The Media's Own Innocent Bystander Fable

As anyone who has read my columns, blog posts or book knows, I have a mild obsession with the Innocent Bystander Fable - the one whereby political actors pretend they have no power or even minor role in the arenas they are elected or hired to participate in. This fable has been most prevalent in the Democratic Party's posture toward the Iraq War and the bailout - they claim, rather idiotically, they have no power to stop the war or fix the bailout. But now, as I am three-quarters of the way through Newsweek's 7-part story on the gossip, innuendo and palace dramas behind the presidential campaign, I see that this Innocent Bystander Fable may be just as powerful inside the media itself.

If you read the piece, you might have noticed that the Newsweek reporting team is constantly referring to "reporters" and "the press" and "the media" - as if Newsweek reporters aren't a part (and a leading part) of those things - as if they are innocent bystanders. More broadly, the way they portray it, candidates and political operatives are larger than life heroes or villains who make Big Decisions and Face Consequences, while the media is a herd of lobotomized automatons that are so mindless and innocent and pure, that they cannot be held culpable for anything at all. Indeed, according to Newsweek, the entire political media is an innocent bystander to politics. And Newsweek creates this portrayal as if somehow the reporters writing their story have nothing to do with "the press" they are writing about.

The best example of what I'm talking about is this excerpt:

On the campaign trail, McCain was asked about Davis's "race card" remarks. McCain looked uneasy and tepidly endorsed his campaign manager's remarks, but said that the campaign needed to return to debating the issues. After a brief kerfuffle, the press let the matter drop. Reporters are as uncomfortable as the politicians they cover about discussing race.

So here you have one of the largest magazines in the country insulting readers by devoting only a single sentence to the widespread racial bias in the media (see Chris Matthews for some choic examples) - as if that's merely a trifling factor in a presidential campaign involving the first African American nominee in history. Worse, it's as if Newsweek correspondents are pretending not to be the "reporters" they are referring to. And the sum of the article ends up being a subtle - and perhaps unconscious - attempt to absolve the media of any responsibility to facts in a democratic society. That is, an attempt to forward the Innocent Bystander Fable.

If it wasn't that, and the piece was honest, then its coverage of the media would have said, "Newsweek reporters and the rest of the media are as uncomfortable as the politicians they cover about discussing race," and then devoted a little space to exploring this topic.

But no, we are expected to believe that the innocent bystanders perfectly report what they see, and that when they stampede off on silly, mindless, substance-free stories, there's no one to blame. While candidate and party decisions all come with responsibility, media idiocy is just a force of nature with no culpability whatsoever.

None of this is new. We all remember New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller justifying her sycophantic worship of George W. Bush by saying she was too afraid to ask the president questions before the Iraq War. Look, she effectively said, I was just an innocent bystander.

Now it's Newsweek depicting "reporters" as passive, disinterested observers with no responsibilities whatsoever - and certainly no faults. Indeed, we see the Innocent Bystander Fable alive and well inside the very media institutions that increasingly humiliate themselves and undermine our system of checks and balances.

Comments

[bayside]

I blame our media for all of this corruption. They let us down..Didn­t do their jobs for whatever reason, bribes, boss, politics etc, but they let bush and company do this to us..We wouldnt be in this mess if they had had courage and gave us the truth..

[killmenow]

This is a good start, David, but we need to further discuss assertions that journalists are unbiased to the point that they claim that they don't vote as a matter of their profession.

It's unethical for journalist to refrain from voting. I believe that voting is a responsibility, and to forsake voting because of your profession is unethical. Your duties as a citizen take precedence over whatever profession, whether journalism or corporations that avoid paying US taxes and headquarter in PO Boxes in the Caribbean.

I also think that we should stop pretending that we can never know any reporter's party affiliation. If you are a professional who does the job well, you can report on anything in an unbiased manner even if you are known as Democrat or Republican.

Standing aside from citizen participation because you are a journalist should become a thing of the past.

It's like claiming that you should never be affiliated with any religion because that might expose a bias in your reportage of issues and events.

No one's going to tell you that you cannot be a reporter because you're a pro-life Catholic, a born-again Christian, a practicing Jew or a Muslim.

So start encouraging journalism to drop this bull about "appearing" unbiased. Just report like it. Examples are Cambell Brown and Andrea Mitchell. Both married to right-wing psychopaths (just kidding... a little), but not barred from journalism. Both do excellent reporting and also express their opinions as well.

[blessinggirl]

It is indeed hilarious for Newsweek to talk like that. I sometimes wonder who are the producers who determine what the cable news people talk about all day. The so-called Clinton drama is written, produced and directed by the news media, and we're supposed to believe that. What's even funnier are all the talking heads on TV saying what our next president must do. What do they know? They are paid outrageous sums of money to bloviate.

[richchaplin]

There's racial bias in the media? Where? Oh, I see, you are one of those people that can see bias in everything, like the people who see Jesus on a potato chip. As a journalist, I have not seen this "widespread" bias. Racial bias is still a factor in this country, as a percentage of votors Nov. 4 said race DID play a factor in their voting. But I think bias is LESS apparent in the media than in the overall population. Show me the PEW or Columbia or U of Minn study that shows "widespread" bias.

Your basic thesis of media objectivity being a myth is, of course, valid, as physics teaches us that the very act of observing something affects it. (Perhaps when she doesn't have a camera pointed at her Ann Coulter is sane.)

But that doesn't mean the media should stop trying to be objective and minimize it's bias.

[breakfast]

What we refer to as the news media are not that at all. Its members may have taken journalism in school, but what they do now is sell advertising. And it is a big business, and like all the other big businesses and big financial interests, they are interested in the status quo, maintaining the established order of things, business as usual.

Members of the club don't get unpleasant with other members of the club if they want to stay in the club. And the "news media" definitely wants to stay in the club.

It's a problem.

[likeicare]

How true. Didn't Sarah the Moose get a journalism degree?

That pretty much says it all.