What follows is my monthly column in the Albuquerque Tribune. It ran yesterday, Thursday, September 22, 2005.As always, I would appreciate your comments.
A.A.
News Splash
Let’s see how both sides have painted the media – and how that might be wrong
By Arthur Alpert
We were talking about news - how objectivity diverts us from truth and, last month, how the Right uses "liberal media bias" to divert attention from its agenda. To wind up, I decided to forego simple judgments and spell out, instead, how money, technology, law, history and other factors really do shape our news.
Terrible idea.
It’s too complex. Involves too many biases, by which I mean influences or directions. I’d need a book to untangle the Jackson Pollock action painting that is our system.
How about we just throw some colors at the canvas and see what sticks. Ready?
Splash: Green is the primary color in the news business. Green as in dollar bills. News companies exist to make money. As Martha might say, that’s a good thing. Reporters and editors like to eat. A defunct newspaper serves no one.
Splash: Journalism lives inside the news business and most news people operate quite independently there. (Attention, liberals – Henry Luce is still dead. Erase those mental pictures of Despotic J. Publisher censoring Truth.)
Yes, Brittany, Jen, Brad and Paris get more ink and videotape than, say, Karl Rove, but - as the movie trailers once proclaimed – they are "back by popular demand."
Splash: Corporations dominate broadcast news. Not the powerful networks of yesteryear, but their owners - titanic global enterprises that deal in defense contracts, refrigerators, finance, theme parks, movies, cable, music, Internet commerce, satellite TV and the kitchen sink.
Murrow, Huntley and Brinkley played second fiddle to sitcoms, but their bosses (broadcasters) basked in the prestige and saw the FCC placated. Today the numbers guys (not broadcasters) who steer GE, Disney, Viacom and Fox know Wall Street pays off for improved quarterly results. Period. Oh, and the FCC is a buddy.
Affect on TV news? Relegated to fifth fiddle. There are tighter budgets. Fewer foreign bureaus. Recycling of stories. Awareness in the ranks that "corporate" is disinclined to offend the White House. (Hard questions out of New Orleans? They shall pass.)
Splash: Novelists explore complexity, journalists simplify. TV (with less time than a paper has space) over-simplifies daily. Its reporters omit most of the story. Effect? Public servants get away with, I guess, four out of five lies.
Splash: Technology matters. Ragamuffins no longer bark, "Extree! Extree! Read all about it" because radio and TV stole the breaking news job. Newspapers found new roles. (The Tribune’s brilliant adaptation is one reason I’m proud to write for it.)
Splash: Technology biases content. Pictures may move us, but they show surfaces, not thoughts or feelings. Moving images convey sensory information, not the kind we get from black letters on white newsprint. TV news content doesn’t help us think.
Splash: Public Television has virtues, but since its prime news program won’t reach even the most innocuous conclusions - for fear of bugging a benefactor? – it’s boring. So is the idea-challenged "Washington Week in Review". Responsible journalism? Snore.
Splash: Bring back Happy Talk! Today’s "local TV news" is a Rio Grande - a constant flow of street crime and other dysfunction. It’s quite educational, teaching viewers to fortify the house, never leave and vote for law-and-order. Achtung!
The colorful strands multiply and intersect and, stepping back from the painting, I discern a pattern. We’ll explore it next month, but here’s a preview: I see a dirty word emerging: "class."
Alpert, a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque, may be reached at
ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears in Insight and Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.
What follows isn’t about journalism, it’s about the sad state of the Democratic Party:
Yesterday I heard John Wertheim, leader of the New Mexico Democratic Party ( and Governor Richardson’s mouthpiece) ruminate on the party’s internal debate. It was blather. Wertheim offered the classic Clintonian approach to winning elections –triangulation and marketing.
Today’s New York Times reports, however, that former President Clinton himself said New Orleans highlighted the Bush Administration’s tilt toward the upper class. Yes, he talked "class."
In another story, the Times reported that Cindy Sheehan challenged Sen. Hillary Clinton to oppose the war in Iraq.
Forget the Clintons. My point is that the Democratic Party’s problem is not how it expresses itself nor is it specific stands on issues. It must believe in something.
Imagine, for example, the Democrats taking up the cudgels for the middle class and poor against the corporate state. And vowing to end the Iraq War, not just because Bush mismanaged it but because it was ill-begotten
That would distinguish the parties, wouldn’t it?
Of course, the Democrats (think Hillary, Bill Richardson) won’t run against corporate power; they are almost as beholden to it as is the GOP. Of course, the Democrats won’t stand tall against the war; they are too fearful of looking wimpy, even unpatriotic.
No, they will continue to poll, identify positions that lie between what they secretly believe and what the Republicans espouse. Finally, they will poll again to find the right way to couch those sentiments. Voila, Clintonism!
Unless, of course, Bill Clinton’s comments mean he is abandoning Clintonism.
Naaah.
Change happens.
Sen. Pete Domenci, the New Mexico Republican whose religion is "trickle down" economics, who believes governament's sole proper role in the economy is corporate welfare, says it may be time for Detroit to meet higher CAFE standards to conserve fuel.
Governor Bill Richardson, a so-called Democrat who is proud of cutting income taxes on the wealthiest New Mexicans, thinks it may be time for the state to raise the minimum wage.
Domenici for pressuring the oligarchs? Richardson espousing a Democratic position? Wonder if the Weather Channel is reporting a cold snap in Hell?