Tag: media critique

Old Media’s Awkward Embrace

The awkward embrace by which the established media figures are halfheartedly wrapping their arms around their heir apparent reminds me of the uncomfortable John McCain/George W. Bush man hug used so effectively by Barack Obama’s campaign.  That any mainstream outlet would seek to collar the internet and with it the multitude of online-based means of information exchange, forcing them to march to its own tune in the process surprises me not really all that much.   Power plays like these are why the blogsophere has often been contemptuous of the big names.   A drowning person reaching desperately for a way to stay afloat would have to be awfully sadistic if he or she, out of pure spite, sought to drag down the very means by which he or she might survive.   But then again, no one ever confused the media as being strictly and patently rational.   A crisis mentality permeates the thought process of many in these trying times and catastrophe is rarely graced by sensible or conscionable decision making.      

The Washington Post, also known as the walking dead, pulled a fast one on just about everybody quite recently.   Its Next Great Pundit Contest™ started out with a stated desire to lift some obscure member of the Proletariat blogging class into a temporary, but nonetheless visible role as a Beltway heavy hitter, but was shiftily transformed from beginning to end to showcase an “average” member of society who happened to have a substantial publication history and at least one book in print.   The winner was highly competent but also the safest choice the company could have ever made.  And not only that,

…in this contest, as in much of new media, though over 50% of bloggers are women, the opinion sections at some of America’s most respected online publications continue to be dominated by men. Between August and October of this year, only 20% of the Huffington Post’s front page opinion columns were written by women, a proportion that dwarfs the corresponding number at Salon, which was a mere 12%.* The primary consumers of new media are young people, a Twitter-crazed generation raised in the post-feminist era, many of us too young to remember Katie Couric as anything other than a serious prime time anchor. So why, when it comes to pundits, does new media look so much like old media?

My response, in part, is this.   Any industry in turmoil is going to aim for the lowest common denominator, because it is averse to take a risk.   In better days, struggling companies might have taken the opportunity to invest into something off the beaten path that conventional wisdom might question or that didn’t have a history of a guaranteed rate of return.   Those days, lamentably, no longer exist.   One sees this in the newspaper business and one sees this also in the music industry.   One of the more gaping flaws with capitalism is that there is always a temptation to view everything, no matter of its quality, in terms of a commodity or in terms of turning a guaranteed profit; I also know that social progress will always be impeded by the pursuit of the bottom line.

Any historically marginalized group, provided they speak with enough of a unified voice and demand their right to be heard is often thrown a cheap concession in the form of a specific platform upon which to be heard as a way to get activists and reformers to stop applying pressure and in effect, to shut up.   Traditionally the addition of a token member promoted to a high level from within has been an easy way to satisfy protesters, and so also has been the creation of a specific publication to best serve the interests of those who have historically been denied a voice.   As a noted intellectual put it, what has been set in motion up to this point could well be described as The Triumph of Tokenism.   This could never be confused as true equality, but it is often embraced as “at least a start.”

In 1966, the scholar whom I reference above, historian C. Vann Woodward, wrote a provocative essay entitled “What Happened to the Civil Rights Movement?”   The opening two paragraphs have an eerie resonance to the present day.   Woodward was specifically writing about the struggle for African-American rights, but they fit this context neatly.

As if adopting the techniques of the cinema director, history has obligingly thrown in a few flashbacks or replays of hauntingly familiar lines, encounters, whole episodes from the past.  It would seem at times, in fact, that contemporary history has been plagiarizing an old scenario and helping with the script.

With all due resistance to superficial parallels, we have been unable to to avoid comparisons between past history and lived experience.  For we have witnessed in our own time a rising tide of indignation against an ancient wrong, the slow crumbling of stubborn resistance, the sudden rush and elation of victory, and then the onset of reaction and fading of high hopes.

So it would seem then that demands for equality must be measured against the course of events as established by some sort of equilibrium we can sense but have a difficult time observing viscerally.   But neither, of course, does this mean that revolutions of all sorts are unnecessary or need not even be attempted.   Even if the ultimate end is that of discouragement and disillusion, this does not mean we ought not to start the process over again.   Perhaps we should assume that the life cycle of movements and issue activism is beholden to ebbs and flows by its very intrinsic nature and thus we ought to prepare ourselves for the nascent battle charge in the same breath as we acknowledge our retreats and the re-entrenchments of our opponents.

Woodward continues,    

Historians have their arm chair consolations, of course, their after-dinner ironies with brandy.  We knew all along, or so we inform the young and ill-tutored, that all revolutionary upheavals have their life cycle:  rise, climax, decline, reaction…We knew all too well–and the knowledge always embarrassed encounters with true believers–that high fevers of idealism and soaring moods of self-sacrifice cannot be sustained indefinitely, that they lag and burn themselves out, that disenchantment and self-doubt inevitably set in.  And one could expect from past experience that extremists from both ends would take over and make common cause against the rational means.

This passage has parallels to our day that go well beyond gender inequality.   I think what is most crucial is the understanding that revolution as strictly defined doesn’t necessarily mean armed revolt and establishment of a brand new way of conducting one’s affairs.   Sometimes the most subtle revolutions are the most influential and the revolutionary power of the internet is one of these.   The internet reveals both the best and the worst of humanity and I choose to observe the best while taking care not to be dragged down by the latter.

I prefaced this piece by quoting the Huffington Post article written by Chloe Angyal, who concedes that even though the deck may be stacked against female contributors to media, a certain amount of persistence is necessary to overcome it.


…[W]e — young people, and especially young women — can do better. New media, despite its distinctly old-fashioned start, still represents an enormous opportunity to shape for ourselves the kind of public discourse we want to have. It is from our ranks that America’s next great pundits should come, and it is our responsibility to support them when they do. Furthermore, new media represents our chance to genuinely participate in changing the face of our nation’s public discourse. The men to women ratio of submissions to the Washington Post contest was eighty-twenty, a distinctly old media proportion. Young women can and must do better than eighty-twenty. It’s time for us to change the conversation. It’s time for us to sit down, log on and be the change we so desperately need to see in the world.

Reform of any kind is a two-way street upon which seeking a scapegoat isn’t nearly as effective or necessary as positive action.   Far too often our cynicism gives way to a self-fulfilling prophecy of ultimate defeat.   Ultimately we will have hard times, but we will also have times of inspiration and great success as well.  One of my favorite sayings is that life never promises us that it will be fair, but it does promise us that it will often be good.  Finding that which is uplifting and satisfying is our role and ultimately our decision.   Businesses rarely make decisions based on faith or on intangibles.   In the cold, hard world of numbers, graphs, charts, and raw data, nothing is left to chance and nothing exists without some undeniable proof to back it up.  Yet, some of the most innovative reforms and products required leaps of faith to set into place, even when the safety net below might not have been several reassuring glances downward.   Irrationality in any form is foolish, but rationality and trusting in the unknown and even the unknowable are not mutually exclusive concepts.   If none of us were willing to risk potential loss and relied exclusively on the status quo, slavery would still be legal in at least half the country, women would not be welcomed into the workplace, LGBTs would be treated with scorn and contempt by most Americans, and we would dwell in a world exclusively of the white males, by the white males, and for the white males.    

The Feud That Wasn’t

Recent Obama Administration attacks against the Chamber of Commerce, and, more notably, Fox News have been greeted with perfunctory attention and notice by the major media outlets.  Though a few pundits and experts chimed in to state their case in the immediate aftermath of Team Obama’s war on bias, few were willing to really say what they believed.  Reaction from the chattering classes and the peanut gallery was largely negative and unfavorable of the decision but one got the feeling that many expressed heavily disingenuous views.  Invoking Nixonian tactics in a critique reveals more about current station than All the President’s Men and Women.  In an era where every network and news agency is under increased pressure to maintain advertising revenue and, let we forget, often running significant deficits due to competition with electronic sources of information, caution prevents a major ratings war or uppercut.  In another time, a direct challenge by the White House might have fueled a bare-knuckle brawl among the heavyweights, following its bold example, but at the moment the best one can expect is a holding pattern and resulting uneasy truce.  Peace might be explained away as journalistic ethics, but ethics often are disregarded if monetary advantage is an option.      

Low-octane, under the radar sniping that frequently resorts to passive-aggression is the most obvious sign of the friction between politicians and purveyors of content.  As a result, the major cable networks have largely resisted the temptation to go after each other.  Striking from a defensive posture, MSNBC recently ran effective ads that directly contradicted Fox News’ claim that the 9/12 Tea Party demonstrations in Washington, DC, were not sufficiently covered by other outlets.  MSNBC was, however, careful not to go for the jugular.  To cite another example, despite recent attempts to modernize its programming and its look, CNN still takes a frequently unsatisfying middle ground between centrism and more progressive reporting that frequently comes across as artificial and plebeian in all the worst ways possible.  Still, CNN runs self-serving promo ads on a regular basis that tout its status as number one cable news network, making particularly mention of those under its employ who have won numerous awards and accolades.  This may be so, but CNN in many ways is the proverbial sleeping giant and it will take more than a direct challenge or surprise attack to fully rouse it from its self-satisfied stupor.  CNN was the first on the scene and as a result its demographic is often older and beholden to brand loyalty, but if it continues to lose younger viewers, it will find itself hemorrhaging revenue.      

Returning to the President’s attack on Fox News, one would expect the network, despite its obvious disdain for labor unions, to be solid in its hatred for President Obama.  However, a chink in the armor appears to have developed.  One of its reporters has declined the opportunity to directly engage the President in hand-to-hand combat.  The question remains whether or not he is violating policy or merely exercising a liberty he has the right to embrace.  It is also possible that this decision is a coordinated attempt designed purely to make President Obama look like a child and make Fox News seem like the rational adult in the matter.          

Returning to the relative surface placidity of Fox News versus Barack H. Obama, et al,

Fox News Channel correspondent Major Garrett called himself a “conscientious objector” in his network’s fight with the White House after a brief interview with President Barack Obama Wednesday during which the topic never came up.

One wonders also if this is merely a shrewd tactical move or indicative of larger trends within Fox News.  Much exists behind the scenes that we simply aren’t privy to and whether the Obama Administration has struck a deal with Fox News is purely speculative because no one’s talking.  Naturally, at least one conservative pundit has taken the opportunity to take a condescending swipe at the President’s strategy and perceived lack of satisfying and successful victories in foreign policy.  It is the intention of many on the right to paint our President as little more than an empty suit.    

Tongue in cheek, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said the interview “constitutes the most important truce in our history since the Korean armistice of 1953.”

“We are South Korea in this particular analogy,” he said.

To be completely honest, however, Fox News has never truly embraced an all out battle royal with the Obama Administration.  While it continues to be snidely dismissive of its policies and eager to run stories with a healthy dollop of right-wing distortion, it has never counter-attacked with any kind of ferocity.  When the immediate charges were levied against Fox News, namely that it was merely a propaganda wing of the Republican party, it became at most a two-day story, and notably reached no fevered pitch of nastiness.  Clearly, no one really wanted to run with the story for very long.  The truth is that the media had nothing to gain and quite a bit to lose if it pushed back too hard.  

Any means of information dispersal has to justify its own existence from time to time and anything that might cause some degree of doubt on behalf of viewers or readers is poisonous.  Opening up a major dialogue about the role of the media in daily life is the last thing any of the mainstream outlets wanted in this situation, which is unfortunate because I think it’s a long-overdue topic that the American people need to debate and then decide for themselves.  Fox News’ stated objective is noble enough, until one realizes that it is cynically manipulative at best.  We report, you decide?  I suppose it depends on what one means by “reporting.”  The easiest populist tactic in the toolbox of any politician is the act of criticizing the media for unfair and unbalanced treatment.  The irony, of course, is that the media, and by this I notably remove Fox News for the most part, is frequently criticized for fueling baseless fears as a means of pushing back against accurate, damning revelations.  It is notably not held accountable for its real limitations and real shortcomings.          

Snide commentary aside, one isn’t sure whether this revelation constitutes victory, stalemate, or submission.  The powers that be in this circumstance are shadow figures who always talk off the record and never wish to be identified.  Nothing could be less transparent than the motives at play or the ultimate decision.  Still, if conditions continue to deteriorate regarding the quality of content and a resulting shift towards partisan bias rather than impartiality, expect some major wars to break out that will not be assuaged by back-stage politics.  If, at some critical juncture in the near future it seems like there’s not enough money or enough oxygen to go round, one can be sure the gloves will be coming off and staying off.

Real World Success is More Important than Legislative Wrangling

Count me among those who have listened with no small annoyance to the incessant alarmist chorus of worry and hand-wringing regarding the White House’s decision to go on the offensive for once and attack Fox News.  I have always known the political process to be fickle and seemingly designed for the sake of those who would split hairs and raise concerns, but I have never seen so many degrees of second-guessing from so many different corners as I have with the President’s bold attack.  Articles like this one prove my point.  Any effective governing coalition requires placating not just the base, but also moderates, independents, and conservatives.  This should be common sense, but the purveyors of news and politics easily forget it.  The big tent is supposed to be big.      

If any Democrat in power states a position, it will be automatically criticized for being too partisan.  If one doesn’t flex one’s muscles, the lack of strong response will be lambasted as being spineless and wimpy.  A shift to the left will be criticized as catering only to the base.  A shift to the right will be criticized as forsaking liberals to appeal to a transparent sense of phony bipartisanship.  Aiming for the middle will win critics on both the left and right who would much rather prefer their concerns winning precedent rather than having a foot in one side and a foot in the other.  One could almost argue that a President, any President, can’t manage to do much of anything right, except be a combination egalitarian punching bag and dart board.  Any majority coalition is going to have natural fissures and at times conflicting interests, but the best leaders find a way to not sweat the small stuff and instead advance the common thread upon which all can agree.    

Returning again to the recent condemnation of Faux News by the Obama Administration, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that some were so quick to make a Nixon analogy.  I personally was surprised that the White House had the courage to take a chance by stating the unvarnished truth for once.  Many of us in the netroots had been arguing similarly for years, i.e. that Fox News was not a network that aimed for any kind of objective, unbiased spin in its “news” coverage.  That this was decried in some corners as a kind of Chicago-style kneecapping that utterly contradicted the President’s earlier stand advancing post-partisanship is petty politics to the extreme.  I doubt seriously that Obama keeps a constantly revised hate-list of enemies in the desk drawer of the Oval Office.  Post-partisanship is fine but as we have seen over the months it also requires cooperation from the not-so-loyal opposition, who have wished to play by their own rules in their own sandbox thankyouverymuch.  Once hopes in future that the substantive networks and news agencies no longer have to chase the narratives and outlandish pseudo-news set in motion by Fox.

Like many, I was among the ranks of the skeptics when our President continued to advance an optimistic agenda that sought to supersede political ideology in favor of cooperation.  This Era of Good Feeling lasted, if memory serves, about three full months.  As much as it pains me, we’ve still not evolved yet to the point that we can set aside our selfishness and our suspicion of the other side to truly work hand in hand.  One of the open secrets of Washington legislative politics is that many Senators and Representatives do routinely reach across the aisle in formulating worthy bills and many, shockingly enough, even have friendships with those in the opposition party.  They are, however, always cautious and careful to prevent this from becoming common knowledge back home among their constituents.  Few wish to be accused of “palling around with Democrats” after all.

Part of what drives conservative opposition is the fear of being surrounded and outnumbered.  This rally-round-the-flag response I see constantly when I am back home in Alabama.  Having a long history of feeling marginalized and having its concerns discounted by the rest of the country provides a substantial ability and precedent to band together. After having fallen out of power altogether, it is a well-worn identity that can be easily embraced yet again.  Not only that, at this point at least, Republicans really have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  They can afford to speak with more or less one voice projected directly towards their base because, as has been exhaustively reported, moderate voices are currently few and far between.  Energy does not need to be devoted to keeping everyone on board.  Liberals and Democrats can be easily vilified as smug oppressors, forcing their version of ill-suited progress upon a public which would like nothing more than to be left alone to run its affairs in its own way.  Still, at some point free will and laissez-faire produces more harm than good and intervention is necessary.  

In the meantime, it might be best for us to embrace, for the first time in decades what being the majority party entails.  We seem to have gotten out of practice over the years. It means being inclusive without papering over differences and knowing also how to engage different wings and blocs in honest conversation without degenerating into fratricide.  On this point, the media seems poised and eager to pronounce a party at war with itself because doing so promises rapt attention, increased readership, and a steady stream of interesting, lurid headlines.  Let’s not go there, please.  What I see is not exposed fault lines in stretched tautly in anticipation of a major tremor, but rather something quite different.  I see the inevitable stress and strain which characterizes the democratic process at work, one which never provides a satisfying rallying cry for anyone until its conclusion, or until its effects are judged by the direct impact made upon those whom it sets out to help.  At times we forget that the formulation of reform is often much less important than its role in improving the lives of others, but the former does make for good theater.  The latter might not make for interesting copy, but it is upon this standard that we ought to judge success or failure.  In so doing, we ought to act and choose our words accordingly.  

 

Human Interest Story? Sorry, Not Interested

I admit that I have always been skeptical and unaffected by the majority of human interest stories.  It’s not that these efforts to tug at America’s heart strings leave me cold and uncaring, but rather I rightly see them as an attempt to tug at our purse strings as well.  Every so often a story, such as the brave pilot who quite incredibly landed a commercial aircraft in the Hudson river will come to light; situations like those deserve every mention and every laudatory bit of praise.  However, for every one genuine story of high drama and unselfish heroism, there are four which are cynically leap upon and patently designed to hook in viewers. These are then given the hard sell by the excited, tension-building cadences of television anchors, compelling us, if not begging us to watch the story develop in front of our faces.    

Though the Media (and certain members of the Obama Administration, if the story is to be believed) will chide us for our irresponsibility in jumping to conclusions or not taking into account the whole picture, in situations like the recent story regarding the six-year-old little boy who was said to be dangerously being carried by a runaway balloon when he was in fact hiding in his family’s attic, the media looks more foolish than the most clueless blogger.  Attempting to save face, the media is now questioning whether the entire matter was a cheap stunt.  Whether it was or not is largely immaterial.  News reporters rapaciously jumped aboard this story when only the most basic of facts had been confirmed, and the most glaring offenders were the twenty-four hour cable news networks.  Child + perilous situation + novelty + human interest + potentially heroic rescue = media catnip.    

Teachable moments™ like these can be direct at a variety of offenders.  I might start with a few news outlets whose desperation to use this non-event for their own ends led them to play a bit fast and loose with journalistic restraint.  Everyone stands to gain from a particularly juicy story, of course.  Still, pardon my skepticism, what would have been accomplished if the matter had turned out to be true?  What if there had been a stirring rescue followed by at least an hour’s worth of self-congratulatory talk from the active participants in the rescue effort?  A three-day-dialogue on bad parenting skills?  A picture of the young boy on the cover of People?  A satellite interview with the family and the child himself on the morning pseudo-news/variety hour of one’s choosing?  An eventual appearance on Oprah™?  Aside from a nice distraction from our lives of quite desperation, how does this help?    

It did not, of course, turn out this way.  As it stands, the media does not like to be punk’d, yet the irony in this instance is that the mainstream players unintentionally punk’d themselves.  It is for reasons like these that the phrase “human interest” elicits yawns rather than heightened curiosity within me.  I suppose maybe I see news purely in terms of substantive critique and a presentation of important information.  My life is boringly normal enough and I don’t need validation of mutual humanity in the form of the latest person who has bravely faced some challenge or distinguished himself or herself from the rest of the pack.  Most of my personal heroes never faced a television camera in their whole of their lives and, if they ever exist in the public consciousness at all, they are often mere footnotes and shadowy phantoms in someone’s forthcoming book or dissertation.    

Fame is ephemeral enough, but soft news fame is its own kind of ephemeral cotton candy—here now, gone quickly, likely never to return.  Those who court it know that the quickest way to maintain attention is to resort to sensation and to devise their own means of achieve it.  When I was in undergrad, the Mass Communications 101 class I took taught us each of the ways which could be employed to grab the attention of the media.  Those whose stated internal agenda is to achieve the spotlight would be well to memorize them, since they are truer now than ever, especially in a time of great transition.  In a different time, this whole child in balloon facing great danger story would not have been instantly transformed into an established motif of vulnerable child fighting against a harsh environment.  Facts would have been checked more judiciously.  With three main cable networks fighting for the attention of an audience, each seeks to outdo the other.  Competition can be good for everyone involved, but while each has carved out its own particular niche, one can still plainly observe squabbling over the coveted title of number one.  A media with egg on its face again would be wise to not invest in eggs, since they have a way of boomeranging back to their thrower.