The Death of Journalism
Misinformation, hubris and the shunning of objectivity has led to the stunning demise of the Fourth Estate.
I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Journalism in 1980. By my math, that was 42 years ago.
It has not aged well.
I was 25 and enamored with what I believed in the noblest of professions. This was in the aftermath of the Watergate saga. Walter Cronkite was still the most trusted man in broadcasting. 60 Minutes was in its 12th season and gaining momentum. Hell, even if I couldn’t be “Woodstein,” I dreamt of living the gonzo life of Hunter S. Thompson.
Moreover, Journalism flowed in my blood. My father was a lifer with the Associated Press, where he was a colleague of Joe Rosenthal and Nick Ut, both AP Pulitzer Prize winning photographers, and Peter Arnett, AP correspondent and Pulitzer winner for his coverage of the Vietnam War. As a staffer at the San Diego Union, I thought I was embarking on my life’s journey in the Fourth Estate.
It didn’t turn out that way. I became a P.R. exec in Major League Baseball, a communications specialist and eventually a teacher. My career in Journalism became The Road Not Taken.
For me, it has made all the difference.
Truth: What Has Happened to the Fourth Estate?
I look upon journalism today with equal amounts of sadness, regret and exasperation.
In college I learned that reporting facts, tracking current events, dispersing information clearly and objectively, and holding policy-makers accountable were the foundational roles of the press. The reader/viewer was responsible for analyzing the facts and using critical thinking skills to ascertain the truth.
Not anymore. Not even close.
Over the years, particularly the past decade facts, objectivity, analysis and critical thinking have been taken out of the equation. Where does that leave the Truth?
Today, the Fourth Estate is just a memory, an anachronism of Western Enlightenment Philosophy. Cause of death: Political and cultural warfare.
The 24/7 news cycle has devolved into a partisan free-for-all, a nightly rage of ideological spitballing. Lots of categories for the finger-pointing … misinformation … disinformation … propaganda … “fake news.” Lately, reporting comes with allegations of media activism and even espionage. (Click here)
In fact, the depth and scope of the corruption of the media is so pernicious that objective truth has been obliterated, giving way to moral relativism.
There are often said to be five main ‘theories of truth’: correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, redundancy, and semantic theories. The coherence theory of truth equates the truth of a judgment with its coherence with other beliefs. Different versions of the theory give different accounts of coherence, but in all its forms the point is to exhibit truth as an internal relation between beliefs.
Got that? Neither did I.
Relativism is the belief that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture happens to believe. In other words, there is no such thing as THE truth … there’s only MY truth. To relativists, 2 + 2 = 5 is reality, your truth, if that's what you believe.
The Source?
Part of it is our own fault. According to The Literacy Project Foundation, the average American reads at between a 7th and 8th grade level. Consider this …
Currently, 45 million Americans are functionally illiterate and cannot read above a fifth-grade level
50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level
57% of students failed the California Standards Test in English
Source: The Literacy Project Foundation
American teenagers are not turning pages of To Kill A Mockingbird or The Hunger Games. Rather, they are glued to devices … scrolling, trolling, killing animated bad guys and doctoring selfies to eliminate blemishes and correct bone structure. According to ABC News, the average teen spends more than 7 hours a day on their phones.
After maturing to adulthood, the average American spends his/her day living life, working, running errands or tending to family matters. We are too busy to read and digest details of foreign policy, or research the data behind pandemic response.
So we outsource our thinking on where the truth lies to trusted voices in the media. After all, they have always been the brokers of news currency: information.
More and more, however, news currency has coalesced with legal tender. And there’s plenty of proof that consolidation of those currencies are brokered at levels far above the newsroom but in corporate boardrooms, in halls of government and the headquarters of Big Tech. The Cultural Elite.
“More and more, however, news currency has coalesced with legal tender. And there’s plenty of proof that consolidation of those currencies are brokered at levels far above the newsroom but in corporate boardrooms, in halls of government and the headquarters of Big Tech. The Cultural Elite.”
This is neither conspiracy nor Tin Foil Hat fodder. Truth is dependent on information, and he who controls the information controls reality.
Think Orwell.
First casualty: Print journalism
I became a journalist so I could write, rather than a writer so I could practice journalism. But as technology advanced in the 1990s the demise of print journalism soon followed.
As Internet tech grew, newsprint dwindled. Online access, advertising, corporate stewardship, and social media played major roles in the shift.
Since 2004, there have been about 1,800 newspapers that have been shut down, most of them (1,700) were weeklies. Since 2004 on average 100 newspapers have been closing each year. Many dailies (and their advertising) have relocated partly and sometimes exclusively to online delivery. Staff sizes reduced accordingly.
Moreover, as the size of newspapers dwindled, so did industry competence. Journalism’s most experienced and accomplished writers, editors and columnists – those wedded to objectivity in search of the truth – have either died out or been forced out, replaced by younger, less competent ideologues.
The Rise of Social Media
When information is weaponized, misused or abused, trust in the media erodes.
Therein lies the paradox of new media, which includes social media. Over the past 15 years, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and streaming services have overtaken and overwhelmed traditional media. With the whole world at your fingertips it isn’t surprising that news delivery is fragmented and factionalized.
Unfortunately, the techno giants are driving the news, not vice-versa. Reporters, editors and other “blue-checked” influencers parse links – very strategically – in small, byte-sized chunks. Subsequently, when a semi-literate, gullible audience starts clicking, it doesn’t take long for confirmation bias and caveman DNA to take over.
However, social media also serve a redeeming purpose. Through its many channels and platforms, people are talking with each other. Yes, it can be feral and toxically divisive. No, Twitter isn’t real life. But information is being exchanged. It’s no longer a one-way street.
Legacy Media: Corporate influence and public rejection
Americans have become increasingly distrustful of the media. Collective approval ratings of legacy media rank somewhere between diarrhea and cockroaches. They are largely unwatchable.
CNN, the “most trusted name in news,” is drowning … partly because of its lockstep allegiance to the Democratic party, and partly because of self-inflicted scandals and newsroom incest. It’s Left-leaning cohort, MSNBC, is already opaque, and will be virtually invisible once its only star, Rachel Maddow, takes permanent leave.
Their political rival – Fox News – is more popular but no less unpalatable. Let’s not kid ourselves … CNN was called out for malfeasance in its unethical association with former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Don’t think for a minute that Fox anchors aren’t similarly linked to leaders of the Republican party. Theirs is a nightly gripefest of partisan complaints and smug-mugging.
Ubiquitous on all newscasts are legions of “experts,'' brought on to expand upon or bring validity to stories. They often speak in tropes to clarify or interpret information. In practice, however, their three-minute segments are tantamount to faux diplomacy. They are there simply to validate preexisting bias. Or shilling for a book.
If you look even closer, you also might notice the “experts” have skin in the game. Think about that next time you see a retired general lend his expertise. Check and see if he is now a consultant for Lockheed Martin, or Raytheon. Or if the medical expert has ties to Big Pharma.
All of it is shameful, childish and dehumanizing.
Check out this memorable scene from the 1976 satire “Network.” Prophetic?
Media Hubris: Don’t think critically, rely on Us
Worse yet is news hubris. Charlie Warzel, a New York Times columnist who styles himself an expert in “online radicalization,” recently implored readers not to “go down the rabbit hole,” in an op-ed depicting the dangers of evaluating new information with nothing but one’s own mind.
Thinking critically, says Warzel, leads to giving away one’s precious attention to conspiracy theorists whose only apparent goal is to dupe you.
Instead, you need to trust the honest narrative brokers at the Times, who just want to make sure your brain is filled with the required “right thinking” quota - about viruses, Russians, your neighbors, parents as terrorists, pronouns, racism and the deficiencies lurking within your subconscious.
Thinking critically, says Warzel, can lead to giving away one’s precious attention to conspiracy theorists whose only apparent goal is to dupe you.
Yes, Charlie Warzel, of the New York Times, believes thinking critically is a waste of time.
Think about that for a second.
Then there’s CNN spokesman Brian Stelter. Stelter’s recent rant about podcasters distracting viewers from CNN was embarrassing and cringe-worthy … almost as bad as CNN’s Legal Analyst and Zoom star Jeffrey Toobin taking matters into his own hands.
Take heart! The growth of Podcasts
Because of the Internet, legacy media and government no longer have a monopoly on information. Try as they might, they also don’t have a stranglehold on the national narrative.
Much has been made recently of martial-artist-turned-comedian-turned-actor-turned podcaster Joe Rogan. His podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, has blossomed into a new media monster. The JRE has nearly 12 million subscribers, far outdistancing any network, cable or streaming newscast. 1
In Sept., 2020, Rogan signed a contract with streaming service provider Spotify, in a deal now revealed to be worth $200 million (twice as much as previously reported).
Rogan, an affable “man’s man” with an easy smile and cat’s curiosity, hosts a wide variety of guests, engaging in three-hour conversations. Guests range from MMA fighters to fellow comics to best-selling authors and leading intellectuals.
Recently, legacy media and online culture warriors tried to “cancel” Rogan, citing first his spreading of COVID “misinformation,” then with accusations of racism. As typical of Rogan, his response was genial and levelheaded: “I’ll do better.”
This positivism and “Average Joe” persona are the primary reasons for his popularity. He brushed off the outrage performers and moved on. In the interim, his base grew by a half-million new subscribers.
Podcasting has grown exponentially since Rogan’s little DIY project began in his basement 14 years ago. There are thousands of podcasts available on every conceivable platform. Politics, of course. But there are podcasts on every topic imaginable … culture, entertainment, all of the arts, sports, health, comedy, science, fiction … even knitting.
And it doesn’t require a journalism degree to do it.
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Jim Geschke was inducted into the Marquis’ Who’s Who in America registry in 2021.
In one recent episode, with Dr. Robert Malone, the JRE podcast had more than 40 million views, exceeding all cable prime time broadcast audiences for a month … combined.
This piece is right on point. 100%.
I cringe at any effort to further erode confidence in the free press, and even though I think there is a concerted effort to do that here you really do highlight some important and legit issues. I wish there was some nuance so readers weren't consuming the information with the hypothesis in mind that news if bad now, but I think they will benefit regardless from the information provided. If there was any single point that I think is the truest assault on journalism, its the demise of local newspapers. The fact that was one of your first points is telling and appropriate. It's a well thought piece, even if I don't love the prevailing theory being offered.