Journalists Try To Hold Democracy Hostage

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Some months ago, I used this space to lament the fact that numerous businesses employ a form of moral bullying to get our money. From mega-corporations like Target to sainted “locally-owned” businesses (organic grocery stores tend to be the worst offenders in this regard), companies have been telling consumers that to hand their money over to them is to conduct a profound moral act. It’s not enough for these businesses to compete on price or quality anymore, they now compete on “morality.” But, I pointed out, this is a scam. Corporations aren’t in it for charity, they’re in it to make money.  In sum, this is form of a moral armed robbery: shop at my store, or the whales get it.

The imminent demise of Newsweek is demonstrating that journalists are not immune from employing this kind of self-serving moral hectoring. Indeed, they might be the worst offenders of all.

The website of New York Magazine has helpfully posted the video of Newsweek Editor In Chief Jon Meacham’s appearance on last evening’s Daily Show. To be sure, Meacham was undergoing some profound psychic stress throughout the appearance. Nevertheless, it’s worth pointing out he that makes a number of extraordinary statements. First, Meacham claims that it’s a “serious day for everyone who cares about journalism,” erroneously conflating the fate of one one middlebrow newsweekly with the whole of American journalism. He also says its a bad day for everyone who cares about “reporting.” But after that he really kicks it into high gear: “I do not believe that Newsweek is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance,” he solemnly declares, “but I think we’re one of them,  and I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.”

In other words: buy my magazine, or democracy’s finished.

Meacham is, of course, wrong on the facts. There are now more catchers in the rye than ever before. Paradoxically, the same forces that are killing Newsweek are responsible for a blossoming of scores of specialized news outlets. Newsweek has to die so democracy and journalism can live. Simply put, it is the fact that web publishing is so cheap that has both killed Newsweek, and allowed all forms of niche publications to thrive. (The kind of publications, it should be noted, that never would have made it in an era when you needed deep pockets to produce news.) Just a few examples from my own browsing habits: Daily NK, a web-based newspaper produced by North Korean defectors, is by far the most exhaustive source of news on the goings on in North Korea. Hitchenswatch provides richly-deserved skewerings of (Newsweek contributor) Christopher Hitchens. And – ahem - True/Slant is an online news network that covers all manner of happenings. Combine that with the evident news-generation possibilities of technologies such as Twitter, and one finds that we now have a veritable surfeit of news sources.

But the real scandal here is the way that Meacham is conflating his own professional interests with the interests of the country, and democracy at large. Of course, he’s hardly alone in this regard. Journalists from PBS, The Seattle Times, Truthdig (all news sources available online), and scores of others have made the claim that the decline in traditional journalism will lead to a decline in “democracy.” In other words, their professional interests dovetail perfectly with the interests of the country at large. Convenient, that. If only laid off steel workers, auto manufacturers, retail salespeople, and loggers could claim that their jobs must be saved in the name of “democracy.”

Newsweek may be dying. But news isn’t – and neither is democracy.