Journalism Is Broken
Published by carlo June 1st, 2006I’ve been thinking a lot lately about journalism, mostly on the backdrop of my education and background in it but my hefty (and growing) disillusionment and dissatisfaction with it. Traditional journalism is broken, and out of touch with the reality of today’s media landscape. While this most often manifests itself in the stupid things old media are doing to try to adapt to the Internet (things like paywalls, registration barriers or putting only some content online), the problems go much, much deeper, and without acknowledging them and changing significantly, traditional journalism’s future is in doubt.
This stuff has been kicking around in my head for a while, but a post by Mark Cuban along similar lines brought it into focus. Cuban may be a loudmouth, but he makes salient insights, and this post is one of them. His basic premise is that journalism no longer offers people (particularly young people) enough of a “payoff”. It’s not that they’re not interested, but rather that journalism does a shoddy job of reaching them. And it’s true.
It’s time to toss the traditional ideas about journalism out the window; they’re no longer the best way forward. All this whining from old media about how untrustworthy blogs are, the importance of newspapers and how journalism is best left to professionals smacks not of people speaking the truth, but rather of a group of people who feel their livelihoods are under threat, as well as their self-appointed position in some ivory tower reserved for those that choose this supposedly noble profession.
The biggest problem facing the journalism world is its ongoing ignorance of opinion. Facts are often meaningless without interpretation. To act like bias and subjectivity in that interpretation don’t exist is not only naïve, it’s short-sighted. For all that people talk about wanting “just the facts”, that isn’t true, they want them interpreted and presented in some particular way — witness the popularity of Fox News, or the interest in things like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It’s this embrace of subjectivity that tends to separate old and new media, and is holding back journalism.
So here’s a few more thoughts on what is, and what should be:
- Objectivity is a load of bull. Transparency and honesty are not.. The media shouldn’t strive for objectivity, but rather honesty and transparency in its subjectivity. Don’t shy away from opinions or act like they’re a problem; be upfront with them. Disclose conflicts of interest and motives, should they exist, but don’t stifle good thought because it strays from “the facts”. Explain what things mean and their impact, and don’t worry about going beyond the simple relaying of facts. Of course, old media already does this to some extent — after all, even deciding which facts to include in a story and the context in which they’re presented is a subjective decision.
- Don’t act like opinions don’t exist. People need opinions. Opinions are what give meaning to facts. Somewhere along the way, the idea that presenting somebody with an opinion in the media precludes them from making their own judgments popped up, which is typical of the media’s underestimation of their audience’s intelligence. Letting people make up their own minds isn’t dependent on them receiving news independent of opinion.
- Redefine the concept of authority. Journalists thrive on creating the perception of a scarcity of authority. They become arbiters of authority by choosing who to talk to and who to quote, and thus ensure themselves an ongoing role — after all, without reporters’ knowledge of sources, who would we know who’s worth listening to? Here’s where blogs, the Internet and user-created content scare the journalism world: people can access authoritative content without them. With blogs, people can take their message directly to other people, they’re not depending on getting mentioned in the media.
The net is something of a meritocracy, rather than a place that awards authority based on the prominence of somebody’s platform. Check out The Stalwart two untrained writers, but two highly intelligent guys with great thoughts on business and economics. Om Malik’s best work (in my opinion, anyway) is on his blog, not in his regular pieces for Business 2.0 magazine. The aforementioned blog of Mark Cuban is interesting not because of its prominence, but because of the unmediated insights and stories it delivers. As I’ve followed the mobile phone industry, first through TheFeature and now at MobHappy, what people have grown to value from me isn’t my writing of “facts”, it’s my opinion — explaining what they should pay attention to, why something’s important, or why something’s just hype and hot air.
That’s the threat to traditional journalism — people that create alternative sources for their own authority to flourish. The emphasis is on people that know what they’re talking about, rather than on people with particular learned skills or training. Formal training isn’t much more than a barrier to entry, similar to licensing requirements for particular fields of work, again with the intent of creating a scarcity of practitioners and keeping up this appearance of a scarcity of authority.
For journalism to thrive, or ultimately survive, it has to recognize this, and empower authority and opinion. It needs to evoke a reaction from people, to make them care one way or another. “Just the facts” is an outdated MO, and an inaccurate and hypocritical one to boot. And it’s one that will undo the business.
46 Responses to “Journalism Is Broken”
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How could a blatantly subjective journalist hope to cover all sides of a story?
Objectivity is the key, and it’s the crumbling of objectivity that’s killing journalism. The New York TImes is still as relevant today as it was 50 years ago, and it’s not because they’re less objective now–actually it’s less so.
When I see data that show the majority of humans reading blogs for news, I’ll start to consider your arguments. But right now, it really only reflects the concerns of a subset of a minority of humanity. Traditional journalism still has plenty of legs with most of the global population.
ok,
but it’s not all. People need an agora where to be not just listened, but in a vague feeling of being a citizen in a society.
This mean that any kind of mass information have a social role. it depends of any of us to make it enough honest and representative. but it’s not just difficult, it needs to be organized and powerful. And who can have enough strenh and power to take his chances to succed in your mind ?
Journalism has been compromised for a long time hun. Ever hear of Operation Mockingbird?
It’s not some fictional conspiracy theory eithor, it’s the real thing, happening right now. Digby has an excellent post on this issue.
Digby:
How could a blatantly subjective journalist hope to cover all sides of a story?
How could an objective one (assuming that objectivity actually exists)? They can’t, nor should they.
“The biggest problem facing the journalism world is its ongoing ignorance of opinion.”
I don’t know if it’s ignorance of opinion as much as it is pretending to be objective. We get plenty of interpretation from dinosaur media (e.g., Dan “Fake But True” Rather). What prolly rubs people the wrong way, myself included, is Big Media’s pretending to not be biased. Admit it! Wallow in it! Otherwise, it’s just a sham. It’s phony, and we’re (literally) not buying it.
It’s a shame that this always comes down to “real journalists” vs. “bloggers” because there is a bigger issue to be talked about.
There are enough excellent journalists to create amazing newspapers, and they’re not all blogging away. Also, I think you may have misinterpreted Mr. Cuban a bit. But anyway…
I agree with the first RP here. Objectivity - being fair - truly is the key, and the foundation of journalism. You can already see how easily people are manipulated with opinionated journalism, if you have the money and the access to media, “witness the popularity of Fox News, or the interest in things like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.” People have preconceived ideas of things, and by turning to the bloggers and media that feed them the same opinions, there can never be debate or discussion that would take the country/world/mankind forward.
Surely history is written by the winners, and surely pure objectivity can be just a mirage, but the ivory tower leading up to the popular blogs seems to be just as high as with the newspapers you’re accusing of being arrogant.
If not higher.
Subjectivity would be okay if we could trust people to get their news from more than one source. Unfortunately, most people don’t, so if we retreat to subjectivity then most people will never have their opinions questioned. I think you’re creating a false dichotomy here between subjectivity and objectivity - there’s a middle ground where, sure, you don’t have some godlike perspectiveless view (which is impossible), but at least you try and cover the story from at least two points of view and do your best to subtract out bias. That’s what journalists should aim for and what a lot of them still achieve. And bloggers usually don’t.
“what people have grown to value from me isn’t my writing of “facts”, it’s my opinion — explaining what they should pay attention to, why something’s important, or why something’s just hype and hot air.”
So…um…where will you get these “facts” from to form your valuble opinion?
Just supposing there was no repository of objective truth, however hard that is to attain; the result would be a desert full of screamers.
You know, Something does actually happen each day.
As other responders have mentioned, journalism today IS subjective. That’s why we can’t get an honest debate about the Palestinian issue, to use the most obvious example.
At the top of each major media organization there is a guy who has an agenda and that trickles down to the lowliest of reporters and writers through the editors whose jobs are on the line if they don’t toe the line.
There’s only a mirage of objectivity. Major corporations control what we see and hear. The truth lies somewhere outside a boundary made of dollar signs and greed.
Violent, destructive revolution is the only cure for this disease.
You don’t appear to have noticed that The Colbert Report is a show that parodies how stupid slanted news can be. Your examples involve Fox News, renowned for the ignorance of its audience, and two comedy shows.
This rates a 1 on the worthometer.
The Colbert Report is a comedy show? No shit?
Ho ho, your reply is as spot-on as your article isn’t.
Now that you’ve noticed and endorsed the trend to infotainment that began decades ago, perhaps you could enlighten us as to how much better it’s made the world.
Part of the problem is that somehow, the concept of objectivity morphed into “present two people who disagree and don’t side with either one”. So (as the anecdote goes) if a member of group A stands up and says “The moon is made of green cheese”, and a member of group B says “You are incorrect, we have been there, it’s made out of rock”, the journalist’s report is “Composition of the Moon: Opinions Differ.”
(And if things start going against group A, they insist that people should “teach the controversy”.)
The proper thing for the journalist to do is to research the subject a bit themselves, and when one group is clearly being idiots, say so! Objectivity does not mean you can’t say that someone made a mistake.
He’s not arguing that objectivity should be abandoned, he’s arguing that it (in it’s ideal, ‘pure’ form) can only exist in a fantasy world. In face of that, journalists should stop pretending they’re giving us ‘just the facts’, first because it isn’t true and second because people want opinions, despite what they may say. But not only that: it would be better for everyone if opinions were shown as such, so people could take them into account when evaluating a news piece. It would be easier to ask yourself ‘why is this being presented this way? how did that person reached this interpretation of the facts?’. If I understood right, I totally agree with this post.
A few thoughts …
1. Gaining younger viewers is more than about a “payoff” as Cuban suggests. If that’s all it is, then what you have is entertainment. This isn’t to say that news has to be stuffy and boring, but if all that’s needed to get younger viewers is some sort of “Snap!” moment at the end, then this society is screwed. (It may be already, but that’s for a different discussion.)
2. I think many people are aware that true news isn’t “objective” – everyone has his or her own biases that seep through in one way or another. And while I understand how having those biases transparent upfront can be a good thing (just look at the explosive popularity of blogs to see how it can work, and work well) the problem is that, far too often, most people confuse fact with opinion.
For example, Rush Limbaugh has millions of listeners who take his every word as gospel. The problem is that he rarely gets the facts right. What we get are millions of misinformed people who have no clue of what is really going on. It’s a fine line, to be sure, and I’m not sure I trust corporate owned media to walk it. Which brings me to …
3. The biggest problem I’ve seen (as someone who studied Journalism, has worked at a small paper, and run my own blog) is that the traditional media worries about two things: viewers/readers/listeners and money. Because of this, the pressure from the top filters down to the bottom and what we get is almost always incomplete, often shoddy, and occasionally high-and-mighty reporting. Or, we get stories that are, in reality, PR from some company that comes across undisclosed as news (see the report from the Center for Media and Democracy here). (Hope the hyperlink works — not sure if your site accepts HTML.)
There really are no easy solutions to all this, but I honestly think blogs are at least heading in the right direction (for the most part). And if traditional media can adjust (the WaPo has gotten as close as any – still not perfect, but close) then all will be well. And if not?
Well, all those pretty talking heads will have to get real jobs.
This is the dumbest thing I have read on the internet in a long time, and I have seen a lot of dumb things written on the internet. Well done.
Is presenting the evolution/creationism controversy as a two sided debate “fair”? Same goes for global climate change, is it fair to present it as a two sided scientific debate when it never has been?
Objectivity is a load of bull. Transparency and honesty are not..
Is it a failure of objectivity when the media refuses to disclose conflicts of intest and stifles disent? What if disclosing such things and explaining the true impact of policies runs up against political power that doesn’t want the public to know? Now that the Bush admin is aggressively going after reporters who disclosed the NSA’s activities how many jailed reporters will it take before such stories disappear?
Don’t act like opinions don’t exist. People need opinions.
What planet are you on, really? Opinions are all we get these days. And only neocon opinions are allowed at that. Have you ever listened to news or information from around the world lately? If you have, you can hardly have failed to notice how heavily censored US media truly is. Opinions are ok, but facts are intellectual bread and without them we starve.
Redefine the concept of authority.
Nawwww….. true authority flows from truth, new concepts are not needed. What we need are those willing to skeap truth to political power. For too long the media have function as gatekeepers filtering information into a form the great unwashed can understand. “Just the facts” has never been a MO. Media has ever been a tool of the powerfull to manipulate and control, nothing more.
In my experience it’s mainly Americans who’re in love with the myth of objectivity. For ages, Americans have acted superior about the New York times, oblivious that their beloved Old Grey Lady rarely sticks its neck out as much as e.g. The Guardian or The Independent in the UK.
Well, okay, what is the role of the traditional or established media? To inform, right? But of course they’re going to be biased. Bias is innate to the human condition: we categorise. The problem with this kind of journalism is that it’s overly structured, overly institutionalised, based on a rigid conception of ‘truth’ - which is, after all, merely the dominant construction, and thus at its heart subjective and human. And this severely limits the scope of what can be covered, as does time/area constraints.
We cannot escape bias. All we can hope to do is bear witness to as many angles and interpretations as possible. And this is where blogging comes in, surely: it’s accessible, and there’s so much of it. Furthermore, because it isn’t as generally recognised or authenticated, we feel under less pressure to accept this kind of wisdom as ‘fact’, which leaves us more room for our own ideas and opinions.
I’m new to this whole blog thing and I’ll tell you why:
Mainstream media has nothing to offer me but a few facts and some pictures. It has no depth, no passion, and does not have the ablility to teach you anything. Check out any major website like CNN’s; do you really have to read anything past the headline to get the point of the story? It’s like reading an encyclopedia.Yes, you get the facts but what of it?
So here I am in this new world of opinion and I am learning all kinds of things .. I’m even getting involved and it is refreshing to see that pople still think and care about things in may diffrent ways.
And to those posters here that are defending the status quo of today’s journalisim I think that you are proving the authors point … just by being here. Something is missing from journalism.
Noen:
Wow. Has your foil hat come loose? Your thoroughly nutty post was entertaining as it was enlightening.
Too bad you couldn’t explain how Karl Rove’s time machine went back 10000 years to kill off the mammoth. (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-05-10T184512Z_01_L10609712_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-EXTINCTION.xml&src=rss&rpc=22).
Now back to the Old Neocon Gray Lady, the NYT, that mouthpiece of neoconservatism.
From Bill Moyers:
“A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.”
“Objectivity is not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference.”
I’ve been working at YourHub.com, a Denver “community journalism” site created by the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, since it started in May 2005. I think in the past year we’ve discovered that “citizen journalism” is not going to replace traditional journalism. This will probably surprise no one. There were big dreams for “citizen journalism” when it was a mid-range buzzword, but I think we’re figuring out that not many folks out there are going to want to attend city council meetings and write stories about them, which makes me wonder how many people are reading stories written by professionals about city council meetings. Now, I’m thinking that we’re providing something like a small-town newspaper to suburban and exurban communities that existed, barely, on the fringe of regular news coverage, and only saw their town’s name in the paper every few months or so. Now, they have something like the newspaper published in my hometown, where you actually could send in a photo of your kid when he graduated from college, and it was newsy enough to be printed on page 15.
I wrote a take on some of the criticism we’ve received on my blog: http://denver.yourhub.com/Blog.aspx?contentid=90520
I’ve said the same thing about Science for years now.
if only they’d let go of silly things like “objectivity” and “facts” we’d all be better off.
Imagine how society — and the marketplace — would benefit!
It sounds as if what you are saying is that since people, especially younger people, are growing more and more slack and feel entitled to get what they want in the form they want it, that journalism should pander to their selfish needs by lowering its standards to blatant opinionism.
This is what FOX news does; a sound bite followed by a guffaw or a shrug or a sarcastic nod. I agree people are drawn to this, but they shouldn’t be. It’s laziness. And it is solely by virtue of this laziness that journalism is threatened because journalist stop seeking the truth in what they are reporting and go after only what they believe the viewer, the listener, the reader want to see, hear or read. journalism dies when truth gives way to sensationalism.
You may be right that the news will only survive if it changes its approach, but I don’t see that as a good thing at all.
I agree. There is a problem with the concept of ‘balance’ because it normalizes both viewpoints. Let’s assume that on a given issue Position 1 is correct and Position 2 is completely false. If this issue was covered by the media, they would have to present it in a way that both positions appear tenable, heavily skewing the validity of both positions (position 1 seeming more vague, and position 2 more valid). ‘Objective’ coverage heavily *biases* BOTH sides of any debate. It’s no surprise that this kind of coverage would lead to a generally apathetic population.
For example, if the issue of Slavery was being debated in the current media, instead of portraying it as a horror story, you’d have one lukewarm pro-slavery person debating another lukewarm anti-slavery person in 5 minute spurts between commercial breaks, leaving the audience with the vague sensation that Slavery is a morally ambiguous thing that people can go either way on.
What to do instead? What scientific journals have been doing for years: Don’t present views ‘objectively’, rather subject all views to the same rigorous *standards* of logic and evidence.
I couldn’t agree more and it’s interesting to me that so many commenters are parsing words and cheering for objectivity (or re-defining subjectivity). I like what Bah said — it’s about the passion, and bloggers have done a far better job of communicating passion through subjectivity. Sure, sometimes the Kool-aid drinking can get to be a bit much (read any Mac blogs lately?) but it’s in hearing the stories behind the opinions that we learn so much more than “just the facts, ma’am.”
I love that blogging (and I’m only talking about the *best* of blogging, here, the kind that rises above the rest) is journalism personal stories. I’ve noticed that my local newspaper has started doing that more and more often — they’re finally getting the picture that people *want* to hear the journalist’s voice. Bravo.
It is interesting to note that this blog entry has attracted 34 responses versus only 4 for your last 10 entries. Conclusion… your reputation and wisdom is respected in your field of expertise. Take this as a vote of confidence in striking new ground and setting different standards in the world of jounalism. Submit a paper for academia to dedate.
Well done for generating such a passionate response from those who care about this issue… altho’ we all should.
Alan
Duane,
And why do you think young people are turning increasingly to new media? If our values have changed, it’s only in response to a changing environment! The tv stations in particular are full of insincerity and marketing… I guess part of the appeal of blogs is that they contrive the impression of genuine human interaction.
Society’s relationship to the concept of ‘truth’ is obviously a fluctuating thing. Maybe we’re moving towards giving it a secondary position. In itself, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Over the years, ‘truth’ has done a lot of damage. It’s always been subject to manipulation anyway, right?
I don’t think blogs or citizen journalism will replace traditional journalism; for one thing, what would you fill your blog with?
In my view it is the same discussion that went on about the radio when tv appeared, and then again about newspapers and books when the internet appeared. They are all different media, and radio is still here inspite of television, and newespapers will still be around inspite of the internet. And so traditional journalism won’t disappear because of a new phenomenon such as weblogs.
When you have watched your favorite team win their game in the evening, do you not skip the pages to read what the newspaper says about it next morning? Why? Not because of the facts, since you have seen it with your own eyes. It is because you want to read their ‘reflections’ on the game, or their opinion if you will.
Ofcourse traditional journalism is not subjective, and the journalists know it. The audience knows it as well by now. Apart from fact finding, traditional journalism and bloggers enrich us because of their reflections on a story.
It is interesting to note that this blog entry has attracted 34 responses versus only 4 for your last 10 entries. Conclusion… your reputation and wisdom is respected in your field of expertise. Take this as a vote of confidence in striking new ground and setting different standards in the world of jounalism. Submit a paper for academia to dedate.
Alternate conclusion: it made boingboing and many commenters thought it was dumb enough to add a comment.
The title’s a cliche and it goes downhill from there, confusing the selling of journalism with the journalism itself, and I suspect not even considering the work-a-day journalism as most people use it: opinion doesn’t make a lot of difference or sense if someone wants to find out about the bank-robbery that happened in the mall, or whether or not the hotel tax passed, what the weather’s likely to be and so on.
The five Ws and an H still have an enormous constituency, whether in print, on-line, or on TV. They also make money. If this audience is being eroded due to other options, that’s the way it goes, and it’s not a death-knell or even a surprise, but it shouldn’t be taken as a given that the basic enterprise of journalism - attempting to deliver unvarnished facts - is unwanted or unwise, especially when you consider that opinion-based journalism - that fabulous Fox News everyone should seek to emulate - helped gull the US into an idiotic war.
I await an article entitled Boys are Broken in which tampering with the brains of males is advocated because girls are doing better on tests.
Yay, it was dumb enough for you to leave 3 comments. And comment on your own site. That’s the lovely thing about the internets, no shortage of people willing to remind you that you’re an idiot.
Yay, it was dumb enough for you to leave 3 comments. And comment on your own site. That’s the lovely thing about the internets, no shortage of people willing to remind you that you’re an idiot.
Here’s number 4!
Alas, I can’t say I’m not a gawker at the scene of an accident.
So clever too!
Global Journalism Manifesto (Beta):
http://www.gonzopj.net/global
http://www.gonzopj.net/global/global.pdf
http://www.gonzopj.net/global/manifesto1.png
Gonzo PhotoJournalism Collective:
http://www.globaljournalism.org
Gonzo PhotoJournalism Manifesto v0.89 (circa January 2005):
http://www.gonzopj.net/v089.html