Media Musings: Objectivity or advocacy?
In our new world of American journalism, we are seeing a war between those who believe objectivity is vital if the press is to have any credibility and those who believe in advocacy. While there’s room for both, of course, the “rule” is to run notations that what’s being said are either a commentary or an editorial position.
As a new medium, broadcasting has to be “objective” to live within the rules of the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, which demanded reporting “in the public interest.”
All of this is quick background to the new age of cable news and talk radio, which can work virtually outside of the FCC because of deregulation.
The rise of conservative sources of news – Fox News, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh – along with the GOP’s latest triumph, are causing the Democrats to once again try and develop liberal voices and even a liberal cable news service.
Two radio programs with liberal voices, Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower, lived short lives. And it won’t be long before Phil Donahue’s show on MSNBC will be quietly cancelled. Donahue is simply too bland for today’s marketplace. Democratic party leaders now admit they have failed to build a media support system and are struggling to make it reality.
Limbaugh is the breakthrough commentator for the Republicans. The Washington Times has a very modest 100,000 circulation, which has limited impact. But the recent ratings victory of Fox over CNN has roiled the Democrats.
Wait a minute, you say. We all know that the networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and reporters are liberals.
Well, no, they aren’t.
The major networks are conservative, big businesses. They have long elected not to go too far to anger either liberals or conservatives and they have long feared government regulation. Network investigative journalism is at an all-time low.
Even “60 Minutes” runs many stories with government sources. Remember, it blinked when it had an incredible exclusive of the huge abuses of Big Tobacco and then pulled it at the last minute. It finally ran, but the obvious absence of courage was there.
Mainstream media care about numbers, ratings and circulations, most of all, and they cannot really take sides for a protracted period. So, when conservatives with flair and purpose attack them, they look weak. When an advocate hammers away, and the guest starts sentence with “It’s a complex question?” and spouts statistics, the advocate wins. Eggheads, said one Democrat consultant, are boring.
Roger Ailes, the guru of Fox News and longtime Republican stalwart, has been brilliant in his development of a network that makes tolerance of ideas a weakness. That’s also why his top gun, Bill O’Reilly, is having difficulty scheduling “liberals” to be on his show. O’Reilly is a gifted junkyard dog.
Most observers don’t believe the liberals will be able to pull it together. Conservatives opine that’s because the Democrats don’t have any ideas anymore and they do.
If you think this is just a Cassandra crying out, it isn’t. Where was the press in reporting corporate greed, corruption, and government agencies that failed the nation? Where was the press in reporting the movement of the Arab world into hostile camps dripping in the hatred of the West? Where was the press when terrorism was building?
It was focused on Monica Lewinsky and greed and political warfare. Easily distracted, now bordering on a return to advocacy journalism, the nation and its people will be even more ill equipped to prepare for the future if journalism returns to its historic roots.
A nation, Thomas Jefferson warned, cannot be both ignorant and free.
And that’s what’s at stake now.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)