{"id":72101,"date":"2016-04-18T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=72101"},"modified":"2016-04-16T18:34:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T17:34:45","slug":"when-newspapers-die-and-reporters-go-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/when-newspapers-die-and-reporters-go-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"When Newspapers Die and Reporters Go Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"media<\/a><\/p>\n

14 Apr 2016 – <\/em>When right wingers go off on NPR\u00a0and the New York Times for being mouthpieces of\u00a0the Democratic Party or left wingers criticize Fox News\u00a0and PBS\u00a0for\u00a0having too many conservatives on the air, it makes my head spin. Is there no such thing as truth anymore or not a single honest reporter in town?<\/p>\n

No. And we shouldn\u2019t expect there to be. Journalism is one of those bedrock institutions that are critical to a democratic society. Reporters are supposed to inform citizens of things they need to know, to help them navigate the world confidently, effectively,\u00a0to live well and prosper. Such a noble calling reporters have. From the outside journalism looks like public service. Sometimes it is. But from the inside, the news business is like making sausage or\u00a0politics. The average person\u00a0really wouldn\u2019t like\u00a0to watch how the news is actually made. It\u2019s a pretty dirty and disgusting business even if people like\u00a0the news product they consume every day.<\/p>\n

Reporters are supposed to be fair and thorough but they are often fatuous\u00a0and sloppy. In order\u00a0to make their deadlines they\u00a0take short cuts, make deals, trade information, manipulate gate-keepers, misrepresent themselves, snivel, dissemble and act disingenuously or even\u00a0dishonestly. Some are quite vindictive and write\u00a0just enough of the truth to tell a lie or support one. Judith Miller\u2019s shameless reporting about Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction when he didn\u2019t have any comes to mind. Not exactly the kind of people\u00a0who follow the golden rule in their work life. But theirs is such a noble calling.<\/p>\n

There is a kind of catechism you learn when you go to J-School: get the facts, get the story, get if first, but get it right. That inspiring code of ethics is a load of hooey\u00a0because in the real world there are a number of factors that limit the unfettered competition for the public\u2019s attention\u00a0and they\u00a0have little or nothing to do with the pursuit of truth, journalistic ethics\u00a0or the craft of reporting. I shall call these limits Journalism\u2019s\u00a0Ten Commandments. If you break these rules, you will be\u00a0ostracized and banished from the 4th Estate to an alternate reality called the 5th Estate. In the\u00a0world of alternative news\u00a0everything is the same except you don\u2019t get paid for the work you do.\u00a0If\u00a0you fall from grace and lose your job with the MSM you can keep reporting but then it\u2019s a hobby. Just when you really need to, you can\u2019t itemize deductions and take off the cost of your cable, telephone, and magazine prescription anymore. The news is such a noble pursuit.<\/p>\n

But this is the price you pay for taking too much for granted. It catches up with all reporters eventually. They think they have a divine right to tell the truth. They don\u2019t. They have a platform to tell stories. Hopefully, the stories they tell are good ones bolstered by the facts. But if a reporter gets the facts wrong or if somebody else has a story that is false but more persuasive, then the Greek goddess Nemesis first makes proud and then destroys. As a character type, reporters\u00a0are notorious for their cocky disrespectful attitudes about sacred things and important people. When they\u2019re not that kind, they are something else: lickspittles for the masters\u00a0who \u201cmake the rules for the wise men and the fools.\u201d That is a Bob Dylan line from \u201cIt\u2019s Alright Ma, I\u2019m Only Bleeding\u201d. He wasn\u2019t singing about reporters but he could have been.<\/p>\n

Legions of reporters are out of work since newspaper and television news layoffs began about ten years ago. Those\u00a0people didn\u2019t do anything wrong but they\u00a0got the shaft anyway. They were good soldiers,\u00a0loyal\u00a0to their news organizations, covered their beats, and served the public good. Then the news business changed almost overnight. Ad revenues that supported local print and broadcast news operations declined\u00a0and like a rising flood the layoffs began to drown\u00a0the ranks of an entire profession. Most cities could no longer support two newspapers, so many of them merged or simply ceased to exist. According to\u00a0PaperCuts,<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>a website that tracks the decline of the print media,\u00a0166 newspapers in the U.S died between 2008-2010. More than 30,000 reporters have lost their jobs in the last decade. That is a big deal but not my major talking point here. The financial troubles in the news business are serious but that is not the only crisis reporters are facing.<\/p>\n

You work hard and long hours and you\u2019re a reporting machine, a truth seeker who gives comfort to the afflicted and who afflicts the comfortable, but then one day you make a mistake. Even really good reporters\u00a0like Dan Rather make mistakes. A CBS story Rather\u00a0reported in\u00a02004 was based\u00a0on what turned out to be forged documents critical of George W. Bush while his father was running for President. This proved to be Rather\u2019s\u00a0downfall. The truth is\u00a0what the editors and owners of news organizations\u00a0say it is. Not what a reporter or even a\u00a0famous news anchor\u00a0says it is. Rather paid the price for being the talking head of his\u00a0network that could not authenticate the documents the Bush story was based on. This is something they don\u2019t tell you in J-School: don\u2019t let your mouth get bigger than your dick or you\u2019ll have it cut off and stuffed down your throat. Reporting the news is such a noble calling\u2014and quite a wonderful life\u2013until, for whatever reason, it suddenly ends. In Rather\u2019s case, it didn\u2019t. He got a gig with Mark Cuban\u2019s AXS cable channel,\u00a0so he was lucky. CBS bought a piece of the channel in 2013 so now, ironically, Rather is back\u00a0working for the same people who hung him out to dry. Go figure.<\/p>\n

Those thousands of laid-off reporters are\u00a0victims of changing times, not their own malfeasance. There are lots of reasons why they are no longer employed: because circulation numbers and TV viewership declined, because ad revenues could no longer support\u00a0the business side of the news,\u00a0because the Internet brought ubiquitous news to the masses for free, because people are\u00a0no longer served\u00a0by a single primary source of news in their community, because the role of a daily\u00a0newspaper has been eclipsed by the public\u2019s boutique appetite for news and entertainment selected from a wide menu of choices available via cable, satellite, and the Internet, because a la carte news\u00a0reflects people\u2019s particular values and interests and not the choices of editors who once decided what is important for people to know, and because newspapers have not been able to generate sufficient revenues from their on line editions to hire enough reporters to cover the news as\u00a0well as they used to.<\/p>\n

In addition to the widespread layoffs and newspaper closings, there is another challenge\u00a0journalists face that is at once both philosophical as well as profoundly personal.\u00a0What concerns me here are the knockers, the misfits, and the unreliable sources that must constantly be weeded from the grounds of respectable journalism, like pulling out crab grass in\u00a0a well-kept lawn. Here are the ten commandments of mainstream journalism that if broken\u00a0can be\u00a0career-ending mistakes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Thou Shall Not Consort With the Enemy: don\u2019t give your sources away to the competition or to law enforcement authorities or anybody not on your team.<\/li>\n
  2. Thou Shall Not Get too Close: don\u2019t become part of the story.<\/li>\n
  3. Covet your access and protect your sources at least until you publish. Don\u2019t trust anyone who isn\u2019t a trained dispassionate observer of the truth like yourself\u00a0but take authorities at their word.<\/li>\n
  4. Thou Shalt Not be Vulgar in speech or manner of expression when it comes to omnipotent figures and descriptions of their affairs. Use of AP stylebook and proper terms is\u00a0mandatory.<\/li>\n
  5. Thou Shall Work on Sundays because the news cycle is now 24-7. It never stops.<\/li>\n
  6. Thou Shall do a good job to\u00a0support your family but\u00a0you may rarely see them.<\/li>\n
  7. Thou Shall Not Kill does not refer to the competition or the ridicule of hateful people.<\/li>\n
  8. Thou Shall Not Freelance except when specifically authorized.<\/li>\n
  9. Thou Shall Not Plagiarize but\u00a0stealing leads and\u00a0stories is often required.<\/li>\n
  10. Thou Shall Fact Check and double-source all allegations of wrong-doing or controversy.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And then there are the unwritten rules, or the Ten\u00a0Corollaries, as I call them, just as important, but more or less\u00a0understood by all reporters who have any common sense. Mainstream reporters are members of what Bernie Sanders calls the\u00a0the media establishment and they need to act like it. They need to internalize the rules of engagement and the limits\u00a0of what Noam Chomsky once called the \u201cbounds of thinkable thought\u2019. There are certain rules of conduct and ideas\u00a0to keep in mind that go above and beyond the commandments\u00a0listed above.\u00a0 Among them are:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Always give two sides to the story even if you can only\u00a0find one.<\/li>\n
    2. Don\u2019t Bite the Hand that Feeds You: if a colleague or the news organization or an\u00a0advertiser become the subject of a news story, do not criticize but\u00a0defend the company line.<\/li>\n
    3. Don\u2019t Call the President a Liar: repeatedly pointing out that politicians lie and that some lie compulsively, risks repeating the news, which by definition, is not news, so don\u2019t do it.<\/li>\n
    4. Don\u2019t\u00a0break a story that will offend your superiors, impugn their political opinions, or undermine their influence\u00a0with important public figures.<\/li>\n
    5. Don\u2019t go beyond the limits of what is locally permitted. For example, if you work sports in St. Louis it is okay to hate\u00a0the Cincinnati Reds\u00a0but not the Cardinals.<\/li>\n
    6. Don\u2019t go beyond the limits of what is ideologically permitted. For example, you can call the War in Iraq a huge mistake. You cannot call it genocide. That would require an impartial judgement of the actual facts, which is not always, or even mostly, in your job description. You don\u2019t judge, you cover things. If you start uncovering the wrong things, it\u2019s career suicide.<\/li>\n
    7. You can violate the tenets of so-called \u201cobjective\u201d news reporting whenever you like, as long as you bolster the conventional wisdom, policy choices, and ideological premises of the political establishment in Washington or wherever you work.\u00a0If you do otherwise, you are painting a big red X\u00a0on your back. Don\u2019t do that if you know what\u2019s good for you.<\/li>\n
    8. Break stories when you can. Follow\u00a0up on good stories you didn\u2019t break but act like you did.<\/li>\n
    9. Practice your deadpan and never appear surprised\u00a0regardless of what people tell you.<\/li>\n
    10. Do not get emotional unless it\u2019s a ploy to get your source to become emotional themselves.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      If you violate\u00a0any of these rules, you will start getting shit assignments and working weekends or nights. If you complain, your work ethic or news judgment will be called into question. This will really piss you off.<\/p>\n

      The final straw will be when\u00a0the brass calls you on the carpet and\u00a0calls you unprofessional and claims\u00a0your job performance is unsatisfactory. Doesn\u2019t matter that last month you collected an Emmy or some other prestigious award. If you have a union you can file a grievance but they might not\u00a0stick up for you. Whether this is your first mistake or your last, if you get the boot, you have made your final mistake. Then, it\u2019s\u00a0time to leave and open up a pizza joint or drive for Uber. If\u00a0you are very very lucky, you can take your beat on line or find something at one of the Internet news start-ups that will at least help\u00a0pay the\u00a0rent.<\/p>\n

      If any of these things happen to you, your life as you have known it, is pretty much over.\u00a0One good thing to keep in mind: you are now free of all those confusing\u00a0rules than didn\u2019t make a whole lot of\u00a0sense anyway! And you\u2019ll have time to read about Greek mythology.<\/p>\n

      Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      On dead newspapers and rotten reporters. Is there no such thing as truth anymore or not a single honest reporter in town? No. And we shouldn\u2019t expect there to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}