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Journalist Says…Don’t Trust the Media
Matt Taibbi, over on his substack, posted his opening remarks at the Munk Debates he participated in recently. You can read it here.
He brings up some very good points (well, because I agree with them), but he also makes some troubling ones as well. He thinks that the fracturing of news into many outlets and channels created an environment where each media outlet seeks an audience and writes to serve that audience and ignores the rest. He pointed out that while Fox is watched by 90%+ Republicans, MSNBC is watched by 90%+ Democrats and neither seems dedicated to telling the facts and the story, but rather promoting a narrative.
At a basic level, I agree with him and think he is spot on. But where I suspect we differ is going to be how to resolve it. Can journalists be trusted to self-regulate themselves? It’s not like they have a good track record. The idea of the unbiased reporter is a relatively new concept that didn’t even exist prior to the mid-20th Century. Joseph Pulitzer is credited with using his fortune (made through selling news, much biased) to push for the creation of Journalism schools where aspiring reporters would be trained to be objective. His funding of the Pulitzer Prize was supposed to give Journalists something to aspire to win and thus guide the journalists on how to act.
But look at what wins Pulitzer Prizes now. The most recent and arguably the most egregious examples of this would be the prizes won for the reporting on Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the ’16 election. The reporting was based on fabricated information that was reported as truth, but aligned with the narrative it was rewarded. What gets rewarded gets repeated. To me, until those prizes are revoked and the Pulitzer organization reviews how they screwed up so badly, how can we expect journalists and Journalism to be trusted.
Published in Journalism
Where I disagree with Taibi (a name I mis-spell in multiple ways?!) is his reflexive, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand equating of Fox News with MSNBC, as if MSNBC was all by its lonesome out there on the left, rather than being merely one of dozens/hundreds of media outlets devoted to massaging the preconceptions of leftist readers.
Otherwise: Spot on. He and Douglas Murray ought to give a good showing tonight.
I was going to make a similar criticism. A number of studies have shown that while Fox leans right, MSNBC (and many other outlets) lean far, far left. There is nothing close to equivalency here.
Also, one Fox News vs. 100 MSNBCCNNNBCCBSABCPBSs. There one view that blasts from every megaphone of the culture. And then you have Fox News all by its lonesome. And Fox News (or rather its talk shows) might lean right, it’s far more centrist compared to, as you say, the far far far far far left of the others. And even Fox News has its moments where it adopts the narrative of the left, for example, with gender garbage.
I agree. Spin is one thing, reporting factually is another. The other difference is that I have found Fox to be factually correct much of the time through the spin, whereas much of the “gotcha” news that is trumpeted by the left turns out to be false. And corrections are never given equal attention.
FTFY.
I’m probably wrong because of my bias, but I’m not certain Fox News “news” is necessarily biased, at least to the same extent as MSM Leftist bias.
Yes all the Tucker, Ingrahm, Hannity type opinion shows are openly Conservative, but the straight Fox News “news” shows may have a conservative bias as to what stories and issues are covered, but that measure may be based upon what the MSM Leftist outlets don’t or won’t cover.
For instance, why would Fox News “news” reporting on the entire Russia Collusion related stories be considered conservative bias when it was essentially accurate, as compared to the MSM Leftist outlets quite literally being a major component in propagating the biggest political scandal in United States history.
Then there are the blatant Hunter Biden laptop and the MSM ignoring Biden family corruption that would have obviously caused a successful impeachment if the name of the family involved was Trump.
Most recently the incorporation of terms like “election denier”, “insurrectionist”, etc. into the MSM lexicon even working it’s way into local newscasts.
Again I’m conservative and I have my bias …. and my bias says I’m right.
Rush Limbaugh used to highlight periodically how the 100’s parrot almost word for word Democrat talking points as if they had come up with them. With completely sincere faces. You see it all the time still. Even if Fox were getting their talking points from the RNC, they only have one outlet and only their talk show hosts keep repeating them ad nauseum with sincere faces.
And I don’t know who came up with the format of having every statement ever uttered on these channels accompanied by Democrat and Republican operatives who sit there and give their talking points followed by a heated exchange that satisfies no one. Whichever outfit that was, whether Fox or CNN, may they be relegated to the eighth circle of hell.
What’s really stupid is when journalists “interview” other journalists about the news of the day. (Instead of bringing in someone knowledgeable.) Or the “expert” that they bring in is someone who is already on their payroll and therefore already biased.
Speaking of bad journalism, . . . this guy runs a ponzi scheme that bilks people out of billions, and he’s still getting puff pieces and giving happy-talk interviews. Isn’t it great when you’re a Democrat money launderer? Anyone else would have immediately been thrown in prison.
Giving a happy-talk interview to Bill Clinton’s communications director, who is masquerading as a “journalist.”
Riffing off this, a lot of the MSM political “reporters”, hosts, and “political directors” of news organizations were former political operatives. Tim Russert worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Mario Cuomo. Chuck Todd worked for Democratic campaigns. Chris Matthews worked for Ed Muskie, the Carter Administration (speechwriter), and was Tip O’Neill’s Chief of Staff. There’s the aforementioned George Stephanopoulos, who is now “Political Director” for ABC News.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The belief that coverage of politics is for the most part unbiased is incredibly naive.
Not only that, but there are tons of members of intelligence agencies working as “journalists” at all the news channels.
Oh yeah, but I didn’t want to go on and on.
I have heard some people try to claim that Fox is to the Right, MSNBC is to the Left, and CNN is just straight news. How far to the Left must one be to consider CNN moderate or unbiased?
Where this media bias matters is not with political junkies, but with normal people who have better things to do with their lives. For instance, my 86 year old mother is not out there surfing the web and checking out cable news channels. She will see the nightly network news and assume that what they are saying is true . . . and she votes.
Yep. My mom will just have NBC news on, and assume they’re telling the truth. Then she’ll start to say “Did you hear about . . .” and I’ll have to do a little damage control.
The unbiased journalist is a fictional character. I’ve seen untold people on social media posting how when Walter Cronkite was on was the glory period of unbiased news. What a crock. Cronkite was an unrepentant leftie who finally let it loose after he retired from CBS. He may have single handedly turned the huge American victory that was the Tet offensive into a loss.
It’s as bad as the fiction that Reagan and Tip O’Neill were great buddies and respected one another.
I wonder if he was just singling them out because one of the opponents in the debate was from MSNBC?
If you haven’t read Left Turn by Tim Groseclose I highly recommend it. He breaks it down two ways and uses another group’s research to all show that this is true. He also shows that while Fox may tilt to the right, it doesn’t nearly as much as the MSM outlets tilt to the left, and this was all during the aughts, its worse now by far.
I have also heard it argued that many mid-century journalists learned much of their craft while serving in World War II, and the training they received on writing documents and reports for the military had a real “just the facts” flavour to it. The style changed dramatically as those veterans started to retire and were replaced by kids who’d never served, becoming much more centered on finding the “narrative” of a story.
I have no citation to back up the claim.
Mrs. Tabby frequently complains about how much “news” media “coverage” is media people talking about each other. An item that annoys me is how much “news” media “coverage” is describing people’s reactions to events rather than investigating or reporting on the events themselves.
I generally assume all “journalists” (especially those who went to “journalism school”) are stupid, a conclusion I understand is supported by college entrance scores. Otherwise they would have gotten a real education (or experience in a real field) and then reported on the subjects about which they actually know something. Instead they spend a bunch of time and money supposedly learning how to ask “who, what, when, how, why” with no facility with which to understand the underlying subject matter.
It also doesn’t help when “journalists” repeatedly say (either overtly or by silence when led astray by government officials) that they don’t think freedom of speech should exist. If “journalists” support government suppression of speech, why should I believe anything the “journalists” have to say?
Unfortunately, as I understand the data, only the education students who are becoming the next generation of teachers are stupider than journalism students.
I loathe the news stories that are “Someone on social media said . . .” and spin out from there.
:: raises hand ::
As a J-school grad, I frequently assume my old profs would be spinning in their graves if they saw how modern journalists behaved. One prof I had several times was always pounding the podium about adhering to journalistic ethics. And it was also frequently mentioned that you shouldn’t just do “journalism degree,” but combine it with some other field so that you can be “journalist who knows about [other thing] and can therefore write about it with authority.”
These days journalism students seem to go into it to become activists, and imagine themselves to be the next Woodward and Bernstein taking down another Nixon.
By the way, know how long I lasted in the field before moving on to something else? Three years. And even then, that was mostly being the director of a local newscast, editor, and other behind-the-camera activities. I enjoyed it while it lasted.
Most of the time, it’s a short lead paragraph followed by a twitter stream. Drives me crazy. Happens on Townhall all the time. What do I care about what people on Twitter are saying?
This. They think their job is to “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” No, their job is to report the facts.
The Pulitzers are working as intended: rewarding those that peddle the progressive establishment narrative (PEN). That was what changed after WW2 – instead of peddling the proprietor’s narrative, journalists were ‘elevated’ to serve the ‘public interest’: peddling, as I said, the PEN.
This may have looked different in the 50s and 60s because the PEN was (a) more hidden and (b) not so distinct from the mainstream. But it was always the case that “news” means “news that pushes the PEN”. Which is why Fox News “news” leans left, and WSJ “news” leans left, and ALL news ALWAYS leans left, because that’s what “news” means: the PEN.
Walter Duranty was given Pulitzer for lying about the Holodomor.
The gang at the NY Times was given the same for pushing Russian Collusion.
I suspect it’s always been about narrative vs fact
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/q_g5HjtK0rM
If they really thought that this was their job, they’d be putting Mayor Pete on the rack.