Armin Rosen poses a very interesting Russiagate question in Tablet. It begins with some pointed criticisms of Jeff Gerth's four-part review of the issue in The Columbia Journalism Review. I haven't read Gerth's articles because in my view this Rosen piece stands on its own.
Why Jeff Gerth’s Endlessly Long Four-Part CJR Limited Hangout Doesn’t Wash
Lee Smith got the story right six years ago
The media will never be able to overcome the Russiagate catastrophe unless it recognizes that its failures weren’t hidden inside labyrinths of Slack channels or text message traffic, but were in fact public and obvious. They were so public and so obvious that the media-consuming public itself noticed: Per Gallup’s polling, the percentage of Americans saying they had no trust at all in the media went from 24% in 2018 to an all-time high of 38% today, while the number saying they had a great to fair degree of trust plunged from 45% to 34% during that same span.
With Russiagate, the media doesn’t have the excuse of being flummoxed by a complex or nebulous factual record. Thanks to Smith, Lake, Techno Fog, and numerous others whom Gerth ignores, we’ve known for years that the media worked in concert with a political comms firm and elements of federal law enforcement and the intelligence community to peddle an incorrect theory about a secret deal between an enemy of the United States and an American presidential candidate they all didn’t like.
All of which begs the question: Does the media not want to overcome the Russiagate catastrophe? And why not?
The key question is obvious enough. Why are the news media so relaxed about Russiagate, here in the UK as well as the US?
The media actually has learned a lesson from Russiagate, hinted at in CJR’s refusal to acknowledge the people and outlets who got the story right from the very beginning. The lesson is that serious self-reflection should be avoided at all costs. And why not? For much of the media, Russiagate was a rousing success: It kept everyone busy and motivated, and it saved a dying business model (one interesting detail in Gerth’s story is that the American media produced over a half-million articles or television segments about Russiagate)...
If Russiagate discredited the media in the public’s eyes more than any single event this century, that’s because it also cemented the news industry’s role within a broader messaging structure. The media, for its part, seems not only to have accepted this new role, but to actually prefer it to loftier alternatives. There will be no serious self-exploration of the media’s Russiagate misdeeds. The American news industry traded away its credibility but is too satisfied with whatever money and sense of purpose it got in return to demand that much of itself.
The media will never be able to overcome the Russiagate catastrophe unless it recognizes that its failures weren’t hidden inside labyrinths of Slack channels or text message traffic, but were in fact public and obvious. They were so public and so obvious that the media-consuming public itself noticed: Per Gallup’s polling, the percentage of Americans saying they had no trust at all in the media went from 24% in 2018 to an all-time high of 38% today, while the number saying they had a great to fair degree of trust plunged from 45% to 34% during that same span.
With Russiagate, the media doesn’t have the excuse of being flummoxed by a complex or nebulous factual record. Thanks to Smith, Lake, Techno Fog, and numerous others whom Gerth ignores, we’ve known for years that the media worked in concert with a political comms firm and elements of federal law enforcement and the intelligence community to peddle an incorrect theory about a secret deal between an enemy of the United States and an American presidential candidate they all didn’t like.
All of which begs the question: Does the media not want to overcome the Russiagate catastrophe? And why not?
The key question is obvious enough. Why are the news media so relaxed about Russiagate, here in the UK as well as the US?
The media actually has learned a lesson from Russiagate, hinted at in CJR’s refusal to acknowledge the people and outlets who got the story right from the very beginning. The lesson is that serious self-reflection should be avoided at all costs. And why not? For much of the media, Russiagate was a rousing success: It kept everyone busy and motivated, and it saved a dying business model (one interesting detail in Gerth’s story is that the American media produced over a half-million articles or television segments about Russiagate)...
If Russiagate discredited the media in the public’s eyes more than any single event this century, that’s because it also cemented the news industry’s role within a broader messaging structure. The media, for its part, seems not only to have accepted this new role, but to actually prefer it to loftier alternatives. There will be no serious self-exploration of the media’s Russiagate misdeeds. The American news industry traded away its credibility but is too satisfied with whatever money and sense of purpose it got in return to demand that much of itself.
5 comments:
And our media aren't any better on this side of the pond, so no smugness please.
"Why are the news media so relaxed about Russiagate, here in the UK as well as the US?"
I offer a new phrase: systemic elitism.
Nobody admits sucking up to the elite as a conscious activity, therefore it must be unconscious bias i.e. systemic.
Well if certain groups can argue for systemic racism (believed in but not overtly shown) systemic elitism is not that much of a stretch. And there are echoes of colonial Establishment too.
Tammly - I think the BBC and Guardian have hogged our entire supply of media smugness.
DJ - that's a good phrase and systemic elitism seems to be real. We see it on display in the BBC. I think the high salaries are there to ensure that presenters see themselves as upper middle class and at least fit to mingle with elites.
I used to be so naive that I took the Watergate affair at face value. Then it was revealed that Deep Throat was an FBI man so I assumed it was an FBI plot. Then recently I learnt that the journalist Woodward was a CIA man. So: in all probability a CIA plot. And Nixon was sap enough to fall for it.
Presumably it would have been known to quite a few journalists that he was CIA and yet not a dicky bird reached the population.
dearieme - I took the Watergate affair at face value too. I still don't see why Nixon didn't make a better attempt to defend himself, but maybe he saw it as a battle he couldn't win politically whatever defence he adopted.
Post a Comment