Begging for Lies

It has been only sixty years since the publication of George Orwell’s 1984 and the introduction of double-speak and telescreens to the vocabulary of the public.  But within this short amount of time, the media has evolved into a propaganda powerhouse that perhaps not even Orwell could have conceived.  There are twenty-four hour “news” stations, up to the minute coverage of every major event, and all of the convenient perks that go along with an internet connection.  For all of these resources, there is a public that is dying to consume as much content as possible, regardless of credibility or truth. And although every news outlet presents itself as factually accurate, media consumers are now using these same outlets to be propagandized, and the lines between factual journalism and punditry have been effectively blurred. 
           
There are currently three major networks that provide a national nightly newscast: NBC, CBS, and ABC, respectively.  PBS provides a nightly broadcast, but enjoys nowhere near as many viewers as the other networks.  Each of these stations claims to provide a fair and factual account of the day’s news stories, and for the most part, this can be seen as true.  The anchors provide the majority of the details, while reporters and eye-witnesses collect further evidence for support.  There are no pundits, nor analysts, and the journalists rarely make any comments toward the news.  Only in extreme circumstances, such as Brian William’s recent on-air disgust with an Air Force One photo-op gone wrong, will a journalist break from their traditional role to comment on any report.  This is what is expected of the major network broadcasts, and in comparison to other media outlets, such as cable news or talk radio, the complaints of bias are far less prevalent.
      
      But with the help of the internet, these same journalists are able to shed their reputations as news professionals and participate in the frenzy that is web-logging, or “blogging.”  NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams updates his blog, the “Daily Nightly,” after every broadcast, including opinions and criticisms of the same stories presented earlier in the evening.  More importantly, these blogs are usually part of the network’s website, and are often advertised in the nightly broadcast.  This ties the traditional presentation of news to the personal opinions of the journalist while eliminating the professional courtesy of pure fact.  Established and respected journalists such as Jack Cafferty , now of CNN, have been asked to turn their attention to the web to not only reach an even larger demographic, but to allow a more intimate channel for the news.  Viewers and readers alike are asked to comment on news stories, and these same comments are often used on air to gauge passion between two sides of an argument.  The blogger responses to the news become as large a part of the story as the news itself, creating an entire ocean of possible pundits through the advancements of the internet.  These opinions are now integral parts of the news. 
         
   Consequently, with thousands of viewers later logging on to view journalists’ blogs, the opinions of an anchor can help to solidify his station’s ratings, or ultimately damage credibility.  This is nowhere more apparent than in the realm of cable news.  Each of the three major cable news channels, CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC, cling to slogans such as “The Most Trusted Name in News,” “Fair and Balanced,” and “The Place for Politics,” while offering more commentary than news reporting.  Deceptively, hosts like Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs all present an account of the day’s events, but litter their broadcasts with opinion based reporting, punditry, and spin.  Each of these stations has developed a reputation based on their broadcast personalities, with FOX News being widely considered the most conservative, and MSNBC the most liberal.  Furthermore, the stations do very little to argue against these political constraints.  The reason for this is simple: people tune in exclusively to hear their side of the argument in full swing, effectively offering themselves up for propaganda, and contributing to huge ratings in the process. 
          
  With this in mind, each of these networks has created a business model based on their targeted demographic, pumping out partisan propaganda over an entire twenty-four hour span.  According to a recent L.A. Times article, FOX News has led the ratings war for the past seven years, “delivering an average prime-time viewership of 2.1 million” in 2008.  Michael Wolff, author of the book Rupert Murdoch: The Man Who Owns the News, has spent a great deal of time with Murdoch, owner of FOX News, and claims that the biases and tilts that are often associated with the station’s reporting are not a matter of political preference, but are purely based in business.  “If [Murdoch] felt there were any money in far-left reporting,” Wolff wrote, “he would gladly do it.”  With MSNBC and CNN being labeled as liberally slanted and center-left networks, FOX News has monopolized the conservative viewpoint, and consequently reaps the rewards.  It should be noted, according to reports by the L.A. Times and the Nielson Ratings for television, all three of these cable networks saw over 40% increases in viewership in 2008, while only NBC gained viewers among the major network nightly broadcasts.  This could suggest an even more dramatic shift toward commentary-based broadcasts and further highlights the viewers’ desire for propaganda. 
           
To complicate things even further, many of the commentators double as reliable journalists and experts.  Tom Brokaw, the former NBC Nightly News anchor and frequent moderator for Meet the Press, has recently opened himself up as a commentator and pundit, most notably for MSNBC.  He’s even begun writing op-ed pieces for the New York Times.  His most recent article is a scathing criticism of what he calls “small town big spending,” which details his complaints over the economic practices of states like South Dakota and Iowa.   During his tenure as a news anchor, he rarely allowed his opinions to leak, but now in semi-retirement, he has made a comeback through punditry.  For viewers familiar with Brokaw, this could easily blur the line between journalism and subjective analysis.  Furthermore, guests are brought onto cable news programs and labeled “experts” or “journalists,” then proceed to share a slanted mixture of thoughts and fact, most often never differentiating between the two.  To a viewer that is relying on journalism to provide them accurate reporting, these guests’ arguments can easily be misconstrued as completely factual.  Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, actually claims that the blog revolution has kept windy pundits in check, citing that bloggers “fact-check statements and compare them with previous utterances.” This might very well be true, but the fact remains that these statements are already being consumed, and many will escape the pursuers of veracity. It can easily become a vicious cycle of one-sided debate that can unfortunately muddy the waters of truth. 
          
  This is seen most interestingly through a study done by the Pew Research Study in 2007, which tested the political knowledge of news consuming participants.  Pew claims that despite the fact that “today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago,” not all sources are equal in effectiveness.  Among national broadcasts, FOX News viewers actually recorded the worst scores in the study, and viewers of network nightly news broadcasts did even poorer than CNN viewers.  And to add the icing to the cake, viewers of Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, shows based on the mockery of the news, recorded the highest scores of all participants.  Understandably, newspaper website and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer viewers also ranked near the top of the list, neither exhibiting any major concerns for bias.  But what these results show, above all else, is that a steady diet of one-sided rhetoric may not be the best way to remain educated in news-related matters.  In fact, it may be the best way to lose sight of the truth.
          
  But for all the flack that journalism receives for its perceived biases and spin, most would agree that the good outweighs the bad. It was our third President, Thomas Jefferson, who famously said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.”   Newspaper journalism, sadly the least profitable method of news media, still remains a well respected force in the presentation of fact, and most networks do indeed have entire blocks dedicated purely to news reporting.  But with the invention of the internet, and the advancement of technology, the opportunities for media propaganda and spin have become greater than ever, with even less scrutiny.  And perhaps most frighteningly, new methods of media propaganda have been able to bypass the watchdog of journalism entirely, while still providing the partisan rhetoric that much of the public desires. 
           
This is seen most strikingly in New York Times columnist Virginia Heffernan’s article “The YouTube Presidency.”  The Obama Administration, widely considered the most high-tech administration in our nation’s history, “maintains an entire staff devoted to new media.”  Part of this staff’s responsibilities include continuous updates of the Barack Obama YouTube channel, which not only supplies clips from Obama press events, but also weekly speeches from the President himself, created solely for YouTube purposes.  These speeches are full of the same rhetoric and promises that most politicians are known to spread, but what makes this considerably different is that journalists have virtually no say in the presentations when all is said and done.  Obama is able to communicate directly to millions of his subscribers who willingly follow his channel and swallow the propaganda.  As Heffernan notes in her article, it is “unsettling” to realize that political reporters can’t keep up with the steady output from the Obama team, and that millions of American citizens are attracted to the unfiltered content.  This material escapes all fact-checks and analysis, and goes directly to the viewers that want it.  It’s the most direct form of propaganda available, and with the number of subscribers going up each day, it’s scarily effective. 
           
One must accept that propaganda is always presented with business in mind, whether it be financially or even governmentally.  But the worst part of this current struggle with propaganda is easily the loss of truth in a technological age that should enhance our ability to find it.  Instead, most media consumers are simply that: consumers, and not thinkers that are able to cut through spin and bias to find the core to every story, and the facts within every report.  And although we should be able to confidently trust our nation’s journalists, the lines between journalists and pundits have become less clear than ever, and people are still too willing to accept what is given to them, without any consideration for further research.  These consumers prefer to hear viewpoints and opinion that mirror their own, as opposed to the truth and the consequences that result from it.  With every partisan blowhard claiming to be a newsman, and with every report being sprinkled with falsities, the media is taking advantage of our entire culture, and no one seems to mind.