Dan Froomkin gives his media masters some flawless advice. Froomkin explains the appeal of bloggers and comedy news as a manifestation of our willingness to ‘call bullshit’. This is absolutely true. Calling bullshit probably constitutes 95% of everything I do. It’s why people sometimes mistake me for a ‘serious’ person. I’m not really very serious. I don’t know how often I hear, “If your readers knew what an a-hole you are, they’d never visit your site.” That’s not true, of course, I am actually quite lovable. I’m just not always that nice. And a large part of the reason that I am not that nice is that I have a tendency to call bullshit. I do it when it is socially inappropriate. It’s a character trait I seem to share with the majority of other bloggers I know. We are not strictly cynics, we’re too young to be curmudgeonly, but we are serious about calling bullshit. Froomkin explains:
Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. The relentless spinning is enough to make anyone dizzy, and some of our most important political battles are about competing views of reality more than they are about policy choices. Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy.
It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography. I’m convinced that my enthusiasm for calling bullshit is the main reason for the considerable success of my White House Briefing column, which has turned into a significant traffic-driver for The Washington Post’s Web site.
I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.
If you poll blog readers you will quickly discover that they tend to share a disdain for ‘passionless stenography’ as well as mealy-mouthed ‘on-the-one-hand-on-the-other’ journalism. Let’s face it. We are in Iraq because journalists did not call bullshit. Bush got re-elected because the press treated minor flaws in Kerry as equal to glaring sociopathic tendencies in the administration.
If the old media wants to revitalize themselves they need to start calling bullshit…and do it with great enthusiasm. People won’t necessarily like you any better, but they will respect you…and read you.
p.s. Pat Buchanan has now been on MSNBC for 6 out of the last 7 hours.
If his Viagra is lasting that long, he needs medical attention.
That is the funniest comment I have read in a very long time. Thanks for the laugh.
Ah yes, ‘if the media wants to revitalize itself..’ (my emphasis).
But why should it? The current situation pays beautifully.
Whatever gestures will be made toward regaining a perceived ‘edginess’ will most probably amount to what Froomkin calls ‘catty, inside-baseball gotcha journalism’, without a substantial improvement in the basic practice of journalism.
‘Course, on the supply side, attempts to ‘regulate’ the alternatives will continue, in the interest of condensing control over precisely what’s presented as ‘news’ to the greatest degree possible. As media deregulation continues, actual journalism simply becomes less of a problem.
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Long past time to narrow “the news media” down a bit. Broadcast and cable television have very few – if any – “fair and accurate” reporters & editors; radio is spotty at best, and even the darling of the left, Air America, tends towards the shrill too often; leaving print as one of the last bastions of accurate reportage left.
There I think a couple of good news orgs are McClatchy, and CSMonitor, and Reuters for a wire service. So far those three in general call bullshit – in a reasoned way – in their reporting.
The “old print media” is not dead so much as expanding and/or migrating to an electronic delivery system. The other guys aren’t delivering news so much as infotainment, and seem to care less about anything other than the value of their shares.
is we have to become our own journalists because we’re spoon fed bullshit all the time. We don’t have a lot of resources. I’m a regular person with a full time job and can’t be beating the bushes for sources all time. Wish I had the money to hire foreign correspondents. Thankfully, the blogosphere allows us to share knowledge and we’ve managed to facilitate some light. We’re still evolving and learning but I believe we’re filling a void.
I resemble that remark! I’m certainly old enough to be a curmudgeon. I worked for it, I’ve earned it…
I’d never call you old. You are a spring flower. But you are a bullshit caller of the first caliber.
my imaginary 2nd husband, Keith Olbermann, called bullshit on Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that free speech on the Internets be limited in the interests of preventing terrorism.
Crooks and Liars has the transcript and video…
Great article, BooMan. And I hope I get to meet you in person some day. I get the opposite response. When I went to conferences, people were always surprised to find out that I was really bubbly and friendly, as opposed to the “She-Wolf of the Conspirati” as I was famously nicknamed once, to my everlasting delight!
I would say we have plenty of ‘bullshit’ to wade through lately. We were sort of led to believe there was to be a ‘new direction’ in Iraq strategy, but after all is said and done, we’re sticking to ‘stay the course’. And being fed the misdirection of ‘some pullback of troops’. Bullshit!
Thanks Boo. If people knew what a sweetheart you are, they would never call you a-hole.
Nobody wants to revitalize themselves – they just want you to change.
is as necessary to life as oxygen. If anyone refuses to call bullshit as a life rule, they soon find their lives chuck full’o bullshit and most likely they are also miserable and probably abused.
…and they were talking about how they could revitalize the daily news industry. (The Philadelphia Inky and Daily News press folks may strike today.) Two of the reporters I talked with are the most “bullshit” calling writers I know – at least on the stories they cover. But neither of them talked about how their profession as a whole doesn’t call bullshit. Perhaps, like the Dean/Netroots/Reform Democrat movement is structuring and focused on take back “the Party”, good bull-shit calling journalists should do the same.
But that’s going to be considerably harder because a.) its a job, often with in a large corporation b.) reporters aren’t typically activists, though their hearts and minds seem to often be in sync with their activist friends.
Matt Taibbi while we shared a shuttle together in Crawford Texas. I had no idea who he was then. I just knew that he was a Rolling Stone reporter but Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) claimed to be a Rolling Stone reporter too so okay dude, if you say so :)? I asked him though, as an Army wife, why the media had abandoned us and his take was this. Our media has evolved into a 9 to 5 job for pretty faces. They want their story served to them on a silver platter and the more wrapped up with a big bow on it the better because they’re out of here in another thirty minutes. He said they were a bunch of lazy hacks.