The Sad
Slide of Truth into the Media Cesspool
What
used to be the aim of journalism--presenting the facts--has now become a
sideshow in the race for eyeballs, and the bottom.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology @tullman
I blame Rupert and
Fox. They brought yellow journalism back to the U.S. in spades and the
"news" hasn't been the same ever since. The media game changed
radically and rapidly and even those with the best of intentions had to adapt
and adjust or go under. It's a painful race to the bottom of the barrel and a
constant struggle to create more useless content to toss into the vacuous
vortex. Everyone's obliged to feed the beast. Repurposing and spinning other
people's content to keep up is what has been called "churnalism" and
it's rampant.
And, if you can't make
it, then feel free to fake it. Just this week, a former Fox news analyst
claimed that Fox News hosts regularly say things they know to be untrue just
for the sake of ratings and notoriety.
Facebook execs,
including Mark Zuckerberg, can't figure out why they should bar the Holocaust
deniers and the other made-up conspiracy scumbags from their site (and not just
the newsfeed) when 99% of their users think the answer is obvious. But then,
Zuck isn't about raising the bar-- he's all about the bucks and he sucks. But
the saddest part of the FB story is his constant claim that Facebook isn't a
media business, which makes its living selling small slices of your attention
to advertisers. He says it's just a platform that happens to bring the
"news" to billions of people every day. Give me a break, Zuck, and
get real.
There was a time not
too long ago when there was only one inviolate rule in journalism - the
absolute separation between news and opinion. "Everyone is entitled to his
own opinion, but not to his own facts" was the way Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan famously put it, in 1989. If you, as a journalist, followed that
simple rule, you could smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish, as long as
you made deadline. If your writing style was breathless (as opposed to
timeless) and halfway between cheesy and choppy, well that's what editors were
for. And, in your haste to beat out your buddies, you could even occasionally
get your facts a little messed up.
Of course, getting the
facts straight was nowhere near as hard as it is today where the process is
equal parts sloppy and intentionally skewed. Getting it right takes a daily and
distant backseat to getting it out first and fastest. And, what's even worse, in
a social media-centric version of Gresham's Law, fake news today tends to blot
out and smother any semblance of legitimate, measured and meticulous reporting.
Some 75% of the American public say they can't tell the difference between real
news and the fake stuff and more than 50% no longer read or watch any
mainstream media. In a democracy, without a common ground and some shared basic
facts, it's impossible to have any kind of useful dialogue or discussion. And
when the majority tunes out entirely, you're stuck with everyone settling for
their own version of their "truth".
It's pretty sad that
no one trusts the media any more, but the players don't have to lend its own
helping hand to this sleazy slide into the cesspool. Reporters used to pride
themselves above all on their independence, their neutrality and their
objectivity. The television detective Joe Friday of Dragnet wasn't
the only one focused on "just the facts, Ma'am." Writers weren't
supposed to inject themselves and their theories, opinions and prejudices into
their stories -- that's what editorials were for. The suits sitting in the
comfy suites upstairs would write their endless editorials intending to educate
and edify us in so many important ways. But the guys and girls running around
the city sourcing the stories just told their stories the best and most
accurate way they knew how. Short, sweet and to the point. Today's digital
media is quite short, but it's rarely sweet, and almost always pointless.
I'm not exactly sure
when it started or what caused reporters to think that they were now mind
readers and oracles, but practically every news story you read is full of
reporters' snide asides, unwarranted observations and gratuitous jabs at
somebody. The examples are legion, but it's not worth the time or space to list
them. We read that this politician is "trying desperately to shed a
certain label" or that another is only supporting certain legislative
positions in order to "to position himself for higher office." Or the
pieces are stuffed with fake facts, suspect statistics or phony factoids that
fit the prejudices and predispositions of the writers.
The media's methods,
motives and messages are all under constant attack for increasingly good
reasons, but the really sad news is that it's the public's trust in just about
anything that's been the most obvious and immediate victim of this wholesale
rush to sensation, celebrity and notoriety. Most current surveys rank
media just below politicians and used car salesmen and just a drop above pond
scum.
We were also always
told that there was an ironclad "Chinese wall" between the guys and
girls running around the city sourcing the stories and the people selling ads
and space. A sacrosanct separation between reportage and revenues - where craven cash flow considerations never seeped subtly into the deliberations or
influenced the sometimes-delicate decisions about when and what the papers
would be writing. It feels like the drama and hard calls made around the
publication of the Pentagon Papers may have been the industry's high-water mark
and that it's been all downhill since then. And, needless to say, back then,
misleading and mendacious headlines weren't written with half an eye toward
collecting clicks and aggregating eyeballs rather than highlighting critical
content.
It's always important
to highlight your material and it's still called the newspaper business
because you've got to sell news, papers and advertising, and no one doubts
that a great headline is still something to be valued and appreciated as it
helps to launch the day's papers and websites into the hands of readers. But it
never felt quite as slimy and sneaky (and cheap) as it does today-- when
it's all about SEOs trying to capture anyone and everyone's attention at any
cost, hijacking someone's else's triumphs or tragedies, and driving people from
site to site like rats in a maze. Our cellphones may be irradiating our
earlobes, but the glut and pace of digital media is turning our brains to mush.
There's no happy
ending in sight for these problems. And no easy answers either. It's clear that
the media can't fix itself since it's totally hooked on hype, desperate for
cash, and constantly competing for clicks. And sadly, none of us has the guts
to go cold turkey and try to turn all this noise off because FOMO is almost as
prevalent a disease these days as any other form of addiction. So, what can we
do in our own businesses to help stem the tide?
Three suggestions.
First, focus on what you can control and/or fix. Don't make things worse and don't
contribute to the crap. Make it about providing good information for smart
decision-making rather than slick selling. Second, when you reach out to
customers and clients, say exactly what you mean to do and then do exactly what
you said you would. Living well may be the best revenge but living up to your
promises and delivering the goods is what makes for lifelong connections and a
great business. And finally, make something every day that you can be proud of.
Something you can stand by and for, that makes a difference, and that sometime
soon, you can point out to your kids and say, "I made this".
Anyone who thinks that
the misguided mopes who are writing clever copy, snarky headlines, and
"news that no one needs" feel good about themselves or what they're
doing is kidding themselves. They may be cynical, but even they aren't that
stupid. They know they're just adding trash to the pile. But what they may not
know is that when you do something every day that you don't believe in, it
takes a little bit of your soul away and a sad soul can kill you quicker than
any infection.