Fox for Progressives
So as you may or may not know, I’ve become addicted to Rachel Maddow. Not watching her yet? Here’s a taste:
In any case, though I love Rachel (and to a lesser extent, Olbermann), I must admit that this ain’t journalism and it isn’t a step forward for the journalistic profession as such.
It’s punditry, of course, just like FOX News. The dangerous thing about it, just like the dangerous thing about the blogosphere, is that it leads you to think everyone is thinking like you.
I watch Rachel for the laughs, and because she is in fact quite bright and backs up her sources. Because she’s a young, smart, liberal woman who’s an out lesbian with her own prime-time news commentary show, and that makes me happy.
I don’t believe in “objective” journalism. I believe in transparency. I believe that it’s impossible to hide your opinion, to pretend that you don’t have a horse in the race. If you’re a human being, you’re going to have an opinion, you’re going to be swayed one way or another. It’s just not possible. And thus I think that it’s better to be out in the open about it.
Still, I get my news from NPR, which of any American news outlet seems to come the closest to the “objective” ideal. That doesn’t mean they don’t call out bullshit when they see it–listen to the hilarity when actual lipstick was applied to an actual pig. Even objectivity doesn’t mean some sort of mythic balance between two sides.
It should mean finding the truth.
Anyway, I appreciate Rachel Maddow because she usually has backup for her sources, and her opinions are clearly that–opinions.
My dream media landscape would include much more public funding for NPR and PBS, enough to make them truly competitive news sources. Because not-for-profit news is the only way we’re going to get truly disinterested (at least financially–the reporters and producers will always be human and thus never truly disinterested) news. Then MSNBC and FOX and whoever else wants to get into the game can put out whatever kind of news and commentary they want, because there would be something to check it against.
Of course, the calls of liberal bias on NPR wouldn’t stop, not when Republicans have found it such an effective campaign strategy. But a recent study (Kull, Ramsay and Lewis, “Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War”) found that NPR and PBS consumers had the fewest misperceptions about the Iraq war–and that having those misperceptions contributed to the likelihood of supporting the war, and of voting for Bush.
Anyway, that’s my dream.
Most of you regular readers know that I’m working on my master’s in journalism. Yet very little of what I do currently is actually journalism. I blog. I write op-eds for Global Comment. I write about comic books, movies, and pop music. Very little of that is real journalism. I suppose that when I do an actual interview with a comics writer (like this one) that might count, but I don’t really flatter myself that it has a huge effect on the world.
Not to denigrate the impact of art–I think art and music, literature and film can have a huge impact on the world, and it’s one of the reasons that I return over and over again to writing fiction. Willow Wilson’s AIR and Brian Wood’s DMZ, Warren Ellis’s BLACK SUMMER and Alan Moore’s V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN all could conceivably change people’s minds about political issues, and for that comics are as valid as any other format. But when I’m writing about them? At best I’m a critic, at worst a glorified fangirl.
I’d love to do real journalism when I get out of school. Love to go write for one of the heavy magazines and do long, in-depth investigative pieces that require months of work at a time.
But it ain’t what I do now.
And it ain’t what Rachel Maddow is doing, either. Or Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity or Brit Hume. At least not most of the time.
Posted: October 2nd, 2008 under Media, Politics, comics.
Comments: 3
Comments
Comment from observer
Time: October 2, 2008, 2:45 pm
Speaking as a journalist, most journalists don’t get to write in depth investigative stories. Only a few. If I could do that, I’d be pretty bloody thrilled, but I make ends meet instead.
Most journalists are underpaid, work overtime and shiftwork and get their stories rewritten before going to print. If they’re lucky they won’t have their byline appear on something completely unrecognisable from the story they submitted. Oh and that hard hitting investigative report will totally be sidelined should something more timely come up.
On the matter of bias, of course its there. But like doctors try to suspend their personal opinion so do reporters. You can only suspend so far and that is where the editing process is supposed to help. Unfortunately, it often just muddies the waters. Whenever I feel bias creeping into a story, I write it the other way. The one time I’ve been accused of bias I went out of my way to be balanced. And I voted for the guy who accused me.
Comment from Poeschl
Time: October 3, 2008, 2:42 am
RE: Sarah J’s call for more public funding for NPR and PBS and comments about ‘objectivity.’
I understand the argument for more public funding for NPR and PBS, but I feel a little unsafe with the prospect of even more direct government influence (through funding) on news reporting, especially since the G. W. Bush administration tried to influence NPR’s reporting by appointing a politically-conservative director to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That being said, I admit that I can’t think of any alternative to increased public funding. The now-deceased widow of Ray Kroc (the founder of the McDonald’s fast-food franchise) in her will left $200 million to NPR (or was it to the Corporaton for Public Broadcasting?), so that helps. But that’s almost certainly a one-time financial shot in the arm.
I get my own news mostly from the NPR and BBC web sites, since I don’t watch television. The constant accusations of NPR’s “liberal bias” puzzle me, because, even though I’m a Republican, I see NPR as being slightly biased toward a conservative point of view (in 2006, one leftist blogger said NPR stands for “Nice Polite Republicans”). What I myself perceive as NPR’s ‘conservative’ bias might reflect NPR’s generational bias toward political/cultural moderation, since, I think, most of the NPR political and cultural reporters are Baby Boomers.
Oddly, Justin Webb, the BBC web site reporter on the 2008 U.S. elections, also seems to me to have a conservative political bias, since he goes out of his way to speak favorably about McCain and even favorably linked to an online Newsweek column that was clearly written by a GOP operative. Yet the BBC is routinely accused by American conservatives of having a “liberal” bias.
As to ‘objectivity’ in reporting: The determination of exactly which facts need to be highlighted necessarily includes a value judgment, so even reporters who are sincerely trying to be objective necessarily are influenced by varying degrees of bias. As long as reporters try to stay aware of their own biases and try to be reasonably transparent about their bias, I have no objection to that kind of ‘bias’ by intelligent journalists who are morally committed to telling the truth as best as they can determine it. That’s all I can ask as a reader.
Comment from mikeb302000
Time: October 3, 2008, 8:43 am
What a wonderful post. Thanks so much for introducing me to Rachel Maddow. I’ve seen Olbermann a few times but never Maddow. My excuse is that I live in Italy and have limited media sources, which is usually a blessing.
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