It Was Never Fair and Balanced -- Now It's Not Even News

We are all painfully familiar with the many casualties of the deep economic decline that has ravaged the value of our homes, businesses, and investment accounts.

Another less obvious victim of the economic crisis has been the truth. Hatespeech and lies have been on the rise in politics and the media while fact checking has almost disappeared. The actions of those with a political agenda are reprehensible but at least easy to understand.

But I have always assumed that the real journalists would step in at some point and refuse to cover the rantings of crazy people, fanatics and liars as though they were actually news. For decades these types have stood on street corners handing out pamphlets and screaming about the coming end of the American way of life but none of them ever showed up on the national news or was written up in real newspapers.

But that has all changed in a big time hurry. Forget about "Fair and Balanced" or "News You Can Believe In." What we now see on cable TV is nothing resembling news. The entertainers who pose as newsmen now routinely spew lies, distortions, and biased opinions or provide a platforms of legitimacy to the sociopaths who do.

It's all right to have personal opinions expressed on television or the radio. Just label them appropriately.

There is a guy who sits near me at the University of Arizona games who starts screaming at the referees at the opening jump ball and never stops for a minute throughout the game. He and the other fans don't want the game called fairly -- they just want their team to win. You certainly wouldn't ask the president of the Booster Club to be the referee. He would have no interest in being fair and balanced and could never be objective.

But that's what we now have on cable news. People who are on the payrolls of or involved with partisan groups or political parties are introduced as "analysts" with no disclosure of their obvious conflicts of interest.

For years Fox News has been the unofficial network of the Right wing and Republican party while hilariously calling its coverage "fair and balanced." If Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity were actually fair and balanced then none of the Fox viewers would watch them -- and they know it.

But during the last year, Glenn Beck has taken hatred, bias, and unabashed lying and demonization to a level that Hannity and O'Reilly could only dream about.

Last month, Beck went on the air and called President Obama "a racist -- who hates white people" without giving any support or documentation for his claim. He also did not explain if Obama's hatred of white people extended to his own mother and white family members of the hundreds of white people he has chosen to advise and represent our country in his administration.

Just a few days ago, Beck came up with a blatant lie claiming that Mark Lloyd, the newly appointed FCC Diversity Chief will levy exorbitant taxes against Right wing radio stations with the proceeds slated to go to public radio, The fact is that Lloyd has neither the plans nor the authority to do any such thing. Non-Beck watchers should view this link as Beck and his guest talk in very specific terms about a complete falsehood.

When this happened, I was at the Aspen Institute FOCAS conference with 40 media leaders from around the U.S.

When the News Corp (the parent company of Fox) people at the Aspen conference were asked about how Beck could keep his job given his record of blatant fabrications and racist rants they admitted that they were personally embarrassed by his behavior. But they confessed that Fox has made so much money by pandering to the hateful Right wing that nothing is going to change in the foreseeable future. Maybe the fact that many of Beck's sponsors have recently canceled their advertising on his show will make a difference.

The unfair and unbalanced hatemeisters of Fox have been recently joined by Lou Dobbs of CNN ("The Most Trusted Name in News") who for years has railed on a daily basis about how Americans are being victimized by foreign countries and undocumented immigrants who come here in search of a better life. In recent weeks, Dobbs became of hero of the Right wing with his endorsement of the Birther movement.

Apparently Dobbs and a many Republicans believe that Americans should not have had the right to vote for the man they wanted to be their next president because he was born in Kenya. The Birther movement is a thinly veiled racist effort to undo the will of the American people that has been promoted by a depressingly large group of people who simply can't deal with the notion that we have elected a Black president by an overwhelming margin.

The management of CNN, like the leaders of Fox, have not been able to turn their backs on the revenues that have accompanied the journalistic malpractice that in the past would have caused Dobbs to be fired. Today, the truth is apparently just a matter of opinion and it's just fine for a newsman to call the President of the United States a traitor, socialist, Nazi, Kenyan, and such with no evidence or supporting facts.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC provides a more troubling case study. Matthews has repeatedly questioned the sincerity and "grass roots" credentials of protesters at the health care town meetings and the sanity of the Birthers accurately claiming that they are either paid or political stooges or well meaning real people who have fallen under the influence of the political operatives who are trying to bring Obama down.

He has referred to the Birthers and the anti-health care reform mercenaries and liars as "whack-jobs, crazies, and nut cases." But then he invites these very people to be guests on his show to state their cases.

He does not seem to understand that once you provide liars, haters and people who bring loaded guns to presidential meetings with a platform, you have already lost the battle. If a person is crazy or hateful, they should get no platform at all. Once you start presenting "both sides" of an issue where one side feels free to rant and lie you have already lost.

There was a time when we could have expected our most respected journalists and news reporters to be an effective filter and only present us with issues and stories that had real merit. But the economic crisis facing all types of journalism have put us in a different place.

During the three days I spent with a broad range of print, internet, and media managers and contributors in Aspen, most of the conversation focused on financial survival and ways to monetize the variety of information services being provided and how to keep from going broke in a very challenging environment. Many were mourning the imminent loss of print journalism. Few were grieving over the ongoing loss of journalism itself.

I came away from this experience with a better understanding of what is going on and why. It didn't make me happier. Even in a tough environment, there is no way to excuse the blatant lying, distortion, and almost complete absence of fact-checking that is now business as usual at media organizations that claim to be reporting news.

It's just plain wrong to call it "Fair and Balanced" or "News You Can Believe In" and it has been for quite a while.

Now there's no way to justify calling it "news" at all.

Comments

[Flavor]

We are truely at a time where gossip sells at the expense of the innocent and what I mean by that is whether fact or not it will still get reported and even if true a lie is likely in the reporting of some sort. Power is what these men have in mind and they don't like being stripped of it so what they feel they have to do is distort the truth after calling themselves christians. I believe that it will be a long time before the republican party will be the majority again.

[kyleet12]

Fox may be making tons of cash through tabloid journalism, but just like conservative A.M. stations, they have backed themselves into a corner. Rupert Murdoch is laughing all the way to the bank. A foreigner has systematically been able to manipulate a country by having laws changed where he could flood all markets through multimedia, (tv, newspapers, publishing houses) through the buying of American politicians. This is the real capitolism in America. Blame Bill Clinton for the telecomm act of 1997. He unbelievably said with a straight face that he could not have envisioned what eventually happened when some rich person is allowed to own all the media in any given market. Everything cant be about money. It is going to destroy us.

[MikeEdelman]

Larry Gellman's argument, while totally accurate, is hardly original. Remember the 1900s - when some of New York City's newspapers, struggling for readership, waged a similarly fought battle? Bold headlines, sensationalism, fear-mongering, etc. It's the same tried and true, yellow journalism plain and simple, the only difference is the speed and coverage area by/to which its disseminated. Just goes to show you, from the New York World to Fox News - there's always a tabloid to point out.

I hate to break it to you Larry, but if history repeats itself once again, cable news' version of the Pulitzer prize is likely to be named after Glen Beck, Rush, or Bill O.

[Larry Gellman]

God help us all if you're right. Given the sorry state of the media as an industry, they are clearly going after whatever will bring in readers, viewers, listeners, and dollars.

[FWDpost]

"Thank you, Mr. Churchill for your opinions on the one-thosand plane bombing of London," the network broadcaster, talking head, said.
"And now for the opposing view, we have the commanding officer of the Luftwaffe, Mr. Hermann Goering. Mr. Goering is also the designated successor to Adolf Hitler.
"Mr. Goering, Mr. Churchil has alleged that a number of civilians have died in the recent Nazi bombing of London. What's your take on this?"
"Churchill is a liar and drunkard. The Third Reich does not condone injuring civilians. We are compassionate national socialists, and we value human life in every country," Goering explained.
"If you could hold on, we have to break for a word from one of our valued sponsors, and then we'll be right back to continue this complicated and controversial discussion."

[Senzasord]

The key is in the licenses issued to radio and television stations that require programming in the public interest as part of the obbligation for using the public airwaves. These licenses should come up for periodic renewal, and at that point the station's records need be made available for public inspection. By closely studying the broadcast logs, we can find out if the station is really acting in the public interest or is just faking it. Their license renewal can be denied and the station closed down. Now cable and satellite transmissions pose a different problem but not one that is insurmountable. The broadcast of pornography is severely restricted. Hate speech is every bit as reprehensible as porn, so it can be curtailed too.

[larry278]

HP's headling tells you that this blog is about FAUX NOISE. Why bother reading it? FAUX NOISE is an urban legend. WTF watches FAUX NOISE or listens to AM talk radio besides ditto heads?

[lgillooly]

So what do we do about? The airwaves are owned by us. We deserve the truth. Even Thomas Jefferson said if he had a choice between Govt or the 4th Estate he would choose the media. That was when they had some integrity and truth and facts were not just optional.
The 4th estate is an important piece to maintain a Democracy. When will we do something substantial to get back on the right track? I am sick of the almighty dollar and Capitalism being a good enough excuse.

[CantStopUsNow]

The problem is you have one side (FOX mainly) that wants to convince the American people that the MSM is actually liberal when most of the MSM is run by filthy rich Conservatives. When discussing Barack Obama on the MSM, we hear words like Socialist, a Communist, a Fascist, Hitler, a secret Muslim, A Kenyan, a Manchurian Candidate, The AntiChrist, The Devil. Would a left wing Media really allow the President to be portrayed as any of these? Barack Obama's approval ratings are going down, he's losing his fight for Health Reform, Dick Cheney is calling HIM a traitor. Left Wing Media Conspiracy?? And then you have the other side. The actual progressive media (MSNBC) that are so terrified of the word, so scared of being labeled "left wing" that they try to do Fox News style fair and balanced, which is basically inviting a regular guest on who is left leaning, educated, armed with facts and numbers, respected among their peers and a student of recent History, and they sit next to them a hate mongering (Liz Cheney), racist (Pat Buchanan), ignorant (Michelle Bachmann), uneducated (gun toting red neck at Town Hall) , right wing (Benjamin Ginsburg) , coloring book author (Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson) to repeat whatever GOP talking points they received that morning.

[Larry Gellman]

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that it seems as though things are moving in the wrong direction. For some time now we have had O'Reilly on one extreme and Olbermann on the other. Now the Right Wing has raised the ante by bringing in Beck and the "new, improved, more hateful" Limbaugh. They are taking the hatespeech and lies to a whole new level and the rest of the industry is sort of stumbling around for a way to respond. They can either become more extreme thenselves (which they are sort of leaning towards) or they can simply do their jobs and ignore the crazies which they seem to have a hard time doing for fear of leaving too much money (viewers) on the table.

[Estreet1964]

Is there any way we can get a class action suit going to slam these networks that have "news" in their names and yet deliver nothing of the kind?

This is false advertising in the worst way. They pretend they are reporting news, but 98% of what they do is either infotainment or outright propaganda depending on the network.

[Larry Gellman]

Rather than a class action suit, what we really need is something like what happened in food industry years ago when suddenly they had to start listing the real ingredients and nutritional informaton on the box. For years, they had been calling certain foods "light" or "healthy" when they just weren't. There ought to be some sort of standard for calling a program "news."

[sankyo]

Ditto for MSNBC, like it or not.

[lgillooly]

Since the Impeachment of President Clinton I have realized the power of media. They shut the country down for over 1 yr to discuss in great detail why the president should be impeached because he lied about a personal affair. Then for 8 yrs this same media did nothing to Bush or Cheney for the crimes and lies during their administration.
If the media was doing the job our Founders expected we would never have gone to Iraq (100's of thousands killed) The economy would not have collapsed and Bush/Cheney would have been impeached. Money and controlling the message are the most powerful entities in our Country. We now have a handful of companies owning 90 percent of all media. The most dangerous outlet is talk radio.91 percent of stations are "conservative". They saturate and repeat the propaganda all day every day. If facts are optional and hate is acceptable on our airwaves our Democracy is a myth.
Why are there no rules about lying? To have free speech do we have to accept lies and propaganda? Why is it OK to completely distort the healthcare bill and get away with it? If a Democracy needs an informed population and the majority of news and radio misinform why do we tolerate this? It is time to decide if we want a real Democracy. That might mean people like Rush,Beck Hannity and others will be accountable for what they say.

[FHTB]

If the media was doing the job our Founders expected we would never have gone to Iraq (100's of thousands killed)

They wouldn't do it because if they had called Bush and Cheney out thee would have been no access for the likes of Sam Donaldson, Andrea Mitchell, Katie Couric or Tim Russert, who managed to milk over and over again losers like Cheney, Rummy, Condi and Colin to come on and spew lies unchallenged, yet during the campaign, said Russert eviscerated someone as honorable as Bill Richardson.

[SewaneeLeftist]

I don't find it "hilarious" as Gellman does that the motto of Fox is "fair and balanced" -- and I'm not sure he does either, really. To me, it's terrifyingly Orwellian. And while I agree that a wingnut minority doing what they do is not news, I DO think real journalists should cover the dangerous rabble-rousers, the cynical PR firms, the Rethug hypocrites, and the supremely greedy health "care"/insurance people because their mobocratic manipulation of these poor misguided uninformed people threatens ALL American democratic political discourse. It's NOT journalism to cover it just because it's kinetic, as Rachel said the other day (and perhaps it was she who referred to the media as being like kittens whose eyes follow everything that moves). And to treat it as if it's more than a minority of citizens is dishonest. Therefore, I agree with Gellman that the news needs to provide perspective and magnitude (as well as, well, the truth). It's not balanced to play he-said, she-said when one side is lying and represents a minority living in an alternate universe, and the other is speaking the truth and represent a mainstream moderate majority. In particular, the news needs to investigate Gellman's very germane point that much of this is driven by deepseated racism, sometimes so deep that even those most governed by it don't realize it. Good article, Mr. Gellman.

[SpencerCat]

Thank you Mr. Gellman! This is why I can't watch the "news" any longer. It's not news. It's stupid people yelling stupid things at each other.

The question is, what can be done about it? Are there any real news organizations left?

[Larry Gellman]

I would recommend National Public Radio and Public Television as good alternatives. After Michael Jackson died, I took refuge there just to make sure the rest of the world hadn't ceased to exist.

[Estreet1964]

Thanks to CNN's continuing "Breaking News!!" coverage of Michael Jackson, I also discovered a good news show on BBC America.

Anderson Cooper can cover MJ all he wants, I'll be elsewhere.

[HypocrisyAlarm]

Perhaps the time has arrived for licensing boards of professional standards, such as in law and medicine, for journalism. Then if a licensed journalist abuses the public trust through violating journalistic integrity, the board can revoke the license.

[Larry Gellman]

It's a thought but it probably won't happen. I remember when the dairy industry put a limitation on what could be called "cheese" because so many different versions of things calling themselves that were popping up. I think we should do the same thing with the word "news."

As I said, I don't mind that there is partisan spewing on TV. I just mind that they call it news.

[FHTB]

As I said, I don't mind that there is partisan spewing on TV. I just mind that they call it news.

Right...all those shows should come with disclaimers beforehand that say that this is an opinion program that does not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of the management.

However, on Fox that would not be true...the lies and misinformation are Roger Ailes' reason for putting his awful network on in the first place.

[shel3364]

I was a little miffed at Chris Matthews for entertaining these "birthers", still have to commend him for his public flogging and humiliation of Kevin James.

HE'S AN APPEASER, CHRIS. HE'S APPEASING.

James had NO idea where that term originated from (except his talking point sheets for the day).

THAT was a thing of beauty.

However, we've somehow made a celebrity of Joe the Plumber and the folks that show up to presidential events with sidearms. God, we've tanked, haven't we?

[FHTB]

Chris is appeasing and the media in general are giving credence to people who are not sane...
Watching on C-Span a town meeting from Wisconsin, first of all one was struck by the lack of anything other than very white faces, and then the almost shrill tone of anger that the world they would so like to perpetuate, America circa 1950--or is it 1880? Is gone forever, and will never return, no matter how much they scream, whine, stomp their feet and moan.

[ElBruce]

It's really "news entertainment," in much the same way that pro wrestling now refers to itself as "sports entertainment." Sure, it's rigged, but it wasn't designed to be fair. It was just designed to entertain you by pandering to your prejudices.