The Shadow Media

Sacramento gets a "Bee;" the right wing media gets an F

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

6/6/05

http://zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/bee.htm

The Sacramento Bee has what is now called a "Public Editor". Until recently, the position was called the "Ombudsman" but it turned out that 15 out of every 12 readers thought an ombudsman was a Buddhist monk who pruned the roses at the local nursery, so they changed the name to reflect modern intellectual capabilities.

The new Public Editor is Armando AcuZa, and he’s off to a good start in his job, which consists, in the main, of providing an independent analysis of how the Bee does its job as a newspaper for the benefit of the readers, while addressing questions, concerns and complaints that readers have about the Bee. He came at a difficult time for the newspaper, when its star columnist, Diana Griego Erwin, resigned after allegations arose over her methods used in providing quotes and background in her (usually) human-interest columns. The Bee stated that they had run spot checks on a dozen or so of her recent columns, attempting to track down sources she used, and in a dismayingly high percentage of such cases, were unable to find evidence that the people named actually existed.

As an admirer of Ms. Erwin and her work, (I wrote an essay in 2001 praising her for her essay revealing the nature of the racist neo-fascists in the Sacramento region) I was disturbed by this, although I refuse to judge her, simply because I haven’t heard her side of the story. I hope that someday, that gap will be filled.

Mr. AcuZa handled what was an extremely difficult situation for both the paper and its readers with considerable grace and poise. I decided that, as an ombudsman, he would do. Excuse me. Public Editor.

People familiar with my writings know that I’m often sharply critical of much of the mainstream media. I regard AP as having a tendency to slant stories to please a Republican audience. (As an example, today they ran a story that quoted Joseph Biden and John Edwards as criticizing Howard Dean for saying "Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives." They gave no reaction from the thousands of rank-and-file Democrats who were delighted with Dean’s words ("Give ‘em hell, Howard!"), leaving the impression that the whole party was distancing themselves from him. Further, the AP didn’t mention that just a few days earlier, GOP spokesperson Rush Limbaugh said, "Most [Democratic] voters don't work anyway," and there was no mention of any member of the GOP criticizing that for being unfair.) The New York Times, whose standards are generally excellent, has a dismaying habit of sometimes writing misleading headlines over important stories that directly contradict what the story actually says. (The biggest example was when the NORC survey of voting in Florida came out, and the Times trumpeted the story as showing that Bush won legitimately. In fact, the survey – and the news story under the headline – showed clearly that by every legitimate standard of vote counting that could be applied, Gore would have won.) Most papers and all of the television media are, at best, timid and afraid of offending the powers-that-be. The Washington Post is a sad example of that. Others, such as Fox News and the Washington Times, are propaganda organs, not worthy of being considered journalistic endeavors.

Today, Mr. AcuZa raised the question of why, if journalistic standards are being ever more rigorously enforced by entities such as the Sacramento Bee and New York Times, the credibility of the media is continuing to drop in the public perception.

Mr. AcuZa, the answer to that riddle is a simple one. The far right has assembled an entire "shadow media" of cable news stations, newspapers, and radio outlets that pose as news sources but are, in fact, propaganda organs. And one of their main tasks is to constantly attack "the liberal media" (translated: the real journalistic media) in any way possible.

So when outfits like the Bee, the New York Times, or Newsweek acknowledge situations where their own standards were not met, the right wing trumpets this. Whenever they want to attack the media, they start talking about Dan Rather or Jayson Blair or Diana Griego Erwin or Newsweek (oddly, they never mention Michael Isakoff, the writer who actually wrote the piece about Q’uran desecration – as the man who broke the Monica Lewinsky story, he remains a darling to the right). In the very same section in which the Public Editor column appeared today, there was a letter to the editor decrying the Bee’s "agenda journalism" on filibusters and GuantBnamo Bay prison. The writer buttressed his argument by saying, apropos of nothing, "The Bee recently fired a columnist for dishonesty. That is really something." It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even accurate, but the writer wasn’t interested in that; he simply wanted to attack the Bee’s credibility, and that was the tool he had at hand.

The problem is that the shadow media has no journalistic standards at all. Not only do they often exhibit reckless disregard for accuracy, but they coldly and deliberately lie to their readers. Fox News, in fact, was embroiled in a court case two years ago with two employees they fired for reporting accurately (and they stipulated the reports were accurate) arguing, in effect, that they had the right to lie to the public. [Google Akre vs. Fox]. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting issued a book in 1995 detailing the first one hundred Rush Limbaugh lies they encountered ("The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error"). They stopped only because they wanted to keep the list small enough that people would want to read it. Al Franken wrote a book, "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," which details the utter lack of veracity among this shadow media. On a daily basis on his Air America radio show, he debunks new lies told by Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Joe Conason and Gene Lyons detailed the deliberate and systematic skein of lies promoted by Richard Mellon Scaife and the Arkansas Project, and piped into the mainstream media through the American Spectator, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News ("The Hunting of the President").

In fact, one of the most effective debunkers of the systematic lying by this shadow media is a former member of that media. David Brock wrote articles for the American Spectator about the utterly bogus Arkansas State Trooper story, and he wrote the hatchet book attacking Anita Hill, but he then became disaffected with the far right. Now, as director of MediaMatters.org, he lists at least five inaccuracies, misstatements, and/or flat-out lies by right wing writers and commentators on his site in any given week.

The problem is that while these shadow media never ever admit error, let alone committing deliberate falsehoods, they maintain an unrelenting attack on the mainstream media. They mischaracterize a feedback system Mr. AcuZa regards as a healthy and necessary self-regulation of the press as a series of admissions of fault, in order to portray the mainstream media as riddled with inept or corrupt reporters. The chant of "DanRatherJaysonBlairNewsweek" is endless from the shadow media, even as they never, ever confess to any flaw of their own.

Mr. Acuna concludes, "This is the puzzling place where papers are trying to be more earnest with readers than ever before, while at the same time readers believe their papers less than ever. My hope is that newspapers are on the right track, and that readers will eventually catch up."

Newspapers are on the right track, and I applaud the efforts made to ensure reliable, honest reporting.

I have a series of suggestions, Mr. AcuZa. 1. Go to David Brock’s website. 2. Contact Mr. Brock, and get his permission to post one week’s worth of Brock’s examples of shoddy, misleading, and dishonest behavior by the shadow media in your column. 3. Ask your readers what they would think if they saw such a laundry list of journalistic malfeasance directed at the staff of the Bee. 4. Ask your readers if they would be disgusted and enraged, and if so, why it is they accept such behavior from such entities as the cable show talk hosts, the "news sources" owned by Rupert Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon, and the rest of the shadow media. As I said, these are just suggestions. But I think you could set some people back on their haunches and make them think by doing this.

The Bee, and other legitimate news organizations, are on the right track. It really does just take time for your readers to catch up. You can start by showing them examples where people not only sometimes fall short of your standards at the Bee, but are openly contemptuous of them.

Your standards reflect respect for your readers. The contempt of the shadow media for those same standards reflects their contempt for their audience.