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September 21, 2009
Mark Bowden in The Story behind the News in The Atlantic argues that one of the consequences of the collapse of professional journalism is that:
Work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by political operatives and amateur ideologues of one stripe or another, whose goal is not to educate the public but to win. This is a trend not likely to change.
True, Bowden is nostalgic for the good old days of journalism. He says that what gave newspapers their value was the mission and promise of journalism—the hope that someone was getting paid to wade into the daily tide of manure, sort through its deliberate lies and cunning half-truths, and tell a story straight. That is one reason why newspaper reporters, despite polls that show consistently low public regard for journalists, are the heroes of so many films.
Bowden's article gives two examples of the conservative political operatives and amateur ideologues in the US who used snippets from U.S. Circuit Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor early talks to portray her as a racist and liberal activist during the first few weeks following President Obama nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. He makes his case.
This kind of political partisan work, which can be usefully described as post-journalistic, is one that we informed citizens are already familar with. It is quite extensive in the media landscape of the 24 hours news cycle and this normality operates at different levels.
Bowden goes onto say that the consequences are harmful, as the partisan practitioners see:
...democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle. The blogger’s role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. would describe their approach as post-journalistic. .....
...The blogger’s role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement.
Well, this the classic understanding of politics--what Carl Schmitt called an existential conflict between friend and enemy (any person or entity that represents a serious threat or conflict to one's own interests).
Bowden then argues that journalism prevents this destruction of democracy in that, without journalism, the public good is viewed only through a partisan lens, and politics becomes blood sport. I find this playing off the honest, disinterested reporting versus partisan advocacy by bloggers close to mythmaking. Most practising journalists in the media establishment are already partisan, in that they spinners for political parties, rewrite political and corporate media releases, and are complicit in management of the publicity machine. They are, to put it bluntly, engaged in mass deception not enlightenment.
Secondly, Bowden is pointing the finger at amateur bloggers when the main media institutions simply recycled the material from the Republican noise machine. Journalism these days is not seeking truth to enlighten, far from it. Journalists are a part of the relations of knowledge/power and integrated into our what works politics Thirdly, the sordid reality of actually existing journalism is covered over by Bowden's appeal to an ideal of journalism, and the ideal is then equated with what journalism actually is.
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But is the problem the internet or Murdock