I’m on an early flight from San Francisco back to Honolulu this morning, but wanted to recommend this column from Aljazeera America by Larry Beinhart, author of “Wag the Dog”, which was made into a 1997 movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.
Beinhart argues that the style of “objectivity” adopted by the mainstream media allows crazy ideas to gain legitimacy (“How journalism helps lunacy become reality“).
Beinhart writes:
After the second prime-time Republican presidential debate on Sept. 16, The New York Times published an astonishing editorial. It said the candidates must be “no longer living in a fact-based world” and described what they said as “a collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre that they form a vision as surreal as the Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates’ lecterns.”
It was about time that someone as authoritative as The New York Times editorial board said it as bluntly as that.
One of the things that made the editorial so striking is that the news coverage of the same events, in the same paper as well as in the rest of the media, treated what the candidates said as almost entirely unremarkable.
That prompts interesting questions. Why was this only an editorial? Why wasn’t it in the news? Shouldn’t it be newsworthy that the leading contenders for the Republican nomination are “no longer living in a fact-based world” and that what they say is “untrue … bizarre … surreal”?
Beinhart targets what he calls “Chinese-menu journalism,” in which reporters are considered to have done their jobs if they quote someone from Column A, and then get a response from an “authority” in Column B. No need to go further.
I’ve commented on this same thing in local news several times in the past.
What drives me mad is that this kind of “he said, she said” reporting takes a straightforward factual question and turns it into a matter of subjective opinion (“who should we believe, this source or the other one?”).
Anyway, I recommend Beinhart’s column.
And if you want to see how this happens in local news, check out my earlier posts, this one from 2009 (”He said-She said” reporting obscures substance of Kamehameha story) and another from 2012 (Getting beyond “he said this, but they said that” reporting).
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Some of the most obvious local examples of this type of lazy bullshit “reporting,” heavy on wild claims but devoid of reason or context, have been in regards to the rail project. “Cliff says this” ridiculous crap, or “Panos says that” utter nonsense, and now “Cayetano says Lingle told you so” with no analysis of what the politicized report she commissioned actually said or any mention of the problems his wasteful and failed lawsuit caused, or a shred of reporting on who paid for it.
Pathetic. Honolulu would probably be better off with Al Jazeera than this hick “journalism” (and the laughably dishonest columns and commentaries that are far worse).
And then there’s all the crazy GMO bullshit….
in the social media world that took off in 2007, crazy ideas are assumed true. evidence and logic do not exist. it is a massive cult for the poorly educated. the standard is Uncommon Sense.
in this silly world, “Chinese-menu journalism” is the most racist term Everrrrrrrr and you will need to apologize on camera. shame on youeth.
A good example of he-said she-said journalism in the Star-Advertiser and both of its merged predecessors, and now also in Civil beat, is the reporting on Hawaiian sovereignty. Typically, they will run a story citing two opposing radical viewpoints as though those are the only viewpoints worthy of mentioning. The two viewpoints are: (1) restore (all of) Hawaii to the status of an independent nation; vs. (2) the tribal concept (OHA, Akaka bill, Department of Interior rule-making, Kau Inoa, Act 195, Kana’iolowalu). Sometimes there will be side-by-side essays of equal length written by leading advocates for those two concepts. The clear implication is that Native Hawaiians are facing a crisis which requires that a choice be made urgently; that the choice is to be made by Native Hawaiians without regard for what the other 80% of Hawaii’s people want; and — most importantly — that those are the only two choices for Hawaii’s future. But in fact both of those choices are extremely radical, and I believe that most Hawaii citizens, and indeed most ethnic Hawaiians, do not want either of those choices. I believe the majority of us all, including the majority of ethnic Hawaiians, want a third choice which I call the Aloha choice: We should remain the 50th State in the USA, under the single sovereignty of a State of Hawaii whose land and people are not divided along racial lines. But this Aloha choice is never mentioned as a possibility, and no advocate for it is allowed to write a third essay alongside the essays for the two radical choices. All we get is he said independence, she said tribe, now which way will we go? As Ian’s headline says, this is “How lunacy becomes reality.”
Unfortunately this has seeped into the court system locally as well. Judge Helen Gilmore denied the ACLU request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the city from removing and destroying the property of homeless individuals because ‘the two sides don’t even agree on the facts’ (my paraphrase). So because she couldn’t decide between the city said this but the homeless individuals said that, she didn’t grant a TRO–the purpose of which is to stop something that may be illegal while attempts to remedy the situation go on, or to allow fact finding before a court case!!!!!
on the flip-side, analysis and polls can get far closer to stark and tearful political reality:
“The Republican Party heads into the 2016 White House race with a negative image and policy stances out of step with those of the broader public, while Democrats are backing a front-runner who continues to lose steam with all parts of the electorate, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.”
“Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton preserved her lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but she is showing new signs of wear as a general-election candidate. She now runs neck-and-neck with three of the four leading Republican contenders, two months after polling showed her dominating the GOP field. Vice President Joe Biden, who is still weighing a bid, performs much better in test match-ups against potential GOP nominees.“
Makiki Barb, I for one was thrilled that the meddlesome ACLU lost. They can’t win them all….
The Malarkey Beat,
speaking of crazy GMO bullshit, here’s Neil Young playing for the self-loving Maui Wowie farm scientists.
“Family seeds they used to save were gifts from God, not Monsanto, Monsanto / Their own child grows ill near the poisoned crops / While they work on, they can’t find an easy way to stop, Monsanto, Monsanto.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=belEBMZu_Tg
Neil Young Performing his song “Monsanto Years” on Maui at OUTGROW MONSANTO, May 23,2015
I have known three homeless (houseless as they prefer) men very well and none of them pushed their stuff around in shopping carts or pitched tents on the sidewalks. All of them had storage lockers for most of their belongings and all of them had backpacks in which they carried their valuables and day-to-day essentials. All of this weeping and wailing about homeless folks losing their documentation, medications or other valuables is just so much bleeding heart BS. If these things get caught up in the sweeps (which are well publicized ahead of time) it is more due to stupidity and/or laziness than anything else.
The journalistic practice you are calling for would strike a blow against the “truthiness” that conflates facts and opinion in civic discourse with the purpose of stirring up “hot button” blather so injurious to our politics and our efforts to govern effectively. It would achieve truly “balanced” journalism.
My takeaway from all of your comments is that our journalists (from whatever local source you are using) are sadly lacking in analysis.
What are the opportunities within these islands for all of our best talent?
Those with bright minds plus ambition are going to, at the very least, go elsewhere to rub elbows with other writers, investigators and journalists in the bigger pond.
It may leave a void here, but it is wrong?
To do journalism well today requires knowledge of history for context and some level of wonkiness to sift thru the spin. Yes?
Seems like very few media orgs (and not just our local ones) really give a darn to invest the time to develop/nurture talent that will cover a big story well. Ian’s audience wants analysis but does the consumer tuning in to network TV and local programming seek that? The ridiculous sound bites and taglines get the shares and clicks.
Thankfully, the brightest minds on the planet are blogging, tweeting, writing or sharing somewhere online. Long live the Internet.