At Least they Can Afford an Estate or Three

Bad news for democracy can often be good news for the market, in this case the housing market. How in the world are those two related? Well, I’m just kidding actually, but one could argue that a media led by people who themselves fall in the top one percent is never going to serve as the hallowed fourth estate it once did – though they may be able to buy several estates with the riches they are accruing not doing their jobs. Not just in the halcyon days of the muckrakers or when Agee and others detailed the travails of the great depression on average Americans, or those two fellows that once took down a president, but in a more general way. And this came into stark repose when MSNBC host Chuck Todd last week informed us that the media’s job is not to correct misinformation spread by politicians (Op Ed News).

During a segment on "Morning Joe," former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) argued that most opponents of the Affordable Care Act have been fed erroneous information about the law. Todd said that Republicans "have successfully messaged against it" but he disagrees with those who argue that the media should educate the public on the law. According to Todd, that's President Barack Obama's job.

Continuing he argued "But more importantly, it would be stuff that Republicans have successfully messaged against it," Todd told Rendell. "They don't repeat the other stuff because they haven't even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, 'Well, it's you folks' fault in the media.' No, it's the President of the United States' fault for not selling it."

So to a pundit on MSNBC, the one station besides PBS and Moyers, where left-leaning media personalities actually challenge conservative discourse on television (maybe CNN once in a blue moon), the media’s job is simply to report the spin doctors and who are more effective in their framing and “messaging.” This is exactly the problem and reaffirms suspicions first voiced by Chomsky and Herman and later by Eric Alterman that we have lost the media to the growing leviathan spectacle society (see Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle) and rightward turn over the past 30 years. Just watch political television in the 70s and you will start to see how bad things have gotten in comparison, given the reasoned and critical debates that used to occur. But as Network so poignantly showed us, ratings and the huge corporations behind the teleprompter have consistently undermined their role in keeping the public informed (and interested) in news that matters to them.

Todd is simply the latest example of a pundit that believes firmly in the absurd call for “neutrality,” “balance” and “objectivity” in reporting. It is part of the positivist trend in American social science and society in general that Karl Popper and his acolytes have been pushing on us since the 50s. There are a number of problems with these calls for objectivity, of course: 1) It is an impossibility, 2) It allows the more effective rhetoricians and spinners to dominate debates, 3) It tends to support the status quo (as it rarely critiques what is, rarely considers what isn’t and never asks would could or should be) and 4) It allows lies and misinformation to spread unchallenged. For all these reasons, we actually need a media that does the opposite.

Conservatives have understood this since the 60s, when they were on the verge of irrelevancy, and built a wide network of radio, television, print and Internet media representatives, together with think tanks and other institutions that legitimate their false claims, spreading their lies far and wide, to an audience that uncritically accepts most of what they say. Internal squabbles among their punditocracy do little to undermine the firm and consistent message and instead serve to solidify the overarching aim – serving the few while pretending to represent the many.

Liberals have done little to challenge this. One problem is their inability to counteract the conservative frames or create any alternative narratives that resonate with the public (except as opposition to bullshit fatigue and the occasional realization that things are getting worse for most people each year). A second is how those messages are delivered. The two main approaches are measured, reasoned and rational critique (ala Moyers) and ironic, humorous attacks on their opponents (ala Maddow and Stewart). Neither is very effective outside liberal circles – as the former is too at odds with the general tenor of social life today and the latter alienates those who feel spoken down to (aka all conservatives).

The Internet has certainly provided a number of spaces where one can check the veracity of political claims (like Politifact, Alternet, Truth-Out and the like), Facebook and You Tube have democratized access to information and allowed average citizens to challenge power (or overthrow it in the Middle East) and successful blogs and alternative news sites (like Huff Post, Slate and Salon) have expanded the number of voices we hear and challenged politicians and the mainstream media to be more accountable. But shouldn’t we demand more from that mainstream media, particularly as it attempts to reestablish the mass society of the 50s – in a more diversified form? He said, she said reporting has undermined political discourse and debate for far too long. It’s time to demand change, or simply stop watching – with the latter maybe the better option in the end. Instead of turning on, tuning in and dropping out, maybe the new reality means turning off, tuning in to alternatives and dropping back in to the public sphere.