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Sunday, April 02, 2006

Should Everything Be For Sale?

When I signed on to The Blue Voice, one of the topics I intended to cover was my pet peeve—the sad state of our national news media. In 2004, I became painfully aware of the critical dearth of decent information available to the voting public, even those like me who purposely went out in search of it. I was scandalized that matters of such critical worldwide importance were covered so half-assedly—or not at all—by the American media. In my opinion, the media are largely responsible for the disaster that sits behind the desk in the Oval Office today. Lately, other topics have eclipsed my ire at the media; but Slate Magazine ran a piece on Friday that really cheesed me.

The Twilight of Objectivity
How opinion journalism could change the face of the news.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, March 31, 2006, at 6:08 AM ET

One little phrase in the subtitle immediately raised my hackles. “Opinion journalism?” What is that, exactly? According to my American Heritage Dictionary, journalism is defined as “The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of the direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.” There is no such thing as “opinion journalism.” You have opinion, and you have journalism. They are mutually exclusive…like military intelligence.

Author Michael Kinsley would like us to believe that technology is irrevocably changing the face of journalism.

“No one seriously doubts anymore that the Internet will fundamentally change the news business. The uncertainty is whether it will only change the method of delivering the product, or whether it will change the nature of the product as well. Will people want, in any form—and will they pay for—a collection of articles, written by professional journalists from a detached and purportedly objective point of view? …Or are blogs and podcasts the cutting edge of a new model for both print and video—more personalized, more interactive, more opinionated, more communal, less objective?”

The whole basis of Kinsley’s argument is that journalism is a consumer commodity, evidenced by his musing about what people will pay for. It is at this point that I have to ask: What is the mission of our national news media? Is it to fulfill a responsibility to provide the people with solid, unadorned, unbiased information? Or is it to package that information in such a way that it can be sold at a premium? Are the news media charged with informing the public, or entertaining it? Somewhere in the last twenty years, with the advent of 24-hour news channels like CNN, and all the copycats that followed, “news” became entertainment. Or entertainment was reclassified as news. Either way you look at it, it has been a disaster for the American public.

The instant gratification of the Information Age makes it so tempting to obliterate the line between journalism and opinion. There are so many voices out there, so many choices available to the “news consumer.” What better way to get your share of the audience than to spice up your offerings with a dash of controversy and a pinch of personal conviction?

The word “journalism” gets a lot more use now than it ever used to. In the good old days, we used to call it “news.” I suspect it’s much easier to take some of the crap—the puff magazine pieces or the politically slanted Limbaughisms—that appear on the evening broadcasts and call them “journalism.” Because they for damned sure are not “news.” Let’s get back to using the proper terminology, shall we? In my dictionary, “To present an opinion in the guise of an objective report” is the definition of editorialize. What Kinsey calls “opinion journalism” may be good theater. And it may even be good television. It is most certainly editorialism. But it is not journalism.

Objectivity—the faith professed by American journalism and by its critics—is less an ideal than a conceit. It's not that all journalists are secretly biased, or even that perfect objectivity is an admirable but unachievable goal. In fact, most reporters work hard to be objective and the best come very close. The trouble is that objectivity is a muddled concept. Many of the world's most highly opinionated people believe with a passion that it is wrong for reporters to have any opinions at all about what they cover. These critics are people who could shed their own skins more easily than they could shed their opinions. But they expect it of journalists. It can't be done. Journalists who claim to have developed no opinions about what they cover are either lying or deeply incurious and unreflective about the world around them.

Of course we expect objectivity of journalists, Mr. Kinsley. I may be a raving lunatic who stands on a street corner in the rain screaming my political rants at innocent passers-by, but I still have every right to expect a news reporter to present me with the facts of a story—no more and no less. I depend upon that unbiased, objective report in order to form my own opinions. I don’t expect reporters not to have opinions about the stories they cover. I simply believe it is not part of their job description to air those opinions in the body of a news story. That is the trick to being a good reporter—taking yourself out of the equation. Just because today’s reporters are too lazy, too egotistical, or too avaricious to do that anymore doesn’t mean that is not the essence of true journalism.

It’s much like the change that has swept the medical community over the past fifty years. Twenty-first century physicians have made medicine a consumer commodity. Modern technology has turned doctors into technicians…mechanics. Just because today’s medical community has decided that it isn’t fair to expect doctors to become emotionally involved—to care for patients—doesn’t mean that is not the essence of true medicine. And I don’t know a soul who would concede that society is being better served by this new, high-tech medical culture.

Similarly, the public will not be better served by news media who allow technology to distill their role in the community down to competition and greed. Isn’t that just what our nation needs: one more way for us to be diminished as a people by our consumer-driven economy? Can we really afford to let our news media go there, Mr. Kinsley?

posted at 10:00:00 PM by Lisa :-]

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