Funmurphys Looks At The News

| | Comments (0)

In a recent post , I highlighted the following claim about journalism:

The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards -- favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority -- were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer's real feelings.

But the convention was a pretense. There is a generally laudable move toward more conversational -- and more candid -- language in stories. This shift allows a respected pro like the Associated Press's Ron Fournier to unsheathe a knife and write this sentence earlier this year about Mitt Romney: "The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents' record and continued to show why he's the most malleable -- and least credible -- major presidential candidate."


I'd like to pick up a couple of threads from this - one is the generally laudable move toward more conversational and more candid language. Is this a top down or bottom up move? I'll argue that it is a bottom up move, as journalists first push and then find that editors will let pass more and more conversational and candid language in stores. Of course, by candid I mean biased. i.e. representing the candid views of the journalist. At first you read stories where the reporters voice would be cloaked by euphamisms such as "experts say" - without ever naming a single expert who said any such thing. Now you just read the reporter in so called objective news stories not just unsheathing the knife, but sticking it in and then twisting it. So let's be honest about the new honesty, you aren't reading factual coverage anymore, you're reading opinion from cover to cover. And editors let this pass because it conforms to their own prejudices.

And on to the second thread - why did objective journalism sicken and die when it did? Objective journalism was good for the business of journalism. Our new candid journalism has been terrible for the business of journalism but has done wonders for the egos of journalists.

But why can you pick up a newspaper today and find editorializing in every news story where 30 years ago you would find straight news?

I'd say first liberals within the media, just like at universities, became predominant by first making the environment chilly for conservatives and then flat out not hiring them. Now that we have an overwhelmingly liberal media, why not drop objectivity? It's not like a conservative AP writer is going to be able to unsheath the knife, let alone stick it in a twist it because they don't exist. Nor is there a conservative editor or fellow journalist to privately dispute the liberal view in newsrooms. There is simply no hope of a group that is overwhelming composed of individual liberals to produce a product that is anything other than overwhelming liberal. The old convention didn't break down because it didn't suit the consumers of news, it broke down because it didn't suit the producers of news.

The move to objective journalism was driven by concern for the bottom line - an objective AP could sell stores to any newspaper, an objective newspaper could sell itself to any subscriber. The move away seems to be driven by demographics within the profession itself.

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Kevin Murphy published on April 28, 2008 12:37 PM.

Today's Quote: More On Thinking was the previous entry in this blog.

A Great Leap Backwards is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

LINKS


St. Louis Blogs:

J Bowen
Christopher Johnson
Charles Austin
Archpundit
Random Observations
Brian J Noggle
Shelley Powers
Gateway Pundit
Listless Lawyer
Jim Durbin
Timothy Birdnow
Diane Meyer
Marijean Jaggers
Scott Ginsberg
Steve Boriss
St. Louis Bloggers
St. Louis Blogs . Org
Randall Sherman
Urban Review STL

Missouri Blogs:

John Combest
Blue Girl, Red State
Another Rovian Conspiracy
The News Buckit
The Source
Fired Up! Missouri
Susan "Farmgirl"

Favorite Blogs:

James Lileks
Glenn Reynolds
Rich Galen
Megan McCardle
Scrapple Face
In The Agora
The Brothers Judd
Geitner Simmons
Cronaca
Science Blog
Winds of Change
Da Goddess
Justin Katz
Fran Mason
Phil Carter
Greg Costikyan
Tom McMahon
Kevin Aylward
Rand Simberg
Michael Totten
Belmont Club
News Busters
Mark Ciocco
David Weinberger
Tom Maguire
Jon Henke & McQ (plus Dale!)
Kevin Murphy The Other
Craig Henry
Brian Tiemann
Crooked Timber
Charles Johnson
Powerline
Busy Mom
Jason Van Steenwyk
Jenne
INDC Journal
Eamonn Fitzgerald
John Little
King of Fools
Perish the Thought
Patterico
Jeff Harrell
Michael Yon
Ed Driscoll
George Roper
Jeff Goldstein
Mark A. R. Kleiman
David Opderbeck
Libertas
Bob Somerby
Ben Witherington
Creative Bits
Mark Daniels
Michael Spencer
Think Sink
The Brussels Journal
A J Strata
S K Murphy
Joe Carter
John Hawkins
Bridget
Back Talk
Joe Sherlock
Mark Perry
Daniel Dilger

Pundits

Charles Le Kraut Martel
Victor Davis Hanson
Mark Steyn
Thomas Sowell
Malcolm Gladwell
Robert Cringely
John Carroll
Paul Graham
David Nicklaus

My Interests

The Paralyzed Veterans of America
The American Anti-Slavery Group
Wayside Gardens
The Alliance for the Separation of
School and State

MacSurfer Daily News
Urban Legends
Diablo II Net (Unofficial)
The Word Detective
HotAIR
UN Documentation Center
Cub Scout Pack 787
Baloo's Bugle (Cub Scouts)
Wounded Warrior Project
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Defense Industry Daily

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here