George Rebane
Well, it appears that they have all been doing it, and now are beginning to admit it. “Foxification” is the term the 9-15jul11 Economist used in its extended report on the future of news to describe news that is delivered with a known slant, commentary, or viewpoint. (more here)
This is nothing new, it was ever thus, and only the charlatans and morons in the journalism industry have claimed otherwise. The Economist itself makes no bones about it, and as “the world’s oldest newspaper” (1843) liberally sprinkles its own opinions into every news story it prints.
Journalists have forever been modifying, manufacturing, and mangling the news. The scandal with Murdoch’s News International operation in Great Britain is only the tip of a recent iceberg that reveals the overzealous extremes reporters have gone to in order to give a leg up to whatever medium employs them. Readers familiar with the history of journalism will recall how in 1932 reporters broke into the mortuary housing the casket bearing Lindbergh’s kidnapped and murdered son. As Lindbergh described in his wartime journals, they tore the lid off the casket to take photographs of the baby’s mangled body.
The Economist’s survey of news reporting today concludes that with the entry of the internet, we are going back to the ‘coffee house’ format of disseminating news. News today comes from so many sources – verified, vetted, prioritized, etc, or not – that it most resembles the way people got the news before mass produced newspapers became its prime purveyors. In short, people then went to public houses, read pamphlets, corresponded with associates and family members, and shared what they had received – and all of it came with a slant of the writer or speaker.
Fox News has adopted a format in which it delivers a heavy dose of right leaning commentary and opinion programs that offset its delivery of “fair and balanced” news programming. Its ratings have soared, leaving in the dust liberal outlets like MSNBC and CNN who have continued to deny that they are anything other than the moronic model of objective journalism. Well, those days appear to be over.
Given the blatantly biased programming of outlets like the satirical Daily Show, leftwing Huffington Post, rightwing Rush Limbaugh, and countless blogs (RR included), we now have MSNBC’s Phil Griffin admitting what everyone has known for decades about news outlets – “we definitely have a progressive sensibility, a sensibility to the left.” MSNBC will henceforth openly reflect this ideological perspective instead of continuing to push the bullcrap that it somehow avoided any ideological bias in its reporting. Look for the other members of the lamestream to soon follow this trend.
I believe that such openness will be a benefit, and as the Economist foresees, we will accept transparency as the substitute for objectivity. Spin it as you will, but your message will be more powerful and accepted, the more you can source/cite any factual claims that are made. At this point, dear reader, don’t come to confuse commentary (as is this) with those who claim to be sources of news.
Finally, the world’s oldest newspaper believes that the internet is making journalism better, and cites its own surveys that claim broad agreement with that belief (see online debate). The bottom line of it all is that “News is becoming a social medium again, as it was until the early 19th century – only more so.”
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