Glass House With a Lot of Broken Windows
There's a wonderful piece on the Newsbusters site about Bill Keller, esteemed executive editor of the New York Times. Once again, it comes time to show his and his paper's might, the same paper violently laying off a large percentage of its work force due to flat ad revenue and declining circulation, over the likes of mere mortals who "blog". He started out his salvo here:
"Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media," Keller said. "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."
What? I don't have a direct feed to AP or some journalism student writing copy in my den? What a horrifying thought. Folks, the age of investigative journalism, if there ever truly was one, is long gone, and the significance of recycled rags like the Times, which seem to have more in common with the Pravda of old Soviet days, is waning. From the paper that brought you Jayson Blair, they are the first to step up and show you how little they can offer us anymore.
Maintaining a Baghdad bureau in 2004 cost $1.5 million, and says Keller, "This kind of civic labor can't be replaced by bloggers."
Of course, if you don't report the stories out of fear of the regime and risking your "unique position" like CNN did, that money largely goes to waste. If you only cherry pick the stories that fit your paper's agenda, same goes. You're no better than any of us bloggers, except you have a credit card and frequent flier miles.
Keller cited more items to prove that the New York Times was better than bloggers. Some of the points he cited were laughable considering the paper's reputation of late, especially when discussing the Times' "rigorous set of standards."
"A worldwide network of trained, skilled [observers] to witness events" and write about them, and "a rigorous set of standards. A journalism of verification," rather than of "assertion," and maintaining an "agnosticism" as to where any story may lead. And he said the Times practiced "transparency," or, in math-teacher terms, "we show our work."
Oh, who's that ghost lurking behind you Bill? Why it's..it's still Jayson Blair. How many more of him do you have? How many good stories do you ignore because your personal opinion doesn't think they're relevant (Air America for ex)? I wonder if any snorts or guffaws followed his statements. I have seen voracious attempts at verification in the sea of bloggers who are willing to chew out each others' throats for the best and most accurate story while at the same time I've watched "where most people get their news in the MSM" run with story after story that ranges from poorly sourced to speculation to flat-out fantasy.
Maybe Bill needs to look through that Glass, Darkly and reverse the lens. He might be speaking of the reflection he sees in his own failings.
As for Fox News' slogan, "fair and balanced," Keller labeled it "the most ingeniously cynical slogan" in media marketing.
That's more than what can be said for "all the news that's fit to print."
Amen brother. "All the News That's Fit for the Unwashed Masses." Has a nice prole ring to it, wouldn't you say, Bill? Maybe that could do for a new subheading. There, I've recycled and chewed on his comments. I think that story looks much better now...
There's a wonderful piece on the Newsbusters site about Bill Keller, esteemed executive editor of the New York Times. Once again, it comes time to show his and his paper's might, the same paper violently laying off a large percentage of its work force due to flat ad revenue and declining circulation, over the likes of mere mortals who "blog". He started out his salvo here:
"Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media," Keller said. "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."
What? I don't have a direct feed to AP or some journalism student writing copy in my den? What a horrifying thought. Folks, the age of investigative journalism, if there ever truly was one, is long gone, and the significance of recycled rags like the Times, which seem to have more in common with the Pravda of old Soviet days, is waning. From the paper that brought you Jayson Blair, they are the first to step up and show you how little they can offer us anymore.
Maintaining a Baghdad bureau in 2004 cost $1.5 million, and says Keller, "This kind of civic labor can't be replaced by bloggers."
Of course, if you don't report the stories out of fear of the regime and risking your "unique position" like CNN did, that money largely goes to waste. If you only cherry pick the stories that fit your paper's agenda, same goes. You're no better than any of us bloggers, except you have a credit card and frequent flier miles.
Keller cited more items to prove that the New York Times was better than bloggers. Some of the points he cited were laughable considering the paper's reputation of late, especially when discussing the Times' "rigorous set of standards."
"A worldwide network of trained, skilled [observers] to witness events" and write about them, and "a rigorous set of standards. A journalism of verification," rather than of "assertion," and maintaining an "agnosticism" as to where any story may lead. And he said the Times practiced "transparency," or, in math-teacher terms, "we show our work."
Oh, who's that ghost lurking behind you Bill? Why it's..it's still Jayson Blair. How many more of him do you have? How many good stories do you ignore because your personal opinion doesn't think they're relevant (Air America for ex)? I wonder if any snorts or guffaws followed his statements. I have seen voracious attempts at verification in the sea of bloggers who are willing to chew out each others' throats for the best and most accurate story while at the same time I've watched "where most people get their news in the MSM" run with story after story that ranges from poorly sourced to speculation to flat-out fantasy.
Maybe Bill needs to look through that Glass, Darkly and reverse the lens. He might be speaking of the reflection he sees in his own failings.
As for Fox News' slogan, "fair and balanced," Keller labeled it "the most ingeniously cynical slogan" in media marketing.
That's more than what can be said for "all the news that's fit to print."
Amen brother. "All the News That's Fit for the Unwashed Masses." Has a nice prole ring to it, wouldn't you say, Bill? Maybe that could do for a new subheading. There, I've recycled and chewed on his comments. I think that story looks much better now...
posted by Rob Beck | 8:22 AM
3 Comments:
A thoroughly enjoyable article.
While I agree that the corporate media has generally become a journalistic wasteland -- a clearinghouse for press releases and commentary, nearly devoid of serious investigative journalism -- it's also true that the capacity of outlets like the NYT to conduct investigations dwarfs that of most bloggers. What will decide the fate of every outlet is whether it decides to utilize that capacity.
I really hope that the blogosphere's abundance of free analysis and commentary -- and the free mass distribution of institutional communications provided by the Internet -- will create the necessary pressure to compel the major media to go back to real investigative journalism and abandon the "he said, she said, here's the color commentary" style it's devolved into. However, if it doesn't, the "real" journalists will simply become bloggers, expense accounts will be replaced by PayPal buttons, and hard news will become the province of distributed collaborative journalists -- blogswarms. That works too, and probably works better, since bloggers generally won't be as beholden to editors, owners, or (hopefully) advertisers.
Perhaps even still we could see the end of "some say" and "there are those that feel" and just report that it's actually the reporter asking the question who thinks this and wants to know the why and wherefore to an answer. I see nothing wrong with that.
Yeah. To me that falls under the heading of commentary, and the blurring of the line between news and opinion is something I blame on the cable news networks and their eternal quest for ratings. Sensationalism requires that instead of actually relating what's going on in the world, you grab hold of the juciest story and spend half of every hour speculating about how much jucier it might get. That idiotic mentality has bled into every part of TV news, and there seems to be a revolving door between news and commentary in all the major media. Infotainment.
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