Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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the explosive truth only exists on one side of the cannon.....

Look, it is one thing for reporters and line editors to abandon the fundamental principle of objectivity as they hurl their hatchets at those who provoke their prejudices—Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, this, that or the other governor or senator, this, that, or the other dissident. It is greatly, entirely another for the retired coots now posing as the profession’s wise men to elevate these derelictions to the principle of there-are-no-principles. 

My word. How far down the crater of corruption are those running American media’s newsrooms going to cascade? Land sakes alive, as my great aunt Louise used to exclaim.

 

By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

 

In a recent column I mentioned The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman for her farcically unbalanced coverage of Trump during his 2017–2021 presidency. This is a reporter who saw fit to ridicule Trump’s preference for hamburgers and ice cream while covering a foreign visit during which a state dinner featured haute cuisine. It is over-the-top juvenile, but I cite Haberman as merely exemplary of the prevalent aesthetic in mainstream American media, an aesthetic of self-indulgent childishness and irresponsibility. 

Now Len Downie, a former executive editor at The Washington Post, and Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News, have tucked into this matter. A couple of weeks ago they released their co-authored “Beyond Objectivity,” a lengthy report published by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. This 54–page document, subtitled “Producing trustworthy news in today’s newsrooms,” seems already to have set off a minor riot of shallow, uninformed comment. It is nominally intended to address professionals, a “playbook,” but, text and subtext, it comes over as a we’re-on-the-job reassurance to the reading and viewing public—which, of course, is reading and viewing ever less of what mainstream media inflict upon us. 

Downie has concurrently published an opinion piece in The Post, “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust.” 

Ditch objectivity as a professional norm and we will be better trusted. Let me get this straight. 

The Gallup polling organization, in its latest “Confidence in Institutions” report, published last summer, found that 16 percent of those surveyed believe what they read in American newspapers. If you are sitting down, 11 percent of Americans take broadcasters of television news seriously. Bear with me a sec, as I have to turn these concussing numbers upside down to absorb them: 84 of every 100 Americans do not think newspapers report events truthfully; 89 of every 100 Americans consider what they see and hear in nightly newscasts unreliable. 

By any serious interpretation of these kinds of polls, readers and viewers are not getting anything like what they seek when they pick up the newspaper or turn on the nightly news. What they want seems to me beyond debate: They look for sound, disinterested accounts of human events, reported by practitioners trained to convey information such that their audiences are—key word—informed. To be informed is to know what happened. American media do not inform us and we cannot tell what happened: This is what people say when they respond to polling questions.

By definition, I would say, keeping people informed and telling them what happened can have nothing to do with what a reporter wishes happened, or what a reporter and his or her editors want you to think happened, or what reporters, editors, and publishers at this point insist happened as a matter of ideological imperative. It is a question of the journalist’s special, maybe unique duties in a democratic society. These duties require a maximum degree of detachment, otherwise known as objectivity, to be fulfilled successfully. 

“Objectivity enforces ‘the view from nowhere’ as the norm.” “Objectivity is not even possible.” “The journalist’s job is truth, not objectivity.” These are quotations from journalists Downie and Heyward cite with approval. Do you detect what a morass those purporting to lead debate on this question guide us into? I do not for the life of me know what the first of these remarks means. The second is obvious, and I will shortly address it. The third is pernicious: This is the kind of journalist one must watch out for. 

“Both-sidesism” is among the cardinal sins in this universe. So is being white and male and a trained professional. While acknowledging the question of newsroom diversity as valid—pressing, indeed—I do not see that addressing it is at all served by discarding objectivity as a professional norm. I would say the opposite in the case. Let us consider race, gender, and all things to do with diversity with careful detachment, understand them as they are, and get them right: This would be my line, and I will otherwise leave this matter alone for now as my concerns lie in another direction. 

Here is Downie reflecting back on his own professional years at The Post: “I never understood what ‘objectivity’ meant. My goals for our journalism were instead accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability, and the pursuit of truth.”

Say whaaa? Is objectivity so out of fashion one must repudiate it while favoring the very things objectivity is intended to achieve? Are we so befuddled we descend into pointless word games? Parenthetically, I wonder whether someone who confesses he never understood the principle of objectivity ought to have served as managing editor and then executive editor of what was during his time a major American daily. A little unnerving to think about it.    

Well, objectivity as a professional principle has collapsed in “today’s newsrooms.” Let us make a virtue of this collapse. This is the Downie–Heyward thesis, fair to say. “Beyond Belief” is the better name for it.

■

We had better begin at the beginning, as what Downie and Heyward wish to perpetrate by way of awarding some kind of seal of approval is a very, very big deal not only for journalists and its practitioners but for the health or otherwise of our polity. 

Objectivity has been a contentious question for journalists since it was elevated to a professional orthodoxy a century ago. We can define it as the notion of truth untouched by opinion, sentiment, bias, belief, or ideology. Or: principled, disinterested fidelity to available evidence, all of it, even when it may conflict with one’s perspectives and leanings. 

Walter Lippmann was among objectivity’s influential advocates in the 1920s, but there began the complications. Objectivity was soon put to other uses: Newspapers and radio broadcasters that were other than objective cited their objectivity to claim elevated authority over their audiences. Publishers and editors used the imperative of objectivity to straitjacket reporters and neuter their faculties of discernment and judgment. The intent was to naturalize prevalent ideologies and orthodoxies—American exceptionalism, pre–Cold War anti–Communism, what we now call free-market fundamentalism. These were advanced as objective realities in no need of critical inspection.   

Along about the 1970s, when critical monthlies such as [MORE] were on newsstands, journalists who considered their craft seriously began to hold the encrusted dogma of objectivity up to the light. They did so in the name of the uncorrupted ideal. This is the ideal of objective reason, which dates to the ancient Greeks. It requires that thought be conducted without reference to the desirability of its conclusions. To make any such reference is to succumb to subjective reason. Socrates taught us that reason should determine belief: To allow belief to determine reason is the corruption of subjective reason. The late Robert Parry, a journalist of impeccable integrity, put the case for objective reason this way: “I don’t care what the truth is. I just care what the truth is.”

Ideals are never fully realized: This is so by definition, and certainly it holds for journalists. But ideals are to be striven for nonetheless. From the moment an editor or reporter decides which story to cover and which to leave alone, personal judgments and all that inform them are at work. There is nothing to be done about this and only one sound way for journalists to think about it. This requires an understanding of one’s responsibilities, quite special responsibilities, and the discipline to honor them. This was the point back in the [MORE] days, when conscientious journalists challenged the misuse of the principle of objectivity. It is among the lessons I learned in my earliest days as a professional. 

Now objectivity is up for consideration once again. And the project is not to restore the ideal: It is to discard the ideal altogether. The New York Times was the first to advocate this, in that Jim Rutenberg piece I mentioned in this space a short while ago, published at the time of Trump’s political ascendancy and headlined, “Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism.” This piece effectively announced the triumph of subjective reason, wherein thought is assigned the purpose of producing a desired outcome, and it has been a long time coming. Max Horkheimer identified this as among the maladies of our time—“the sickness of the thinking mechanism”—in “The Eclipse of Reason,” which he published in 1947, the same year, it is worth noting, the Truman administration set Cold War I in motion.

“‘Objectivity’ has lost its usefulness as a shorthand for journalism’s aspirations,” Michael Luo suggested in a piece he published in The New Yorker four years after Rutenberg’s. At the time, a reporter for one of the networks dismissed objectivity as “a failed experiment.” Reading these and other commentaries like them gave the strong impression that journalists active in  mainstream media were well on the way to making a mess of the matter, if they had not landed themselves in one already. Their thoughts as to what ought to replace the ideal of objectivity amount to a case for radical subjectivity, for a license to infuse one’s work with all that was previously to be guarded against: belief, emotion, bias, ideology. Wesley Lowery, who rendered the “failed experiment” judgment, calls this “moral clarity” but fails to explain whose morality he means. 

“I’m not arguing for subjectivity,” Lowery told Downie and Heyward, apparently in reply to his (numerous) critics. “I’m actually whole-heartedly endorsing objectivity as properly defined.” Lippmann, the old advocate of objectivity as an instrument of liberal ideology, lives in phrases such as Lowery’s. 

Not to be missed in all of this and as Lowery suggests, the subjectivists, as I will call them, are almost invariably inclined to wrap their biases and beliefs in the very language they purport to oppose—the traditional language of objectivity. It is in this way the subjectivists take us straight back to Lippmann and the restoration of objectivity-as-pose. With the history of this question in view I can think of few greater ironies. But a reading of any major daily’s front page on any given day makes this point quite clearly: We find the same sonorous, authoritative diction and the same faux disinterest used to naturalize contempt for whomever or whatever the press wants to attack and to approve of whatever it wishes to favor. It is by way of this professional sleight of hand that advocates of subjectivity propose to advance their ideological proclivities as none other than objective truth. We are back in the 1920s.

To cast this question in a larger context, to refute the principle of objectivity, is to railroad journalism straight into the swamp of postmodernism, wherein there is no reality but subjective reality, the truth is whatever one posits it to be, the truth one asserts on Monday is entirely fungible and may be different by Tuesday. How far distant do we stand from Orwell’s “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength?” Pomo newspapers and newscasts: Are we ready for this, readers? Or have we already arrived?

It is already evident—has been for years—where this kind of thinking gets us. If you can tell where the news section of any major daily ends and the opinion pages begin, I need your assistance. I can’t.

Here I make common cause with none other than Bret Stephens, the far-right New York Times columnist. You’ve got to love Bret. We all love Bret. We all set aside the disclosure a year ago next month that our Bret was on the QT editing a right-wing journal, Sapir, that is funded by a dark money op called the Maimonides Fund, a minor detail I would have liked to have known about. And let’s just forget that The Times ought to have fired Bret on this news, assuming—and this is a dicey assumption—it did not know of and approve of this undisclosed conflict of interest. At least now we can read Bret’s commentaries on Israel and know who writes one of his checks.   

Bret hasn’t got an objective bone in his body, his blood running as it does with conservative ideology. But Bret Stephens dwells in the land of opinions. We can buy them as he offers them or leave them on the shelf, as we wish. And in a column published last week he has come to the defense—imperfectly argued, but still—of objectivity and the difference between a reporter’s responsibilities and a columnist’s.

■

The genesis and timing of this… this swerve into stupidity must be noted if we are fully to understand it. 

It is not hard to discern the facts of the case. Recall the outsize expectations during the 2016 presidential campaigns that Hillary Clinton would win handily in her contest with the relentlessly denigrated Trump. This had a deeper meaning apart from delivering unto Clinton her moment in the sun. Her victory was to consolidate liberal ideology as humanity’s only way forward; it would mark the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama had so idiotically postulated years earlier.

Read into the chronology I have pencil-sketched—the Rutenberg declaration of The Times’s intent just as Trump rose to prominence, the debate subsequently conducted in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and now the Downie–Heyward report. As these people defenestrate the principle of objectivity, they are waging this same ideological battle on another front. It is quite unmistakable, is it not, that the campaign to drop objectivity as a professional principle is a  campaign conducted by liberals.  

We are listening, then, to the frightening emergence of liberal authoritarianism as it manifests in our newspapers and over our airwaves. Spongy, insidious phrases such as “moral clarity” refer to nothing more or less than the “morals,” if this is what they are, of the illiberal liberalism that has flowered among us since 2016. Never mind Donald Trump and his many wrongs, his hamburgers, and his ice cream. It is the liberal authoritarians among us who will prove the lasting blight, they who already begin to fulfill de Tocqueville’s prophecy of a “soft despotism” descending on America.

To stand for objectivity is to stand for something very important to a thriving public space, a verdant village green. It is part of what makes debate—discourse altogether—possible. To stand against it is nothing more than an argument in disguise for one-sideism, and that—know your history—leads to places only the worst among us would favor. 

***

A portion of this essay is extracted from “Journalists and Their Shadows,” forthcoming from Clarity Press. Cara Marianna contributed additional insight. 

 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/14/patrick-lawrence-objectivity-and-its-discontents/

 

 

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an other side.....

 

by Mendelssohn Moses

 

The President of the FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Oesterreichs) Herbert Kickl on the V. Zelensky show in front of the European Parliament on February 9: "to dare to describe this conflict as a 'total war' is an affront, in the face of which Austria must clearly show its distance".

On February 9, the FPÖ issued a statement https://www.fpoe.at/artikel/fpoe-fordert-rot-weiss-rotes-veto-gegen-kriegstreiberei-und-fuer-frieden-in-der-ukraine/, quoting its President Herbert Kickl regarding the speech of Vladimir (he is a Russian speaker) Zelensky in front of the European Parliament:

"We have not heard a single word about any commitment on his part to peace — on the contrary. We are pushing for an escalation in this war between Russia and Ukraine by delivering more and more weapons. Poor choice. The Austrian representatives must impose their veto against these warmongers and intervene in favor of peace. Zelensky has spoken of 'total war' and is being applauded by the EU Establishment!

These so-called elites have learned nothing from 20th century European history. Discovering this notion in Zelensky's speech, a speech in which every word was chosen with the greatest care, let it be said, is another lamentable proof, if need be, of the inability of the European elites to grasp the tragic dimension. We should have set Zelensky's clocks back on time, and instead of cheers, he should have encountered a heavy silence. Official Austria must distance itself from such a spectacle and such statements by Zelensky”.

What legitimacy do the warmongers of the EU have?

"The question is valid", Kickl continued, “if ever any vote at the national or European level paved the way for this war undertaken by the EU and its Member States. The show in the European Parliament is an agonizing example of their warmongering (…) Where will all this end? What is the next step ? Long-range missiles? Fighter-bombers? EU soldiers? When I replay the film of that day in my head, I conclude that we are not far from it.

This strategy is that of the elite launched against the interests of the European peoples… The EU has mutated: for a time a peaceful project, it has become an Alliance for War; it stirs up a conflict where blood flows unnecessarily on both sides. Nobody wants to take responsibility. The bill will be paid by the citizen of European countries. Hundreds of billions of Euros that these states do not really have go up in smoke in a war, while the EU elites are applauded. We are going mad."

On February 11, on the occasion of the reception in Vienna given by the "Green" President Van der Bellen to the foreign diplomatic corps https://www.bundespraesident.at/fileadmin/user_upload/2023_02_14_

Diplomatisches_Corps_Rede_FRANZOESISCH_formatiert.pdf, he distinguished himself in his speech by a displayed and strong hostility against Russia. Again, Herbert Kickl wished to remind him of the role assigned to Austria https://www.fpoe.at/artikel/bundespraesident-van-der-bellen-betaetigt-sich-weiter-als-totengraeber-unserer-neutralitaet/ . "Nobody asked the Austrians if they wanted to see their economy, their standard of living and their security as a society destroyed, through an economic war where the Austrian President and his allied parties (Schwarz-Grün-Rot-Pink) dragged them through these suicidal sanctions, all subjugated to the EU as they are. No one asked the people if our perpetual neutrality, which for decades ensured peace in Austria, should be sacrificed on the altar of an ever more radicalized Brussels. A Federal President who took his role seriously would place Austria's interest above all else. But Van der Bellen is the President of the elites and the Establishment".

Even before Prof. Wagenknecht in Germany – Kickl Chancellor of Austria?

However, it cannot be ruled out that Herbert Kickl, whose Party holds 31 seats in Parliament, will become Chancellor of Austria, driven by the upheavals of the months to come.

The FPÖ is a conservative party that has played a fundamental role in the fight against confinements and the vaccination mandate – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5gddaDVb0g, and Kickl's role was truly historic. Delivered on January 20, 2022, Kickl's speech to parliamentarians urging them not to vote for the vaccine mandate gives goosebumps https://www.wochenblick.at/politik/hoeren-sie-auf-ihr-gewissen-kickl-appell-an-alle-parteien-zum-impfzwang-stopp/ "Hoeren Sie auf Ihrem Gewissen" (Listen only to the voice of your conscience).

Shortly after, on March 4, 2022, Richard Lugner, ex-politician-turned-journalist at Puls 4 joked "We must send Kickl to Ukraine so that they execute him by bullets" (sic) (Den sollten sie irgendwann einmal in die Ukraine schicken, damit sie ihn dort erschießen! https://www.wochenblick.at/allgemein/lugner-entgleist-voellig-kickl-in-ukraine-erschiessen/)

Russiagate, Continuation.

In an attempt to nip the FPÖ "danger" in the bud, an endless stream of "Russiagate" style articles (https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000143503027/zahlungen-aus-russland-rechnungshof-prueft-vorwuerfe-gegen-fpoe-nicht ; https://www.krone.at/2927097 now appears in the Austrian press accusing the FPÖ of being the relay of the Kremlin; in 2016, the party had indeed concluded a friendship agreement with the United Russia party to which the current Russian President belongs https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/news/freedom-party-austria-signs-agreement-cooperation-united-russia.

Now the socialist party the SPÖ, https://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/politik/parteien/fpoe-will-russland-vertrag-nicht-offenlegen/545045896, accuses the FPÖ of having introduced since February 2022 30 parliamentary questions which would be “Russophile” (Russlandfreundlich – sic).

Moreover, in war as in war and little finger on the pants: poor Austria having dared to issue visas to Russian diplomats supposed to participate in the next OSCE conference in Vienna, the Usual Suspects have arisen and are on the move https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/13/neutral-austria-under-international-criticism-osce-sanctions/?tpcc=onboarding_trending to try to stop it.

 

READ MORE:

https://en.reseauinternational.net/zelensky-au-parlement-europeen-un-clown-sans-frontieres-vu-dautriche/

 

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the US did it....

by Pepe Escobar

What's left for all of us is to swim in a swamp full of neglected pigeons, dodgy cover stories, and shards of intelligence.

Seymour Hersh's explosive report on how the United States government blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea last September continues to cause geopolitical waves across the board.

Except, of course, in the parallel bubble of American mainstream media, which ignored him altogether or, in a few well-chosen cases, decided to shoot the messenger, calling Hersh a "discredited" journalist, a "blogger" and a “conspiracy theorist”.

I offered a first approach, focusing on the many merits of a seemingly thorough report, but also noting some serious inconsistencies.

Old-school Moscow-based foreign correspondent John Helmer went even further, and what he found might be as incandescent as Sy Hersh's account itself.

The crux of the issue in Hersh's report concerns the attribution of responsibility for a de facto industrial terrorist attack. Surprisingly, no CIA; that responsibility falls squarely on the toxic planning trio of Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland – neoliberal-conservatives part of the “Biden” combo. The final go-ahead is given by the ultimate decision-maker: the senile president and teleprompter reader himself. The Norwegians play the role of minor assistants.

This poses the first serious problem: at no point in his account does Hersh refer to MI6, the Poles (government, navy), the Danes, and even the German government.

He mentions that on January 20, 2022, “ after some hesitation », Chancellor Scholz « was now firmly on the American team ". Well, by then the plan had been under discussion, according to Hersh's source, for at least a few months. It also means that Scholz remained on the american team until the terrorist attack on September 20, 2022.

As for the British, the Poles and all the NATO games that were taking place off the island of Bornhom more than a year before the attack, the Russian media – from Kommersant à RIA Novosti – talked about it widely.

The Special Military Operation (SMO) was launched on February 24, almost a year ago. The explosion of Nord Stream 1 and 2 took place on September 26. Hersh assures that there was " more than nine months of top-secret debates within Washington's national security community about how to 'sabotage the pipelines' ».

This therefore confirms that the planning of the terrorist attack preceded by several months not only the WHO, but also, and above all, the letters sent by Moscow to Washington on December 20, 2022, asking for a serious discussion on "the indivisibility of security” involving NATO, Russia and the post-Soviet space. This request was met with a dismissive American non-response.

Although he wrote the story of a terrorist response to a serious geopolitical problem, the fact that a top professional like Hersh did not even bother to examine the complex geopolitical context raises eyebrows.

In a nutshell: the ultimate Mackinderian anathema to the American ruling classes – and this is bipartisan – is a Germany-Russia alliance, extended to China: that would mean the expulsion of the United States from Eurasia, and that conditions everything what any American government thinks and does in terms of NATO and Russia.

Hersh should also have noticed that the timing of the preparation for the "pipeline sabotage" undermines the official narrative of the US government that it is a collective effort by the West to help Ukraine against a " unprovoked Russian aggression”.

This elusive source

The account leaves no doubt that Hersh's source – if not the reporter himself – supports what is considered legal US policy: combating " Russian threat to Western dominance [in Europe] ».

So what appears to be a covert US Navy operation, according to the account, may have been misguided not for serious geopolitical reasons; but because the planning of the attack intentionally eluded US law "requiring that Congress be notified". This is an extremely narrow interpretation of international relations. Or, to be frank: it is an apology for exceptionalism.

And that brings us to what could be the Rosebud in this Orson Welles-worthy saga. Hersh refers to a " secure room on the top floor of the former Executive Office Building...which was also the headquarters of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) ».

This is where the planning of the terrorist attack would have been discussed.

Welcome to PIAB: the President Intelligence Advisory Board. All members are nominated by the current POTUS, in this case Joe Biden. If we look at the list of current PIAB members, we should, in theory, find Hersh's source (see, for example, “ President Biden announces appointments to President's Intelligence Advisory Board and National Science Board » ; and " President Biden announces key appointments to boards and commissions ").

The following are the PIAB members nominated by Biden: Sandy Winnefeld; Gilman Louie; Janet Napolitano; Richard Verma; Evan Bayh; Anne Finucane; Mark Angelson; Margaret Hamburg; Kim Cobb; and Kneeland Youngblood.

Hersh's source, according to his account, states beyond a shadow of a doubt that " Russian troops steadily and ominously reinforced on the borders of Ukraine " and " concern grew in Washington ". It is unbelievable that these supposedly well-informed people were unaware of the gathering of NATO-led Ukrainian troops across the line of contact, ready to launch a lightning strike against Donbass.

What everyone already knew at the time – as the recording itself on YouTube shows – is that the combo behind “Biden” was dead set on ending the Nord Streams by any means necessary. After the start of WHO, all that was needed was to find a plausible deniability mechanism.

Despite all the meticulous reporting, the inescapable feeling remains that what Hersh's account highlights is the terrorist gambit of the Biden combo, and never the overall US plan to provoke Russia into a proxy war with Israel. NATO using Ukraine as cannon fodder.

Moreover, Hersh's source may be eminently flawed. She said, according to Hersh, that Russia " did not respond to the terrorist attack on the pipeline because " maybe they want to have the ability to do the same things as the United States ».

This in itself may prove that the source was not even a member of the PIAB, and did not receive the PIAB's classified report assessing Putin's crucial September 30 speech, which identifies the "responsible" party. If so, the source is merely related (emphasis mine) to a member of the PIAB, was not invited to planning the crisis room that lasted for months, and is not certainly unaware of the finer details of this administration's war in Ukraine.

Given Sy Hersh's outstanding track record in investigative journalism, it would be quite refreshing for him to elucidate these inconsistencies. This would dispel the fog of rumors describing the report as a limited teaser.

Considering that there are several information "silos" within the American oligarchy, with their corresponding apparatuses, and that Hersh has cultivated his contacts among almost all of them for decades, he there is no doubt that the allegedly insider information about the Nord Stream saga is coming from a very specific address – with a very specific agenda.

So we should see who the story really indicts: certainly the Straussian neo-con/neoliberal-con combo behind “Biden,” and the faltering president himself. As I pointed out in my initial analysis, the CIA comes out unscathed.

And let's not forget that the Grand Narrative changes rapidly: the RAND report, the impending humiliation of NATO in Ukraine, the balloon hysteria, the psychological operations on UFOs. The real “threat” is – who else – China. What's left for all of us is to swim in a swamp full of neglected pigeons, dodgy cover stories, and shards of intelligence. Knowing that those who really run the show never show their hand.

Pepe Escobar

 

 

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https://en.reseauinternational.net/attaque-terroriste-du-nord-stream-le-complot-sepaissit/

 

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the 4th estate.......

 

BY jonathan turley

 

I will be speaking today in Colorado on the “Rise and Fall of the American Fourth Estate.” The speech explores the legal and political history of the free press in our democracy — and its rapid decline in the age of advocacy journalism. This week, a poll was released that shows just how much ground has been lost by this generation of journalists. Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that 50 percent of Americans believe that the news media lies in order to promote an agenda. Only 25 percent of Americans reject that premise.

The poll also shows that 52 percent of Americans disagree with the statement that “In general, most national news organization care about the best interests of their readers, views, and listeners.” Only 23 percent agree with that proposition.

The view of bias and untrustworthiness increased across the political spectrum, including among Democrats who usually favor the media given the liberal bent of the coverage.

It is also striking that the media is losing young viewers and readers with its current approach to journalism.

This poll is consistent with other polls showing that people are rejecting mainstream media in growing numbers. In 2021, a survey by the global communications firm Edelman (via Axios) found only 46 percent of Americans trust traditional media. That mirrors earlier polls by Gallup showing an even lower level of trust. Now this poll shows overwhelming distrust in the media.

I wrote a column a couple years ago asking how the media expects to survive while rejecting half of the country with overwhelmingly liberal coverage. Most news outlets seem to have written off conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans.

We have often discussed the increasing bias and advocacy in major media in the United States. While cable networks have long catered to political audiences on the left or right, mainstream newspapers and networks now openly frame news to fit a political narrative. With the exception of Fox and a couple of other smaller news outlets, that slant is heavily to the left. What is most striking about this universal shift toward advocacy journalism (including at journalism schools) is that there is no evidence that it is a sustainable approach for the media as an industry. While outfits like NPR allow reporters to actually participate in protests and the New York Times sheds conservative opinions, the new poll shows a sharp and worrisome division in trust in the media. Not surprisingly given the heavy slant of American media, Democrats are largely happy with and trusting of the media. Conversely, Republicans and independents are not. The question is whether the mainstream media can survive and flourish by writing off over half of the country.

A 2021 study from the non-partisan Pew Research Center showed a massive decline in trust among Republicans. Five years ago, 70 percent of Republicans said they had at least some trust in national news organizations. In 2021, that trust was down to just 35 percent. Conversely, and not surprisingly, 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they have “a lot” or “some” trust in the media. When you just ask liberal Democrats, it jumps to 83 percent.

This latest poll shows that the problem is only getting more acute for the media. Yet, publishers and editors are still pandering to the mob in calling for more advocacy and less objectivity. For individual media figures, these woke policies protect them personally from backlash or criticism even as they undermine their respective publications or media outlets.

For example, we recently discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as “bothsidesism.” Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a familiar reality for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.

Downie recounts how news leaders today...

...believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.

There was a time when all journalists shared a common “identity” as professionals who were able to separate their own bias and values from the reporting of the news.

Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”

This move away from objectivity has gained steam even as Bob Woodward and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting. Yet, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism.

This movement has been building for years.

In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.” 

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.

Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotten as inaccurate and inflammatory.

Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin has also called for the media to abandon balance and impartiality. Rubin has become notorious due to her screeds against Republicans and even calling for the Republican Party to be burned to the ground. I have previously written about how her work has lacked of not just objectivity but accuracy.

All of these voices show a complete disconnect from readers and viewers who do not want advocacy journalism and no longer trust what they are reading in the media. Yet, these calls remain personally popular for writers and editors alike. It is reminiscent of how executives at companies like Disney have pursued woke policies to the detriment of their shareholders and the alienation of many of their customers. The same is true for the push for censorship on social media despite the clear preference of users for more free speech and fewer speech controls.

That is why the latest poll is unlikely to deter the movement of “new journalism” in abandoning objectivity and impartiality. As Downie explained “objectivity” is
“keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.” So they will do their job even when viewers and readers no longer are interested in their work. Perhaps the new media can find a way to exist not only without conservatives but customers in general. That type of vanity press will require increasing subsidies from billionaires like Jeff Bezos, but they may balk at a media that is increasing writing for itself.

 

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http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/february/18/gallup-fifty-percent-of-americans-believe-media-lies-to-promote-agenda/

 

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