Augean Stables

Among the elements of MSM control, perhaps the most important is their role as gateway to the public sphere: one of their most important functions is deciding what gets “published” and what doesn’t. Unlike some critics of the MSM, I think this is a perfectly legitimate function: not only does the MSM have the right to do this; it has the obligation. Indeed, the mainstream media is precisely there to make sure that it filters out the wild and crazy and often terribly destructive “information” that circulates freely in less presitigious arenas.

But like all such matters, this power — and it is an enormous one — comes with an accordingly heavy responsibility. Abusing this power to keep legitimate news out, or by letting illegitimate news in, or by refusing to correct the inevitable errors that any MSM will commit over time, constitutes one of the worst abuses of journalistic privilege on record. In the Al Durah Affair, for example, we see all three errors/felonies: 1) allowing/pushing in a story that should have received a great deal more vetting before running it; 2) keeping any effort to correct the record out, thus perpetuating the original error; and 3) refusing to even cover newsworthy events like the decision of the court in Paris which would have served to correct the record (e.g., the NYT), or at least to make the public aware that there’s a disagreement about something the MSM was — and still is, tacitly — in consensus about — i.e., that Muhammad al Durah was killed by Israelis on September 30, 2000.

Of course just because the MSM is egregiously misbehaved where Israel is concerned, doesn’t mean it doesn’t misbehave elsewhere. As Lord Acton so memorably noted, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And until the advent of the blogosphere in the 21st century, the MSM was not only a “fourth estate” without any checks and balances, but, with pictures and video, an increasingly powerful player in the cultural scene. As far as the MSM seems to be concerned, if a major event happens and no one hears it, it didn’t happen. “We will decide what is important and not important.”

The most recent and glaring example of MSM misbehavior comes in its treatment of the Edwards Affair (pardon the pun). I personally don’t pay much attention to these matters, and found Republican behavior around the Lewinsky Affair to be appalling. But I am interested in how the MSM handles these issues which are clearly important to the larger public (for a variety of reasons, good and bad). The following post at Contentions by Jennifer Rubin offers some valuable insights into the process.

The MSM’s Latest Embarrassment
JENNIFER RUBIN - 08.10.2008 - 10:05 AM

Tim Rutten, taking to task his own Los Angeles Times and other MSM outlets, writes:

When John Edwards admitted Friday that he lied about his affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, a former employee of his campaign, he may have ended his public life but he certainly ratified an end to the era in which traditional media set the agenda for national political journalism. From the start, the Edwards scandal has belonged entirely to the alternative and new media. The tabloid National Enquirer has done all the significant reporting on it — reporting that turns out to be largely correct — and bloggers and online commentators have refused to let the story sputter into oblivion. . . It’s interesting that what finally forced Edwards into telling the truth was a mainstream media organization. ABC News began investigating the Edwards affair in October, but really began to push after the Beverly Hilton allegations. When ABC confronted Edwards with its story (which confirmed “95% to 96%” of the tabloid’s reporting, according to the network), he admitted his deception. With that admission, the illusion that traditional print and broadcast news organizations can establish the limits of acceptable political journalism joined the passenger pigeon on the roster of extinct Americana.

We also have the obligatory column from Clark Hoyt admitting that the New York Times was wrong, but denying that their reticence to cover the Edward story was the result of liberal bias. Yes, who could imagine such a thing of the paper which ran a front-page, uncorroborated story of the Republican nominee’s alleged relationship with a lobbyist some nine years ago?

The Edwards mess is the most recent and visible, but hardly unique, example of the mainstream media’s hear no evil/see no evil approach to newsgathering. How many other stories has the MSM missed, denied or avoided? From Rathergate to Reverend Wright to the success of the surge, the pattern is the same: MSM stalls, shuffles its collective feet, and doggedly ignores information for as long as possible until they can no longer do so with a straight face. The fact that these stories without exception work to the detriment of Democrats is apparently a grand coincidence.

My father — in the days before computer driven restaurant bills — would always do the addition himself. “Amazing,” he commented to us, “the mistakes are almost always in favor of the house.”

And the notion that they are upholding some “journalistic standard” is rendered absurd. Edwards’ story wasn’t important on Thursday, but it was on Friday because he confessed? No, the level of proof changed, but the story’s relevance did not. If it wasn’t worthy of investigation before the ABC interview then it was unworthy of mention afterwards. Their explanation for their editorial decision-making is no more credible than . . . well than Edwards himself.

I’m not sure I follow this reasoning. If I understand the MSM’s excuse was that they needed more proof before going ahead. So the confession does change matters. But the hollowness of that argument appears as soon as one sets it side-by-side with their treatment of McCain (see below).

There is a reason why the news media’s trustworthiness is rated so low. MSM news reporting by and large has not improved or become more rigorous with the advent of so many alternative news outlets. (To the contrary, the 24-hour landscape of cable news has sent them scurrying for their niche audience, wary of any mildly opposing views that might offend their target audience.)

However, because of this and other similar episodes, the public now fully appreciates just how deficient most of the MSM outlets are. That’s generally a good thing (the public should know what they’re reading and watching is a pale and shaded immitation of reality), but it would be even better if the MSM engaged in some real introspection and cleaned up their act.

I think Rubin may be jumping the gun here. My general sense of the public’s attitude towards the MSM is something like that of children towards parents, or maybe towards an uncle — they don’t want to believe that they’re being systematically manipulated, that they are really on their own in a world of information affluence, looking for reliable — accurate and relevant — information. On the contrary, just as in the case of the Al Durah affair, when every new blow to the credibility of Enderlin was greeted with a “now we’ve reached a dramatic conclusion,” an obvious slam-dunk doesn’t necessarily mean 2, much less 3 points. My sense is, that like children or spouses with abusive parents, it takes a great deal of time and many bitter disappointments before people will declare themselves “free.”

On the contrary, unless we want to spend a life of websurfing looking for reliable information, we desperately want to believe that the MSM is reliable, and like someone drugged who briefly wakes up, we rapidly fall back asleep at the first occasion. Like people who hear about the HSJP and glimpse, briefly, that the seemingly pacific PCP not only won’t work but will backfire, the immediate response to being told that the MSM doesn’t do its job… and that on a massive scale, is to say, “so what’s your solution.” And when the solution, in the case of getting reliable news means active participation in news consumption, the hair in the ears closes up, the eyelids drop, and it’s back to same old, same old.

So I think this process of the demise of the MSM (as currently operating — i.e., the Augean MSM), will take much more time. And we should not get too discouraged when the process takes longer than we’d like.

The two things we can do best in the meantime are:
1) document carefully the extent of MSM misbehavior
2) provide the most accurate and relevant information possible.

In an age of information affluence, the future belongs to those who provide the most reliable information.