Earlier this month, more than a dozen people were killed in Afghanistan during riots that resulted as a reaction to a fallacious and incendiary article in Newsweek, which unwisely relied on an anonymous source.
As is inevitable when Americans feel betrayed by the press, this ghastly incident has brought the media’s failure to live up to its obligations to the forefront of public discussion. The prognosis does not look good.
A decade ago, pundits pointed to the rise of cable news as a sign that people were losing faith in traditional journalism. A few years ago, talk radio was the soon-to-be bane of the media establishment. And now bloggers are supposedly going to drive a stake through the heart of print media and the big three broadcasters.
All the while, circulation and revenue for newspapers have ticked steadily downward. I am troubled by the declining circulation of newspapers. Not just because it’s my livelihood, but because I feel it’s indicative of a decline of reading in general.
As reading declines, the ability to critically engage a text is gradually being lost. Instead, we are becoming accustomed to having prepackaged infobytes served up ready for immediate consumption between commercial.
The decline of the American newspaper heralds the death of nuance. Broadcast journalism just can’t cover certain subjects with the same depth and attention as print journalism — the business model doesn’t allow for it. With Internet journalism, the rampant lack of accountability leads to a corresponding lack of credibility.
During this downward slope of readership, print media resort to sensationalism more and more in a desperate attempt to keep or increase readership. Or they become the unofficial PR
departments for the media conglomerates, as entertainment news becomes an increasingly larger part of the newspapers and magazines.
So the print media have to debase themselves just to survive — they’re fighting for their lives. This uphill struggle, though, is slowly leading print media to a place in which they will no more represent truth than reality shows represent reality.
I am glad to see, however, that the myth of objectivity is finally starting to crack in American journalism. The relatively recent (and relatively foolish) notion of objectivity is that journalists will simply find the news and report it.
If this were the case, there would be no discernible difference in media outlets. If the news is the news and reporters just go out and get it, all media should basically be created equal.
But in the gathering and reporting of news, there are dozens of subjective decisions that need to be made: what counts as news, who to interview, which words to use to describe particular situations. The reality is there’s very little about news gathering and
reporting that is objective.
Now I certainly believe that reporters should never let their personal biases conflict with indisputable facts. But a respect for the truth is not the same thing as objectivity. Not by a long shot.
As I said, this faulty notion of journalistic objectivity is a fairly recent conception that arose partially as a reaction to the abuses of the so-called “yellow journalists.”
Up until this time, journalists had never feigned objectivity. Editorial comment was never restricted merely to the opinion section. Newspapers were explicitly partisan — splitting on ideological and political lines.
If you were a Democrat, you could read your Democratic newspapers. If you were a Whig, you could read you Whig newspapers (or later Republican newspapers). Even before that, there were Loyalist newspapers and Patriot newspapers.
These days, we’re seeing a return of ideologically driven media. We can choose between blue state radio or red state radio. We can choose FOX News or CBS News. We can choose the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. More locally, we can choose the Oregon Commentator or the Oregon Daily Emerald (though I would recommend both).
That’s why I have to laugh when I hear people call talk radio stations to complain about the increasingly brazen lack of objectivity in the media. By calling talk radio, these people are participating in the single medium that has been most responsible for the return of ideological concerns in American media.
As ideology once again takes a greater place in our media, I can only conclude that slogans such as, “We Report, You Decide” and “Fair and Balanced,” must surely be meant as ironic. As an opinion journalist, the return of ideology in the media can only mean more job security for me. So I have no complaints.
Seriously, though, I see this as a positive move for the American media. Bias has always been there. Now we’re just being honest about it again.

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