I've been thinking and writing about the war in Lebanon lately almost to the exclusion of other topics. In this I'm not alone; much of the media and the blogosphere is focused on the conflict, and rightly so.
And much of this discussion and thought isn't just about the war itself--strategy and battles and goals--but on the coverage of the action.
At first this fact puzzled me a bit, including my own emphasis on the media coverage--after all, isn't the conflict and what's behind it far more important than how the MSM chooses to frame it? The answer is yes, it should be--but the latter isn't just an unimportant side issue, either. It is absolutely essential to the war itself and can be instrumental in determining its outcome.
Morale, will, the perception of how essential it is to win a certain war and the justness of the cause--all have been part of war since time immemorial. Leaders have always had to inspire their armies; and now, in democracies, they have to inspire their people as well.
Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, and certainly prior to the 60s, the media used to be both less ubiquitous and more supportive of government efforts. During the Vietnam War, the media found its power as an antiwar force and a gadfly (see this for my views on the matter).
And since then, the media has never looked back. The irony is that the war in Vietnam probably was far more tangential to our interests than the present wars in Iraq or Lebanon, which are vital. But the media, like a junkie on a high, keeps going back for a fix of action and sensation and visual effect and almost kneejerk criticism of the US and Israel, without realizing the destructive potential of its own actions.
And those elements--the pursuit of sensation and effect--have become, I believe, at least as potent a motivator for the media's actions as any possible political bias of journalists. Perhaps even more.
On this point, Betsy Newmark cites an article by Noah Pollak that appeared today in National Review, "Video Made the Terrorist Star." In the piece, Pollak comments on the decline of "serious journalism," which was embedded in context and history and facts, and the ascendance of journalism as entertainment, designed to entertain and stimulate, looking for interesting "stories" and personal dramas.
Pollak doesn't even see journalists as especially biased, but rather as ignorant of the consequences of their actions, and intent on telling telegenic stories. And in doing so they have become, as he points out, codependent enablers of terrorists themselves.
In a far less important arena, I've noticed the same thing in coverage of sports events such as the Olympics. Over the years, fewer and fewer minutes were spent just showing us the unadorned action, and more and more time was devoted to fancy features about the personal lives of the athletes, usually highlighting tearjerker soap-opera type details designed to make it seem all the more "up close and personal." Pretty soon the sport became almost tangential to the story.
Well, it doesn't matter much with the Olympics, does it? I liked them better the old way, but who cares, really?
But war is different, and it matters, terribly. Because the truth is that the stupidity and short-sightedness of the media has worked to change the face of war. When, as Pollak puts it, "Hezbollah does not have a military strategy; it has a media strategy that so far has been chillingly effective," we understand that his words are true: Hezbollah doesn't need a military strategy. Military strategy has become increasingly irrelevant in today's modern, limited wars, every sensational detail of which is beamed around the globe at lightening speed.
Of course, if Israel ever decided to pursue a goal of all-out, total, war, the issue might become irrelevant. Israel could utterly destroy Hezbollah and Lebanon and even Iran if it so desired. But that has not happened so far, and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Iran are well aware--despite their demonizing of Israel as Satanic--that it's unlikely to happen.
So the media, pursuing its own selfish ends, has become the handmaiden of terrorists. And, in its shortsighted pursuit of sensation and "stories," the media could well be a participant in sowing the seeds of its own destruction, since the protection of a free press is not exactly the goal of Islamic jihadis.
Ironic, indeed.
An additional irony is that the media actions which you judge as so detrimental to the spread of "free-market" democracies, have developed in response to market incentives. News organizations, except BBC/NPR, are all capitalist businesses, following the profit imperative to maximize the return to shareholders.
So calls for more "responsibilit" and "morality" from the "MSM" will fall on deaf ears, with the management attention focused instead on advertising revenues and viewer numbers.
It's almost enough to make one question the infallibility of the "invisible hand" of the market. No,No, of course not, that would be heresy in ConservativeLand!
Thanks for the most succinct critique I've yet found of journalistic contrarianism.
Your wisdom will be conveyed to many other readers... (i.e., I'll steal shamelessly...)
NO! I'll give full credit. I promise.
The dynamic has now matured to the point that deceiving the media, and using the media to deceive, has become part of the strategy of both sides. What Ed Murrow taketh with one hand, he giveth with the other. It'll be interesting to see what impact this role has on the media itself. But I suspect that the situation won't last much longer in its present state.
"News organizations, except BBC/NPR, are all capitalist businesses, following the profit imperative to maximize the return to shareholders."
I think that there is a certain level of truth in this, but here are several important problems with this.
1) The majority of the media news organizations are hemoraging customers and money. There is a really serious question here. Which began first? The decline in relevancy of the news media, or the sensationalism and lack of seriousness on the part of the news media. Is it possible that the news media are, for whatever reason, acting in a fashion that is not in their best economic interest? Have they misjudged the market, producing entertainment that they enjoy but which is not in fact enjoyed by the customer. I recall an experience in High School in which a new student newspaper editor made big changes to the newspaper and ended up winning various awards. The problem was, none of the students were actually reading the newspaper. The content was being provided for other journalists. The readership themselves could have cared less.
2) NPR is in fact a business. It has a customer base which it must please, and most especially it is underwritten by a number of very large doaners who are also political foundations with particular agendas (for example, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation). If it is true that the other MSM organizations must produce content that satisfies thier customer base, it stands to reason that it is equally true that the NPR produces content to satisfy its customer base.
3) The BBC and AFP are state owned media organizations. You assert that this makes them independent of satisfying thier customers, but what you really should say is that it makes them independent of satisfying thier viewers. They are however wholly dependent on funding from the state, and thier administrators are likewise subject to pressure directly from the government. If it is true that the corporate owned media agencies must alter thier content to satisfy the people that sign thier checks, then it must be equally true that the BBC and AFP must alter thier content to satisfy the people that sign thier checks.
"It's almost enough to make one question the infallibility of the "invisible hand" of the market."
Not really. I recall those falling revenues of the MSM are accompanied with the proliferation of media choices as well as the rise of real serious journalism (interviews, facts, context, on site reporting, etc.) amongst the blogosphere. The market is correcting itself. It does suggest to me that you can't defy economic law no matter how you shuffle your political system, something you seem content to ignore.
"Which began first? The decline in relevancy of the news media, or the sensationalism and lack of seriousness on the part of the news media."
The problem was likely always there, particularly in the case of television. Anyone who has never read it should get their hands on a copy of Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Abolition of Television (circa 1978 - get this back in print!), and contemplate his stories of what messages could and could not be passed through the filter of television PSAs. You don't have to be a leftist - particularly these days - to buy his arguments.
His prescription was then impractical given the lack of an alternative. But here we are. How many of us, posting or lurking, of whatever political persuasion, have proudly noted that we have sworn off TV news, or TV or even MSM generally? Want to guess our collective demographics, psychographics, and even VALS profiles? I've seen some of them, and you'd better believe those running MSM properties know what's going on - a steady flight of trendsetters, influencers, and high earning elite.
So is Murrow coming back to save that audience, or is it being given up as a bad job, as 'death ground' for mass media? Consider the résumes of current network newsreaders, and the danse macabre that makes war, blood, and death into a combination of Survivor and traffic accident, and you've got the answer. Even puerile levels of analysis get to fight it out with the televangelists for air time.
What's lagging is a rewiring of the political and policy process around the infantilization produced by the MSM chokehold. The policy makers still twitch when a Hezbollah agitprop piece runs on the CBS evening news, even if we no longer understand its real political consequence. It's paradoxical that such bitter opponents as GWB and Howard Dean both seem to have a visceral sense that the game has changed, and are both unable to articulate or drive the change.
One of the things I notice is the importance of the culture of TV reporting. I like to use Fox news as an example because it is more supportive of the conservative point of view. My observations is that it falls right into the trap of saturating the airwaves with emotionally manipulative imagery that has much the same impact as CNNs. I live in Australia and haven't seen their coverage of the current war but I was in the US in 2003-4 and was quite surprised to see that particularly if you turned the sound off the constant imagery of burning US vehicles on all the channels amounted to much same visual message. My theory is that they don't really know how to do television any other way - even when, like Fox, they are trying to put out different content. The form dominates because the visual dominates and they all edit for the emotional impact of the visuals.
"It does suggest to me that you can't defy economic law no matter how you shuffle your political system, something you seem content to ignore."
I am far from ignoring that fact, which is why I am so certain that the Bush administration policies of spending our children's money will end disastrously.
My point was that the objectives of producing good journalism and return on investment only coincide sometimes. Clearly a competetive system of diverse information sources is best for democracy. The best radio info source in my town is community-owned and it provides an important alternative to the Clear Channel party-line (Ban The Chicks,etc.).
Markets are human-created systems which operate under human-created rules, not some divine law handed down from Heaven. Recognizing that markets are good economic tools does not mean ignoring obvious market failures and negative consequences. Every country on earth limits and restricts market activities for common sense reasons. For obvious reasons the "free market" in plutonium is not operational right now.
There is no "law" that the economic process of consolidation should be to continue to the point where a single corporation controls all print or electronic media in a locale. Instead, almost every country, including the US, chooses diversity of opinion as a higher value than unmodified "free" media markets, by limiting local media market domination. Even Adam Smith himself recognized the negative effects of monopoly on the competition which helps markets become more efficient.