News media has been disinvesting in news reporting. It may seem perverse, but it's true. Reporting can mean a lot of money spent for accuracy and context, which is a big ask if that's not what your customers are paying for. So while you might think reporters are ubiquitous, they're more in the position of smiths who make horseshoes. The profession exists, but it's marginal. Most stories you see in the neverending news cycle are based on other stories, or nothing.
Pundits have held on quite well, though. Maybe because they tend to become recognizable brand names, which is valuable in a crowded field. But that may wind up being a case of diminishing returns, as it can be hard to tell one from another.
This story compiles a number of instances of journalists crossing over from factual reporting (to the extent they ever did that) and open advocacy. But what does it mean to take a stand when everybody takes the same stand? There's a large number of media figures who share the same opinions on what stories need to be shared and which can be swept under the rug. Pretty soon they're only talking to each other, plus a small cohort of "civilians" who agree. Which of course the voting base of the current President.
Then there are more florid examples. It's tempting to say that Siegel read the Rolling Stone "dominatrixes vs. vaccine hesitancy" story so you don't have to. But I did read it and found it painfully insipid. It's an attempt to make a familiar narrative sound new and exotic, maybe even erotic. Well, that last part really doesn't pan out.
Are “trans women of color” and “dommes” genuine authorities in America? No, but they are made into public idols that real power can hide behind. In theory, these totems of the marginalized are being “centered” by social justice movements that overturn historical power structures. In practice, the dominatrix, stripped of all authentic erotic power and allure, becomes a new kind of patriotic hero defending the civic virtues of the American middle class.
Perhaps a bit ironic, that.
2 comments:
Well, those were a pair of eye opening articles, weren't they? The James Bovard essay was particularly revelatory about just how dishonest and self-serving the nobility of Washington journalists have become.
On a related topic this afternoon I read a review written by Chris Hedges of a book called 'Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife' by Ariel Sabar. The gist of the article is that in 2012 Karen King, a professor at Harvard's Divinity School, announced she had a recently unearthed papyrus stating that Mary Magdalene was not only one of the disciples, but was also his wife.. officially.
While I had read about Dan Brown's major plot element in the DaVinci Code, I hadn't thought much about it at the time since, while it sounded interesting, the idea of Jesus's pregnant wife running off to France was a little too fantastic to take seriously. Apparently, Karen King promoted the book for her own reasons, then some years later claimed she had proof.
What eventually transpired was that Sabar found the man who forged the documents that Prof King had proclaimed as real. Of course, while she got lots of affirmative publicity, including from Harvard and the Smithsonian, no real antiquarian or scholar had ever got a peek at that papyrus while the hype was fresh.
The element of this story that most accords with your post about dishonesty in journalism is that once Prof King was shown the proof of forgery she didn't care. Hedges comments, "King, like many academics, is infected with the disease of postmodernism. To them, there is no discernable, objective truth. Truth is a language game. It is determined by those who tell the best story. History is, they argue, a form of fiction. Facts, along with linear time, do not matter as long as the story told feels true and relevant."
The whole article is worthwhile read if you feel like doing so, but the salient point is that in King's opinion: Those bound by facts are constricted by “fact fundamentalism.” The thought that such a preposterous notion is taken seriously by anyone, particularly those presumably well educated, is disturbing.
Ironic is definitely a good descriptor of this general tendency in journalism.
The word "nobility" is well chosen. It's a small class of people who, at the end of the day, expect to simply be obeyed. I don't think the tendency is brand new, but it's gone unchecked as of late.
The idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene predates Dan Brown by quite a bit. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln published The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail back in 1982. The tendency to invoke shakey facts or just launch straight into narrative on the issue has been around for a long time as well. How can you pinpoint who Magdalene was, anyway? Richard Barber wrote that, "It is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate."
Not everyone agrees on the divinity of Christ, obviously, but the idea of "My kingdom is not of this Earth" speaks to me. The premise that he essentially founded the Merovingian dynasty is another myth altogether. One that essentially serves aristocratic interests, which is why it's not too surprising that would-be aristocrats have grabbed onto it. "Fact fundamentalism" indeed. Just take a scary sounding word and half your work is done.
So anyway, I'm hopeful that more people are becoming aware of this loss of credibility.
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