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Discussion Membership
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Taking on the media
[Note: At RealClearPolitics.com, Jed Babbin posts an open letter to Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman called "Taking on the '527 Media". He challenges Mehlman to action in a manner that mistakes the media and misdirects a reponse. Ever helpful, I offer this letter instead.] Dear Mr. Babbin, Your letter to Mr. Mehlman, Republican National Committee chairman, recognizes the challenge to cut through the noise before the election. It's true the media is a greater threat to the election than a muddle-headed Democratic Party that stops shooting itself in the foot only long enough to reload. But does the media seem willing to do anything to defeat Republican candidates bydesign, inclination, or by ignorance? The mistake is to presume the media -- in particular, CBS, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and lately, AP are populated by political activists; that they are in the campaign business as much as they are in the business of reporting the news. Not true. For one thing, such a concerted plan is beyond them, and, for another, they really aren't in the business of reporting the news and historically never tried to be. News isn't news. Grocery tabloids entertain the people with what they say. As far as luxury infotainment wrapped in pretense, the difference between the grocery tabloid and CNN is only the level of gall. Behind the curtain, people who prepare the news are the same as those who watch it -- ordinary people who repeat popular conventions because they follow their own ordinary thoughts. News writers play to the audience just as Jay Leno's monolog writers parrot popular clichés because those are the punch lines that get laughter and applause. Newstainment requires no other expertise, professionalism, or high purpose than pretending that it is important. Their real business is only the business of staying in business. With that balloon deflated, you can concentrate your leverage where it will do the most good -- beyond the news gathers to the readers and listeners. Listen to these phrases:
Don't even try to lecture. Nobody listens to a zealot. Nobody listens to anger. Nobody listens to the pedant. You can't challenge convictions. It is pointless to try. While people will concede greater strength and finer beauty, they will never concede better judgment. Instead, sneak through a steady diet of good-natured dissonance that readers and viewers will tumble over in their own good time. Concentrating on readers and viewers fans the common sense that underlies personal experience. Inoculate people to see what to value and why. Generate the clear thought to accept nothing less. They'll begin to recognize in news gathers such unacceptable behavior as misrepresentation, misconstruction, misunderstanding, miss-recollection, miscalculation and out-and-out blather. Success will be measured two ways. The first will be when people learn enough to laugh at weak journalism, and the second will be when they no longer have to. Interrupting the cycle of incomplete thought that allows the fungus of bad journalism to thrive is critical because the underlying risk has changed. Science has put such power in the hands of anyone who cares to learn enough to use it that we haven't the luxury to afford leaders who promote smooth-sounding jingles as if they were answers. The time has passed when as President we could tolerate amiable bumblers like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, for whom a cliché was as good as a thought. Remember, though, the consequence of this approach is that there are some Republicans who deserve this treatment as thoroughly as Democrats and journalists. In parallel with this, you need to trust outsiders to create a repository of act checking prepared for by -- to borrow Instapundit Glenn Reynolds' title -- an army of Davids. Face it, voters are more likely to trust an army of independents checking each other than they are likely to trust you. Quality bloggers have teased out the Wilson/Plame game and wire service fauxtography. Since World War II, popular convention considered that the job of journalism was to be "fair and balanced." More recently the description was to be "objective." Neither represents the real task, which is simply an expansion of what an individual does for him or herself -- to assure that one's mental map of reality is the best it can be, the better to plan one's future. Quality journalists serve as surrogates for this, not entertainers. Over time, people will learn that they get what they tolerate. Over time this will serve to undermine the mean-spirited miss-directors of our political conversation.
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