An essay by Joan Didion in 1968 pointed out a fundamental problem with standard American journalism: "It is a comment on our press conventions that we are considered 'well-informed' to precisely the extent that we know 'the real story,' the story not in the newspaper. We have come to expect newspapers to reflect the official ethic, to do the 'responsible thing.'"
Half a century later, everything is the same, but worse. For years The New York Times has written about Donald Trump's administrations as if they were more or less normal presidencies; such "objectivity" is "the responsible thing." Lesser newspapers have hollowed out their staffs to meet corporate or private-equity directives and are barely able to produce even the thin "official ethic."
To get "the real story" we have come to rely on columnists and commentators, some of whom (d'you recall Bob Woodward?) will hold on to that story until they can capitalize on it in a book long after the fact.
And Murdoch's Fox News takes "the real story" to the next logical step by retailing grotesquely fabricated stories that are exceeded only by the conspiracy theories that infest social media and draw in the simple.
It remains to be seen what effects will emerge from journalists' tentative experimentation with AI programs, themselves vehicles of plagiarism and fabrication.
Not to veer into giddy optimism, I see a glimmer of hope in the journalism being done by nonprofits such as The Baltimore Banner (for which I work as a freelance copy editor). If you also glimpse such glimmers, feel free to mention them in the comments.
El Paso, Texas, has El Paso Matters. Founder Bob Moore had been editor of the Gannett-owned El Paso Times; he eventually included himself in corporate-mandated layoffs. The Times is now irrelevant, but El Paso Matters was named Newsroom of the Year this year by Texas Managing Editors. It's the first online-only site and first nonprofit to get that honor. www.elpasomatters.org
ReplyDeleteI finally cancelled my NYT membership recently. Sources external to the U.S. (The Guardian, Al Jazeera) now seem to demonstrate by far the most journalistic integrity. Curious for other thoughts on that.
ReplyDeleteThe Cascadia Daily News in Bellingham, WA. Run by real news people
ReplyDeleteAlmost every Sunday morning, I sit down and go through news sites from Spain, Ghana, Lebanon, Taiwan, India, New Zealand, Canada, Pakistan, Japan, and South Africa. I'd say the best paper is Spain's El Pais.
ReplyDeleteI subscribe to both The Guardian and El País, so broadly concur with Sandra and Marc. Some of my UK friends are gradually warming to the FT (Financial Times), not so much for the markets, etc., as for the reporting and comment.
ReplyDeleteI have given up on the legacy media entirely. My bottom line is that a news organization does not deliberately misinform its readers. It may make a mistake. We are all fallen humanity. But when it is deliberately misinforming its readers, it is a propaganda organization, not a news organization.
ReplyDeleteThe nature of Fox News and its ilk is obvious. The decision to watch Fox is a moral failing. Just as Fox deliberately misinforms its viewers, its viewers deliberately choose to be misinformed, and to act on that misinformation. The NY Times and Washington Post are more subtle. They present themselves as the sensible center, while in reality working to normalize the radical right. The mask is slipping. The Post has pretty much gone openly fascist. The Times tries to maintain the facade, but anyone who steps back and compares how it treats Trump with how it treats pretty much any Democrat will see the hypocrisy.
The Kentucky Lantern, run and solidified by a bunch of old, good reporters from the Courier-Journal, The Herald Leader, other local newspapers in Kentucky, and the AP, along with the States Newsroom, is doing a fine job of covering Kentucky new -- along with some local news from around the commonwealth. I support it monthly, and it's worth it.
ReplyDelete