Why the News Is Not the Truth
The U.S. press, like the U.S. government, is a corrupt and troubled institution. Corrupt not so much in the sense that it accepts bribes but in a systemic sense. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works, Paul H. Weaver (The Free Press, 1994).
Who Stole the News?: Why We Can’t Keep Up with What Happens in the World, Mort Rosenblum (John Wiley & Sons, 1993).
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America, Cynthia Crossen (Simon & Schuster, 1994).
The U.S. press, like the U.S. government, is a corrupt and troubled institution. Corrupt not so much in the sense that it accepts bribes but in a systemic sense. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do.
The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively. That is the thesis advanced by Paul H. Weaver, a former political scientist (at Harvard University), journalist (at Fortune magazine), and corporate communications executive (at Ford Motor Company), in his provocative analysis entitled News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works.
Journalists and politicians have become ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that misleads the public.
Take, for example, the long effort in the 1980s to eliminate the federal deficit, centered on the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Amendment. For several years, newspapers, magazines, and television newscasts ran hundreds of stories on the debates over Gramm-Rudman, the views of all sorts of experts on the urgent need for deficit reduction, and the eventual enactment of the legislation. Politicians postured—and were described—as working diligently to get a grip on the deficit. Anyone who read a newspaper or watched television news received the message that Congress and the Reagan administration were heroically and painfully struggling to contain government spending and reduce the deficit.
Behind the smoke screen, however, congressional committees and federal officials were increasing spending and adding new programs in the routine annual budgeting and appropriations processes. When journalists reported on a new program, they usually characterized it as good news—the government tackling another problem—rather than as an addition to the budget and the deficit. Journalists conspired with politicians to create an image of a government fighting to end the deficit crisis, but they ignored the routine procedures that increased the deficit. As a result, Weaver writes, “there were no news stories about government adding to the deficit even though that was what was happening.”
The news media and the government have created a charade that serves their own interests but misleads the public. Officials oblige the media’s need for drama by fabricating crises and stage-managing their responses, thereby enhancing their own prestige and power. Journalists dutifully report those fabrications. Both parties know the articles are self-aggrandizing manipulations and fail to inform the public about the more complex but boring issues of government policy and activity.
What has emerged, Weaver argues, is a culture of lying. “The culture of lying,” he writes, “is the discourse and behavior of officials seeking to enlist the powers of journalism in support of their goals, and of journalists seeking to co-opt public and private officials into their efforts to find and cover stories of crisis and emergency response. It is the medium through which we Americans conduct most of our public business (and a lot of our private business) these days.” The result, he says, is a distortion of the constitutional role of government into an institution that must continually resolve or appear to resolve crises; it functions in “a new and powerful permanent emergency mode of operation.”
The architect of the transformation was not a political leader or a constitutional convention but Joseph Pulitzer, who in 1883 bought the sleepy New York World and in 20 years made it the country’s largest newspaper. Pulitzer accomplished that by bringing drama to news—by turning news articles into stories with a plot, actors in conflict, and colorful details. In the late nineteenth century, most newspaper accounts of government actions were couched in institutional formats, much like the minutes of a board meeting and about as interesting.
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The article itself is 11 pages.
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I know this article is from 1995. I know this article is long. TLDR in todays shorthand. ( I simply detest acronyms.) Not exactly the shorthand I learned in 1973.
I do believe it to be of some worth today, just as the writings of Hobbes have some worth today. Age is not necessarily a deterrent to wisdom, or truth.
I have lived through much of what is discussed in this article, as have not some few of us on this site. And seemingly, we continue living through it every day. As to the news? Every day is Ground Hog Day. The particular words differ, but the effect is the same.
The government is working, or not, on the latest crises. Real Muricans are getting what they deserve, or not. Non-whites are screaming, “Whites Off Earth Now!” (A 1986 album by the Canadien band Cowboy Junkies. I have owned that CD for quite a number of years now.) Or Non-whites are being so downtrodden they may never get back up. Golly gee whiz, what do we do now? Well Beave, we're gonna have to let dad decide, after all Father Knows Best.
Ain't it all grand. You don't need to think anymore. Thinking is hard work. So the talking heads have done all the thinking for you. You can relax and know that you are a true believer and are on the right side of, …. something.
In the end? Who knows, maybe Mother is gonna kick Father's ass when it all goes wrong.
The fact that it is a 1995 article does not make it less veracious, and in fact, in this case, over the years since to the present time its message had become more and more characteristic.
I don't intend to link to an 11 page article to understand from what is posted what this article is all about. I prefer the "Executive Summary" in situations like this. I'll apply a journalistic method and consider that the beginning of the article did itself summarize the premise, and what follows is development of the premise down the pages in a lesser and lesser degree of importance, but what it all boils down to is you can't believe the news. But I admit that maybe I am wrong and the 11 pages consist of further and further proof of the premise. In any event, I'll comment based on what I take from what is actually posted.
For a year and a half, 1956-1958 I was the Editor-in-Chief of my university weekly newspaper. Those were the days of SPUTNIK. Both years we won the award given for Canada's best university weekly newspaper. Our model for both format and content was The Christian Science Monitor, which, contrary to what one might think was not and still is not a religious web site. However, back then it won the Award for being the LEAST biased newspaper in America, although I think it may be a bit left-leaning now, but still has been accredited by various sources as being "centre" in its content. It is now available to me and anyone else to read by searching "GROUND / The Christian Science Monitor". The non-bias award that I referred to is no longer awarded, I guess for obvious reasons.
Where I live now, I know that much of the news that is reported reflects political bias, but there is still knowledge to be gained - it isn't all fiction. You can't make up a story to say there was an earthquake or a volcanic eruption or a tsunami that never happened. But politicization has become the norm now. What is posted and what is omitted tell tales that require us to use our judgment and our logic and our common sense and our experience to interpret. So good luck in picking out the trees from the the forest - perhaps it depends on our individual capability to sort through the morass.
Could this have become the beginning of more obvious "misinformation", although followed more recently by "disinformation" which is much more regrettable.
By the way, I'm amused by the "Three Monkeys" image you posted. On my desk sits the exact opposite....Seek evil, Hear evil, Speak evil (that's a megaphone). The base contains a magnifying glass.
I like yours better. It's surprising how many people misinterpret the meaning of "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" as in if you don't see it or hear it you won't speak or be evil. But as I'm sure you know it really refers to those who deal with evil/bad things by refusing to acknowledge them. Yours is cool, did you have it when you were Editor?
No. I used to go on Sunday mornings 25 to 30 years ago to the office of an elderly cousin of my ex-wife for coffee and conversation. He was a most amazing man who in his lifetime owned hotels in the Bahamas, was friends with many Hollywood moguls as he also had a business that provided popcorn machines to movie theatres, had life experiences and wisdom only a few could boast. I saw the item on his desk and admired it, and he gifted it to me. When he retired, I used to pick him up on Sunday mornings and take him out for breakfast. He was one-of-a-kind and I'll never forget him. The Hollywood people used to call him "Frenchie" for no reason I could think of.