The News: The Prequel
rantingprofs.com
By Cori Dauber
It struck me the other night when I saw Tom Fenton, author of that new book attacking (critiquing is too mild a word) the news industry, Bad News (and there are reasons he uses the word "industry") on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, that the man hasn't really had a book tour. Stewart's show, of course, is marketed as a "fake" news show, but as much as it's that it's a mocking of the news that barely attempts to disguise its contempt for what the news has become, so they of course welcomed Fenton and his message with welcome arms. (Stewart's audience cheered Fenton so loudly at points he was startled, and simply didn't know how to proceed.)
Last night Fenton appeared two other places -- On C-SPAN. (Heavy irony there. Their new format involves a guest expert doing the interview. Their choice? The CBS correspondent who lost out, all those years ago, to Dan Rather: Roger Mudd.) And, perhaps heavier irony, his second appearance was on the late night talk show on Fox News. (Ironic since Fenton makes little effort to disguise his contempt for Fox, yet I don't see the networks giving him a platform.)
I bring Fenton up again because of course his big argument is that the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus, CBS having no permanent bureau in the Arab or Islamic worlds, and the danger when that happens is that the press loses the capacity to warn the American people of what's coming around the corner.
I bring this up because today, now that we all know that things were ready to blow anytime in Lebanon, the Times goes back and does a careful and detailed job of reporting the events that led up to the assassination of Hariri, explaining why he was such an important figure, why the Syrians had such an interest in seeing him taken off the field, why he was such a unifying figure for the Lebanese, why they so badly needed a unifying figure, and so on. The result is a narrative that's cohesive, clear, fascinating, that illuminates the events of the last few weeks in a way that serves as a perfect example of what good foreign reporting can do for a reader, how well it can enrich our understanding of the events shaping our world.
Given the importance of Syria to American interests (think about all the charges that Syria has been behind efforts to destabilize Iraq in an intentional way), and the importance of Lebanon to Syria, the arguments that Iraq would have consequences throughout the region, and the fact that most of this story was knowable before the demonstrators took to the streets, why weren't we hearing about this before?
Oh, right.
Scott, Laci, Michael . . .
Fenton also makes clear that there is no evidence anyone can provide, none, that Americans prefer the crap to the hard news.
And yet, given the way the audiences keep dwindling, there does seem to be substantial evidence they don't like the crap.
Why the stubborn insistence that we like the crap?
It's very, very cheap to send a reporter and a camera crew to Modesto.
It's even cheaper to put a couple of lawyers on the air to yell at one another about what the reporter's just said.
Period.
As for print? They're just getting squeezed to show more profit (not less loss, you understand, just more profit) in any given quarter.
Short sighted?
You betcha.
Ever wonder why the New York Times and the Washington Post are the two best papers in the country?
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