Journalists of America--Your Country Needs You Now!

The dizzying ramp-up of lies and distortions coming from the McCain-Palin campaign have left many Obama supporters scratching their heads and wondering what ever happened to journalists.

You remember journalists. They were the reporters and analysts who used to make sure that stories were true before they published or went on the air with them. Remember a couple reporters named Woodward and Bernstein who doggedly pursued the truth about Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal? They were journalists. Today, there are virtually no journalists left and none of the few who remain work in radio or television.

Those former broadcast journalists have morphed into one of three types of people. The first are the partisan pundits who cherry-pick among the factoids that support their points of view. This group includes virtually all talk radio personalities and many hosts of TV shows that typically bear their names. These programs are characterized by their lack of balance and the use of partial or incomplete information.

The second are the news readers--almost all of whom are physically attractive--who deal with political issues by inviting a loud, rude surrogate for each campaign to yell and scream at each other at the same time. This is what's called balanced reporting. The role of the moderator is to serve as a referee--not to worry about whether their guests are telling the truth.

The third group are people who used to be real journalists but have now become celebrities. These former reporters who used to be occasional guests on TV news shows are now daily guests on multiple programs. They earn most of their money by charging $25,000 to $50,000 plus expenses for personal appearances and spend much of their time blogging. They just don't have the time to check out facts anymore.

Wolf Blitzer, David Gregory, and Andrea Mitchell are among those who used to be journalists. Now they are celebrities with book tours, agents, and publicists. Don't get me wrong. I don't blame them. They should live and be well. It's just a national tragedy that no one is doing their old jobs now that they've moved on to another line of work.

The brilliance of the Karl Rove-trained handlers of the McCain-Palin campaign was to realize the vacuum that has been created by the disappearance of journalism and to exploit it by using lies and distortions to smear Barack Obama and build a phony resume for Sarah Palin.

The Republicans have used this playbook before. That's why so many Americans (apparently including Sarah Palin) still believe that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were involved in the 9/11 attacks. That's why the absurd Swiftboat ads worked so well against John Kerry. Democrats were scratching their heads wondering how their opponents could tell the same lies over and over and have the strategy work. Rove understood that the absence of real journalists meant you could ignore the posted speed limits and go as fast as you wanted--there were no cops around to catch you.

"In the last two election cycles, the very notion that facts matter seems to be under assault," said Michael Delli Carpini of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. "Candidates seem to have learned that if you don't back down from your charges or claims, they will stick in the minds of voters regardless of their accuracy. The truth will be viewed as a matter of opinion rather than fact."

Shortly after Steve Schmidt took the McCain campaign out of the hands of McCain and his old team, things got pretty outrageous. McCain called Obama a traitor who was willing to lose a war and was a "me first, country second" kind of guy and then said he wasn't questioning Obama's patriotism. He said Obama cancelled a trip to visit U.S. troops in a German hospital due to lack of press coverage which was a lie. He has said and continues to say that "Obama wants to raise your taxes" while every independent study of Obama's plan has determined that 80-90% of Americans would get a tax cut under his proposal.

Through it all, the only people who seemed to get upset about this were the partisan commentators like Frank Rich, Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman, and Bob Herbert who were often branded and dismissed as Left Wing Liberals. The mainstream media simply reported the lies and attributed them to the McCain campaign but almost never pointed out that the information was false.

The McCain-Palin lie machine has been put into overdrive since the Republican Convention. They have stuck to claims made about Governor Palin's past positions on earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere long after they have been proven false. They falsely accused Obama of calling Palin a pig and also lied by saying Obama wanted sex education classes for kindergartners.

The good news is that the level and frequency of lying by McCain has apparently jarred some sleeping journalists out of hibernation. Articles are finally starting to appear pointing out the untruths that are being spread. The five most emailed articles from the New York Times today were all about the lies and deceptions being spread as truth by the McCain campaign. Charles Babington of the Associated Press just wrote a scathing article expressing his outrage over the tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign.

It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, this mini-wave of vigilance by reporters will have on the public's infatuation with Sarah Palin and John McCain's surging popularity in the polls.

Journalists of America--please come home. Please cut back on your personal appearances and celebrity spots for a few months. Please spend less time posing in sideways rain in Galveston and more time on what used to be your job. Your country has never needed you more.

Comments

[kayatarms]

Don't know how I missed such a wonderful and honest portrayal of what is happening to our society. It is shockingly embarassing to see what is happening to journalism. And under the guise of monikers and slogans, that now is what people hold up to a standard. If it says fair and balanced it must be! No fact checking, just BS. What is happening to America is sad. We have become a nation of bumper sticker slogans and ADD retentive. Sheeple. Back in the day, never could commentators get away with inserting their opinions into interviews, it was left up to the public to form their own opinions. Now the News (hah) informs you of the pundits opinion. I say the same about strategists and spend more time arguing at the TV. Who are these people?? What makes them qualified? Half of them don't know JACK, and want to represent a party, and I am disagreeing with their opinion. They don't speak for me? What happened to actually during election time having true town halls with people who are not chosen for ratings? Sad, but we move along with the world spinning at a dizzying pace and catch the soundbites and go to the polls, and it's what did _________say a hour ago?? Right vote for______________ and it's no going back. We are just sadly dumbed down!

[Larry Gellman - Huffpost Blogger]

Have you noticed that the news shows occasionally run a two or three minute segment called "Factcheck?" What does that say about the extent to which they check out the rest of what they broadcast? Although, at the end of the day, it's really not about false information in the reports they give--it's about the lies that go unchallenged that come from their partisan guests.

[lkgellpell]

I agree with the concept that we are sadly dumbed down Just like a well respected comedian cannot accept a "LOL" as a replacement to hearing real live laughter in response to a funny well timed routine ............... an educated, validated journalist cannot accept a "cliff noted quick read" of their hard dedicated work as representation of their extensive research .............both of them will look for easier, better paying gigs

[brief candle]

MSM let's play stump the candidate. Palin's words. When is it going to happen?

[woodnthrifty]

Yes that was a bluff..........and then McCain took over.

[glitz]

Thank you, Larry; You would think that the press after being used to build-up the Iraq war..the realization of all the lies they helped to spread..would have produced more responsibility to truth. Instead, they have all converted to entertainment..pick up little words, soap opera stories, deadbeat people and rerun, rerun, rerun; on the level of National Enquirer. Our incompetent leadership of the last 7 years and possibly the next four are in favor of a doctrine of nation building, spreading their ideology, spending trillions in wars, creating huge deficits, ignoring all of the needs of the people of this country, and removing "exceptional" from the definition of America. Without someone telling the truth this cannot be stopped. Of course, if the press sells it, America will buy it. Truly Sad.....

[Larry Gellman - Huffpost Blogger]

It sounds like we're on the same page. Thanks for your comment.

[BOin08]

Journalism is dead. Olbermann killed it.

[marignymitch]

Thanks for the post.

Altho the MSM has been compelled of late to commit ocassional acts of journalism I'm not optimistic about the long-term integrity of our corporate 'reporters'. They've been serving up lies for their masters so long they don't know what the truth is.

This week in a CNN piece alleged to be on the topic of the lies and distortions of the McBush campaign the reporter repeatedly bashed the Obama campaign instead. When the NY Times repeatedly lied in the run-up to Junior's phony wars I knew we were headed down a road from which we might never return.

Thus I watch little network of cable news and read little served up our newspapers. The lack of balance and professionalism is too painful, so I limit my exposure. Instead I turn to the Internet and the BBC for information I can rely on.

[marignymitch]

PS: And the Daily Show with John Stuart and the Robert Report.

[Larry Gellman - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm not sure that most reporters are lying. They're just not pointing out lies that the subjects of their stories and political hacks repeat over and over--even after they're proven to be lies. The fact that a variety of non-partisan watchdog groups have stated that 80-90 percent of Americans would get a tax cut under Obama's plan has not slowed down the Republicans from repeating constantly that Obama wants to raise your taxes. It's the politicians who are lying--not the reporters. The problem is that the reporters never call them on it when it happens. I guess it's considered bad manners.

[tablesedge]

Agree, don't care about the anchors' lives, never watch networks, cable is becoming more of the same. Talking heads all have obvious agendas.

Primary source, Sunday morning shows with no spin or analysis, debates will be the only way to actually see these candidates for real. Every time McCain has been challenged on his lies face to face he backs down.

CNN has been doing some fact checking, hope they ramp it up!

[celticjag]

Walter Cronkite was the last of the great on-air journalists. I wonder how Jack Cafferty would do replacing Wolf? There is still some hope with people like Naomi Klien, Ron Suskind and Jane Mayer writing informative books, but the MSM seems to ignore them.

[Chavez08]

Real journalists left the country after the Reichstag burned and the new nationalist, fascist fervor kicked in to high gear.

Ole Prescott would be proud of his illiterate offspring.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

Thank you.

[TerenceCooper]

Thank you Larry for touching on a subject that has been bothering me for a number of years now, which is that with a few exceptions, most of the members of the mainstream media do not practice 'journalism' as is traditionally understood. I do agree with most of your points, with one exception. I'm referring to your conclusion about journalists having the right to change or adapt, to the more lucrative versions that are now prevalent. I agree that they have the right to make the change, but the question is can they still be called journalists? An owner of a health food store can decide that selling junk food is more profitable then selling health food, and change his business accordingly. That is all fine and good, but can he still refer to his business as a 'health food store' if the bulk of his sales and profits are being made on junk food? The same principle applies to journalists. It is still expected (or it should be anyway) that journalists will dig deep and provide relevant stories with basis on fact, and will call out inaccuracies and outright lies. If they are doing something else, then they are in effect giving up their titles of journalists and should be called something other then journalists (I have a few choice suggestions, but will resist temptation...)! The truth of the matter is that there are precious few journalists left, and we're all worse off for it.

[Larry Gellman - Huffpost Blogger]

I think we agree on the main issue. As far as how this happened and whose fault it is I think reasonable people can disagree. This is a development that has occurred over time and, as a result, it has sort of slipped under the radar. I'm stretching a little for an analogy but take the Olympic Games. For most their existence, it was purely amateur competition. About 20 years ago, in a handful of minor sports they started allowing professionals to compete. Over the years, they starting allowing it in more and more sports until now it a purely professional competition where countries give huge cash award to the athletes who win medals. It is clear that the nature and character of the Olympics have changed but it's hard to point to a moment in time when that change happened or determine who made it happen. As far as our subject is concerned, I think over time more and more fluff got injected into news reporting and then jouranlistic standards started to soften. At the same time, media companies have decided that attractive people and loud controversy sell better than solid journalism. Regardless of how we got here and who's to blame, we totally agree on where we are and that it's really sad.

[DuPageDem]

The problem isn't slumbering journalists, it's the companies they work for. I got out of newspaper editing two years ago, after 20+ years of fighting top managers who weren't interested in journalism. "We can't print that, it will piss off the owner." Freedom of the press, haven't you heard, belongs to those who own the presses. Our only hope for real journalism is right here on the Web.

[RobinSeattle]

David Gregory, Ron Fournier, John Solomon, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Wallace, Tom Brokaw, Charlie Gibson and etc, historians have a big red bullseye painted on you. The only question isn't whether you guys are going to take some historiographical bullets for your total neglect of our democracy, but how many.

So you had better scramble to wake out of your malaise and actually do what you are supposed to do or when the comprehensive chronicles of this era are finally written, you will be as excoriated and as infamous as Bush and his cronies. It is your choice to choose a legacy that will glorify you or condemn you. I would recommend the former.

[Larry Gellman - Huffpost Blogger]

As I said, I don't blame them for the choices they have made. It's a free country and people are entitled to change jobs and make more money. The problem is that no one has stepped up to replace them and their employers have apparently not even posted the job. I think it's more a fact of the media managers deciding that entertainment pays better than news. They just changed the news department to an entertainment center without announcing it--or changing the name.

[AngFL]

Yes, that's bottom line isn't it? For the media literate or media savvy Americans who have figured this out -- it can really put us in a bad mood having to watch all these tv personalities do everything put report the news, and yet "act" like journalist... Media literacy really should be taught in the schools or at least addressed the same way commercialism and advertising is taught in schools. It's really too bad Michael Moore is such a polarizing figure because he probably would produce a great take on what has happened to journalism in this country since the Watergate scandal...

[chulanow]

Will the REAL JOURNALISTS please step forward......

[jellinda]

If ever there was a time, this is the right time - for an honest nonpartisan news organization to advertise objectivity - not only on the net, but in hard copy form. The NYT was our last bastion until it too sold out to corporate bias. It's time for a cooperatively, journalist-owned news organization, freed of punditry, opinions and corporate-driven bias. Time for the journalists to join together and stand up for true journalism. The voice of the free world needs you.

[Mojane]

Larry,

What's the best way for us, the people, (you know, for the people, of the people, by the people) to make a direct impact on the media moguls and how they manage their people, be they reporters, talking heads, pundits, whatever? If we could go to our windows and yell "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" and have it heard we'd have done it already. So how do we create the sort of noise that would be heard and heeded?

Sincerely,
mad as hell

[Larry Gellman - Huffpost Blogger]

We could find out where they live and teepee their houses. A more serious answer is a little more elusive. We live in a free country where the media is also free to be as good or as bad as they choose. In this case it's more a choice of which market they choose to cater to. Broadcast media decided years ago that they were really going to get into the entertainment business and deliver pretty people and food fights as opposed to serving the public trust and focusing on substance and accuracy. All we can do it let them know clearly and often how we feel and take our business elsewhere. There are places where we can find a focus on accuracy. It's just not as convenient as it used to be.

[RobinSeattle]

It's called the blogosphere. It is only after being humiliated for years by guys in their living rooms and bedrooms that the media is showing some indication that it might actually be trying to do its job now.