Slanted

How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism

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I was going to use that cliché about how Sharyl Attkisson "writes more in sorrow than in anger". But I have to admit the possibility that there's quite a lot on the "anger" side of her scale.

She argues that in recent years there's been a significant shift in journalistic practice, from reporting "just the facts, ma'am" to "supporting a narrative". And that narrative is pretty simple, although playing out on different spectra: anti-Republican; anti-conservative; anti-business. And especially anti-Trump.

Some of this is personal; Attkisson tells the story of her work at CBS, where her reportage was increasingly spiked because—she claims, pretty convincingly—it didn't fit with the narrative of the moment. Eventually she demanded to be released from her contract, and after some legal wrangling, she was. (She currently hosts "Full Measure", appearing on TV stations affiliated with the Sinclair Broadcast Group, also streaming at a computer near you.)

But she doesn't restrict her fire to CBS; the entire array of "lamestream media" is in her sights. Especially CNN and the New York Times, but there's plenty of ammo left over for ABC, NBC, the Washington Post, … A long (somewhat tedious) appendix details the "Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump, August 2016-June 2020". hat list is meant I think to parry the lists of Trump's misstatements/whoppers/lies elsewhere; There's an online, updated version here. Not all items refer to Trump, but many do.

Attkisson does a pretty good job of demonstrating the perils, corruption, and inherent insidious aims of "narrative" journalism. Instead of simply telling us what happened, it tells us what to think about their carefully curated facts. And, see above, those "facts" are selected by the appropriate narrative, and may not be reported fairly or even accurately.

This won't be news to many. Attkisson was pushing on an open door in my case. One downside to her presentation: when discussing the media's dreadful unfairness to Trump, she soft-pedals Trump's manifest flaws: his narcissism and his reality-challenged statements. That doesn't excuse the media's behavior, of course, but it makes a lot of it understandable. At a certain point, you just assume the guy is lying.

And I think she's somewhat off base in presenting this media behavior as new. There's Herbert Matthews' coverage of Castro's revolution, Edward R. Murrows' pontifications on Joe McCarthy; Walter Duranty's sycophantic coverage of the Soviet Union under Stalin. This stuff has been happening as long as there have been journalists.


Last Modified 2024-01-15 5:20 AM EDT