Journalism’s Horrendous Week

For those who care about the health and reputation of the press, this week started out on a high note when the Washington Post ran the first of it’s Top Secret America series Monday. The project, delving into the chaos and bloat in the enormous national security system, reflected the sort of journalism that’s slipping away in the current media environment, namely time- and resource-intensive investigations done in service of the public interest, not merely what the public is interested in.

But the rest of the week was a wet hot mess. Stories carrying the stench of partisan hackery and incompetence dominated, giving aid and comfort to those who would prefer a neutered press unworthy of the public’s trust.

The same day the Post began its investigative series, Andrew Breitbart posted an edited, misleading video of USDA official Shirley Sharrod to attack the NAACP, resulting in the Obama administration freaking out and firing Sharrod without proper due diligence. The New Republic’s Jon Chait argues that the Breitbart episode is an example of conservative pseudo-journalism, which is thinly disguised opposition research presented as real reporting. Chait’s argument is characteristically strong, but I tend to agree more with his label mate, Michelle Cottle, who plays the scold:

[W]hat I find disheartening about this Andrew Breitbart business isn’t what it says so much about conservative journalism as about the sorry state of journalism period. Not the way it’s practiced (or malpracticed) by any one group or individual, but how the very notion of journalism as a real profession, with even minimal standards of conduct and ethics, has evaporated.

…

More and more Americans consider journalism just another front in the bloodsport of partisan politics, where the ends justify damn near any means. Increasingly no one cares about (or recognizes) the difference between marshalling facts to make your argument and just completely making shit up.

Also this week, the Daily Caller ran a series of stories on the now-defunct Journolist, an email list-serve populated by about 400 journalists and academics hailing from the left side of the political spectrum. Tucker Carlson, the Caller’s editor-in-chief, argues the leaked Journolist emails show that the members are partisan political operatives, not journalists. Ezra Klein, the Washington Post blogger who created and curated the list-serve, fired back, saying the Caller’s Journolist “stories have misstated fact, misled readers, and omitted evidence that would contradict [Carlson’s] thesis.”

Klein maintains that the list-serve was a “wonkish, fun, political yelling match,” not some sort of media conspiracy. I don’t doubt Klein’s intention to create a space for freewheeling debate, and while I’m not privy to the Journolist archives, I’d be willing to bet 99 percent of the content would show it to be just that. Still, he and other contributors should have thought harder about the optics of a private discussion group of center-left and leftwing reporters in light of the longstanding allegation that the press has a liberal bias, especially considering the Politico’s skeptical report on the list from early 2009. Moreover, there are some instances, like a member reportedly using the list to beg for talking points for a TV appearance, which suggest something more afoot than just debate.

Finally this week, Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey admitted that his paper failed in one of its core functions: To serve as a government watchdog. Earlier this month, the Times reported on the completely insane salaries that officials in Bell, a small city near LA, gave themselves. (The city managers’ salary, for example, went from $300,000 to nearly $800,000 over the course of five years.) But this was a story that should have been reported years ago and only came to light because Bell has taken over services for a nearby city that went bankrupt, as Gary Scott pointed out. Rainey says that, due to shrinking newsrooms at the Times and other area papers, “officials in places like Bell can blithely go about their business — racking up 12% annual pay raises, keeping a pal on the payroll in a make-work job — without anyone in the news business sniffing around for months, or even years, on end.”

In a way, it’s unfair to focus on these three items and treat “the media” as a cohesive entity. As lousy as this week has been for public confidence in the press, journalists still filed thousands upon thousands of quality stories reporting and analyzing events from all over the world. But the profession is vulnerable right now, as it goes through an era of contraction and transformation. These types of screw-ups and scandals are ammunition for those who seek to destroy the press’ credibility and invalidate the idea of intellectually honest journalism. Take Sarah Palin, who contemptuously spit on the press this week in an interview with the Daily Caller.

The lamestream media is no longer a cornerstone of democracy in America. They need help. They need to regain their credibility and some respect. There are some pretty sick puppies in the industry today. They really need help.

Palin is prosecuting a savvy, aggressive media strategy: Deligitimize the press; only talk to friendly outlets that share her conservative ideology; and communicate directly with her supporters – without the fact-checking, context-adding journalistic filter – via Twitter and Facebook. Others appear to be following the Palin blueprint. Sharron Angle, the Nevada’s GOP nominee for the Senate, walked away from a press conference Wednesday that campaign invited reporters to without taking a single question.

When it comes right down to it, just about any politician, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise, would prefer to operate without the interference of pesky reporters, with their pesky questions and pesky facts. (Let’s not forget it’s been an entire year since President Obama held his last prime-time press conference.) The rise of social media and the fractured, partisan media landscape make it easier and easier for them to avoid journalistic inquiry while still getting their messages out.

Journalism is a profession that relies on trust. In a recent Gallup poll measuring public confidence, newspapers ranked 10th out of 16 institutions, just above banks and below the criminal justice system. Television news ranked 12th. The press will undoubtedly survive this horrendous week. I’m not sure, though, how many more like it it can take.