The Media, or Try Consuming News Like A Grown Adult
daily Press Briefing Thursday October 12, 2017, in the Brady Press Briefing Room of The White House, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead) [Public Domain]
Among the many wailings and gnashing of teeth that rise above the cacophony of the public discourse and into a place of permanent incantation, “The Media” is now a phrase so ingrained in the vernacular that it has taken on a life of its own. “The Media” is against us, or is biased, or is in cahoots with x, y, and z. “The Media” is controlled by [insert boogeyman of your choice here] and is out to get [insert your preferred group identity here]. Humans are simple creatures and love such plug and play formulas, and the omnipresence of modern media is just too easy a variable to slide into such equations.
Frankly, I’m tired of the lazy caterwauling about “The Media”.
Media consumption is a voluntary activity. You — yes you — decide what media you consume. You decide what to read, watch, digest, think on, and share with others. You — yes you — are responsible for not only what you intake from media outlets but how you process it, talk about it with others, and react to it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you have a problem with the media you are consuming, what you have is not really a problem with the media; you have a you problem.
Consider that you — yes you — have on whatever device you are reading this the power to almost instantly and certainly within a few clicks have access to the entire breadth and depth of human knowledge. All of it. From Hammurabi to whatever was tweeted ten seconds ago. In the palm of your hand or next tab over on your desktop you can — quite literally — find out anything about anything. No generation in the recorded history of humanity has had such power at their fingertips.
And we mostly use that power to send cat pictures, make fun of celebrities, and complain about talking heads on network news.
Media, and journalism in particular, are fine and honorable professions on the whole. Like a lot of things those of us in the public opining business get to painting with too broad a brush and lump the good with the bad and make far-too-sweeping generalizations. Of course there is bias in the media; that is because “The Media” is like any other industry and is full of people, and people have biases, experiences, aspirations, and goals like everyone else does that color everything they do.
Let us take political media for example. The heartbeat of political news reporting traditionally has been the White House Press Corps. Those who crowd into the Brady Briefing Room, or the rope line on the South Lawn to shout questions, and otherwise follow the president around when not doing their standups are supposed to be the link to the highest office in the land, reporting on the goings on of our leaders. Most of them do fine work, and the assignment is seen as a crucial steppingstone in a media career ladder for a reason. But with all due respect to those folks plying their trade over what used to be FDR’s swimming pool, technology means they are only a part of our media story, not the be all, end all they once were.
That amazing modern technology, that ability to find information instantly, should also change how you consume media. The White House since President Biden took over has done an impressive job of getting almost everything they do from executive orders, to official call readouts, to transcriptions of the press briefings themselves up on the White House website. You can read, for yourself, the news and news-making events coming from the executive branch for yourself almost as soon as they happen. That’s not to say it replaces the White House Press Corps, but a responsible news consumer now has the raw information to better put into context the shouted questions and back-and-forth that goes on in the Brady Briefing Room.
More and more, the WHPC is a function of access journalism, of being there, developing relationships and sources, and bringing some insight that requires physical presence. There will always be a need and place for that. At the same time, the average American can use the technology available to contour the media they consume to have a wider picture and keep such access journalism in proper perspective when “sources tell me”-type stories come up. There is no such thing as a leak, you see, only messaging that folks want to get out, trial balloons to float, and narratives to shape. Knowing the who, what, when, and why of what the White House and the media covering it is presenting — and how it is getting to you, the news consumer — are all important parts of discerning events as they unfold. You can find out when someone is spinning, lying, or hiding something, because you’ve already looked into it yourself. You can tell which questions from the press corps are pertinent and which are silly based on what you’ve already learned. You can tell if the person at the podium is being consistent in their messaging or trying to run game contra what the messaging has previously been, and filter it through your own research of history both past and recent. And you don’t have to rely on a go-between talking head to do so.
Or, you can do what too many folks do and just watch the media story as presented to you and complain about it if it isn’t your flavor of choice. Which is not only unproductive, but unhealthy and frankly lazy. Much like sports fans who complain about their lousy team and its bad management, if you are just continuing to shell out your money, time, and viewership to that poorly run franchise, you as the consumer are giving them no incentive to change. And you surely are not improving your lot in life by being miserable. Nor does complaining do anything for them, and even less for you.
The grown folk, adult reaction to the changing media environment and technology available to us is to be proactive about the part of media you can control: your consumption. Media, and news media in particular, is not static. It is changing rapidly. The changes in the traditional advertising-driven model of media as technology becomes omnipresent in daily life means growing pains both for media companies and consumers. On a practical level, consumers of the news should make a point to support outlets, reporters, opinion writers, and others they find to be worthy of their time, and share and recommend them to others. The truth is, everyone is their own media outlet these days. Have a Facebook account? You are a media outlet. Have a Twitter, an Instagram, any social media where you share your opinion with the world? You have a media outlet. Granted you might not be CNN, but having a mindset that folks within your realm of influence listen to you is a healthy thing to consider when contemplating what news to share, and from who you are getting it. Consider what you want your own reputation as a reliable source to be among your friends, family, and followers. Don’t yell at the talking heads on TV for being biased, unreliable gasbags if you are being one yourself.
Furthermore, if you really want to make a difference, media is readily a participatory thing these days. That social media account of yours can put out your videos, your writing, your opinions, just about anything you want to say for the wider world to hear. It is no longer a matter of getting past gatekeepers of traditional media to get your voice heard; it’s just a matter of putting in the work of showing what you say is worthy to hear. Using myself as an example: I didn’t go to school for writing, I don’t have all those letter combinations after my name, nor did I have ins or know folks “in the business”. I just started doing it. I’ve been fortunate that folks who do know about the media noticed and promoted, helped out, and gave me opportunities as I went but mostly anything I have accomplished in the writing and media realms is from just putting myself out there, putting the time in, and putting out stuff folks seemed to want. People are screaming for content, and if you can provide some, there is an outlet out there for you.
The lazy caterwauling about “The Media” rings hollow these days mostly because we as a people have never had more options, more availability, and more control over the media we consume. The White House is putting out the source documents and transcripts of what they are doing for you to read, check, verify, and draw conclusions on. Almost every major court case in the news has the actual legal documents available for you to read yourself with minimal searching. The entire breadth and depth of human knowledge is available to you in the palm of your hand to put context on current events. The only missing ingredient to this being an era of excellent media consumption is your personal level of effort and give a damn.
Media consumption in the United States of America is a voluntary activity. You are the media you consume. If your media isn’t working for you, that’s a you problem. Adjust accordingly.
The media in most other countries is nearly all partisan except at some places like the BBC or theiur equivalents and even then, people will tell you they have a bias. No one bats an eye that the Guardian is left leaning or Le Figaro is right-leaning. It seems rather unique to the United States that we have decided that news reporting should be “objective” and that you can score political points by accusing a media organization of bias. If a Tory accused the Guardian of having a left bias or a French socialist accused Le Figaro of having a right bias, the response would be blank stares and no duh.
But this seems to be an area where the United States has the worst of all worlds. The expectation of objective neutrality and then working the refs to push objective neutrality to something with a partisan lean, almost always to the right.
Another problem is that we have journalists who fetishize their role as “objective fact-teller” and this sometimes leads to debacle like how it took until 2020 for the media to call Trump’s lies lies. Before that it was every euphemism under the sun. When journalists were called out on this, they doubled down.
There should be more things a journalist can be in the United States than a well-paid stenographer with access to the courts (like a noble court, not like a law court) or a proudly on the outside alt-reporter (think Gawker/Jezebel) who can’t pay the bills from their writing.Report
Nobody wants an unbiased, objective media. They want a media that confirms their priors and biases.Report
Yeah, good stuff. “the media” has always been lazy at best. People want to complain but not do better. There are tons of subject matter experts out there with good info or just some generic all purpose pundit who knows nothing. People want to complain about culture wars then fling viscous invective (Jesse Kelly, etc) You want good media stop watching CNN and read smart people.Report
I think you missed the mark a bit with this article. I don’t hear people complain about the media *they* consume, but the material other people consume. (There are some restrictions placed on media outlets too, but I think that’s a more minor complaint.)
I think the most overlooked aspect of all this is the material from the non-news outlets. It’s odd that the three network morning shows have the same political leaning. It’s odd that all the late-night TV shows have the same leaning, and all the major Hollywood studios have the same leaning, and most of the checkout stand magazines have the same leaning. It’s a real problem that they all, across those media, lean the same. And those are all bigger media platforms. There’s a balance in cable news (although still two to one in the big three) and radio (there are about as many NPR stations as right-wing stations) but those are all modest outlets. There’s no point in comparing Twitter and Parler.
I can generally find the information I want. It’s pretty easy compared to twenty or even ten years ago. But in a democracy, you pay the price for the other guy’s ignorance, and even moreso in lawless moments.Report
No, actually, that’s not odd at all. It strikes me as funny how a lot of conservatives are sure there’s some sort of inbuilt psychological thing that makes women and men likely to choose different jobs, because they think differently. Except they don’t. But you know who does think differently?
Conservatives and liberals.
Acting is a skill that requires people to think in specific ways. It requires empathy and mental simulation of a character that doesn’t even exist. It requires trying to piece of motives of someone else. And ultimately, it requires working off of other people in a very social way.
And…conservatives are often bad at this, and don’t enjoy it. It’s the sort of voluntary self-sorting that conservatives often claim explains why women ‘don’t want to be engineers’. Except it’s _real_, because the sorting here is literally ‘by how people think’ and not ‘gender’.
Now, there’s an obvious reason why conservatives don’t want to do the thing that requires empathy and imagining things from other viewpoints, but I’m not actually making that claim. Feel free to invent some other reason besides the very obvious. I’m saying it’s a thing that is true in reality, for _whatever_ reason.
And that’s the reason that liberals own the dramatic performing arts. It’s not any sort of gatekeeping, it’s just conservatives basically don’t want to do it. And that is easy to prove. All you have to do is look somewhere that there is no possible gatekeeping: Community theatre. (1)
I have been involved, for two decades now, in a community theatre in one of the most conservatives parts of this country…a theatre that was created by the Chamber of Commerce to try to bring tourists to town. The entire origins of this theatre is, conceptually, conservative.
It is extremely liberal. Even the Republicans involved are socially liberal, and honestly aren’t really that fiscally conservative either…I once got in a discussion with the Fair Tax guy and _he_ suggested the government should just build housing for the homeless, and I’m like…sounds good to me!
And him, and a few other conservatives, tend to be kinda stiff older guys…who aren’t great actors. I’m not saying that as an insult, honestly, community theatres can use all the warm bodies they get, as long as they can hit their mark and say their lines. And I can’t act _at all_. I’m saying they aren’t the people who have acting in their blood.
No one is keeping conservatives out of community theatre. Honestly, we aren’t keeping _anyone_ out of the theatre, and there’s certainly not a political litmus test.
Conservatives just aren’t really very good at acting, and more importantly, often don’t seem to enjoy the performing arts at all. They are keeping themselves out.
1) I say, making an odd facial expression. Community theatre is _rife_ with weird gatekeeping, but it’s nothing as pedestrian as political viewpoint…it’s dumb grudges and rumors and nonsense. As stage manager, I’ve sat in a dozen different discussions about casting, and not once has anyone’s political views come up….or, any views. Whereas we do care that two people seem to have problems with each other and cause backstage drama.Report
If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, you can’t stop them.Report
That makes sense about acting. Actors and other creatives can have their own production companies, but typically when you get to the level of studio head, you’ll find businessmen. Comedians run libertarian in my experience. Typically, if you’re creating, say, a morning show, you’d want different personalities and ways of thinking, and you’d consider counter-programming if two of the networks have indistinguishably left-wing shows. Reporters and authors run the gamut, although I’d guess that the ones who are willing to spend the time to get a master’s degree in journalism are going to start out more liberal, and become more liberal still through the experience.Report
I still think that one of the reasons conservatives are increasingly attracted to authoritarianism and fascism and other anti-democratic forms of government is because they feel like they can’t win and enforce their view otherwise.
I’m 40. That is not that old. For most of my childhood and 20s, social conservatives were all powerful and corporate America listened to them. Last fall, the radical Bolsheviks at (checks notes) Nabisco came out with some tweets and a marketing campaign in support of using a person’s preferred gender pronouns and in support of LBGTQ rights. Dreher had a huge meltdown over this. But in a sense, he is correct. For most of my life, it would have been unthinkable for corporations to do stuff like this. I can remember some ads from the early aughts that tried to feature samesex couples but the corporationns backed down quickly when the right-wing especially Evangelicals complained.
They no longer have this power. Nabisco felt no need or benefit to listen to Dreher or any other right-wing person whine about how horrible those ads are. This is a huge sea change and I think it happened relatively quickly and while Trump was busy packing the Federal Courts with young reactionary firebrands from the Federalist Society. Remember the transgender bathroom ban could have cost North Carolina a lot of business and it cost them the governorship.
There are still a lot of relatively young people who cut their political teeth on Reganism and Gingrichism. This cohort is anywhere between the ages of 39-60. The largest group is probably born between 1960-1975 or so. The post-1975 crowd tends to be more liberal but there are still plenty of reactionaries in the 1975-1985 birth crowd.
All of this group of soon to be middle-aged or middle-aged people think that small government Reaganism and social conservatism are the bee’s knees and can remember when such positions were unassailable. Now they are going the down and Biden is already being called the first post-Reagan President. Schumer is stating that it would be nice to have a bipartisan COVID relief plan but not if it means going with something small and useless.
But you still have tens of millions of right-wingers (it is a large country) and they are very angry that they don’t have the power that they used to. Even the Trump years probably looked illusory to them in terms of power.Report
Cosign completely.Report
As the saying goes, fiction has a well-known left-wing bias.Report
“Media, and journalism in particular, are fine and honorable professions on the whole.”
Honorable? Well, I’ll let that go…
I think the problem isn’t *media* consumption, but media *consumption*. It’s the idea that media is, in actual practice now, like a Big Mac. You eat it because you love the taste, because of how it makes you feel. And when some “above the fray” type comes along to tell you that eating processed food isn’t good for you. you tell em to zip it.
Another problem is that our consensus-based norms regarding objective reality continue to erode (thanks post-modernism!), thereby obliterating anyone’s ability to make persuasive objective arguments about what constitutes good media, or even a good media diet. There is no agreement on even the most basic aspects of a shared discourse, let alone shared facts. The center cannot not hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. That sort of thing. We’re living it.Report
I forgot how much Americans complain about the media until I joined Twitter not so long ago.
I think it’s a bit like “goddamn the pusher man!” though- most addicts get to a point where they can’t stand the thing they’re addicted to.Report
Recently joining Twitter? What? Did you run out of arm to stick into the garbage disposer?Report
I mean… hey, since you asked! I went there to promote my book:
https://www.diopress.com/product-page/the-paris-bureau
It was actually pretty easy. My old band had an account- I just changed it to my name. But, yeah, I’m finding it’s great to talk to OT folks there, but otherwise it’s a bit like those videos of mobs of drunk Santas fighting in NYC every year.Report
Your comment was not self-promotion. I backed you into a corner.Report
Oh, no problem. I mean my Twitter use is for self-promotion. Although, lately, it feels like picking a scab more than anything else.Report
“I forgot how much Americans complain about the media”
I think that’s because, as a culture, we know heavily propagandized and we like it.Report
The thing is we have the CBC, which is gov’t funded and the biggest complaint you hear here is it’s boring. (Which it is) OTOH, maybe the pressure on corporate news channels to be exciting is why they’re propagandistic.Report
I often feel that the corporate bias is more insidious in (American) news than any particular partisan or policy preferences. The enterprise is for the benefit of the advertisers much more than the viewers.Report
I think that is a huge part of it. They need to keep viewers tuning in to sell ad space, which is why every event is a CRISIS, WAR, EMERGENCY, SCANDAL, etc.Report
What are some concrete examples of pro-corporate bias in the American news media?Report
I lived in Vermont a few, umm, decades ago, and I loved the CBC. Smart science programs, informative new shows, interviews with politicians who actually answered questions. Iy was unlike any American radio and that includes NPR.Report
I do take responsibility for my own information consumption. That’s how I know how terrible the news media are. The problem is that most people do not. They accept what the news media tell them, and they vote. The results speak for themselves.
Furthermore, I really shouldn’t have to do this. I have my own job; I shouldn’t have to do journalists’ jobs for them. I should be reasonably confident that if I go to the primary sources the media are using, I won’t find a completely different story from the story the media are telling me. Yes, I can work around this by fact-checking them, but they’re supposed to do that themselves.Report
With the demise of the Fairness doctrine they are not, in fact, supposed to do this anymore. Thanks Reagan.Report
I’m talking about basic competence, not legal obligations. There’s no Funniness Doctrine that legally obligates comedians to be funny, but one who isn’t is still a pretty lousy comedian.Report
Also its worth noting that “the media” encompasses everything from Epoch Times and OAN to CNN and the New York Times.
And they are not all of equal value or veracity.Report
I am increasingly inclined to read the Guardian’s US edition rather than the NYT.Report
I find that the Guardian’s writers really do not understand how politics works in the U.S. The Times has its problems but I will take Michelle Goldberg, Paul Krugman, Jamelle Bouie, any day of the week over most Guardian columnists.Report
I was unclear, I guess. I meant the news reporting, not the columnists. Today there’s a piece on Biden reversing many of Trump’s actions on environmental regulation. Yes, there’s the expected slant in the text — the Guardian is pro environmental protection, a known thing. But rather than a tirade, or diversions into the peccadilloes of Zinke and Pruitt, the writers provide thorough point-by-point lists of actions taken in Trump executive orders or actions by agencies, and what Biden has done to start reversing those. Neither the NYTimes nor the WaPost would put up an article like that.Report
When I was a little kid, my dad had a story in the local newspaper. He was a coach at the high school and he did well at regionals or something. In the article, they talked about him, his wife, and his two kids… and they spelled my name incorrectly.
Like, if you look at any list of “Top Boy Names of 1970’s”, there’s my name. And they got it wrong. And they didn’t get it wrong like “Jonathan” to “John”. They got it wrong like “Matthew” to “Mayhew”.
My mom clipped the article and put it in a little frame and it featured prominently on one of our bookshelves.
Whenever I looked at it, I re-read the paragraph where they got my name wrong.
Then, in the 80’s, they’d do local news stories on the evils of Dungeons and Dragons. When I’d read the stories, I’d see that they got something wrong. Like, “throwing around sixteen-sided die!” wrong.
Ah, well. I’m sure that they’re covering Israel/Palestine correctly.Report
They got it wrong like “Matthew” to “Mayhew”.
Ah, ye olde y/thorn mix-up.Report
“Raybird”?Report
Janbird.Report
I would occasionally get my name in the paper when I was in high school. Almost always “Shilling”.Report
You almost always shilled to get your name in the paper?Report
I have heard a number of celebrities make jokes about “JUST SPELL MY NAME RIGHT” and I thought that they were making a cynical statement about publicity.
Nope.
They were talking about journalists.Report
Get the bio out of the way: I got a degree in Journalism back in the Watergate days. While I’ve done documentary films, I’ve never worked as a journalist. That said, I’ve always been relatively unable to watch television news. So shallow. so ad-driven. Good for footage during big crises, but that’s about it. But when Trump was elected, I realized that I wanted a daily feed of talking heads. Went right to PBS News. Not much ad support. Pretty decent in-depth analysis. A feeling of, if not objectivity, at least fairness. My best take on televised news? If it isn’t somewhat boring, they are doing it wrong. Stories should be long, not punchy. Graphics should be simple, not exciting. Save the networks for when the bombs are dropping or when their budget can get a camera into the action. Use PBS NewsHour, which doesn’t have much of a budget, to gather some intelligent POVs.Report
Oh god, but the constant BEGGING for money……Report
Yeah, but…it’s constant for a week every couple of months or so. Yeah, but…you just record it on your dvr/TiVO and zip through the begging. Yeah, but…they beg you for your money so they don’t have to beg Proctor & Gamble, or the RNC/DNC, or Toyota, or whoever sponsors the other guys. And yeah, as a regular viewer I actually do contribute. $25 a month. I’m lucky enough to be able to do it painlessly, and I’m glad to support what they do to that small extent. And if you pay attention, you can donate and get a cool “gift.” Win Win.Report
Those tote bags are to die for.Report
O.k., one more post and now I’ll look like a complete shill/barker for PBS. When we signed up for the monthly payment, we got the complete deeeeeluxe “Downton Abbey” set (including movie and a plaque-mounted little bell for when the Dowager Empress calls for tea). We got our giant tottering pile of tote bags from magazine subscriptions. (Has anyone ever done a doc about where all the tote bags come from?)Report
I just re-read this exchange and realize all I talk about is TV news and magazines. Good grief…how old am I? O.k., off to check Billie Eilish’s Instagram…Report
Well, I was referring to the radio broadcasts, so I don’t record them. Even with the donations, they still are sponsored-I hear their “advertisement” when one of the announcers says that “this program is funded by blah blah blah and listeners like you”. Sorry, if listeners are paying for it, then no “sponsors”, i.e. ads. It’s an ad if some someone from the program reads the words or a paid actor reads the words. It’s now worse than adds on tv. It’s a terrible hybrid with public radio/tv. The begging for $ AND the ads. Damon doesn’t give money to organizations to then listen to ads.Report
That’s what I said about satellite radio… but here we are.Report