A Perhaps Quixotic Attempt at Media Reform

Over the next few weeks I will provide further explanations regarding the project that I have announced today in my latest Vanity Fair piece. Obviously, I will have to do quite a bit convincing in order to persuade more bloggers and commentators to participate in this project.

Not until one spends the greater portion of the year in close examination of what passes for erudite commentary in this nation does one come to realize how inefficient is the system whereby pundits are chosen, promoted, and maintained. There are assuredly tens of thousands of Americans who could make better use of valuable column space than could Thomas Friedman or Charles Krauthammer, for instance, and it would not be difficult for the publishers of our several national newspapers to find and hire such people, as many of them are already working writers. The system as it stands, though, does not provide for this, as there is no reason why it should. Consider the following points:

1. It is evident that at least several of the major columnists, such as Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer,  have performed terribly in their duties to inform the large swath of the citizenry who read their work.

2. Those columnists still have their columns – as well as their Pulitzer prizes and their regular spots on various Sunday public affairs programs.

Put these two observations together and one can only conclude that there is very little negative feedback in place within our nation’s opinion industry, which is to say that there is no way for the system to correct its own flaws. No one with the power to do so has any impetus to get rid of Thomas Friedman, no matter how much damage Friedman does to the public understanding by way of his slipshod commentary and ridiculous predictions. And so it is that any real change must come from outside the system.

The rise of the internet has already done much to challenge the existing structure. Media Matters for America maintains an ever-expanding database of demonstrably incorrect assertions and contradictions put forth by the news media at large and particularly by conservative or moderate-for-the-sake-of-moderate commentators, being a liberal watchdog group. A number of bloggers have come to focus on various of the republic’s most prominent pundits, keeping tabs on their flawed commentary and disseminating that info around the blogosphere. In the end, though, only so many people end up learning of such things, and most of them don’t partake of the lesser sorts of media outlets into which most such flaws are concentrated anyway.

The internet is the new medium. It is not some cure-all, though, any more than orality, literacy, the printing press, television, or any other form of information technology one would care to categorize as having fundamentally shaped the minds of man past and present could be reasonably pointed to as having cured all. Poems, written prose, mass-produced books, and the availability of instantaneous one-way communication have all been used in manners both conducive and deleterious to mankind’s strivings. Looking back, though, one would probably agree orality was an improvement upon body language, that literature was an improvement upon orality, that the printing press was an improvement upon the copied volume, and television was certainly an improvement over James Fenimore Cooper. Literature in particular has provided for great strides by way of both the effect that reading and writing has on the human mind as well as the onset of our ability to place our thoughts outside of ourselves, permanently and perfectly. And just as those who mastered literacy during the transition from orality had an advantage over those who had not, those who have mastered the internet during the transition from the printing press have a similar advantage.

The most important fact of the 21st century is that any individual on the planet can now communicate with any other individual on the planet. The great preponderance of human activity is the result of communication between two or more individuals. A great amount of human activity, both devastating and wondrous, has already occurred in a past defined by great limitations on communication between individuals. The internet came to public availability in the mid-’90s and has improved drastically as a means of communication in only fifteen years time. Some people will find these facts to be of crucial importance and will act on them.

We now have a chance to put pressure on the traditional media in such a way as would force them to reconsider the amoral path taken by all too many producers and publishers who don’t seem to care whether the output is of reasonable caliber as long as those producing that output are sufficiently famous to attract large numbers of customers. Starting next week, I will explain the method by which this may perhaps be accomplished.