Kurtz misreads media criticism

July 21, 2006

The WaPo’s Howard Kurtz explained in his online column today that he caught some flack recently for saying that liberal and conservative anger towards the media is equally intense. While acknowledging that “a couple of conservative bomb-throwers” have talked openly about killing journalists who have reported on national security issues, Kurtz said he wouldn’t want to “make the mistake of confusing the views of a few extremists” with all conservatives.

Trust me when I say that many liberals are really ticked off at the MSM, even though the nature of their criticism is very different from their rivals on the right. The anger that liberals feel over media coverage of President Bush and the war is tinged with deep disappointment over journalistic shortcomings and a hope, however vain, that things can be improved. Why aren’t you on our side? The anger among conservatives is fed by decades of feeling that the MSM is a bastion of bias, and a sense of futility that things will ever change. Why can’t we get an even break?

Kurtz is right to the extent that the left and right disapprove of the news media in different ways, but I think Kurtz is understating the problem.

The left sees the media as lapdogs; the right sees the media as anti-American terrorist-sympathizers. The left believes most reporters are lousy watchdogs of democracy; the right believes most reporters are lousy Americans. The left desperately wants the mainstream media to improve and become a meaningful and reliable check on government abuse; the right desperately wants to eliminate the mainstream media altogether.

The left sees the media, on its good days, as the fourth estate; the right sees the media, almost every day, as the fifth column.

Media anger is comparable from the left and right? Hardly.

July 21, 2006 at 4:43 pm

The left sees the media, on its good days, as the fourth state; the right sees the media, almost every day, as the fifth column.

Fix the estate/state typo and you’ve got a brilliant line there.

Agreed. A perfect summary.

Fix the estate/state typo and you’ve got a brilliant line there.

Damn typos, always getting in the way of my rhetorical flourishes…

The media, media, media… thats not anyone’s problem.

A free and open media is a cornerstone to any successful society. If you disagree with whats being reported, write your own report. With today’s blogging, no one has a legitimate reason for blaming “the media”.

Our biggest problem in the US and around the world is getting mythologies, or religions if you prefer, under control. Out of control religious beliefs are the root cause for almost all of today’s problems.

This is false to some extent. Blogs are parasitic on reporting (regardless of the source of the reporting). It costs money to do good reporting — you have to put boots on the ground, spend money on investigative work and so on. Editorializing is entirely redundant with blogs, which is why you see pundits lashing out at bloggers, particularly leftie bloggers.

News, though, costs money and the largely volunteer effort of bloggers can not replace that.

I don’t think the fact that we have a few left wing blogs out there lets the MSM off the hook. For whatever their reasons, they have crafted the so-called news to provide cover for the party in power now that the party in power is Republican. That didn’t happen in the Clinton administration. They were forever searching for a scandal, and eventually found one. To equate right wing anger with left wing anger is really disengenuous. I think there enough evidence to indict MSM for deriliction of duty.

“…the right desperately wants to eliminate the mainstream media altogether.”

Mr CB, would it not be more accurate to say that the right wants to co-opt the MSM even more than the corporate takeover has already done?

Sucessful propaganda gives a huge advantage to the side that owns it. How else could BushCo, Inc have gotten us into Iraq?

Perhaps “…the right desperately wants to eliminate any credible indepentant mainstream media altogether.” would work better.

But this IS a great post. Thanks

The news media has ignored huge issues that lay in plain sight, issues that would cost nothing to print, but which would inform the general public about serious topics which the blogs were covering fully but the average American was oblivious to.

The thing to remember is that the “MSM” is a client of her advertisers. Thankfully the blogs are ripping the mask off of the idea that if it isn’t printed in the MSM, it doesn’t matter. The kids of today know this is crap, their parents are learning.

The internet allows us to see the whole picture, and explore the truth in ways that the MSM will never be able to approach. Thanks to sites like the memory hole, we have a clear glimpse behind the curtain. The roaring voice says ignore him!, and the flames billow.

Go, Toto. Bite the Wizard’s ass.

It seems to me that Kurtz has things exactly backwards when he says the left wants the media on their side while the right just wants to get an even break.

And yes, oldkayaker, why should I worry about what the New York Times or CNN says if I have a blog? That definitely balances things out.

The left gets angry with MSM when they don’t do their job. The right gets angry when they do.
I don’t want MSM ‘on my side’. I want them to press for straight answers when when someone – politician, or not – is obviously bullshitting. With accurate information, I can form my own opinion.

The right wants the exact opposite. They want answers to support their preconceived beliefs. Anything that challenges those preconceived beliefs is viewed as a hostile attack upon them.

I do fault MSM for trying to appease the far right. It only reduces the quality of reporting without actually pleasing a single wingnut. The far right wouldn’t be satisfied if MSM called Bush’s war, The Holy War Against Satan. It still wouldn’t be enough.

Excellent comments here, and world-class analysis from the Carpetbagger. I would like only like to add that it’s my sincere opinion that the Left truly seems to demand a higher level of integrity from the MSM while the Right only insists that the MSM help them move forward with their messianic vision of total domination of society where no one has the right to reject or even question anything that Bushco does, no matter how illegal or murderous it might be.

And that’s the real difference between the two sides as I see it.

Hey Carpetbagger!

Fantastic report! Much needed comparison too. Now I just wanna piigy-back on some of the things being said.

Even though I now write for an alternative news source, in the end I do believe there is some very good reporting mixed in with some very bad reporting in the “corporate media.” The NYTimes’ Judith Miller is horrendous, whereas Tim Weiner did the best job of anyone covering the CIA in the 1990s during the Guatemala scandals. Similarly, Knight-Ridder has done a great job of covering Iraq including trashing the Pentagon’s favorite son Ahmad Chalabi.

At the same time, outlets like Democracy Now do get out some great information from time to time that would not make press elsewhere (Where else are you gonna get Norm Finkelstein and Fmr. Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami debate each other?Sid Blumenthal & Norm Solomon?), but they also run lots of pure propagandistic bullshit and never correct their own errors. One was the alleged investigate report that the two Italian humanitarian workers kidnapped last year were taken in an alleged CIA-backed operation. This NEVER happened as the two Italian women later said they sympathized were their Iraqi insurgent captors. Democracy Now NEVER corrected the story they ran as an alleged exclusive at the time.

Sometimes DN! DOES piss me off (IMHO) because they give me the feeling that they want to pump progressives full of bullshit ideas so that they can barely talk to people who read the mainstream press. I think what we need most is well-informed progressives who are capable of sifting fact from bullshit in the mainstream press. Instead, blowhards in the lefty press will fill us up with a party line of crap that many lefties take literally.

I’ve often wondered and I wanted to ask other leftists out there this for sometime now… don’t you think from time to time that Democracy Now and other like-minded media sources do the same kind of bullshit
journalism that Fox News does, meaning politicized biased reporting driven by a clear ideological agenda –from entirely opposite perspectives? I feel like that sometimes. I’ve been around a lot of folks who love Amy Goodman and DN! but Democracy Now reaches thousands of energized activists, and when I hear them regurgitate what Amy Goodman says, they sound like fools. Same goes for Fox News. They reaches millions of unwitting Americans, who then mimic their right-wing bullshit and I wonder who wins in the end? To me, Fox does.

Or let me ask this. When lefties (myself included) lump all corporate media together in the same group, aren’t we hurting the good media out there in the mainstream outlets while unwittingly helping Fox, the worst offender?

It seems to me the issue is effectiveness versus posturing. Making a difference or just patting yourself on the back.

I’ve seen some good progressive journalism in, where else, “The Progressive.” I like Faleh Jabar, Sid Blumenthal, Frank Smyth, fmr. Ambassador Peter Galbraith (when he writes), and I even admire Robert Fisk of the Independent. I’m sure people have many others out there. Good places to go for news is Common Dreams & Truthout. Raw Story & Huffington Post are also great. And I can’t even name all the good blogs that are now arising. But most of all, Progressives/leftists/Dems/whatever need stories that stick. All journalists fear losing their credibility.

Leftists/ProgsDems/whatever need to write less opinioned stuff and do more real reporting to show exactly when the meanstream is wrong in specific terms. Instead, it feels like to me lefties rail generally and accomplish little or nothing but promote themselves within small circles that the rest of the nation easily ignores.

Struggle is detailed work, not being a blowhard.

Not trying to piss anyone off or agitate anything. Just wanna make some honest comments on a very rare and excellent blog. A place where I think we can get some meaningful and honest discussion going on.

Hope this helps.

Peace,

-Brattlerouser

Interesting points Brattlerouser, but there’s a line in there somewhere that needs to be taken into account. I view sources such as DN and Truthout and advocates first, and journalists second. As such, I have no problem with their bias – they’re pretty straight forward about having one. I take things read there with more salt than usual. (That said, Truthout has some serious credibility issues following their Jason Leopold/Rove indictment story, and the subsequent hollow mea culpa) Raw Story is vastly more reliable than they once were. I applaud their steady improvement.
OTOH, FOX is advocacy masquerading as journalism. If they were as up front as DN or TO, their motto would be GOP News of the Day, as opposed to the fraudulent ‘Fair and Balanced.

Personally, I think having progressive news outfits (imperfect though they are) help negate the right wing noise machine of FOX, and just about the entire AM radio band. There is a finite amount of truth, and an unlimited supply of mud. Since the right insists on coloring the waters with their mud, I don’t have a a real problem color correcting with some mud of our own.
But as with all media, the first rule remains: Consider the source.

Right on Joe W.

What I meant by Truthout was the REST OF THE STORIES Truthout puts out, from outlets you & I may consider the MSM. NOT Jason Leopold, whom I’ve lost respect for and even WIlliam Rivers Pitt. He can write some goos articles from time to time, but he can also miss his mark too and which just leaves me having to sigh after reading his rants.

But I like Truthout because they can put out good & accurate stories from the MSM that lefties/progs/whatever seem to not consider or forget that there IS excellent journalism out there.

Just to clarify.

If you want to know the difference between how the left views the media and how the right views the media, I recommend that you read Louis Powell’s 1971memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was written while he was general council to the organization. The Memo lays out the framework for the corporatist attack, he would say counter attack, on America which we have witnessed for the past thirty plus years. The memo opens dramatically

No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.[…]
[W]hat now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.[…]
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
Moreover, much of the media-for varying motives and in varying degrees-either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.
One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction.
The campuses from which much of the criticism emanates are supported by (i) tax funds generated largely from American business, and (ii) contributions from capital funds controlled or generated by American business. The boards of trustees of our universities overwhelmingly are composed of men and women who are leaders in the system.
Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive.

Powell is saying that in 1971 the American way of life is under attack from the left. Note that who he fingers as the enablers, if not leaders of this attack,: college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences… These are the well worn bogeymen of the right we have lived with for the past thirty years. For the purposes of this discussion let’s focus on what he says about the media. Read the memo for yourself, to see how much of what he suggests has come to fruition in the past three decades.

Reaching the campus and the secondary schools is vital for the long-term. Reaching the public generally may be more important for the shorter term. The first essential is to establish the staffs of eminent scholars, writers and speakers, who will do the thinking, the analysis, the writing and the speaking. It will also be essential to have staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media, and how most effectively to communicate with the public. Among the more obvious means are the following:
Television
The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. This applies not merely to so-called educational programs (such as “Selling of the Pentagon”), but to the daily “news analysis” which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system.12 Whether this criticism results from hostility or economic ignorance, the result is the gradual erosion of confidence in “business” and free enterprise.
This monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts of adequate samples of programs. Complaints — to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission — should be made promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate.
Equal time should be demanded when appropriate. Effort should be made to see that the forum-type programs (the Today Show, Meet the Press, etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it.
Other Media
Radio and the press are also important, and every available means should be employed to challenge and refute unfair attacks, as well as to present the affirmative case through these media.

What separates the Left from the Right when it comes to the media? For the past thirty years the Right has systematically worked to get the media to bend to their view of the world. And do not forget that implicit in the Powell’s observation,” Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive”, is the threat to use the power inherent in this ownership to bend the news.

Oh, and if there is any doubt in your mind how successful Powell’s programs has been consider how quaint this observation sounds today.

Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of “lobbyist” for the business point of view before Congressional committees. The same situation obtains in the legislative halls of most states and major cities. One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the “forgotten man.”

CB, great post and a good turn of phrase:The left sees the media, on its good days, as the fourth estate; the right sees the media, almost every day, as the fifth column. My post at #15 is intended only to give a bit of historical perspective to your analysis.

Kurtz’s typical strategy for responding to complaints or criticism is to turn the critic’s point into a rhetorical question (e.g., “The piece is useless because they didn’t slam the Republicans?”).

But that rhetorical question always distorts the critic’s original meaning. He does this all the time, not only in his column but also in his snide online chat responses.

His wife’s “people” must have given him some tricks out of the PR playbook…

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