Has Matt Taibbi failed journalism, or has journalism failed Matt Taibbi?
Image via Wikipedia
I’m late to this, but it’s not going away, so here’s my question: Is Matt Taibbi merely a journalistic scourge, or also a scourge on journalism itself? The question isn’t just about Taibbi, but about the state of journalism and America right now, post-bubble, post Iraq war, post-Bush.
You probably know the background: Taibbi has written a couple of searing cover stories for Rolling Stone on the financial shenanigans of Goldman Sachs over the past century and on the Obama administration’s close ties to Goldman and Wall Street and its halting attempts to reform the banking system.
These pieces are, unlike most stories that contain the word “Geithner,” actually fun to read and make a simple and compelling point: historically, and now, there is a tight nexus between the elite banks and uppermost reaches of the federal government – whether it’s run by Republicans or Democrats. This has proven to be catastrophic. Its persistence after the disaster of 2008 is a significant structural problem for the American economy – and, by extension, the global economy. Obama’s diffidence on the matter is one of the great mysteries of his presidency, given the both the substantive problem and the political advantages to taking on the bankers, which would theoretically appeal both to liberals and the tea party crowd.
Taibbi indicts not just Goldman, but the system. And that system is, well, highly indictable. But on the way, he overreaches. He imbues his villains with more agency than they deserve. He makes mistakes. So some journalists have been actively fisking Taibbi, including Megan McArdle at the Atlantic, Tim Fernholz at the American Prospect, Heidi Moore and Paul Smalera at the Big Money, Smalera here at T/S. And Chris Lehmann and Felix Salmon have been fisking the fiskers. In a Twitter exchange with NYU’s Jay Rosen, I got hung up on these questions: Can you be right on the big issues if your facts are wrong? Or is the business media engaging the small issues at the expense of the big and truly important ones? After all (with a few exceptions) the business media didn’t alert us to the financial insanity of the housing bubble before it burst.
If you want to indict the system, you need to build a case. And that case should be based on facts. So I agree with Taibbi’s critics that he is playing a bit fast-and-loose, and that in a strict empirical sense, this calls his entire thesis into question. So, Matt – do a better job. Get your Jamie Rubins straight. Explain your chosen financial instruments correctly. But do his mistakes indicate that on the whole, Taibbi has no idea what he’s talking about? I am not a financial journalist, but I don’t think so. The “Taibbi fact-check” seems like kind of a sideshow to me, an approach that doesn’t really get at what Taibbi is doing, what it means, and whether it is right or effective journalism.
The second complaint is about framing: By putting Goldman Sachs as the center of his narratives, Taibbi presents a distorted picture of history, the financial system, Goldman’s own role in various bubbles and the nature of bubbles themselves, which by definition are not the fault of a single entity but a of an entire marketplace. But I don’t read his pieces that way. In individual instances he may inflate Goldman’s role. But if you are even halfway-informed about bubbles and finance, you will realize that Goldman is just swimming with the current, and helping to propel it – but so are dozens of other actors. And that context makes his pieces that much scarier: if Goldman really were the singular villain here, fixing the problem would theoretically be easier. But Goldman is just emblematic.
The real problem here isn’t one journalist, but journalism itself. The U.S. media’s neutral, non-ideological form of reporting reached its apogee in terms of political influence and number of practitioners post-Watergate and pre-9/11. But during that time, its reach and credibility among the public were also steadily declining due to – you name it: fragmentation, failing business models, culture wars, growing structural and demographic political divisions. Government (and governing itself) came under sustained assault, and its regulatory and political checks on business – never all that strong – have been weakened.
Taibbi peels back the layers on this and shows it to be outrageous. Whether you are a liberal or a free-marketeer, it is clear something big has gone wrong in the business-government nexus. If you’re going to part ways with Taibbi over his factual blunders or framing, that’s legit. But it still leaves the big question hanging out there – is his outrage misplaced?
But post-Watergate pre-9/11 journalism doesn’t traffic in outrage. Take Watergate. Facts and digging – often against the tide of conventional wisdom – exposed the true extent of the Watergate scandal and brought Nixon down. This event has shaped much of the generation of investigative journalism that followed: the Platonic ideal is to get someone indicted, to resign, or both. The problem with this is that its assumptions are essentially naive: that the system basically works, or can work once the facts come out. But what if it doesn’t work, or cannot? What if what’s most shocking and unjust is what’s perfectly legal? Also: what if, in society, there’s no consensus on what’s shocking and unjust?
These questions tend to drive practitioners of empirical journalism (and I count myself among them) crazy. If the system doesn’t work, you have to make some value judgments. If you make value judgments, though, people who disagree with you will attack you as biased. Which can’t be, because we’re trained to be cool and detached, to convince people through rational argument, to reach for universal approbation of our conclusions. But this goal, always elusive, is now nearly impossible. Should that stop us from investigating? Or making judgments?
But that’s now it works in practice. The establishment media is, after all, tied up with government and business itself in various ways. If those things aren’t “working” the media has trouble grasping the failure. To do so would be “controversial.” It would invalidate the hoped-for universal approbation! Better to keep your head down, withhold judgment.
These tensions can drive the media to forest-for-the-trees absurdities. Take the debate over whether to call “enhanced interrogation techniques” “torture.” The New York Times, NPR and other outlets have engaged in odd verbal gymnastics to avoid calling something what it self-evidently is. All ultimately in service not to any empirical truth but to the legal and historical interests of the politicians and appointees who engineered the interrogation policy – and have build an edifice of spin around it to obscure the facts.
The travails of the banking system are not directly comparable with “enhanced interrogation,” obviously. Except that in one sense: They require journalists to question their basic assumptions about how, and whether, government works. The Nixon problem could be addressed (if not “solved”) by digging up the truth and letting the system do its work. No longer. Too often, though, mainstream journalism just won’t ask these questions because they are too knotty, too complex, too dangerous for institutions already under siege to take on. My advice, though, is to get comfortable with outrage: it’s pointing somewhere interesting.
Here’s my problem with Taibbi, though. He is a polemicist, and a polemic has its uses. But it’s a lot easier to indict the system after that system has already failed. And his polemics don’t explain what’s really happening, or why. But if you read his pieces, there’s not much explanatory power: it’s just a bunch of assholes doing self-interested things and the weak and/or evil politicians who enable them. That is, of course, unsurprising. It’s human nature. But “human nature” doesn’t tell us where the system went wrong, what the incentives are, what the politics are that enforce the status quo and block reform. What are the politics of taking on the banking system? How did things get so bad? Have they always been that way? (Call this the “Al Swearengen school of democratic capitalism.”)
I remember reading an old “Doonesbury” strip in which Duke is engaged in some scheme and he remarks on that there’s no rules, everybody is out for himself, the American dream is just a big scam: “It’s my time!” he declares. This seemed to capture something larger that was unfolding at the time, and has since flourished a thousandfold. And I want to know more about it.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
I saw Laura Flander’s interview a couple of days ago with two young economics scholars – Nicole Gelinas and Max Fraad Wolff. They offer a succinct and cleareyed analysis of how we arrived at this horrible marriage of government and business, and how to fix it. The interview addresses the questions you pose at the end of your post – http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/12/19/week-in-review-fixing-capitalism/
P.S. I’m a big fan of Taibbi.
My take on journalism is that the age of flashbulbs and cute headlines to sell papers has gone the way of (other) pulp fiction. There are countless bloggers and microbloggers who can do that for free now- so that business model is dead.
You can be paparazzi or academics. Take your empirical field research skills and look into the social sciences, communications, or information sciences. There’s a new world to explore. But society is saturated with noncontextual factoids now.
Preface: I love Matt Taibbi big-time.
Just as there are systemic problems with the financial sector, there are systemic problems with journalism. Being academic and carefully fact-driven is a prescription for being ignored. People are drawn to conflict and bombast. That’s why Fox News Channel has made it their business model and the other cable news networks have rapidly followed suit.
That’s why we’re talking about Matt Taibbi’s columns and not the great string of documentaries Frontline has done on the excesses and corruption in the financial sector’s relationship with the government.
Concision is why it pays off to focus on Goldman Sachs even though other companies were doing the same thing – it dulls every damning conclusion one makes to have to append it with “… and Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, et. al.”
This is the same problem that plagues science journalists: being open, honest and fair guarantees that you’ll either be ignored or that your findings will be misreported.
The climate science emails that were pilfered by hackers are a great example; the ignorant public has no patience for nuance (a feature capitalized on by oil companies, for example) so scientists had to dumb-down and oversimplify their findings so that they would comport with the message they’re trying to convey. They know that the public isn’t going to bother reading through the millions of pages of studies confirming that human activity affects the climate by a preponderance of the evidence.
Yes, we’ve grown to tune out anything “academic” as dull and unworthy of our attention. But opinions and outrage are in such abundance as to become meaningless. If we compete on opinion, opinions only become more extreme until we’re left shrieking and throwing poo for attention like zoo monkeys. What’s the business model in that? Sooner or later, you hit bottom. Then the only direction to go is up.
The bar has to be raised in public discussions for our society to rise above the mess we’re in right now. We’re not getting out of this otherwise.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thank you for your insightful commentary on our aversion to nuance and the resulting unfortunate preference for polemic. Can you suggest, for someone who greatly fears for her own attention span and ability to take in and analyze complex news stories, some good news outlets and sources of information, along the lines of a Frontline (which is an excellent example, by the way)?
In response to another comment. See in context »Do you mean individual journalists or pieces or media outlets? Mother Jones has some insightful, passionate journalism. Michael Lewis’s piece on the financial collapse (in the now-defunct Portfolio) was superb http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom/. This American Life/NPR did the now-classic “Giant Pool of Money” http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355
In response to another comment. See in context »Interesting piece. I have to agree with you analysis regarding the overuse of outrage in journalism today. While the nature of blogging is such that it gives opportunity to the writer’s ability to vent, is this really what it is supposed to be about? Isn’t the ultimate purpose of political, financial or whatever type of journalism one choses to engage in to educate and inform?
Clearly, there are those moments where a topic is so offensive to the writer that the anger cannot help but seep through. I’m quite sure I have been guilty of doing so, from time to time. However, we all can point to bloggers whose stock in trade is selling their anger. It get’s a bit wearisome.
But- just like dedicating 3/4 of news coverage time on television to Tiger Woods or Michael Jackson which brings ratings- selling anger appears to work. The number of readers appears to climb exponentially with the degree of anger and sarcasm employed in the writing.
So, do you give the people what they want or do you continue in the effort to inform and educate a bit more dispassionately?
Your take on journalism is decidedly old school. Seems to me that in a world where young people get most of their news from Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and sites like this one, Taibbi is exactly what we need to keep them (and me) engaged. His subject matter is serious with a cynical and ironic bent, and just the counter angle we need to combat the sycophantic, all-for-deregulation ravings seen in the Wall Street Journal.
Personally, I think the dispassion of investigative journalism is one of the reasons the system is so broken. Taibbi is trying to wake people up out of their complacency, and I think he’s doing a terrific job. No one’s perfect, and he’s certainly corrected his minor factual errors.
“Obama’s diffidence on the matter is one of the great mysteries of his presidency, given the both the substantive problem and the political advantages to taking on the bankers, which would theoretically appeal both to liberals and the tea party crowd.”
Political advantages of taking on the bankers? I don’t see any such advantages. Obama didn’t win the election because he promised to take on the bankers. He won the election because he was better organized, had more money in the campaign fund, and because the economy was in chaos for *two* reasons – the mortgage crisis *and* a huge oil price spike.
And since the inauguration, he’s had such a tough Senate battle with the health insurance industry that he’s had to let the bankers slip back off the radar screen for the most part, and hasn’t even begun to address the energy issues. On top of that, he couldn’t even get Ford into the federal auto industry protection program.
Then there’s Iran. In the face of all that, I don’t see the “political advantages” of taking on the bankers. He’s got to fight battles he has a chance of winning, or he runs the risk of being another Jimmy Carter – lofty ambitions and ideals, but crushed by opposition inside the Democratic party first and by the Republicans second.
The outrage reflected in Matt Taibbi’s journalism is an accurate mirror of the buzz on the American street. Matt Taibbi is the heir to the mantle of Hunter S. Thompson and as often happens, the imitator is better than the original. Taibbi’s substantive journalism skills are vastly superior to Thompson’s and his snark is totally competitive with The Master’s. My favorite Taibbi quip is when he called Sarah Palin’s nomination acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention “Heidi addressing the Reichstag.” Wonderful stuff. There’s nothing wrong with Matt Taibbi. It’s the truth he writes about so well that hurts.
if you could actually list the factual errors of his you have a problem with, that would help your argument. the only factual error that has come to light recently that i know of was a minor one from “obama’s wall street sellout” about a person’s background.
most of his critics, if you read closely their complaints, never try to shoot down the actual facts and statistics that make up his articles, instead they take issue with the “tone” of his arguments, often saying things to the tune of “yes he was correct about this or that, but…”
given, just because his most of his detractors are unable to attack the meat and bones of his articles, does not make it so that he is free of any fallacy. true.
however if you write an article stating that he is sloppy and gets the facts wrong without building a case without any facts or examples of your own to back up and support this claim, then you’re article is no better than what you claim to have a problem with in the first place.
also, the second to last paragraph i find to be kind of confusing. anyone who reads taibbi’s work can easily see the months of research and interviews that go into one of his pieces. taibbi himself has stated in an interview before that, in the dying format and field, he is a rarity in the sense that he gets paid well enough to spend months building a case instead of like a lot of his unfortunate peers having to file for press every five minutes.
his articles are highly informative, entertaining a very revealing, not just about the system, but , yes, human nature itself. but you’re saying that’s not enough? that he hasn’t explained how things got to be this bad? really? what exactly is your issue here?
If it wasn’t clear, I like Matt Taibbi’s work – the post focuses principally on the misplaced criticism of him and what I think it means. But I also think that his style of “investigative rant” has certain limitations as a journalistic form. Of course, so do all the others.
In response to another comment. See in context »Excellent post.
“Too often, though, mainstream journalism just won’t ask these questions because they are too knotty, too complex, too dangerous for institutions already under siege to take on.”
That in a nutshell is the problem and a weak excuse for journalism and one that is complicated by the nexus of big business and journalism.
The questions must be asked no matter how complex or knotty or dangerous or awkward.
No questions, no answers.
Woodward and Bernstein were very young and didn’t know better they were following their nose and without Ben Bradley would have gone off the rails much like Taibbi does on occasion. Muckraking is a dirty business.
Something is very wrong in America and normally the press would reflect the malaise and demand some answers, do some digging because without knowing the problem we can never find an answer.
Outrage is somehow impolite, we can’t investagate Cheney and Bush because it would damage an institution. We can’t think about breaking up the banks and wall street because that would hurt the GNP. We can’t prevent influence in Washington because of free speech.
Journalism has become about “controlling the message”. So networks and cable channels use Pentagon hacks as expert without any concern that they have been totally discredited. Million dollar journalist celebrities would never put their jobs in jeopardy with tough questions. Their performances in the debates are laughable. John Stewart, a comedian, exposes more truth than our on air personalities.
We are told that there is a new citizen journalism. From my perspective they lack the power of old journalism who guided us through Civil Rights, Medicare, Vietnam, Woman’s Rights, Watergate, Iran-Contra and the Environmental movement with a real sense of outrage and a pursuit of truth.
Today, there is constant debate and back biting even among those charged with the public trust.
Good points all, libtree09. Tend to agree with you …
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for the post.
This trenchant analysis — read: thinly veiled condemnation — of Taibbi’s work is vaguely reminscent of the gauntlet erected for the late great Gary Webb.
Too many journalists are unwilling or simply incapable of doing what Taibbi does, so they throw stones. Hell hath no fury like a reporter exceeded.
I disagree that Taibbi’s journalism lacks substance or explanatory heft. Your claim that he’s merely name-calling and not advancing the reporting is spectacularly false. His narratives are propelled by a tide of the very complexities you indict the MSM for refusing to address.
Moreover, given all the he-said, she-said shrinking violet “journalists” who are not far beyond transcriptionists, Taibbi is invaluable, a national treasure. The man is smart, resourceful, persistent and quite fearless. He’s a ninja with a bazooka, a highly versatile reporter.
He’s not perfect — nobody is. The Jamie Rubin thing was a stupid mistake. But it’s understandable and forgiveable and in my mind does nothing to negate the potency of that piece.
I suggest that rather than sitting in your den doing drive-by dissections of Taibbi’s work, you get out of the house and discover something illuminating. You know, talk to someone you’ve never met, tell us something we don’t know, break a story, advance a story. We have enough critics. We need more reporters who are willing and able to confront the kinds of stories Taibbi takes on.
As I said in another comment, I like Matt Taibbi and his work! There is no need to defend him from my criticisms, which are mild compared to those that make up the thrust of the piece, which is that American journalism as traditionally/currently practiced by most mainstream outlets is too timid to take on some of the grave problems we face.
In response to another comment. See in context »Gee, thanks for clearing that up (with one of the most convoluted sentences I’ve seen this decade). If your intent was to hector the MSM, it was lost on me.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] John McQuaid: Has Matt Taibbi failed journalism, or has journalism failed Matt Taibbi? [...]
I think you raise some interesting points, John, but I need to provide another choice for your title: Has journalism failed us? Yes.
I think Taibbi’s work has yanked a lot of chains because he’s gone where few journalists dare to tread these days. He’s not infallible, so he’s made some mistakes. Consider that if he were a major league baseball player, his batting average would be pretty darn high. Have you checked some of the fact-checkers? They themselves are not batting a 1000, as the fisk fiskers are determined to point out.
As far as the fact checking goes, I think this will make Matt more dogged. I’m wondering if jeremybaum knows Matt personally, because I doubt Taibbi makes tons of dough – certainly not as much as the talking heads on cable news who are poseurs at best. My sense is that Matt is driven and gets emotionally embroiled in his topics, leading to his bad-ass style thus popularity, and yes leading to some errors.
Just as Taibbi is holding Wall Street and politicians’s feet to the fore, it’s OK for those with corrections to inform him and us when there is a mis-step. In general I think Matt’s done the country a great service; it would be terrific if some other writers would respond to his clarion calls and concentrate on housing, poverty, jobs, the environment, so the few doing the job could have a lighter load – and some company.
[...] Has Matt Taibbi failed journalism, or has journalism failed Matt Taibbi? – John McQuaid –… "If the system doesn’t work, you have to make some value judgments. If you make value judgments, though, people who disagree with you will attack you as biased. Which can’t be, because we’re trained to be cool and detached, to convince people through rational argument, to reach for universal approbation of our conclusions. But this goal, always elusive, is now nearly impossible. Should that stop us from investigating? Or making judgments?" (tags: journalism fear) [...]
Hi John,
Journalism and all its forms grows and changes over time to eventually suit the target audience. Form follows function. Unfortunately, it’s why we have the media we have today.
Harper’s can be downright tedious compared to Mother Jones, but it’s no less accurate.
Fussing over “journalistic form” is irrelevant and meaningless and akin to worrying about what color shirt and tie Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay were wearing when they were looting Enron. What’s more important is, “Is the story true and is it accurate?” The nuts and bolts of the facts and accuracy matter, not the style. Ever. Style is merely what you do to get people to keep reading. You’ve got to give them something credible to walk away with once they get there.
Yes, it’s easy to criticize or indict after a system has failed, but that’s because in our society it always takes a crisis to create change. Very few people are paying attention, or worse, doing something, until after it’s all gone off a cliff. It’s a basic failure of a lack of informed citizenship.
You can be a polemicist and still get it right. And if the how/why is due to human nature, that immediately reveals a lot of what’s needed to correct the situation (i.e. more regulations, etc.) Taibbi’s readers aren’t idiots by a long shot–we all know by now that the Glass-Steagall act was eviscerated and that corporate money and it’s lobbyist vessels have rotted the government. We also know what needs to be done to correct that and what vested interests will do to stop it. If Taibbi uses shorthand and doesn’t bog his readers down with what we already know via what you call “explanatory power”, it’s to keep from being dull and redundant. Taibbi cuts to the chase and assumes his readers are smart enough to know the background.
The American Dream has ALWAYS been a big scam, and if you want to know more about it, it’s reading guys like Taibbi (and Trudeau, etc.) who make up the individual brushstrokes of that particular picture.
Taibbi is certainly not beyond criticism, but he gets it right far more often than not, and that’s pretty damn good compared to most of what’s out there. That’s what’s important.
Uh, I think I know what you are asking and the answer is, in Taibbi’s case, NO – to people who really care, his flowery language does not debase his arguments. As I see it…
I have been reading Taibbi in Rolling Stone for a number of years. He spends time taking on sacred cows. While he has admitted that most of the financial stuff is new to him, I don’t care who you are, his writing is informing you of something true that is going on in circles that want you to know as little as possible as to what is going on in their circles. That takes balls – it’s a David and Goliath story every time and I think he is doing this.
Think about it this way. How do you feel about Jon Stewart for his journalism? Is Jon Stewart paving the way for people to be clowns and newsmen? No. It’s more like the opposite. Jon Stewart is allowed to speak more truth on television than most who supposedly do television news. There are some exceptions like Bill Moyers, who is now gone, and sometimes Bill Maher. I have also been impressed with Dylan Ratigan of late who also seems to be taking on the banks. But damn if you don’t have to be a comedian to pass on any substantive content these days. Which seems to indicate that there is a MAJOR power conspiracy happening with media, the banks, and our military/resource goals.
Which, as to my own interest in the banks, I have been intrigued since watching internet videos like “Zeitgeist: Addendum” and one called “Fiat Empire”. The theory that is put out is that the banks run the world, make tons of money off of wars, and have constructed a rigged system that they have incredible control over. And just think of it – the Fed controls our “medium” of transaction. The person who made these videos had this theory and completed most of his work before the system failed.
Now Taibbi picks up on some of this stuff for me and I become an even more rabid reader since he is covering banking issues and one of the Fed’s main puppeteers.
As a scientist and logician, the burden of proof now falls on the banks to explain that they are not huge wealth consolidation mechanisms for evil interests and greed. Vampire Squid/Schmampire Squid – fuck me running if Taibbi hasn’t been THE go to guy for taking on these forces while using his story telling abilities and appropriate insults to try and get some more people on board for overthrowing these criminals.
I have been reading him here at true/slant for the past year as well. His argumentation and debate style are, IMO, among the best in journalism today. His arguments are built on less conjecture than most – and the extensions he does make seem at least well founded. So what if he you saw him kick sand in David Brooks’ face? Brooks is kind of a dill anyway.
And while I do like a lot about him, I think you might be talking about Bill Maher. I think his heart is in the right place on many issues but he sometimes sells out his intellectualism for comedy or schtick. I don’t think Matt Taibbi does that.
J
[...] True/Slant John McQuaid notes that Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi is being slammed by biz reporters who say that many of [...]