The news media is in crisis.
That’s not news to anyone who’s been paying attention, of course. And there’s been a lot of good work on why the news media is in such trouble. Here are three of the most interesting explanations I’ve come across:
- Linguist George P. Lakoff and Gil Duran, former press secretary for Jerry Brown, break down Trump’s use of language to pwn the media—most importantly, how repeating a lie, even if your purpose is to debunk it, reinforces the lie.
- NYU Professor Jay Rosen—my favorite media critic—wrote a brilliant tweet storm (Thread Reader has an easier to read version) challenging Washington Post editor Marty Baron’s claim that “We’re not at war; we’re at work.” Rosen points out that—however seductive, genius, or even true—this claim doesn’t address the enormity of the problem: that a good 30% (and rising) of the country dismisses “mainstream media” simply on principle. “I think our top journalists are correct that if they become the political opposition to Trump, they will lose. And yet, they have to go to war against a political style in which power gets to write its own story.” (There’s lots of other good stuff at Rosen’s site, Pressthink, too.)
- Whitney Phillips, in an interview on Ezra Klein’s podcast, explains that the media’s problems are not evidence that the system is broken; on the contrary, everything is working as designed. The news media’s business model and, more importantly, what they value (“newsworthiness,” “scoops,” fact-checking, etc.) align perfectly with Trump’s media strategies.
Behind all of this—and behind much other excellent criticism—is the question of identity. What is journalism? What do journalists do?
Lakoff raises this question in an interview with Vox. I noticed this on my own, but Jay Rosen pounced on it and broke it down (Thread Reader version) better than I can:
In an interview with Vox, @GeorgeLakoff provided political journalists (and their “why can’t you be tougher?” critics) an unwelcome insight. By distributing Trump’s false claims in order to debunk them you are assisting in his project. He gets to frame things, then gets attacked.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) November 20, 2018
A crucial exchange:
Vox: So you’re saying that the president has created a situation in which journalists, by merely doing their jobs, are reinforcing his entire communications strategy.
George Lakoff: Right… But you see, there’s still a question of what the media’s job is.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) November 20, 2018
In that moment, @GeorgeLakoff was asking journalists to choose what matters more to them: doing the job they have defined as theirs, or having the effect they say they want to have. You can amplify, then “check” the president, or you can inform the public. Not both. So pick one.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) November 20, 2018
This distinction, between “doing the job they have defined as theirs, or having the effect they say they want to have” reminds me of a central concept in the “personal development” sphere: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” In other words, don’t focus on the items on your to-do list; focus on the outcomes you want to create.
Baron’s “We’re not at war, we’re at work” focuses on the activities that journalists have traditionally performed: uncovering corruption, holding the powerful to account, breaking newsworthy stories. And in many cases (though there are many exceptions, as well), the outcomes have been impressive.
But we now find ourselves with a structural problem: the activity of covering newsworthy stories often undermines the outcome of informing the public. Most obviously: the president is, by definition, newsworthy. But reporting on the president—the rallies, the tweets, the golf, the rambling interviews—makes us less informed.
Part of this is just the overwhelming volume of information; as Steve Bannon told Bloomberg’s Michael Lewis, “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Part of it is the contradictory nature of the information (for an amusing juxtaposition of the president’s current positions with positions from his days as a private citizen, see the Twitter feed@AlwaysATweet).
Part of it, though, is just the asymmetry between journalists doing their job and the president and his mouthpieces saying whatever they want.
Take the “caravan.”
The president sets the agenda—”pre-emptive framing,” as Lakoff puts it. A “caravan” of really bad people is rushing our borders! And the news media, who would be aghast if you called them mere stenographers, report all about the caravan: telling human interest stories, defending American’s history of welcoming refugees, debunking the dangers of these impoverished migrants, and so on.
It’s all newsworthy! … until it’s not, until the mid-terms are over:
None of this is meant to blame the news media—or, at least, not solely. I don’t know how I would respond if I were a journalist. As Whitney Phillips argued (in that previously mentioned conversation with Ezra Klein), the problem is structural, and no single journalist or organization can make the changes needed to overcome the system—which, again, is working as designed.
And we can’t let ourselves off the hook, either. It’s just as hard to know how we—the journalists’ audience, the populace—should handle the hypocracy (from the fictionary: “rule by hypocrites”).
I found myself in the journalists’ double-bind when news of Ivanka’s use of private email servers for official government business came out. I know that Hillary Clinton was excoriated for the same thing. And while it’s impossible to pin her electoral loss on any one thing, the Comey intervention and subsequent media obsession with the issue can’t have helped:
Honestly, I don’t care that much about private email servers. Note the problem, fix it, move on. I didn’t care that much when it involved Clinton; I don’t care that much now that it involves Ivanka. I’d rather just ignore it.
At the same time, the hypocrisy chafes. To give Ivanka (and, I understand, Jarred) a pass for something that had such dramatic effects on Clinton (and, as a result, on the country) during the election just feels wrong.
So what should I do?
My best solution is to focus on outcomes. It may be satisfying to blast a tweet or a blog post in response to every outrageous or hypocritical story that crosses the news wire, or Twitter, or Facebook. But in the end, I need to focus on the issues that really matter. Of course, what issues those are might be up for debate—and there are a lot of them, as well: health care, authoritarianism, our standing in the world, family separation, voter suppression, etc. There’s enough there without rising to every tweeted bait.
And this is what I wish the news media would do: I wish editors would assert the power of editorial judgment and assign stories that matter—stories that are newsworthy for reasons other than “the president said.” I wish they would distribute the work a bit—that is, that they’d work less in competition, and more in a complementary way: Hey, the Post is doing a pretty good job investigating the president’s finances; let’s focus our attention on family separation. Etc.
But, of course, the system is working the way it was designed. Breaking news—and this administration is nothing if not constantly breaking—fits the business model. Cooperation doesn’t.