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Are Journalism and Politics Inextricably Joined?
An anonymous reader writes "Retiring figure Bill Moyers makes his case in a recent speech delivered at the Society of Professional Journalists 2004 national convention. 'But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined.' It is a deep argument, made poignant by the recently murdered Francisco Ortiz Franco of Mexico, Manik Saha of India, and Aiyathurai Nadesan of Sri Lanka, among others. It is a broad argument, touching on history from America's first best seller to yesterday's blog. Is it a convincing argument?"
That should be Dateline NBC for the trucks and Audi, not Volvo for the cars. A much more recent and politically linked example is the current Rathergate with the forged documents and a steadfast refusal by Rather and company to admit that they are wrong.
In the Rather case, he has been personally invested in the Texas Democratic Party for several years. Because of his politics, he blatantly manufactured news with a few of his daughter's cronies. In this case it is the journalistic equivalent of throwing a previously shot cat into Shroedinger's box, and then accusing Shroedinger of being cruel to animals.
The real world impact that was hoped for in this case vanished when the sham was unraveled. First the forged documents and the strings of experts. Then the star interview of Barnes was found to be both not in power at the time, and discredited by his own prior statements and his own daughter. The most recent national polls are probably reflecting a backlash to the "dirty tricks" aspect of this little episode, more than Bush or Kerry's own campaigning. This kind of journalism in action is fair to neither Kerry or Bush, and shouldn't be practiced by any of the press.
Now CBS is still feeling the pain and can't escape from it until they perform a major mea culpa or have a major purge of their perceived bias (Mr. Rather). In this case they lost right leaning viewers because of perceived left slant, and principled left leaning viewers because of tainted credibility. Now their ratings rely on rubberneckers waiting to see what the next act is in this train-wreck. Witness the strings of press releases announcing that they will be announcing something. Pathetic.
-- Len
People do not want to be informed -- they want to feel informed. I agree with everything you say, but it is this which has doomed true journalism. People want so much more to be "right" than to understand, to think, or to suffer challenge to their long-held beliefs.
What we get in America today is not true journalism. Partisan bias, which is largely demonstrated in the choice of what is and isn't "newsworthy", has been pushed to the fore of our media.
There is a very interesting study here that basically tries to gauge how minsinformed the US public is, and then break that down by which candidates they support, which news channels they watch, how clseoly they follow the news etc.
Now, the report has its biases in the sorts of questions they ask, and to some extend how they present the data, but if you read the report as well as just skimming through the somewhat damning graphs littered throughout, you'll see that there are some real systemic problems with US media coverage. In general, if you watched/listened major news outlets (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC etc.) you tended to be more misinformed the more closely you thought you followed the news.
And then there's the problem that this study didn't even consider - all the significant and interesting questions that are simply never be asked by the mainstream US media. Ah well, what can you do? Try and seek out other news sources I guess.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I couldn't tell if you were trying to be sarcastic or not. I'll assume you're not. It is completely ridiculous to suggest that the press has spent more time investigating Bush than they did giving free press to the lying SBVT group.
The lying SBVT dominated the news cycle for weeks. As reported by the New York Times, among others, they were coordinated by the Bush administration, and the SBVT claims were contradicted by official Navy records, by eyewitnesses, and by their own statements prior to the campaign.
On the other hand, Bush has gotten a free pass for
a) Using political connections to get in to the National Guard, when he was far from the best candidate to get in
b) Not fulfilling his duty once he was in there
c) Lying about his service and claiming he flew with his unit for years
Official National Guard records, including those released by the White House, contradict Bush's statements. Others in the National Guard corroborate the fact that Bush did not fulfill his duty. To this day, Bush has been incapable of naming a single person who saw him in Alabama when he was supposed to be training there. Bush claims he signed up for a unit up north (Connecticut, I think), but he never showed up to that at all.
The national media ignored Bush's stint with a champaign unit in the National Guard during Vietnam, with small exceptions, during the 2000 campaign. I know many Bush supporters would like to believe otherwise, but it's fact.
To illustrate this fact, I did a Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Vietnam"
from 1992 through 1996: 8 hits
1996 through 2000: 90 hits
Then I did a search for "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and "John Kerry" and "Vietnam" in the past six months. How many hits? 248!
Okay, so clearly the liars trying to trash John Kerry are getting nearly three times the press in the past six months as the press has spent looking into legitimate issues with Bush's record in the past 12 years.
Is Bush's Vietnam record (or lack of it) relevant to today? To some extent, no. The war was more than 30 years ago. But for a president who calls himself the "war president", who insists he was for the Vietnam war, who started an elective war under false pretenses and shifting reasons, and who is dangerously stretching our military resources, it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Bush signed a Form 180, releasing all his military records, and responsible media has reported on it extensively. On the other hand, war-hero John Kerry refuses to sign a 180. But you'd never know that by watching the "mainstream" (left-biased) media, would you. Hmmm... I wonder what Kerry is trying to hide. Don't you?
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
> "Saddam Hussein, if he's alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to
> not get caught. And we've not seen him on a video since 2001."
>
>Let me say that again -- he said this *last week* -- 9/10/2004.
>
>Here's the original CSPAN realvideo clip. The whole thing is a prime example of
>9/11-Iraq-9/11-Iraq conflation by repetition and insinuation. Iraq was
>celebrating shooting an unmanned American drone, and at the same time, Hanni
>Hanjour was checking into a Marriott in New Jersey...
Uh..he meant to say Bin Laden, not Saddam Hussain. That's the only mistake he made. Calm down.