Another reason to hate the Press…

Updated on July 12, 2007 By Ken Begg 13 Comments

Hey, it’s a feel-good post!  This isn’t about media bias (this time), but a problem we can all, whatever your leanings, pretty much agree with.

There’s a mini-scandal going on in Chicago now.  A veteran woman TV reporter with a reputation for getting perhaps too close to sources (not in a sexual way, as far as I know) was filmed in a bikini poolside at the home of a man whose wife is currently missing, the latter situation being a big story here right now.  Again, this isn’t a sexual situation, as kids were present, both the guy’s and the reporter’s. 

Still, she got fired after video of the incident–in trucated form (more on that later)–played on a rival news station.  Basically her actions in getting so personally involved in the story were considered professionally inappropriate, although because we live in the No Consequences Society, many viewers are rallying to her defense.  Heaven forbid that anyone should be held to any standards, ever.

The rival station has some legitimate criticism coming its way, too.  From what I understand–I’m following this through the papers–they showed a truncated version of the video that made it seem racier than the situation was, going from footage of the reporter in her bikini to unconnected footage of the guy putting his shirt on (off?). 

Here’s the commentary that really burns my ass, though, from the coverage in the Chicago Sun-Times this morning:  “In choosing to air…[the tape]…[the rival station] broke a long-standing tradition in Chicago.  With rare exceptions, stations have adhered to a gentlemen’s (and gentlewomen’s)* agreement not to report on the foibles and failings of one another.”

[*Oh, for heaven’s sake.]

This is what pisses me off.  Reporters and the press, just like lawyers and cops and judges and politicians and every other catagory of (often self-appointed) watchdogs routinely maintain the old Code of Silence in terms of their own.  This is especially egregious with the Press, who are quite comfortable protecting their own in a way that they would raise high heaven about in any other field.  The Press routinely digs up and publishes even non-dirt if they feel it portrays an “appearance of impropriety.”  In other words, they potentially ruin lives and careers even when nothing wrong has actually occurred, but the circumstances might have struck somebody else (usually with their own axe to grind) as looking like maybe or potentially something wrong might have occurred. 

Except, of course, when the wrongdoers, real and imagined, are their fellows in the Fourth Estate.  I mean, only those who work in the Press can understand the pressure and temptations that effect those in the Press.  Unlike, say, the sorts of pressures and temptations that effect cops, the military, politicians, corporate types, etc.  Those people deserve to have the Press up their ass at every moment, working under a presumption of guilt.  Which I’d have less problem with, if the Press did subject their own to half that level of scrutiny.

Thank goodness for the Internet and blogs and all the other forms of communication that are finally lifting the veil on these practices and incidents.  Admittedly, in this case a rival media station showed the video.  However, I wonder how much the Internet played in this rare break with Omerta?  Quite a lot, I think.  The fact is, the media is losing its ability to gatekeep information, and chances are if that an ‘official’ media source hadn’t shown the video, it would have ended up on YouTube or something.  Thus ratings and profits would have been lost, at the same time that embarrassing questions would have been raised about why this wasn’t reported by the “official” press. 

 I think this fact is going to erode the supposed “gentlemen’s” (ha!) agreement to cover up each other’s frauds and failures, since it’s going to be increasingly impossible to hide this stuff from our sight.  I, for one, enjoy the idea of watching trapped media rats chewing each other’s faces off as they’ve done with every other portion of society for the last fifty years.  What goes around comes around, baby.

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  • Food

    Wow, Ken. That’s the most miffed I’ve ever seen you get here.

    Not that I fault you one damn bit for it, though. I feel the same way about academia. Like the press, it too refuses to hold itself to the same standards it seeks to impose on everyone else.

    Damn them all to s**t! **pounds fist on the wet sand**

  • I don’t know, it was just the casual way this was treated, as the whole “gentlemen’s agreement” sort of thing. When you don’t afford anyone else the same courtesy, it’s hardly gentlemanly. The fact is, the Press feel free to excoriate anyone (particularly) they don’t like or sympathize with, but are entirely comfortable covering up for their own mistakes.

    Look at the New York Times. They were part and parcel of the screwing over of those Duke lacrosse players during that obviously fake ‘rape’ scandal, basically having convicted the guys before (and, sadly, after) the facts were in of a patently non-existent crime. Since the whole thing blew up, they have been reporting on the DA who fabricated the whole thing, but have not come close to examining their own repeated misdeeds during this extended period. And neither, really, has any other ‘legitimate’ news organ given them the scrutiny they deserve, either. It’s difficult for me to see any other sort of institution that would have gotten a pass on something of that magnitude.

    Everybody hates hypocrites (although as a sin it’s perhaps overexphasized), and it’s hard to think of worse ones at large then the press.

  • Food

    Roger that. The Duke rape hoax angered me too, both the press and academia gave free passes to themselves for their own complicity in it. Before I got expelled from CSU-East Bay, I had a few screaming matches with profs over it.

  • BrendanB

    The press will never meet the standards they impose on others because no one can. They attack people for the slightest mistake but often screw up facts in their stories (I once heard a guy report about B-52s taking off from aircraft carriers) and never own up to them. The best thing I ever read on this subject (massive hypocrisy in the press/politics) is from pointlesswasteoftime.com in reference to the fact that Al Gore travels with a motorcade of SUVS for his appearances about global warming:
    “And the thing is, I don’t think they know they’re doing it. If you didn’t know it was so common, you’d think it was a mental illness. That absolute disconnect between what we do and what we say and the almost universal belief that the solution to all of the world’s problems lie in deep sacrifices that should be made by other people who aren’t us. I have coined this mechanism of human thought The Retardatron. Feel free to use the term around the office. “

  • PCachu

    Hypocrisy is the only “sin” that remains when you refuse to acknowledge any authority higher than your own. That’s why you see the claims of it flung around like poop in the monkey house — when the only argument tool you have is a hammer, everything else becomes a nail.

  • Ken HPoJ

    I think hypocrisy is overused as an attack because it allows you to go after people you don’t like, and then not go after the people you do like, even if they are doing the same underlying thing. Only in the first, case, they say, “Well, it’s really the hypocrisy we object to.” The problem is especially acute, though, when the underlying action is, in fact, worse than the hypocrisy. Look at Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” (admittedly, an extreme example), in which the murderers were the heroes because, you know, at least they weren’t hypocrites.

    And yeah, I’d say hypocrisy is a sin. I don’t know a better word for it. It’s not a crime.

  • Chris Magyar

    Oh, we’re not all that bad. I agree there’s some prison guard abuse that goes on — “I’m in a position of authority! I must use it!” — but the fraternal thing isn’t nearly as extreme as it is with police, unions, or criminals. My paper just excoriated the one down the block for laying off reporters and then trying to cover up which ones in a stupid and doomed veil of silence. And we’re working on blowing the lid off another weekly whose editor-in-chief is on the county board of education and only runs, surprise!, articles favorable to loyal school board members in her rag.

    To understand the pressures and complications of one’s colleagues — and have a built-in reflex against ratting them out because of that understanding — is only human, in any profession. Journalism, especially on the big scales of national TV and major dailies, has been particularly faulty of late, but that doesn’t mean its examinations of public life are entirely without merit. Nor does it mean that there’s some Omerta policy protecting it. Who reported the Stephen Glass scandal?

    I do agree, big time, that the “open gate” theory of internet communication will, in the long run, be a boon for responsible journalism. Just as soon as business models adjust and talented young workers can stop worrying about the merciless, anonymous axe of corporate layoffs. Bloggers are great, but they can’t replace the skill set of professional writers. You wouldn’t want the patrons running the library, would you?

  • Hasimir Fenring

    Nor does it mean that there’s some Omerta policy protecting it.

    Ken didn’t say that; the Chicago Sun-Times did. So which is it? Do the television media adhere to a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to protect their own, or don’t they? If they don’t, what is the Chicago Sun-Times talking about?

  • Ken HPoJ

    I don’t see bloggers replacing reporters and corporate media outlets in the larger formal sense…although I don’t think it’s completely impossible that ‘private’ reporters working off the Internet will eventually provide an increasingly important alternative to the mainstream press. Michael Yon’s reader-funded work in Iraq is a prime example. (Michael Totten is another example of this burgeoning trend, and also doing terrific work.)

    Yon is actually out in the field, and is eating the AP’s lunch, which sadly isn’t proving to be that difficult as the AP seems content to rely on a rather dodgy set of stringers. While the AP is reporting false massacres via some incredibly dubious sources, Yon is out there documenting real ones, amongst other valuable work. The only MSM reporter I know of doing work as valuable and credible is John Burns of the NYT, and I have to say I view him as an aberration.

    However, the rules *have* changed. The Press is going to have to deal with the fact that they are now being scrutinized by the citizenry they have long claimed to represent, and can no longer operate under a set of unacknowledged (and often falsely denied) set of ‘unwritten rules.’ They also have to deal with the fact that now we have an array of experts writing on the subjects they often mis-report on, catching the sorts of errors (of both commission and omission) that would have passed by unnoticed up to now. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, they will no longer be able to function as ‘gatekeepers’ for what set of information we are allowed to consume. If they try to report only one side of the story, it *is* going to blow up in their faces.

    Meanwhile, the current and increasingly false and desperate snobbiness of the mainstream press towards bloggers is unsustainable, especially since they are almost daily getting caught in the sorts of mistakes and other distortions that are rendering comical their claims to superior accuracy. I’m still seeing sniffing by remarks by reporters and columnists and editors about bloggers being people “in their basements” or “in pajamas.” All this proves is that they really don’t get how the paradigm has changed. The first time the pajamas thing was used, it was immediately adopted by smart-alec bloggers as a badge of honor. The continued use of it as an attempted insult now just shows ‘official’ media workers as being laughably out of touch.

    In a perfect world, or even a pretty good one, the Press will make their peace with bloggers and accept that they’ve got to be better, more accurate and less unstated-agenda driven (or, more workably, just come clean on their agendas and get them out into the open). If they do come to terms with that, then we could be on the cusp of a very real and incredibly beneficial transformation of information delivery. What we see now is the realization that *anyone* can be a reporter. All it takes is time, diligence and a commitment to accuracy that, frankly, the larger media hasn’t always made their primary goal over the eyars. That’s where the technology has taken us, and the genie isn’t going back into the bottle. Resources are still important, but we entering an age where there soon will no longer be an ‘official’ media that stands about the rest by default.

    And, actually, I do think sometimes the ‘professional’ ‘accredited’ librarians do take themselves a little too seriously, and dismiss the concerns of the patrons (i.e., the people who actually pay for the library) a bit too easily. This might be because I’m not a librarian (lacking an MLS), but while I don’t necessarily want patrons “running” libraries, I think they should have the main say in defining what a library *is,* and that librarians should then accept that their role is to administrate those wishes in the best manner feasible. Same thing with our schools. Teachers aren’t there to decide what the role of a school should *be,* but rather to realize the goals of what the community at large wishes it to be. We defer to doctors and lawyers (less as time goes on, though), because their areas of expertise lie well beyond the ken of most laymen. That’s not the case for reporters, librarians and teachers, however, and I think we’ll all be better off when everyone admits that, themselves especially.

  • Ericb

    I have a friend who’s in Beirut at the moment who’s a freelance journalist (her husband is the Mid-East correspondent for a local paper). She written some interesting stuff on Lebanon (and Iraq, she was there in 2004). You can see her stuff here:

    http://anniaciezadlo.com/pages.php?content=nestGall.php&navGallID=1&activeType=gall

  • Jack Spencer

    I don’t know. While I agree that members of the press should not be exempt from being reported upon, I found myself not caring about this particular story because I did not think it was news. I found it more akin to that particularly fallow brand of yellow journalism, celebrity journalism, where we’re supposed to be titillated by the latest young starlet’s coked-up drinking binge that cause her to accidentally flash you breasts and vagina to a hungry mob of photographers. Or worse, it’s like those reality shows where people who are neither interesting nor important are still put on my television. Get. Them Off.

    So, personally, I don’t get why you’re so ticked. The press seems to think that station should not have broadcast that story and I happen to agree. Just not for the same reasons.

  • Well, their reasons *are* why I’m ticked. If they hadn’t reported on it because it was barely news, I’d agree with you.

  • Prankster

    Hey, a Ken rant I can get behind. The press (a much better phrase in this context than “the media”) has been in serious decline of late…ever since the O.J. trial? I’m just spitballing as to the catalyst. But the amount of hard news and analysis has indeed gone way south (though I should admit I’m not the right one to throw stones, as my exposure to US media isn’t perhaps as all-consuming as you guys’.) The internet is indeed going to transform information delivery–I think it’s inevitable at this point, in fact, unless some of the worst-case scenarios about Net Neutrality come to pass. Most good journalists are acknowledging this.

    “I think hypocrisy is overused as an attack because it allows you to go after people you don’t like, and then not go after the people you do like, even if they are doing the same underlying thing.”

    Wait…isn’t that…hypocrisy?!?