The mirage of a journalistic renaissance
Commonly celebrated as a beacon of light in our liberal democracies, the 4th pillar of power should never be overly sanctified, regardless of the medium
Unless we are truly disingenuous, the safest bet to place at the moment is that a rebirth of the media landscape we had been accustomed to up until the introduction of new platforms and social media is highly unlikely to occur.
The old model is dead for everyone to see. Gatekeeping the information ecosystem, like the big players had the luxury to do, has recently become impossible to sustain. The historical technological barriers to enter the game, so to speak, have been lifted. It is easier than ever for citizen journalists or small scale media startups to make a name for themselves and propose alternative journalistic content or political commentary.
Sensing the rug being pulled from under their feet, the legacy media will not die without a fight of course and this fact alone clearly explains their relentless motivations to vilify or discredit the new competition. Case in point, the intimate relationship between well established media players and governments in support of censorship bills or subsidy packages to journalists is becoming embarrassing for the profession, to say the least. In Canada alone, examples abound on this front with bill C-11 and 18 as prime manifestations of this worrying trend. Not to mention high subsidies flowing in the direction of government “approved” media organizations.
With the rapid decentralization of journalism in the last decade, let’s just say that it has now become obvious that the emperor has no clothes. And in hindsight, this old journalistic guard might have been a mirage for most of its history to begin with.
On the other hand, even if this new competition might signify the emergence of a new golden age in journalism, we should not get ahead of ourselves. I will get into my reservations of the small independent media crowd a little later but for now, back to legacy media for a minute.
If we are honest with ourselves, besides the usual over glorified stories about the critical role of journalism in democracy such as the infamous Watergate story that brought down the Nixon presidency, most of the output from the journalistic class in my lifetime has been rather in sync with the power structure from which journalists are supposed to guard the public from.
Reporters exposing governmental corruption and overreach is more the exception than the rule.
And the explosion in the variety of information sources in recent years have only exposed the (sorry to be so blunt) mediocrity plaguing the heart of journalism. As harsh as this statement may be, elected officials are very often given the benefit of the doubt by a media class more preoccupied by their access to the power circles than putting their skin in the game to challenge our leaders.
Let me be clear, my goal here is not to offend any present or past journalist that might be reading this. It is not to say that regular reporters are not doing their job with honesty and integrity generally speaking, but financial forces and human nature applies to every field, including the fourth estate that we too easily raise on a pedestal.
My starting point is the following; like any other field of work in society, I believe the journalistic class is not more corrupt nor more virtuous than any other group. But since most citizens in liberal democracies have been drilled from a young age to accept that a strong journalistic elite is present as a crucial guardrail, our collective memory might have elevated the work of past journalism way above their real contribution to society in general.
We must remember that the capability to challenge authority and being disagreeable, two essential personality traits to truly perform the job at its highest efficacy, are not given to everyone and these traits are too often in short supply in news room.
Humility check
Even a long respected journalist and broadcaster like Dan Rather seems incapable of recognizing the true water temperature of present day journalism.
Looking back to the days preceding the second Iraq War, he was honest enough to recognize the mistakes and the gullibility of the press of that era with the entire Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) theater by the Colin Powell’s of the world but seems to not be courageous enough to admit that the press might be “played” once again by the current administration in Washington and with other politically influent organizations.
Addressing the blind spot of journalism in his 2017 book, Dan Rather acknowledged the inherent risk of the American press by stating:
“ These days, I fear that the pull of our inborn patriotism combined with a fear of being labeled un-American clouds that role, with real and potentially corrosive effect. These are forces every journalist must be aware of, and on guard against. But often our individual defenses fail, and sometimes they fail en masse with disastrous consequences. I consider my biggest journalistic failure to be one in which I unfortunately was not alone. In the lead-up to the second Iraq War, when the American public needed a strong and independent press, too many of us blinked and the nation was far worse for our drifting from our core purpose.”
Dan Rather, What Unites Us, 2017
While I share his reading of the WMD fiasco and appreciate his humility to recognize the mistakes of the press back then, I would be curious to understand what makes him so confident that the journalistic class learned from this unfortunate saga. Has the media suddenly changed course and reached a point where it is immune to such a scenario ?
The press has clearly drifted more often than not - to paraphrase Rather - since he published this book in 2017. The blindspots inherent to the profession as he so candidly admits were on full display during the covid years and are still present with the current conflict in Ukraine where the initial narrative professed and supported by legacy media pundits early 2022 is rapidly collapsing.
On the Ukrainian front, I am still comfortable to this day with my cold, rational and humble analysis of the conflict (see below) compared to the emotionally charged and hubristic take defended by most journalists since then.
The new players
As for the new “players” in town, we must be careful not to glorify their work too rapidly either. Take all the high profile publications created by ex-journalists from the mainstream media on Substack for example. While they certainly open new possibilities and a much needed alternative to legacy media, audience capture can be really difficult to avoid in a model where subscribers are the bread and butter of your business model. In addition, as absolute objectivity is impossible in journalism, readers must be aware of the background and the political biases of its creators.
Internal checks and balances are inexistant in a small scale media where the founder of the media is often the researcher, writer, editor, producer, and the like of the final product. As refreshing as it is to consume such content, we must regularly remind ourselves of the corresponding risks associated with new media.
Besides the written media landscape slowly transferring to platforms like this one, we have also witnessed the emergence of various podcasts and YouTube channels to challenge the traditional television media. One example in Canada is Rebel News.
While I am not particularly impressed nor enthusiastic by the journalistic methods of the Rebel News of the world, I must confess that I understand why this type of journalism is manifesting itself in the current political culture. What are we to expect when the casual officially accredited journalists don’t take any risks by seriously challenging our government representatives ?
When journalists seem to be throwing soft ball questions to our leaders, the emergence of such media outlets in our contemporary landscape cannot be surprising.
So what happened ? Has journalism lost its way ? Or has it always been prone to take the easy path forward ? After all, putting your career and livelihood on the line can be a perilous endeavor.
For Thomas Sowell, this baseline position of the journalistic class is not surprising in itself. For him, as he frequently argues, the intellectual class (that is people that live by creating and disseminating ideas like journalists) will seldom dig to the bottom of a particular idea or issue.
“ Despite the high levels of brain power available to intellectuals for analyzing problems and confronting issues, what is remarkable is the wide range of ways that intellectuals have devised for not analyzing problems and not confronting issues. Verbal preemption has substituted for hypothesis-testing on issues ranging from poverty and race to war and peace.”
Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, 2010
As a young student and observer of public life, I once held in high esteem the men and women that pressured (or so it seemed) on a daily basis the politicians, public servants, leaders of the industry and the like. I used to devour the articles and editorials of my local newspapers on the kitchen table while thinking to myself that one day I could participate in such a noble profession.
With limited life experience at the time and no real professional resume to stand on, a journalistic class capable of operating at an objective level seemed a fairly reasonable assessment to make.
But years have passed and my teenage style naivety has been crushed multiple times since then, as most of you may have experienced. Sowell’s quote above being a friendly reminder to manage our expectations.
In the end, a healthy journalistic class most likely resides in the intellectual curiosity and fortitude of its readership, its willingness and preparedness to read or hear harsh truths for example. And to challenge on a regular basis the media class to do a better job.
If we commonly say that the population has the politicians it deserves, it is certainly the same for journalists. They won’t be operating in some sort of virtuous and objective vacuum with a public around them completely oblivious to the realities of public affairs and current events.
When such qualities are low in the public, combined with an unfortunate deficit in general culture, journalism will only mirror this low interest within the citizenry. Look at vox pop type encounters at university campuses across the Western world once in a while to remind yourselves that we are far from the promise land.
On this note, I leave you with this clear-eyed quote from Christopher Lasch back in 1995:
“ Newspapers might have served as extensions of the town meeting. Instead they embraced the misguided ideal of objectivity and defined their goal as the circulation of reliable information - the kind of information , that is, that tends not to promote debate but to circumvent it.
The most curious feature in all this, of course, is that although Americans are now drowning in information, thanks to newspapers and television and other media, surveys regularly report a steady decline in their knowledge of public affairs.
In the “age of information” the American people are notoriously ill informed. “
Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, 1995
Difficile d’être plus précis sur ce qui se passe aujourd’hui dans le monde des médias. À voir les gens inconscients et insouciants du phénomène, je me demande si c’est différent d’autrefois, ou si les gens sont le résultat de nos systèmes dit modernes avec un grand S?
Merci pour cette belle contribution pour nous éveiller……