My Kitchen Table

The conflict agenda of the mainstream (and not so mainstream) media

More than a few years ago, when I toiled for the CBC back in my native Canada, the executive producer of the radio show on which I was working sent me out to do an interview. She didn't just send me out with a tape recorder and an idea for a story, however - she practically told me what she wanted the person being interviewed to say. So I arranged to meet the person, and lo and behold, the story turned out to be completely different that what my editor had portrayed. It was far less dominated by conflict than my producer had envisioned. It was still a great story - just more complex and nuance.

Excited, I went back to the studio and explained that, while the story had changed, it was still a great piece. "I don't want it," my producer snarled. "It's not what I wanted to get from that interview."

I ran into this attitude repeatedly during my years as a journalist, regardless of the particular medium I was working in. I remember once being told by a TV producer that my story about illegal overfishing by Canadians (who love to blame that particular problem on other nations) needed more "bang-bang." I told him that most fisherman don't tend to pack heat on the high seas. Again it was a case where complexity and nuance were being ignored in favor of conflict.

I'm reminded of this watching, reading and listening to the coverage of the first month of the Obama administration. Several friends (liberals for sure) have complained that the media seems willing to jump on every little mistake the guy makes. (To be fair, some haven't been so little, even by his own measure.) But what these friends don't understand is that the media is not being driven by an anti-Obama agenda. It is driven by a conflict agenda.

The media needs conflict the way an alcoholic needs a drink. while this is certainly true of mainstream media (and TV in particular) it's also true of new forms of digital media. It is easier to tell a nuanced and complex story online, but it's also true that most small media sites seek out conflict when telling a story.

In the US, conflict means the Republicans going after the Obama agenda. While reporters, commentators and editors might tell you that they support the idea of bringing the country together, in their dark, secret places they hate the idea of bipartisanship. How boring it would be if everybody just got along. So it benefits both the GOP AND the media to have the Republicans be as obstructionist as possible. It helps sell newspapers, as they say.

Not all media coverage of conflict is bad, of course. Often conflict is driven by legitimate differences of opinion. Coverage of those differences is essential to the future of democracy in the US. But like Ritalin taken too often and when not needed, the media is hooked on conflict and must find it in everything. And so this message is reinforced in society - the public only sees conflict and believes that little else is possible.

(I found one notable exception to this rule. The Christian Science Monitor would often tell reporters covering "conflicts" to look for the people who were trying to overcome the differences and work together.)

Why I don't miss watching cable news

Out here in rural northern Virginia, we don't get cable TV. Comcast and those folks haven't ventured to my part of Loudoun County and I will never, ever get a satellite dish (they look like carbuncles on the side of a house). So when I do watch TV -- which is about an hour every other day -- what I normally watch is the Retro TV channel I now get because of my digital TV converter. (Love seeing those old episodes of "Emergency" again!)

My primary news sources are the Internet and NPR on the radio. So I am not subjected to the round-the-clock, millisecond-by-millisecond instant analysis of anything that happens anywhere that you get on cable TV news.

There are no unimportant events on cable news. The car chase in Minneapolis, the court appearance of a well-known sports or entertainment figure in L.A., the small plane crash in Iowa, where the Dow is at any particular moment, etc. Each event is reported on as if it is the most important story in the world AT THAT MOMENT. But only for that moment, because in the next moment, well, it's old news.

This style of reporting reminds me of a line from the Stephen Sondheim play "Into the Words." I might be paraphrasing a bit but one of the characters sings that if every moment was an important one, then there would be no important moments. Or it would be impossible to tell the really important ones from the ones that are just the ordinary clutter of everyday life.

This is the problem that America media now face, cable news in particular. In their desire to feed the 24x7 news beast to keep the ratings up so as to make a profit (it all comes down to making a profit), cable news relies on an "anything that happens is worth reporting" model that turns all news -- including stuff that's really not important -- into "moments."

This results in a dilution in news value of all stories. Take this posting from a reader at Andrew Sullivan's blog, about cable news reporting on the stimulus package:

American media, be it sports, gossip, celebrity, or politics, has for at least the past ten years (I am 24 so my sample size is rather small) presented each story of the day as something that is a really important, defining event. In turn, this has had the effect on me and many of my peers of the feeling that nothing is important.  Which is why I have been so excited to see something truly important happen in my lifetime when Obama was elected.  Now we have another truly important event, the economic crisis, and the media is still making micro events the story and missing the enormous picture.

Will Willkinson, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, nails another aspect of this news style on his blog, also in regards to the way the media has been reporting the recent stimulus debate on the Hill: the desire to make every point worthy of discussion, regardless of its merits, in order to be "objective."

I think the problem with the American media is that it’s full of Americans who overestimate the importance of American micro-politics, and so, consciously or subconsciously, undertake every damn story as a public-opinion-shaping framing our counter-framing exercise and eventually forget how to report the obvious interpretation of events. This isn’t willful. The obvious interpretation of events has simply become invisible to their team-spirited minds. This is not to say that there isn’t, at the the same time, a very strong sense of the professional obligation to be “objective,” but that tends to manifest itself as pretending to take the other team’s talking points seriously, which is really not at all what objectivity requires.

So what we end up with is the idea that every single thing that is reported on is important, and every single aspect of those stories are worth reporting. So we have is news that isn't news. And as the Andrew Sullivan reader points out, people start to believe that there really isn't anything important being reported. A problem for all media, but one that finds it ultimate manifestation on the cable news channels.

As for me, reading various sources on the Internet that offer a more straight-forward look at events or listening the longer more textured pieces that NPR can do on the radio, I find I have a much better grasp of what's really going on than I did when I did watch cable news.

Why charging for news content won't work for general interest newspapers

Former Time editor Walter Isaacson is the latest in a long line of newspaper fans who argues that something needs to be done in order to save the dinosaurs before they become extinct. His solution - micropayments. He mentions David Carr's recent article that suggest an iTunes model for newspapers. Rather than paying a lot for a paper, pay pennies instead for an article or photo, etc.

While I remember this idea being pushed in the mid-90s, only now, Isaacson argues, does the technology exist to make it work. Isaacson writes that he believes that people should pay something for what they read because if online news sites rely only on advertising, basically they will lose their moral compass.

Well, it's a nice idea, but I don't think it's going to work. At least not for general interest newspapers and here's why: if you charge me for something, I'm going to go and find the person willing to give it to me for free.

Charging for content works for a site like The Wall Street Journal because they are peddling a very specific commodity - news about business. Yes, they also cover the rest of the world as well, but the business people who get their bosses to pay for their subscriptions read the Journal for a specific purpose - the rest of the world is just gravy.

But with a general interest newspaper, here is what would happen. Say The New York Times tried again to charge for parts of the paper or for stories (the first time didn't work out so well). Once I couldn't read my Times any more, well, I would go and read USA Today. Or the Chicago Tribune. Or the Christian Science Monitor. Or Slate. Or Politico. Or other sources of free news. Even if a lot of papers start to charge, you can bet there'll be one publication out there (and the reality is that there would be many) that will continue to give it away for free because of the ad revenue. (I'm not so sure I buy the idea that ad revenue will morally corrupt a paper, but I'm open to the argument - but regardless of what I or Isaacson might think, others will be happy to take the money.)

Because if a site is getting more eyeballs because it's free, you can bet your bottom dollar that advertisers are going to go there. Advertisers don't give a hoot about saving journalism. They care about the best bang for their buck. And even if we did have micropayments for stories, journalism would still rely on ad revenue to make a profit - as it does even now.

The iTunes music model worked for Apple because it was CHEAPER than the alternative of buying an entire album. Here the opposite is true. The iTunes model for online news would be more expensive (even if it was just charging pennies) than the current model of free news. Now you tell me, based on the way that American consumers look at everything else they buy, which model they would choose?

There is a lot more that could be argued on the topic. But I'm afraid that we're just closing the barn doors after the horse is out of the barn. Media people have to deal with that fact -- information might not want to be free but it is -- and the resulting economic model and find a way we can harness that filly so she can take us where we want to go

The end of the age of print

The news that the Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy signals the public acknowledgment of the end of the age of print. In reality, we've been in this age for about five years now, but media companies have been living in denial. Now that the tumbling global economy has basically forced the issue, media companies have been scrambling to try and grasp the Internet age before it's too late. (They remind me of a drowning man trying to grab a life preserver before he goes down for the third time.)

Eventually, I think we're going to see more online collaborations like the one Jon Weber is doing with New West in the Rocky Mountain West. As it is described, "New West is a network of online communities devoted to the culture, economy, politics, environment and overall atmosphere of the Rocky Mountain West." It pools resources and reporters to give the area the kind of coverage that only large, monolitic media organizations have done in the past. In its first year of operations, New West won two major Online Journalism Awards.

I'm so tired of hearing "but what about investigative journalism, what about foreign news?" New media orgs like the Center for Independent Media, ProPublica and Politico are doing quality investigative journalism online. No ink involved. Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor said one of the reasons it will stop its daily print publication and go to a daily online edition with a Sunday print edition is that it will allow the organization to keep its international bureaus.

And you'll see more sharing of international news. For instance, the Monitor and McClathcy are now sharing bureaus. The Monitor is providing news from places where McClathcy has no reporters and vice-versa.

All of this hand-wringing is just so much sound and fury signifying nothing. It won't stop the change from happening. The money will move to online as well. It's just the way it is.

Old Town News and my adventures in online media

It was a cold late September day in Harvard Square in 1991, and I was feeling pretty frustrated. I had just come out of Out of Town News after a frustrated search for Canadian news. While I was in Boston for a year on a Nieman fellowship, my country was locked in yet another constitutional crisis. (I think it was the Charlottetown Accords this time.) We use to call them "neverendums." But could I find any news about it in any American or international paper? Not a chance. There were a few copies of the Globe and Mail and the Montral Gazette, but they were all several days old and I wanted to know what was happening NOW.

I have a very clear memory of standing outside the building and thinking to myself "I wish I could just read it on my computer."

A few months later I returned to Canada, was introduced to the Internet by my sister, got my first account (Halifax Nova Scotia has the country's first commercial ISP), tooled around on Gopher for a few months and lynx, and then in early 2003 dowbloaded my first copy of the Mosiac browser and I knew that nothing would ever be the same for journalism. By early in 2004 I had convinced my boss to let me put my paper, the Halifax Daily News, on the web - the first online newspaper in Canada.

But whenever I think about how I got lead to the Internet, I always think of that day outside Out of Town News.

Out of Town News out of time

If you want a clear sign that the age of print is over, than you'll find it in this bit of news. Out of Town News, long a symbol of Harvard Square is going out of business. The Boston Globe reports that the chain owners of the store that has been selling news in the Square since the 50s says no one wants to read crushed ink on dead trees anymore.

The owner, now a chain vendor, has notified Cambridge officials that it does not plan to renew its lease Jan. 31, saying the public appetite for printed news has all but vanished.

"It is not the profitable location for us that it once was," said Laura Samuels, spokeswoman for the owner, Hudson News of East Rutherford, N.J.

For years you could pick up a copy of almost every important newspaper in the world in Out of Town News. These days you just turn on your computer and surf there on the web. The Christian Science Monitor, PC Mag, now Out of Town News ... the writing, as they say, is on the wall for printed newspapers and magazines.

Why right-wing talk show hosts are in trouble

Rush Limbaugh is in trouble. So is Laura Ingraham. Ditto Michael Savage. And Hugh Hewitt. And on TV, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. And a whole host of other right-wing talk show hosts.

But it's not because of anything to do with the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting and conservative fears that an Obama administration will require equal time for opposing views.

Don't get me wrong. Rush Limbaugh will always have a large audience. Michael Savage will be on the radio for a while yet, spewing his hatred, homophobia and misogyny. Bill O'Reilly will continue to confound logic by totally ignoring or twisting facts in order to make a point. Same with the others. They'll be making millions for decades. So they'll be happy.

No, right-wing radio is in trouble because it lost the center. Instead of creating opinion leaders, it will be more like voices off in the distance trying to get you to pay attention, when in fact they are just annoying you.

They will still have large audiences comprised of dittoheads. But the real reason these shows had so much power at one time was that they reached beyond these ideological adherents to pull independents and white, center-right Democrats from the center towards their view point. But if this last election showed anything, it's that bombast, wild charges and innuendo don't seem to pack the punch they once did. Right-wing talk radio threw every bogeyman and trumped-up charge it could at Obama -- some even accused him of being the anti-Christ -- and the folks in the center ignored it. Instead, they decided to give Obama a chance. (Perhaps they remembered that these right-wing talk show hosts were the same people who backed President Bush, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, weapons of mass destruction, a precipitous decline in America's image around the world, just to name a few things.)

People didn't listen.

The decline of the right-wing talk radio host is just one symptom of the swing in the pendulum of American politics. The long conservative era is coming to a close. The hot new names in pundit broadcasting are Keith Obermann and Rachel Meadows. Their turn to dominate the spotlight now.

Now, this doesn't mean that all conservative voices are going to disappear, or lose all influence. Far from it. We'll need thoughtful conservative voices to remind us that Obama is, after all, just a human being and one that makes mistakes. But their criticisms are going to have to have substance, because Americans have shown that flinging crap like monkeys in a zoo won't get the job done.

And here's a point that shows how things have changed. During a stop in Greensboro, North Carolina Sarah Palin made her controversial remarks about being with "real Americans" in "pro-America areas of this great nation." And what she mean of course was white, religious, conservative America. Talk radio used her remark, and other similar remarks made by a variety of conservative politicians and pundits, to attack Obama as not being a "real" American.

Didn't work.

Greensboro, where Palin made her "real American" remarks, went for Obama.

Why Fox News is a joke

Just additional evidence that Fox News is more interested in stoking racial tensions than informing people accurately.

John Walcott on journalism, power and celebrity

John Walcott, the Washington bureau chief for the McClatchy newspapers, was awarded the first I.F. Stome Medal for Journalistic Independence for how his team of reporters covered the Iraq war. McClatchy was light-years ahead of almost all the other media in the country in breaking the real news about the war - the lack of WMD, how we were not being treated as liberators, the real cost in terms of blood and treasure. When I was still writing the Terrorism and Security blog for the Monitor, I used their stuff all the time.

But it's what he has to say about the media -- in particular the inside-the-beltway media -- that really caught my eye.

Here's one:

Why, in a nutshell, was our reporting different from so much other reporting? One important reason was that we sought out the dissidents, and we listened to them, instead of serving as stenographers to high-ranking officials and Iraqi exiles. I'm afraid that much the same thing may have happened on Wall Street. Power and money and celebrity, in other words, can blind you. Somehow, the idea has taken hold in Washington journalism that the value of a source is directly proportional to his or her rank, when in my experience the relationship is more often inverse.

And this one, which goes to the heart of the argument in the posting directly below:

Does the truth lie halfway between say, slavery and abolition, or between segregation and civil rights, or between communism and democracy? If you quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Winston Churchill, in other words, must you then give equal time and credence to Hitler and Joseph Goebbels? If you write an article that's critical of John McCain, are you then obligated to devote an identical number of words to criticism of Barack Obama, and vice versa?

No, the answer is you are not obligated to do so.

I agree with a lot of what John Walcott has to say. (And McClatchy's reporting on the war was outstanding.) But the biggest problem I have with his argument is that it ultimately falls back on the old role of media as gatekeeper - that somehow we are purer, nobler and more able to discern fact from fiction than the great unwashed.

I beg to differ. This assumes that journalists are free of bias in their reporting, often not the cast - on the left or the right or the "middle." In fact, I would argue that the best thing the Internet has done for journalism is that it has made more points of view available for people to consider.

Why is that young people turn to the Daily Show for their news? Or that YouTube and Twitter have become a way for people to "report" on what they see happening - it's because they don't believe that the media can leave their biases behind, even when they swear that they are totally objective. (Not to mention the people who own the media and the agendas that they have in "reporting" the news.)

And I predict that as more and more young people -- raised in this digital world -- become journalists, they are going to challenge the way we report the news and demand that we do it in a more transparent way.

So I think that John Walcott wants to go to the same place I would like to see journalism go to - but our directions to get there are quite different.

Fournier is risking AP credibility

Good piece in the Washington Monthly on how Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier is risking the Associated Press' reputation for unbiased coverage of political issues. Based on what he's been writing, Fournier seems so to have abandoned the idea of fair, unpartial coverage. Not to mention all those love notes to Karl Rove.

Sandy Johnson, the former DC bureau chief of the AP, was asked about Fournier and the bureau when she was forced out as part of a staff shake-up. "I just hope he doesn't destroy it," she said.