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I just finished updating my journal entry summarizing the Jeff Gannon affair, and was struck by how often I had to resort to putting things in scare quotes. Scare quotes are what we call those quotation marks that you put around a word or phrase when you want to invite the reader to view it with extreme skepticism. Essentially they are a shorthand for "so-called." Putting something in scare quotes tips you off to the fact that whatever it is has the same relationship to what it's pretending to be that Cheez Whiz has to Stilton.
"Jeff Gannon" goes into scare quotes because it's a pseudonym. His "reporting" goes into scare quotes because it's partisan propaganda. But then when I was summarizing his links to the right-wing media, I ended up putting Sean Hannity's "coverage" of "Rathergate" in scare quotes too, because Rathergate is pathetic as scandals go, and nothing Hannity does can really be considered journalism.
DavidZephyr has a post on the front page today about why the media talking heads don't want this story to grow legs, and he's absolutely right. What "Jeff Gannon" was doing was absolutely not journalism--and neither is what most of the cable news programs are doing. And they don't want people to start seeing the resemblance.
So, I thought, what <i>is</i> journalism, really? And does it still exist anywhere in this country?
I decided to start from a negative example and see where I could get. I, for instance, do not consider myself a journalist, though I do research some things, I do write a lot, and much of my blathering has been 'published' (there go the scare quotes again) online. Why don't I consider myself a journalist?
* I was never trained in journalism and don't know anything about how the profession works.
* All the research I do is on the web. I don't interview people, I don't do FOIAs, I don't visit the locations of the things and events I'm writing about, I don't go digging through dumpsters looking for discarded documents, etc. etc. etc.
* I don't break stories; I just comment on things that have already been reported.
* I have a clearly identifiable political agenda which informs every goddamn thing I write.
* I don't get paid.
Now. All five of those bullet points would also apply to "Jeff Gannon," who works for a 'news service' with no advertising, circulation, or paid employees and who is not so much doing research as disseminating what he's given. He must certainly have been getting paid somehow, but not in any way that the IRS would be liable to know about.
BUT--and this is the thing--the first FOUR of those bullet points would also apply to many of the major figures involved in the cable-news-o-sphere. Research? What research? Documentation? What? You mean it's not good enough to just keep repeating your opinion real loud until the other person shuts up? As for having a politica agenda, well, I mean, Jesus Christ. Nobody would call me a centrist, but at least I'm not calling for the mass arrest, trial, and execution of everyone who doesn't share my point of view, like some people on the right we could mention.
The *only* thing that many of our 'legitimate' mainstream media figures have to distinguish themselves from "Jeff Gannon" is the money. They work for bigger, richer, more widely-distributed media outlets. And, they don't have stupid pseudonyms, and most of them don't have pictures of themselves in their BVDs and dogtags floating around on the internet (thank God). That's it, and that's all.
Investigative, critical, challenging, independent journalism is a dying breed in this country. The 24 hour TV news cycle demands high volume, rapid turnover, and short segments. It has fostered an ethic of disposability in which what matters is getting the copy fast, repeating it frequently, and then throwing it in the trash where it's immediately forgotten. The whole idea of the news "cycle" is an admission that none of what we learn from the news is supposed to have any lasting or cumulative effect; it just diverts us until its cycle is through and then it's gone. We are in the age of echo chamber/mouthpiece/you feed, we read "journalism."
If we weren't, you'd see hundreds of mainstream journalists out baying for this guy's blood now. He makes their whole profession look ridiculous, not to mention sleazy in the extreme. And why aren't they trying to make an example of him? Because they're afraid of what happens if people start demanding, you know, standards.
Faugh,
The Plaid Adder
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