Monday, January 09, 2006

The Non-Partisan Media

I sort of agree with Kos...sort of:

I've recently been on a crusade against the term "mainstream media" or MSM. The fact that it's a right-wing construct doesn't help. But the chief reason is that interactive media is now mainstream. In fact, there are tons of blogs and wikis and email lists that have larger readerships than most of the so-called "MSM". If Daily Kos was a newspaper, it would rank #5 in circulation (it would've been #3 last October, in the runup to the election). The top blogs have more readers than most cable news channel shows have viewers. And while their circulation numbers and ratings fall, our numbers continue to grow.
The part I agree with is that 'MSM' is a completely useless term, and that it's a right-wing construct--which is what I see as the real problem.

What Kos calls his 'chief reason', though, is really pretty weak. I suppose there are people who care whether bloggers are considered 'mainstream' or not, but I'm not one of them, and it's hard for me to imagine why anyone else would. The blogosphere is what it is; if we are at all effective, it is because of what we do, not because of what we are called. Besides, the 'mainstream' part of the label cuts several ways: it was carefully chosen to convey an impression of insurgency against the dominant ('mainstream') worldview they see as suppressing their own. If Daily Kos were generally recognized as part of the 'mainstream', it would only feed wingnut fantasies of the 'mainstream' as a vast left-wing ideology factory.

Weaker even than his chief reason for disliking 'MSM' is what he proposes as a substitute: 'traditional media', which not only conveys nothing very useful but also happens to echo 'legacy media', an emerging favorite on the right. 'Traditional media' has no real advantages over 'mainstream media'.

Worse, it has exactly the same fatal flaw: a failure to distinguish between partisan and non-partisan media. The erasure of that distinction is precisely the point of the term 'mainstream media'. It effectively gives organizations that operate as adjuncts to the Republican party (Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, The Washington Times) equal status with legitimate news operations, which is a big win for the right: either Fox et al. acquire unwarranted credibility, or legitimate news outlets are dragged into the mire occupied by the partisan shills. This is a distinction that, it should be noted, a lot of people on the left elide as well (and understandably so, given the wacky hijinks of Pinch Sulzberger and Judy Miller and Timmy Russert and Chris Matthews et al.); but it is a distinction that has to be preserved at any cost if we are to have any hope of defeating the Republican war on reality.

I think a much better term would be 'non-partisan media', which would encompass all of the news organizations (including bloggers) whose prime directive is to gather and report the news--who are, as Mark Kleiman says, "in the journalism business, not the political-organizing business." 'Partisan media' should be the term for outlets whose primary goal is to advance a political agenda, including (for example) Fox News, Air America, Rush Limbaugh, Daily Kos, and any number of partisan bloggers (including myself).

Just to be clear, the 'non-partisan media' label does not mean giving those outlets a pass on all of their bad behavior. 'Non-partisan' doesn't mean they aren't ever biased, or susceptible to pressure from the White House and wingnuts, or focused on trivialities at the expense of the big picture, or historically deficient, or whatever, and I am not suggesting we shouldn't hold them accountable for these failings. What it does mean is that however flawed their reporting, at least they aren't political operatives.

Nor, for that matter, does the 'partisan' label mean we should automatically disregard anything that comes from outlets so labeled. There is some genuinely great reporting being done by partisans in the blogosphere, and it deserves to be recognized. That said, any partisan source bears an extra burden in proving its credibility; and we should always apply an extra helping of skepticism to anything coming from sources whose political agenda is their primary driver--including (or rather, especially) those with whose political agenda we agree.

The whole Republican propaganda edifice is based on a rejection of objective reality, of any reality outside partisan rhetoric. If we fail to uphold at least the possibility of objectivity, the Republicans win. I would like to see our language reflect that.

[That's all, folks]