The Project for Excellence in Journalism just released its State of the News Media report and has some interesting tidbits: 1) people watch local news less than 3 times a week 2) they get news from four different types of media a week 3) a slight majority of reporting on Iraq was neutral 4) and the stat most likely to get attention, Bush got three times as much bad press as Kerry in the campaign. The big change is from the “journalism of verification” to the “journalism of assertion,” and it has some old-timey journos pissed:
This is a dangerous development, says Joe Angotti, former NBC News executive who now teaches journalism at Northwestern University.
“Blogs and ‘so’s your mother’-style talk shows are distorting news in America beyond what anyone could have imagined 10 years ago,” he says. “The public is finding it more difficult than ever to distinguish between legitimate news and unverified drivel. The problem is that most news consumers don’t realize that mainstream media reporters work within strict policies and guidelines that these other outlets don’t require.”
Yeah, we know non-mainstream sources developed in a vacuum! Just because you operate under “strict policies and guidelines” doesn’t mean you’re not tempted to cut corners, rely on sources with whom you are far too chummy and run slightly modified press releases as news. That’s not even counting the tendency to follow the pack and quickly adopt the conventional wisdom. These are problems that mainstream journalists themselves discuss within their ranks, but for some dinosaurs, the fact that the conversation has left the circle of ink-stained wretches is reason to bitch, bitch, bitch. Needless to say I agree with this guy:
Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs says that those who blame this new form of journalism on technology — the Internet — ignore misgivings about traditional media that the public has harbored for years.
It started in the ’60s and ’70s with Vietnam and Watergate, when journalists “decided they had a larger role to play in politics and society,” he says. “They weren’t just telling people what was going on. They were refereeing among the various contenders for influence by telling us who is telling the truth, who is lying and what the truth is. Once you start doing that, you have created journalism of assertion.”
Lichter says traditional media were able to operate that way for decades because “they had no competition. The politicians could yell and scream, but journalists could say, ‘We’re the public tribunes. We have the constitutional right to tell the public that you are lying.’
“Now the ‘right’ that professional journalists asserted in the ’60s is being claimed by bloggers. Journalistic arrogance is coming back to roost.”
Competition is never fun. You have to work harder, watch your work more carefully, and endure criticism made possible by the ability to compare. It’s true that a lot of criticism is unfair, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to treat all criticism as ignorant and mean-spirited. Speaking specifically about journalism, it also doesn’t give journalists permission to say “Liberals say I’m too conservative and conservatives say I’m too liberal, so I must be doing a good job.” That’s the lazy way out. It’s intellectually dishonest. And it’s far too common.
Also see this Post writeup with more detail about the State of the News Media report. This should blow your mind: Fox News has the most opinion of any cable network, but cable in general is “pretty thin” compared to broadcast evening news.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.