Column of the Day: “Don’t Trust If They Won’t Verify”
Instapunditeer Glenn Reynolds’ column at TCS Daily today has this brutally sad assessment of WORM (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as the formerly Mainstream Media) reaction to blog-uncovered doctored photos; staged photos; staged filmings; thwarted attacks; useful idiot profiles; political hit pieces disguised as objective journalism; bodies unearthed; and, at the root of it all, exposure of how news coverage from the Middle East has been bought and paid for by Arab States:
As columnist John Leo observed ….. “What’s new about the press is that so many people who follow it with a critical eye now have an outlet to howl about inaccuracy and partisanship. The big media used to be able to shrug off critics like this. Now they can’t.”
No, they can’t. But I have to say that I’m disappointed with their response nonetheless. I had hoped that increased scrutiny from bloggers would make the press more honest, but so far there’s no sign of that. And bad or dishonest reporting is destructive and unpatriotic (note that reporting bad news honestly is not, a distinction that dishonest media defenders sometimes try to elide). Can a free press survive if the public concludes that it’s in the business of purveying politically motivated propaganda on behalf of civilization’s enemies? And, if this kind of thing keeps up, will people be able to resist coming to such a conclusion? The press often responds to business scandals by noting that misbehavior by businessmen is likely to undermine support for free enterprise and lead to public demands for free enterprise. I fear that the same dynamic may lead to reduced support for a free press, and to demands for government regulation of reporting in wartime.
In the meantime, we have to hope that the market will correct the problem before things get that bad. Perhaps newspapers will be less willing to use photos and stories from AP and Reuters when those stories are likely to be lies, and, and I strongly suspect that readers will be less likely to trust newspapers when they run stories that are exploded as propaganda. It’s not too late for the press to save itself yet. But it’s getting close.
I think there’s plenty of support for a free press. The problem is that in some cases (the Middle East in particular) we don’t have one, and in most other places, we don’t have one that even resembles having balance.
I had the dubious opportunity to listen to BBC’s World Service radio broadcast for about a half-hour last night. Ten years ago the bias was evident but tolerable; last night, it was nearly unbearable. The Beeb speciously claimed that the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was “holding,” despite “sporadic violence” (not ID’d as Hezbollah-based) and the more fundamental point that Hezbollah was already backtracking on its agreement to disarm (noted, but glossed over in the sense that it was a Lebanese problem because they don’t appear to have the will to disarm them), and is essentially on its way to daring the world to make them (hoping no one has the will to do it). A ceasefire that one party is violating is not “holding.”
The Beeb went downhill from there, treating as highly significant news that there are lines at the gas stations in Iraq, and that seven nations are attempting to establish some kind of international agreement over “small arms” control in the wake of the UN’s fortunate failure to put anything into place earlier this summer. The gas line story portrayed the problem as one of mismanagement, and glossed over the fact that it takes time to adjust to the huge influx of additional cars in Iraq since the US invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 (Implication that never occurred to the Beeb: Is Iraq, perish the thought, becoming more prosperous?). The small-arms story tried to portray the world’s small-arms problem as bigger than that of weapons of mass destruction proliferation, and caused by the failure of the US and other gun-producing countries to track where these arms ultimately go. It’s a wonder that there’s anyone in the world listening to the Beeb who thinks positively of the US.
But the BBC, as an essentially government-sponsored institution, is an instructive Exhibit A. Reynolds fears there are many out there who think that regulation of the press would lead to a fairer and more balanced press. Doubtful — Instead, like the Beeb, under a regulated regime, broadcasts and other news coverage would more likely continue to be as biased as ever, and on the taxpayer’s dime (Consider the NPR-PBS axis Exhibit B).
The real answer is the one Reynolds hopes for — that new players get into the media market and challenge the status quo. Let’s have new upstarts show the world what fair reporting and genuine fact-finding is. We can perhaps look forward to the day when they have done to the international media dinosaurs what Fox News has already largely done to CNN here in the US.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a huge company like Fox that makes it happen. It could be a robust regiment of Reynolds’ Army of Davids — an Army of Hot Airs, Pajamas Medias (a better example, as PJM is attempting its own original reporting), ad hoc blog networks like the TLB’s Mideast Crisis Page, and the like.
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UPDATE: E-Mailer Larwyn referred me to an Al-AP story showing that the Beeb’s “cease-fire is intact” statement was a lie even if you look at it from a narrow “weapons fired at the enemy” standpoint. The “sporadic” rockets fired after the cease-fire by Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon were, by obvious inference in the paragraph cited below, aimed at Israeli positions in Southern Lebanon:
Highlighting the fragility of the peace, Hezbollah guerrillas fired at least 10 Katyusha rockets that landed in southern Lebanon early Tuesday, the Israeli army said, adding that nobody was injured. The army said that none of the rockets, which were fired over a two-hour period, had crossed the border and so it had not responded.
