If you’re in the opinion-scribbling business, you periodically get asked what it’s like to have to keep coming up with stuff to write about. The good news is that there’s always something to write about. The bad news, alas, is that there’s always something to write about.
That’s life; that’s journalism. As Walter Cronkite once remarked: “No one is interested in all the cats that did not get stuck in trees today.”
But no one could have envisioned this commentary sinkhole. Call it a worst-case perfect storm where a morphing media that’s been blindsided by technology and pop culture meets a reality TV president with an adversarial approach to the media and a toxic take on its role.
Some background on how we got here:
The United States, the most powerful and impactful democracy in history, now has an electorate that has become, frankly, a democratic embarrassment. Lazy, uninformed and overly susceptible to pandering.
Turnout was barely more than 50 percent for last year’s presidential election–when so much was riding on it in so many obvious ways. It’s far less than half in most off-year, gubernatorial elections. And sometimes single digits when it comes to local races. “American exceptionalism,” anyone?
We have a primary system that can encourage, jump-start and nominate less-than-the-best candidates. Those at the ends of the spectrum have more than viable shots given low turnout and the impact of activists and virtually unfettered fundraising. And the No Party Affiliation crowd can’t weigh in to balance the scales.
As a result, if a certain caricature candidate, for example, makes for colorful copy, provides killer optics and furnishes white nationalism-populism sound bites, the media will go where the crowd noise and ratings dictate. I saw a George Wallace rally back in the day. The vibe and code language were not dissimilar. Once the free media-induced momentum was underway, no way was a low-energy Jeb Bush or a high-caliber John Kasich going to out-perform Donald Trump.
Remember the first presidential debate in Las Vegas? In political Freudian slippage, Fox moderator Megyn Kelly previewed “the show.” Her words. It was, of course, an all-too-accurate portrayal of what was to unfold: performance art and stage hustle with the media as self-serving enabler and accomplice. It presaged what was to come.
America, we well know, has an iconic First Amendment. It also has a history of envelope-pushing journalism, shall we say. From the sometimes scurrilous pamphleteers of the Revolutionary era and William Randolph Hearst’s yellow journalism to basic tabloid fare that teased and tittered. Throw in Lenny Bruce and Allen Ginsberg for the hell of it.
To paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, we knew it when we saw it. But we thought we had seen it all.
Until now.
Knave New World
Once there were three TV networks, and the national newscast was 15 minutes. News was a loss leader. Yes, its orientation was left-of-center, but hardly hard-core, ideology driven. Prominent anchors–think: Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith and David Brinkley–had all been trained as print journalists, not hot-shot, news-reading media celebrities and opinion-drivers.
Major daily newspapers were differentiated by their editorial pages, but the mainstream news stories were found on all fronts. The New York Times and the Washington Post were still iconic. Recall the impact of the Pentagon Papers’ publication and Watergate coverage. For the most part, everybody was reading or watching the same news. And that included President Lyndon B. Johnson, who famously noted that “Now we’ve lost Cronkite,” when the CBS anchor did politically devastating commentary pieces from Saigon.
And rest assured, no establishment media back then would have been lulled into using “Obamacare,” the demonizing Republican shorthand for the Affordable Care Act, in such routine, clueless, counterproductive fashion. And, BTW, it’s not likely that local network affiliate anchors would have had to be reminded that “Barack” was a first name and not to be used alone on second reference. It sounded, you know, kind of partisan. And, yes, that really happened here in this market in 2008.
Fast forward to right now. Reading a daily newspaper or watching the evening network news is so old school to so many. High-octane talk radio and cable news networks that feature loud, conflict-driven exchanges have become a marketable blend of politics and show business, not necessarily in that order. It’s a world where impartiality means lack of conviction, and partisanship ensures a loyal market sector.
Rupert Murdoch presciently founded Fox, because he was a savvy businessman and saw an unaddressed niche: news, and more importantly, news analysis that was on the conservative side of the spectrum. But Sean Hannity is no William F. Buckley Jr. If you were “fair and balanced,” it’s obvious what was to be inferred about the other side. Smart, however disingenuous, marketing. Game on.
And then, of course, there’s the societal game-changer that is the internet. The echo chambers range from social media opinion-sharing to “fake news” websites to bloggers who can act as their own editors, proof-readers, publishers and, presumably, libel attorneys. It’s never been easier to cherry pick the media that validates a position or confirms a bias. Don’t like Politico or HuffPo? Try Breitbart or Drudge. Battling insomnia? See if there are any 5 a.m. tweets from POTUS.
This is the knave new communication-and-information world we now inhabit. Where aforementioned “fake news” can resonate with those who need to believe that the Pope endorses Donald Trump or the Hillary Clinton campaign is connected to a “PizzaGate” pedophile ring.
And how ironic, if not karmic, given the media’s supportive role in Trump branding over the years–that this president would now unleash his utter contempt for the mainstream media. That it is, in his opinion, “dishonest” and the intentional, agenda-driven purveyor of “fake news.”
It’s a narcissistic overreaction to that which Trump can’t control. He also misses the nostalgic days of lionizing, ego-stroking tabloids.
And all of this from the Fabulist-in-Chief who has trafficked in “fake news” long before its current coinage. From one who has acknowledged–OK, bragged–that he, indeed, does “play to people’s fantasies.” He’s used aliases (“John Barron” and “John Miller”) to spin complimentary lies about himself to the New York tabs and made blatantly false claims about the sham that was Trump U. He’s also the perpetrator of the unconscionable “birther” lie about Barack Obama and incredulously claimed his predecessor had him “wire-tapped.” And more. It’s pathological. Obviously.
And let’s not forget his Tweeting obsession. It’s a function of a hair-Twitter temperament, as well as a strategy of diversion and scapegoating. Plus, he gets unfiltered access to his fan base. It’s a modern version of a familiar ploy for populists and would-be authoritarians.
Yes, this is a challenging, gut-checking time for the media.
The onus is really on the media to make up for being played. For having made personality more of a priority than policy during the presidential campaign. For having allowed a false “equivalence” between candidates to get legs. For accepting increasingly flawed polling as if it were still Gallup calling land lines in the 1960s.
For now, the media can double down on fact checking and substantiating anonymous sources. It can make “accountability” more than an ideal. And it can re-embrace what the “fourth estate” means to American democracy. This isn’t a matter of off-putting personality and a culture of arrogance. This is about truth.
As Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald so unsubtly put it: “Trump has dragged journalism into a back-alley brawl, and we’ve been trying to fight it by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.”
There can be no backing down. This is, after all, our country too.