The Forecast: Overheated, Gusty and Increasingly Bloggy
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page C01
Could this be the perfect storm of bad news for the news media?
Already hemorrhaging readers and viewers and losing public trust, the mainstream media are being battered hourly by the surging denizens of the blogosphere, accused of raw partisanship, rank incompetence and conspiratorial coverups.
Newspapers, networks and magazines aren't likely to vanish anytime soon (and if they did, what would the bloggers talk about?), but their credibility is under assault as never before, and a series of self-inflicted wounds haven't helped.
In just two years, the fabrications of Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley have led to the ouster of the top editors of the New York Times and USA Today; CBS News melted down in using apparently bogus documents for a story on President Bush; major outlets published mea culpas on their flawed reporting about the White House's march to war in Iraq; columnist Robert Novak revealed the name of a CIA operative, sparking a probe that could send two other reporters to jail; more journalists were fired for plagiarism; Sinclair Broadcast Group planned to air an anti-John Kerry film close to Election Day before backing off; Fox's chief political reporter ridiculed Kerry as a metrosexual, and Armstrong Williams and two other columnists acknowledged taking money from the Bush administration. Not to mention the usual array of biases and blunders (remember that New York Post cover on Kerry picking running mate Dick Gephardt?).
Even journalists aren't defending journalism these days. In one poll last year, nearly half said that reporting is increasingly sloppy and filled with errors, and that reporters often let their ideological views color their work.
So do the much-maligned media do anything right?
Maybe a few things. It's mighty expensive to cover wars and maintain bureaus around the world. Some news organizations do that.
The meat-and-potatoes of community news -- city council meetings, zoning changes, school boards -- are still blanketed by local papers.
Old-fashioned, shoe-leather investigative reporting -- from Bernard Kerik's business problems to the Abu Ghraib abuses -- is regularly executed by staffers at large organizations who specialize in developing sources and sifting through documents. (It was newspapers that revealed Blair and Kelley's lies and Williams's $240,000 Education Department contract.)
And television remains unsurpassed at covering breaking news (wars and tsunamis) and bringing the nation together at times of tragedy and sadness (9/11, space shuttle explosions, Ronald Reagan's death).
But now, for the first time, millions of people with access to a wide audience (at least among the wired) are looking over the shoulders of journalists, or practicing journalism themselves. They are Googling and Nexis-ing and dissecting video and transcripts. Many bloggers are careful and thought-provoking, others partisan or mean-spirited. But they are here to stay, and by and large they provide a healthy check on those who once monopolized the news agenda.
In the wake of CNN executive Eason Jordan's resignation under pressure following harsh online criticism over his remarks about the U.S. military, Steve Lovelady, who edits the online edition of Columbia Journalism Review, complained to another blogger about a "lynch mob" of "salivating morons," later writing that no one "can mediate the wrath when the headhunters smell blood."
This drew a rather pointed response from Will Collier at VodkaPundit: "We're not impressed by either your bluster or your insults. You aren't higher beings, and everybody out here has the right -- and ability -- to fact-check your [butts], and call you on it when you screw up and/or say something stupid. You, and Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather, and anybody else in print or on television don't get free passes because you call yourself 'journalists.' "
But Duncan Riley countered in the Blog Herald: "What is unique in the war on blogging is that the battles are not one based on politics, but one based on hatred of the blogosphere by the old media as it continues to lose readership and the revenues a large readership attracts."
Charlie Madigan, who writes a blog for the Chicago Tribune, had this message for his Old Media colleagues: "Shut up with your whining and appreciate the fact that, after generations of stagnation, something new has arrived. . . . Conventional journalism seems aghast that a whole collection of independent voices from all sides of the political spectrum are popping up now to pick and smear and slander and point accusing fingers, wreck careers, cast aspersions and introduce something besides a century-old sense of entitled hierarchy to the formula for news presentation."
If there's one thing bloggers enjoy more than bashing the press, it's arguing with each other. Matt Dattilo at Opaque Lucidity says: "There's a saying in football: When you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before. The blogosphere threw a harsh light on a 'journalist' [Jordan] who needed a smackdown. Congratulations. . . . If the blogosphere is going to insist on doing a little celebratory jig every time some liberal [butthead] puts his foot in it, we will all soon look as if we ARE hunting for heads to put on the wall."
Those who dismiss the new cybercritics should remember that bloggers draw strength from their relationship with readers. It was typography experts sending e-mail that enabled conservative blogs to blow the whistle on Dan Rather's National Guard documents, while Web experts helped liberal bloggers reveal former White House reporter Jeff Gannon's real name and X-rated background. In reporting, it turns out, a little interactivity goes a long way.
Off the Payroll
Eric Wesson, a reporter for the Kansas City Call, will no longer be doing consulting work for Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) while covering him, says the publisher of the African American newspaper.
Wesson defended his dual role in this space last week, but Publisher Donna Stewart says his moonlighting is over. Cleaver, whose spokeswoman defended Wesson's hiring, now says in a statement that "to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, our campaign will not enter into a consulting contract with a reporter who covers our campaign."
This, it turns out, isn't the first time Wesson's writing has stirred controversy. A spokesman for Jackson County prosecutor Michael Sanders complained to the Call last year about Wesson's reporting on his boss -- noting that the office had prosecuted Wesson for robbery in 1991, leading to a 10-year prison term.
Wesson declines to comment, but the complaint drew a sharp reaction from Stewart, who wrote Sanders that the objections were "stereotypical as well as racist. . . . If a small business like the Call does not give an opportunity for an ex-felon to redeem himself who is black, who will? Is redemption only for white ex-felons?"
John Liebnitz, the prosecutor's spokesman, says it's "unfortunate" that anyone would see his complaint as race-related and that he's glad Wesson is "turning his life around." Liebnitz says he questioned whether someone who had been prosecuted by the office he was writing about "might have a very difficult time separating those experiences from his daily work." |
