LITTLE ROCK — Itry not to read too much about the state of journalism, not because I don't care about the subject but because the news is invariably disheartening. While anyone with an ego and a forum can pretend to knowledge, I have to admit I'm not a businessman. I could spin up a theory about pay walls and the relative value of original reporting versus the curation of news, but in reality I have neither the expertise nor the geeky interest to tell you how you ought to feel about the democratization and atomization of what we call "news."
These days, the news is whatever you want it to be, and there are good things and bad things about that. Maybe it's good that it's easy to amuse yourself. I'll admit that I'm a social media user-I find lots of uses for Facebook and Twitter (@borkdog, if you care)-and that I enjoy the opportunities the Internet provides for engaging with other people whom I might otherwise have never known about. I even like the way the Internet has eroded the authority of mainstream institutions and made it more difficult for people like me to pretend to know more than they actually do.
At the same time, cyberculture allows us the opportunity to ignore that which is while empowering the lies and fantasies of the cynical and wishful. Human beings have always had an extraordinary ability to believe what they would like to, but it has never been easier for us to find validation for base impulses and ugly notions.
We might be better off than we were with three networks and Walter Cronkite as "the most trusted man in America" (a facile and disingenuous-if not simply false-tag line that Uncle Walter himself would scoff at). But at least in those days, we suspected that the laying bare of truth might result in some sort of moral accord. We trusted that most of us would want to do right if the way of doing right was made clear to us.
It mightn't have been as simple as the old institutional media made it seem-the war against Hitler mightn't have been a a wholly good war, and Big Lies have flourished as long as there have been Great Men to tell them. The media-the journalistic establishment-of my youth was a media of consensus that looked to avoid rather than create controversy and was often complicit in crimes and cover-ups. But we could still believe absolute truth was out there somewhere, and if it could only be exposed we might know how to behave.
It is different today, when each of us can select whatever set of filters we require, and block out whatever voices we find grating or upsetting. The opinion market has splintered and made that old media model-the media of consensus, what we used to think of as "responsible" journalism-a loser. In its place, we've seen the rise of a media of contention, which thrives by flattering constituents and inciting passions.
We collect around whatever sounds soothe and entertain us, where likeminded people congregate and echo our self-congratulations. We needn't attend to the jabbering of the opposition; we can tune them out or, better yet, shout them down. For after all, they threaten us, with their rhetoric and their socialism, their very un-Americanism.
We live an a land where truth has been denatured. It has lost its power to dissolve lies, to unite us against perfidy and sin. No matter how much we protest that we are good, the truth is that a great many of us have lost any sense of moral compulsion. We will believe whatwe want, however bizarre or wishful. And we can do this because, while we may be in the minority, there are plenty of others who believe as we do, and who will hold fast to those beliefs until their cold fingers are pried away.
Just because there is no evidence that Barack Obama was born anywhere other than where his birth certificate says he was born, doesn't mean that people have to believe it. Just because there is no "death panels" provision in the president's health care bill, doesn't mean that people who know (or ought to know) better have to act responsibly.
After all, as a friend of mine said on a local Sunday morning radio program, politics is a "results-oriented business."
He's right about that-every pragmatic person understands that while perception is not in fact reality, it's often more important than reality. For while reality really "is what it is," it's often less poetic, appealing or easily apprehended than perception, which can be an artfully manufactured thing.
People get paid a lot more money than most journalists make to generate perceptions, and for good reason. Perception sells, while reality usually bums people out. Most of us prefer to hear that our intuition is sound, that our motives are pure, that our prejudices are justifiedand that God wants us to be rich.
Journalists often style themselves as advocates for the truth, but they are human and susceptible to error and corruption. They haven't always the resources to determine what is fact and what is spin, and they are forever tempted to simply report that controversy exists.
(Which is an extraordinarily easy thing to do; especially since most editors insist on just that and nothing more. Especially in the world's most serious and prestigious newspapers.)
What's not so easy is to call a lie a lie and say who told it. The "death panels" lie was not a manifestation of some grassroots fear but a deliberate distortion. And maybe we don't know who decided it would be an effective talking point, an excellent way to derail serious and useful debate about how we ought to care for our sick and dying, but we know good and well whopropagated the lies.
They know, too. And though they have demonstrated their incapacity for embarassment, they might in their heart of hearts feel a sputter-the collapsing gasp of an extinguished pilot-and worry, just for a second, that something more valuable than celebrity or power might be lost.
Perspective, Pages 74 on 08/23/2009