Monday, August 20, 2007
Why journalists become journalists
Ace is more than a little good on the motivations of journalists and their unreconstructed rage that bloggers are taking all the fun out of leading us around by the nose. Appetizer:
All of these arguments about the need for reporters to report facts are dishonest. No one challenges this notion. No individual blogger could conceivably devote enough hours of his spare time (or his blogging time, if he does this full-time) to develop, confirm, and write a true bit of first-hand journalism once a week or so.
And the MSM knows that. They know their job on that score is secure -- simply because no one but a salaried reporter could put in forty hours a week working on a single story. (Especially because 99% of stories are not terribly important or remarkable, but still need to be reported -- but obviously no blogger could write up the Kalamazoo Crime Blotter three times a week and expect to be read by more than three thousand people as an absolute ceiling.)
What they are worried about is the decline in their influence as to matters not directly related to data-collection and not even remotely related to reportage. They're worried that they're losing their ability to shape (and mislead) public opinion in ways they find best for the public good. These people did not get into journalism, after all, to report on 3M's quarterly earnings advisory. They got into journalism to change things.
And they're desperately scrabbling to hold on tight to that bit of undeserved, undue influence by leveraging their entirely-unrelated qualifications to collect and disseminate raw information into a role they actually desire and feel they are worthy of-- a certified, credentialed priesthood of general wisdom, weighing in expertly on matters of politics, scientific and technological ethical dilemmas, foreign policy and of course military strategy, etc.
Read the whole thing.
15 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Aug 21, 12:47:00 AM:
Poppycock.
You can get away writing one story a week at a handful of big papers, maybe. At the daily newspaper where I worked, I usually wrote three to seven stories a day.
Little interest in crime stories? Tell that to the New York Daily News.
I have known very few journalists (even in cities like L.A.) who wanted to influence people or change things. I have known a considerable number of journalists who wanted to become the next Hemingway.
Opinions are nice. Informed opinions are better.
Read the whole thing? I don't have time for fiction.
By 
, at
Tue Aug 21, 01:48:00 AM:
Informed opinions are better.
As long as that "informed opinion" is shaped by YOUR biases right?
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Aug 21, 01:59:00 AM:
I am a businessman and a pragmatist, Anonymous. My conclusions are shaped by the highest obtainable truth.
By Deplorable Dave, at
Tue Aug 21, 02:23:00 AM:
You're right DEC. The MSM has nothing to be defensive about. Twisting stories into predictable shapes? Clamming up when asked questions by "pajama-clad" bloggers? There's nothing to hide here. Move along.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Aug 21, 02:32:00 AM:
I have brought up the shortcomings of the news media frequently on this blog, dfp. I also have pointed out some of the reasons for them.
To solve a problem, you must define it correctly. This post fails to define the problem correctly.
By , at
Tue Aug 21, 05:50:00 AM:
I think it's a hell of a lot more likely that the "influence" is more group think and bias, and a desire to write spin that the editor(s) approve of. That there is bias is simply a matter of human nature. But wire it so that people who think differently than you do are not part of the team and you lose what I would like to see in journalism.
Take the New York Times ... they don't even deny they're left leaning anymore. The bias in some cases may simply be that the writer just doesn't know enough to provide a balance view. They report as they see it.
Hell, I'd be happy just to read a paper written above the third grade reading level, or see the internet stories published after spell checking them.
By antithaca, at
Tue Aug 21, 09:46:00 AM:
Well DEC, you should read it. Even though the excerpt comes across as a broadside it's actually somewhat more carefully aimed.
I don't think Ace is right that 99% of the stories that are reported are unimportant. But he closer to the truth than many.
And the problem is journalists alone. It's editorial-journalist complex IMO.
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Aug 21, 09:48:00 AM:
I have brought up the shortcomings of the news media frequently on this blog
Yet you rely on them to provide this so called "highest obtainable truth" you speak of when they are obviously defective?
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Aug 21, 10:38:00 AM:
Actually I don't, Purple Avenger. I frequently go back to the original material on important stories. I don't simply read the NY Times report on a key speech or report. I often take the time to read the original speech or report. My opinions are formed by my own research and by my own experiences. In other words, I operate the way a good journalist should operate.
On other stories, there are shortcuts. After a while, you know which groups of experts to believe on certain topics.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Aug 21, 11:19:00 AM:
P.S.
Here are two steps to improve journalism today:
1. Journalists should stop using the "tabloid" approach on war, political, and policy stories. Too many journalists in the mainstream media today think like tabloid writers. The key to tabloid story writing is that something doesn't need to be true to print it -- someone just has to say it's true.
2. Don't let any politician, bureaucrat, or political candidate talk "off the record." Ever. The idea that this reduces the flow of information for an extended period of time is untrue. It reduces the flow of information for about six weeks. Afterward, every publicity hound starts to play by the new rules.
Many journalists have forgotten a key point: Politicians need journalists more than journalists need politicians.
By Cassandra, at
Tue Aug 21, 12:55:00 PM:
I don't think we're gettng the "highest obtainable truth" on major political stories of the day when the MSM one sidedly rehash the same simplistic quotes from Joe Wilson or Jack Murtha 60 or 70 times (or worse yet, repeat demands for investigations or complaints about how we haven't had any investigations!) and deliberately ignore the results of entire completed bipartisan investigations.
It's a sad day when I bring up the fact that we've had 3 (count 'em - 3) completed investigations in conversation and people are COMPLETELY UNAWARE THAT THEY EVEN EXIST, and yet they read the Post or NY Times every day and listen to TV news. I don't. What gives?
That says something to me. One, I'm a more careful reader than they are, but also that they are really unaware of how selective their daily news is. That's scary. In fact there are times I'm not at all sure how it's different from being in Communist Russia except it's not our government doing this to us. Anyway, I'm ranting and I need to stop.
Being involved with the blogosphere, you can't help but be aware that entire news stories - important ones - never even enter the consciousness of the average American voter. That worries me.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Aug 21, 01:40:00 PM:
The news media does nothing more than signal us about an event or issue. Breaking news is too imperfectly recorded to rely on it as the last word on any topic.
Most citizens are too self-centered to care about public policy on a daily basis. It is simply a fact of life.
The PR war is as important as the hot war. The political right needs to do a better PR job. During my lifetime, Republicans often have had a problem in the area of PR. Their best PR talent usually works for big companies and collects big paychecks. These PR experts have no interest in the hassle and the smaller paychecks in Washington, DC.
In the old days, magazines used to give us fairly detailed and accurate overviews. Most of those magazines are gone, replaced by newer media. Blogs are starting to play role of the old magazines. (I am not talking about the blogs of political hacks.)
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Aug 21, 04:59:00 PM:
The news media does nothing more than signal us about an event or issue.
Or NOT SIGNAL when its convenient to do so. The power to selectively sequester news is as great is the power to display it.
One might think say...the NYT would be all over Hillary's massive lingering campaign finance scandal and lawsuit by the guy who wants his money back. Yet they are not. That story is effectively sequestered by the MSM.
By Pangloss, at
Tue Aug 21, 08:41:00 PM:
DEC Tue Aug 21, 11:19:00 AM wrote:
Here are two steps to improve journalism today:
1. Journalists should stop using the "tabloid" approach on war, political, and policy stories. Too many journalists in the mainstream media today think like tabloid writers. The key to tabloid story writing is that something doesn't need to be true to print it -- someone just has to say it's true.
2. Don't let any politician, bureaucrat, or political candidate talk "off the record." Ever. The idea that this reduces the flow of information for an extended period of time is untrue. It reduces the flow of information for about six weeks. Afterward, every publicity hound starts to play by the new rules.
You can get even more basic than those two points. Reporting should be "who what where when and how." "Why" is almost always pure speculation and should be eschewed. Reporting should begin at the beginning of the facts, take the shortest path forward through the facts, and end when the facts run out. Reporters should be at least as scrupulous about standards of evidence as the police (and yes I realize the police are flawed on this score). Today's story should cover the facts of today, not choice tidbits from yesterday or the day before to spice it up (and add bias through repetition). Rumor and hearsay is not a story, it is falsehood masquerading as a story. Anonymous sources and "he said/she said" are not factual. They are rumor and hearsay. They are useful because they might point the way to a real story. But if nothing real pans out, they cannot be used.
Journalists are so eager to get a scoop, so eager to get the next Watergate, that they willingly prostitute themselves to propagandists and liars who make insinuations off the record. And they fail to follow up hints and rumors with real reporting.
Of course TV news is even worse. Put a pretty face and a bunch of meaningless piffle with scattered steaming piles of uninformed editorial in the middle of it, and you have a newscast.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Wed Aug 22, 12:28:00 AM:
"...not choice tidbits from yesterday or the day before..."
Beyond a paragraph of background info (for those who didn't read the first story), that often is the result of lazy journalism. The more you can pick up from old stories, the less new stuff you have to write.
