I don't normally do emotional rants, but I want to express my disgust and disdain for the self-righteous smugness and conformism of the mainstream media and, most recently, for the utterly unprofessional gloating and rejoicing on the part of some television journalists in the wake of the re-election of Barack Obama as US President.
I am not claiming that media bias played a significant role in the American presidential election. The extent of the opinion-forming power of the press is an empirical question which I haven't looked into. My guess is that journalists and commentators are less influential than they would like to think, and deeper forces are at work. [But more on this another time.]
With respect to the coverage of the US election, some public broadcasters in Europe and elsewhere were even worse, I suspect, than mainstream American media (which at least is American and so has a stake in the outcome).
To keep up my French, I watch news on France 2. They continually highlight progressive causes, and their coverage of the election was boringly predictable. (The predictability is a plus, however, from the pedagogical point of view, as my understanding of spoken French is not as good as it could be.)
But a Scottish-accented 'senior reporter' working for Australia's hard-left, publicly-funded SBS took my prize for naked bias and patent unprofessionalism. He went so far as to proclaim - as a (foreign) reporter, remember, not a commentator - that the Republican Party's continued dominance of the House of Representatives was not only bad for the Democratic Party but bad for America.
I looked him up on Wikipedia. Brian Thomson. Born and raised Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Majored in politics and history at Newcastle University, where he was Deputy President of the Newcastle University Union Society. Deputy, note. But he was the winner of the 2011 United Nations Association of Australia Peace Award. (God save us from Peace Prize winners.) I don't know that I've ever seen a reporter who appears to take himself quite as seriously as this character does.
In many ways, I regret the demise of pen, paper and print as communication media, but I console myself that changes in the media landscape - the shift away from print and, in particular, the fragmentation of the audience for the electronic media - mean that the current crop of smug, know-nothing, campaigning journalists face a very uncertain professional future.
He was Deputy because the Students Union was a Labour Party stronghold and there was no way an independent could have won the top spot. I know him, he has never been active in party politics. Mate you should just keep watching Fox News? Would be good for your blood pressure!
ReplyDeleteI didn't claim he had been active in party politics. I claimed that his work on the American presidential election exhibited bias and unprofessionalism. He seemed to be jumping out of his skin with enthusiasm for Obama and his people - or was it just hatred for the other side that was driving him?
DeleteHear, hear. As for the shift away from print, it seems to me the electronic media act on public opinion like a catalyst in a chemical reaction. We form opinions more quickly than before, and with less evidence.
ReplyDeleteYes, a print-based culture encourages private reflection, whereas the digital world has no space for that. The instant interactivity of the new media seems to be promoting a new tribalism rather than peace, freedom and enlightenment.
DeleteI've been reading here and there some of your older posts, so my comments are not particularly timely.
ReplyDeleteI,too, am not sure about the "opinion forming power" of the media. Most viewers probably tune into news outlets that confirm their existing opinions. I sensed the lack of interest in the media for asking candidate Obama any challenging questions.
I wonder, however, about the influence of when news media and political discourse coalesce on the particular framing of an issue. I remember a little over a decade ago when abortion rights groups here in America dropped the word "abortion" in favor of the expression "a woman's right to choose." (If a listener was new to the country, he probably would not know what the hell they were talking about.) Soon politicians who support abortion rights began talking about "a woman's right to choose." Then one evening I turned into CBS Evening News, ostensibly a straight, hard news broadcast, and Dan Rather began talking about "another battle brewing over a woman's right to choose."
Conservatives, too, try to "spin" issues and "create a narrative" but when the majority of the traditional mainstream media does not share their views . . .
That sort of ideological corruption of language really bothers me. George Orwell was right to emphasize the dangers of these sorts of insidious changes which, as you suggest, require the cooperation of the media and intellectuals to work.
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