Damned if they do
Power Line
A few months ago, George Stephanopoulos interviewed Markos (of the Daily Kos) and me for a documentary he was putting together. When we got to the issue of the MSM's future, I suggested that it's best hope might well be to re-establish credibility through objective, non-partisan news reporting that could serve as a core product around which all sorts of edgy bloggers and other opinion-mongers could revolve. After all, objectivity and non-partisanship is the one thing bloggers will always be hard-pressed to provide, and news gathering is the one service bloggers cannot provide now.
Stephanopoulus responded by turning to Kos and stating (I quote from memory) "but you guys won't let that happen." Kos modestly affirmed that he wouldn't. Stephanopoulos's response was both perceptive and revealing. Perceptive because left-wing bloggers certainly intend to pressure the MSM into, at a minimum, maintaining its current level of liberal bias. Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics and Stephen Spruiell at NRO's Media Blog highlight this reality in discussing blogger attacks on the Washington Post, Chris Matthews, and Tim Russert.
Stephanopoulos's comment was revealing because of its assumption that leftist bloggers hold the power to constrain the MSM. Bevan explains why one could believe that Kos and his ilk have that power when he observes,
"The mainstream press, which already leans to the left,
can't afford to lose its appeal to such a core
constituency." But Bevan also cautions that "lurching
further to the left will only alienate more readers and
more viewers living between the coasts, significantly
impeding the ability of large media outlets to appeal to
a broad national audience."
To me, the downside of alienating the left seems to pale in comparision to the disadvantages of alienating a broader audience. This is particularly true for news networks, but will also be true for major newspapers which (as a result of the internet) increasingly will compete in a national market. What future is there in being a niche player in a minority political market attempting to out-snark the nastiest folks in the opinion-mongering trade? And what real risk would CBS News, for example, run if it alienated folks who, as a group, don't watch its newscasts anyway? The audience for the nightly MSM newscasts is the remnants of a generation that considered the news anchors the most trusted men in America. Why not try to earn that sort of trust from new generations of non-extremist Americans through objective, non-partisan reporting?
The real barrier to this strategy, I suspect, is not fear of Kos; it is the absence of a strong desire to be objective, and perhaps post-modern doubts about the concept of objectivity itself.
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