Are We Headed for an Opposition Press?
PRESS THINK
"Big Journalism cannot respond as it would in previous years: with bland vows to cover the Administration fairly and a firm intention to make no changes whatsoever in its basic approach to politics and news. The situation is too unstable, the world is changing too rapidly, and the press has been pretending for too long that its old operating system will last forever. It won't."
Back before the 2004 campaign began, before the emergence of Howard Dean, Democrats shocked at the weakness of their party in Congress would commonly say that the only one "taking on" Bush and putting up a real fight was Paul Krugman, the columnist for the New York Times.
John Kerry's defeat is only hours old. One of the first questions to occur to me is: will we see the fuller emergence of an opposition press, given that George W. Bush and the Republicans are to remain in office another four years? Will we find instead that an intimidation factor, already apparent before the election, will intensify as a result of Bush's victory?
I believe Big Journalism cannot respond as it would in previous years: with bland vows to cover the Adminstration fairly and a firm intention to make no changes whatsoever in its basic approach to politics and news. The situation is too unstable, the world is changing too rapidly, and political journalism has been pretending for too long that an old operating system will last forever. It won't. It can't. Particularly in the face of an innovative Bush team and its bold thesis about the fading powers of the press.
This election, says Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times, "sharpened the cultural divides that have increasingly defined American politics over the last generation." With Bush's re-election, this dynamic is likely to intensify, but it's only one thing causing an intellectual crack-up in the press. Here are some developments to watch for:
At some point between now and 2008, either MSNBC or CNN may break off from the pack and decide to become the liberal alternative to Fox, thus freeing Fox to find a more frankly ideological formula, as well. During the conventions the logic of this move became evident. The single most shocking moment for television news people came in late summer when Fox won the ratings for the Republican convention, the first time a cable channel had defeated the broadcast networks in that competition. Everyone realized at once the power of GOP-TV and how much sense that system--the more partisan system--made. (Like a political party, FOX has a base and it reaches out for other viewers, knowing it cannot alienate the base.) If one of the other cable channels goes left, will the remaining networks that are "unaligned" stand pat, go left, or hook right? Big question.
Whatever happens with the news networks, which is only part of the picture, what's more plausible: the "cultural divides that have increasingly defined American politics" will increasingly come to define mainstream American media, or... Big Media will successfully hold itself back from politics, and the major news sources will remain non-aligned? The first prospect means a radical restructuring is due (or maybe it is already underway.) The leaders in Big Journalism will try to remain non-aligned, but do they even have that power? As we know from politics, if you don't watch out you can be defined by your opponents. Opponents want to define the national press as the liberal media, and they are well along in their cultural project, which does not require the participation of journalists.
The election had many high points and subplots involving the media: confessions of failure on WMD's, Michael Moore's success with agitprop, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their effect on Kerry, the disaster that Dan Rather and Sixty Minutes brought upon themselves at CBS, the he said she said, we said furor involving who lies more, the rise of the bloggers and the tensions this caused with Big Media (which also absorbed them), Jon Stewart's showdown with Crossfire and his impact overall with "fake" news, the Sinclair Broadcast Group's plans for Stolen Honor. Such episodes we will continue to see as "distractions," until the day we realize that this is one way Americans do politics today: they attack and defend the media, or start their own media, or use new media against old media, or mount a claim that the media is the opposition.
So what remains after all that? The cultural right, in its struggle with the liberal media, feels that it is on the ascendant, and primed for more action. News and editorial decision-making are thrust into the arena itself as potentially explosive "issues." It's become a way of doing politics: to take action against the media, and to sound the alarm--"come quick"--when the media takes action against you. This expansion of the political into the realm of "news" and commentary coincides with greater transparency for the big news combines, which are more successfully scrutinized than they have ever been. Various layers of protection once kept journalists from the knowledge the public had of their mistakes. That layer seems gone now.
The Bush White House and the Republican Party have the national press in a box. As with so many other situations, they have changed the world and allowed the language of the old world to keep going while exploring unchallenged the fact of the new. The old world was the Fourth Estate, and the watchdog role of the press, the magic of the White House press conference. It was a feeling that, though locked in struggle much of the time, journalists and presidents needed each other. Although it was never put this way, they glamourized politics together, and this helped both.
In Bushworld, all is different. There is no fourth estate; an invalid theory, says Bush. The press is not a watchdog for the public, but another interest group that wants something. (Or it's an arm of our opponents's operation.) But the press is weak, and almost passe, in the Administrations view. There is no need to deal with it most of the time. It can be denied access with impunity. It can be attacked for bias relentlessly, which charges up Bush supporters. It can be fed gruel in plush surroundings and will come back the next day. The Bush crowd has completely changed the game on journalists, knowing that journalists are unlikely to respond with action nearly as bold. For example, would the press ever pull out of Iraq as a signal to the Bush White House? Never, and this is why it is seen as weak.
Washington journalism likes to imagine itself the Administration's great adversary, but most of the time it relies on access journalism-- not the adversarial kind. "Sources make news" is the first tenet in that system, and that gives sources power. But access journalism makes less and less sense when there is no access, and sources rarely deviate from the party line. The White House press corps has always been based on access, so much so that the alternatives to it have almost been forgotten. I think there will be pressure to abandon the whole dream of press access under Bush, and re-position some forces accordingly.
Interesting, then, what Daniel Weinberg of the Sacramento Bee said at PressThink this week: "When my colleagues complain about a lack of access to Schwarzenegger at his media events, I ask, is that kind of access really critical to our doing our jobs? Is it our job to get close enough to describe the color of his tie, or his interaction with a voter, or is it our job to deconstruct the governor's (or president's) policies and proposals, their effect or potential effect on the public, their cost and consequences? Sure it's great to have an interview with the man, or fire away questions at a press conference, but I think good journalists are capable of informing the public without the benefit of these tools." He's thinking of alternatives to access because he's already realized it: Arnold is post-press.
I expect some news organizations to begin dealing with these pressures by essentially giving in on several counts-- for example, that newsrooms are populated by liberals and conservative voices are too few. Coming to terms with "liberal bias" could be seen as a way of recognizing the reality of the election and responding to continued anger at the press. The most likely place for those efforts to begin is with the supposed finding that "moral values" (read religion) were the top concern of voters, yet this is not a strength of the liberal, secular press; therefore we need to change-- something like that. After the Republican sweep, I expect some major initiatives on the bias front.
Keep your eye on Sinclair Broadcasting, in my view a new kind of media company-- a political empire with television stations. It was built to prosper in the conditions I have described. It already has a self-conscious political identity. It is already steeped in culture war. And it admires and imitates the Bush method of changing the world, but keeping the same language for the new situation.
One thing's for sure. The years 2004 to 2008 will be an intense and creative period for left wing journalism, and for opinion journalism generally.
Journalists who have been paying attention know that something big in their world changed in 2004. (See my list of stuff happening.) But will they go through the kind of agonizing re-appraisal the Democratic Party will soon be undertaking? (It's already been called a "battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.") Or will they let that old weary operating system grind on? |
