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The Crisis in Journalism Is Here
Back in the early 1980’s two budding disasters were about to hit the media world — my career in television and the arrival of the personal computer. The first disaster was mitigated to a great degree but the second one is just now beginning to hit its stride. Let me explain.
One of the first things I did upon graduating with a degree in Mass Media was to purchase a subscription to Broadcasting magazine (now rebranded as Broadcasting & Cable) In the back section on electronic journalism in one issue was an article I remember as being titled, “The Coming Crisis in Journalism.” The author cautioned that digital compositing of images was going to reach a point where even the most cynical and demanding journalist could be duped into running a story that simply wasn’t true because he couldn’t deny the images he was being shown by a source.
In the late ’80s the Knoll brothers, Thomas (a Ph.D. student at Michigan) and John (a pioneer in image manipulation at Industrial Light and Magic), created Image-Pro, a set of computer tools that would eventually emerge commercially as Photoshop when they sold the idea to Adobe Software. But the “coming crisis” would prove slow in coming.
It wasn’t until home computer equipment became powerful enough to replicate the things folks were seeing in the movies that the real mischief was about to begin. Suddenly kids (and I do mean kids) were doing things in the basement that would have taken millions of dollars to pull off just a decade earlier. And not just in photography and graphic arts but in video as well.
Which brings us to today and the Age of Trump.
Donald Trump is an essential part of this equation, primarily because he is the most reviled political figure since Richard Nixon. Whereas George W. Bush had his share of lunatic detractors on the fringes of the far left, Trump has made the lunatics mainstream, not only on the left but on the right as well because he has upended decades of conservative dogma.
Bury My Heart on the Dakota Pipeline Access Project
Here’s the most recent example. When the President ordered a reversal of his predecessor’s decision not to build the Dakota Access Pipeline, someone took a publicity still from the 2007 HBO movie Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, cropped it, digitally added snow and haybales and announced to the world that the Feds and local LEOs were burning down the encampments set up by Native American protesters.
It was a little too clumsy. Not many professional journalists bit on that one but it still was widely shared on social media by the people who truly wanted to believe it was true.
One bit of fakery that was picked up originated with the husband and wife film making team of Laura Moss and Brendan O’Brien. Using public domain footage they created two “commercials” for the non-existent campaign of the President’s father for New York City mayor. After they were uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo, independent producer Devin Landin shared them on Facebook with the following description, “See if you can catch all the subtle allusions in this ad for Fred Trump. (Spoiler: they’re not subtle at all!) What is it they say about apples and trees and distance?”
Hillary Clinton’s rabid chihuahua, Sidney Blumenthal ran with it from there. Writing in The London Review of Books, Blumenthal wrote:
In 1969, Fred Trump plotted to run for mayor of New York against John Lindsay, a silk-stocking liberal Republican. The reason was simple: in the wake of a New York State Investigations Commission inquiry that uncovered Fred’s overbilling scams, the Lindsay administration had deprived him of a development deal at Coney Island. He made two test television commercials. One of them, called ‘Dope Man’, featured a drug-addled black youth wandering the streets. ‘With four more years of John Lindsay,’ the narrator intoned, ‘he will be coming to your neighbourhood soon.’ The ad flashed to the anxious faces of two well-dressed white women. ‘Vote for Fred Trump. He’s for us.’ The other commercial, ‘Real New Yorkers’, showed scenes of ‘real’ people from across the city, all of them white. Fred Trump, the narrator said, ‘is a real New Yorker too’. In the end he didn’t run, but his campaign themes were bequeathed to his son.
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler, the man who writes their “Fact Checker” column shared them on Twitter until someone pointed out an anachronism in the videos. Supposedly produced in 1969 they carried “Paid For” disclaimers not in use until the early part of the 21st Century.
The London Review of Books deleted the reference in Blumenthal’s essay and put in this “correction”:
A paragraph referring to Fred Trump’s campaign for mayor of New York, although it accurately reflected Trump’s racial attitudes and his hostility towards Mayor John Lindsay, has been removed because the campaign ads referred to appear to be clever fakes.
Oh, my. They went full Dan Rather there, didn’t they? “Fake” but “accurate.”
Daniel Payne, writing in The Federalist, recently listed 16 Fake News Stories Reporters Have Run Since Trump Won, which includes stories that were even repeated on this website.
Which brings me back to the Ivanka Trump/Nordstroms controversy from earlier this week. Two Wall Street Journal reporters wrote that it was purely a business decision and that was backed up by internal Nordstrom documents. Since no one from Nordstrom actually commented on the record, how did these reporters verify the provenance of these documents? Even if they had seen previous examples (that are no doubt computer-generated in the first place) would they know false documents if they saw them? Probably not. But because it ran in the Journal no one stops and asks if it’s true. I’m not saying that is or isn’t. But it was a single-sourced story and the track record of the truth is getting poorer and poorer. So, don’t disparage me if I take anything and everything with a grain of salt. No. These days I usually need a salt block.
It’s getting harder and harder to kick in the needed amnesia to believe anything that comes from the media. They’ve shot the wad of their credibility and we’re all poorer for it.
Published in Journalism
I don’t think you’re reading what I wrote in the way I intended it (I was joking — really). That’s on me. Sean Hannity, who really is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Trump administration, gets my dander up. I apologize.
I think Yeti may have meant “you” in the general sense…
I was indeed addressing everyone on this thread. Not effective. I blame Hannity.
Yeah but he’s honest about where he stands. Everyone knows what he believes in.
I never watch his TV show, but I listen to his radio show fairly frequently, usually in the car. Our own erstwhile Denise McCallister has become a frequent radio guest.
Denise rules.
Where have you gone @dcmcallister – a website turns its lonely eyes to you…
Yeah. All righty then.
Silly me. Someone quotes me. Then uses “you”, and I am so stupid I think the comment is addressed to: Me! This has been a pattern of late; I address comments that quote me but … supposedly … (when challenged) are intended to the “general you”; whomever the hell they are.
I’m in a hotel bar in Palo Alto. Bad place to write thoughtful comments. Will try to better going forward.
Simple solution; use y’all.
God bless Texas.
Have a double on me.
I’m buying.
I’ll drink to that. Oh wait. I just did. cheers.
Sean Hannity is a much better model for what a member of the press should do simply because of this one redeeming feature: he does not lie about his bias. That single thing would help with our country more than anything else.
He’s a model for Pravda.
P.S. Point me to one example where he admits he even has a bias. I’d like to see it.
By bias I only mean that he is a conservative and doesn’t hide it nor pretend to be unbiased like “journalists” do.
C’mon, he makes statements all the time to that effect when talking about mainstream media. “Hey, I’m a conservative… I don’t pretend to be unbiased. But they claim to be objective.”
I’ve heard Hannity many times on his radio show say that he’s a conservative and that he doesn’t pretend to be objective.
So anyway — as I was saying: Most modern American journalists are highly biased and out of touch with regular Americans and, as a result, don’t represent us well. Most have the Alinsky notions about lying about what their true values are and this leads them to exclude certain stories and to harp on other items in order to move us into their ideas of what is considered progress — even if that progress moves us into anti-American realms.
Yes, it’s true, I have heard him say this. Hannity is a commentator, not a journalist. But his interviews tend to be more sloppy wet kisses than anything else. That’s my issue with him.
There’s nothing wrong with having issues with Hannity, I have issues with Hannity. But before we went off on this tangent, Larry made a strong point about the un-admitted bias from the mainstream press. Between him, and ‘journalists’ who are grossly biased and won’t admit it, Hannity is more honest and trustworthy. And if the others would admit their own bias, we would all be much better served.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant by that.
I disagree. Don’t trust anything Hannity says about Trump. He’s way too compromised for my liking. Clearly, your mileage varies, which is fine. Plenty of other people to watch or read.
That is true. Even when he’s interviewing someone he doesn’t agree with he’s exceedingly nice.
You’re just not getting it. No one here is saying that if Hannity says it, you should believe it. I know that when Hannity asks Trump a question, it will be spun in such a way as to be most beneficial to Trump. Therefore, I can evaluate what I am seeing on that context. But when Jake Tapper or Chuck Todd ask Trump a question, I’m expected to believe that they have no bias. But they do. This pretense that they are objective, when they are clearly not is one of the most toxic aspects of the political world, and is responsible for much of the nastiness and contention.
Oh I get it. You’re just more comfortable with an interviewer who share your biases. Again, that’s fine.
The Judge is stating that he prefers interviewers who are up front about their biases, whether he shares them or not.
“Therefore, I can evaluate what I am seeing on that context. ”
Try harder. Once again, you assume what wasn’t written. In a way bordering on offensive.
That’s not what he wrote.
I think that’s true. I also have no illusions about Rachel Maddow’s biases. Not sure if she is upfront about her position — I don’t watch her. I also don’t criticize her since I have very little on which to base any criticism. I find her off-putting. Mostly it’s her condescending delivery. But maybe I’d forgive her if she were on my side. I don’t know. She has pretty low ratings so I think even people who agree with her find her annoying. My point is, I know Maddow’s a liberal and I know Hannity’s a conservative, and I’d rather listen to Hannity.