Media Critic Calls On Journalists To Be Obedient Stenographers
from the wtf? dept
Media critic Michael Wolff has a fairly long history of being hilariously wrong about just about everything. It's sort of his thing. He also has a history of being a ridiculously bad journalist in those rare moments when he tries to do journalism. We normally ignore him, but last week he said something so ridiculous and so crazy, that it deserved calling out. He called on journalists to be stenographers to those in power. Literally.I think what’s required is for the media to do its job. I feel deeply the media hasn’t done its job. It’s abdicated its responsibility, has lost itself somewhere. Right now it’s an interesting moment where the media looks at Donald Trump as a threat instead of a story, possibly the biggest story of our time. Certainly a story that needs to be told in rather conventional ways. Who are these people, what motivates them, where are they from, where are they going — just basic storytelling.This is wrong and idiotic on so many levels. First of all, a big part of the problem is that journalists have been stenographers for way too long. Their ridiculous "view from nowhere" where "person A says X, but person B says Y" journalism, without ever delving which is correct between X & Y, is a huge part of the problem. Calling bullshit on bullshit is not "bias." It's called accurately informing people. But Wolff apparently thinks we've had enough of that.
I thought these people have won an election, so now is the time to go in and say who are you and what do you think. We are not in an oppositional moment right now; that has passed. I actually asked very few questions. I said tell me who you are. He talked and I took notes. Yes, you do want to be stenographers. That’s a very significant piece of journalism. We don’t want to hear [the reporter]. Write it down. You’re there to literally convey what someone in power says, and you bring it to people who want to know. Journalism is now a profession filled with people who are not journalists. They’re all under 25, talking to people under the age of 25. Let me send the message: stenographer is what you’re supposed to be.
[The move against normalizing Trump actions and language] are just institutional biases. This is formally saying we are biased and want to be biased, we are judge and jury.
For years, calling journalists "stenographers" was a punchline to highlight how feckless many journalists had become, where they looked to pull punches to retain "access." There's a reason you have lots of articles online mocking journalists because they became stenographers. There's a reason that Stephen Colbert got such big laughs by calling White House correspondents stenographers. Because it was all too accurate:
Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions. He's the decider. The Press Secretary announces the decisions. And you people of the press type those decisions down. Make. Announce. Type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you've got kicking around in your head. You know the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know: fiction.Back when he performed that, it was satire. Now here's Wolff saying the same thing seriously. This is how far we've come.
The good thing about this election was that it finally shocked some reporters out of this mode, and it's insane to argue that that was the mistake. There is some truth in the fact that reporters got too focused on Trump, the person, as opposed to focusing on actual issues and policies, but to argue that they should just be stenographers is insane. Politicians thrive on misleading the press and Trump is an expert at it. He's the king of "hey, look over there" whenever any legitimate story against him comes out. He plays the press like a banjo. And, while I'm not convinced they'll figure out how to counter that and to do what the real press should do -- which is hold Trump accountable -- the idea that their role should be stenographers is insane.
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Filed Under: donald trump, journalism, michael wolff, reporting, stenographers, truth
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Actually he's just saying things backwards
When the left is in power they parrot every god danmed thing the left says, nodding their head the whole time....
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Some of these folk refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything left of center because anything left of their extreme right views is a god damned liberal - there is no far left when everything is far left.
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People need to stop being so sodding well dishonest.
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Then there's journalism which is getting the hard facts and dissecting them. Damages expected from the quake and what's the method that generated them, causalities, help lines, how to make yourself useful to the victims (ie: helping in an efficient way). That statement from the White House, what's the context, is there any bullshit on it? Are the figures on it correct, are them exposed in a biased way? Dissect the thing. That's when journalism kicks in and here you can add the outfit own opinions and biases. Not all biases are bad, specially if you know where they are. I keep reading some publications that are very politically biased because knowing the bias their writing offer good insights. It would be better if they clearly stated their positions.
So I think the press can and should both things. How to make this operational is something I couldn't figure out when I reached that conclusion.
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Stenographers? No way.
Journalists should be koala bears. Cute little koalas.
Wait no, those would require an H-1B visa. We can't have that.
What pound class animals does the U.S. have? Rattle snakes?
If nobody can think of anything cuter, let's fill the White House press room with rattlers.
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Re: Stenographers? No way.
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Fascinating "logic"...
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Re: There is a difference between truth and facts
Or maybe it’s neither--it’s actually reality instead?
Enquiring minds would like to know.
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Talking Heads, Cover the Controversy
Some people say the moon causes the tides.
Other people say the tides cause the moon.
Both viewpoints get equal treatment. Cover the controversy, not the facts or science, etc.
The "tides cause the moon" people also can back up what they say with studies by think tanks, and so that deserves extra time.
Just because one guest makes a logical sensible argument with valid points and reproducible results and hard data is no reason you should listen to him or her.
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what a tangled web we weave...
one of the major problems we find ourself in, is that it is all tied up in one gloriously, huge, tangled skein of Empire... you cant tug on one string without all the interlocking strings pulling back: you cant address mainstream media failures without addressing the failings of capitalist imperialism...
you cant address systemic election fraud without preventing money-type 'speech' from overwhelming mere human speech, etc, ad infinitum...
in other words, unless/until Empire falls, there is no way to effectively isolate one problrm to fix it, all roads lead back to the oppression by Empire...
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Failing that, how about passing a law to make it illegal to lie about what you are reporting on.
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That's pretty naive. Who determines what's a "lie"? The government. Therefore, making it illegal to "lie" is an instant route to censorship.
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I threw up a little.
There's a reason the Press is included in the First Amendment Mr.Wolff and it's not so they can sit there and be a mouthpiece for the government. Your last name is fitting sir.
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Not a problem....
Any attempt to regulate the Media in any fashion will result it worse than what you were trying to save yourself from.
The media has done a bang up job making people trust it, so we are doing fine!
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Journalism
Stenography is slavishly and shamelessly echoing the official line exactly as the powerful wish it to be printed regardless of the truth.
Jefferson remarked that he would prefer newspapers without government over government without newspapers precisely because the newspapers of his day were not stenographers. Who here believes that stenographers will bother to listen to and report on the poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless?
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Did you not learn anything from Wikileaks? The press is in the back pocket of the DNC. They are literally stenographers for the DNC! They went after Trump like rabid dogs. Much like you are doing since he won the election. That is very much part of the reason he won.
Seriously, if these kind of articles continue, I will drop TD from my news reader. I have learned a lot here, but it appears it is time to move on. If I want to read angry leftist rants, I can get that in any newspaper or on 3 of the 4 major TV networks.
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Did you not learn anything from Wikileaks? The press is in the back pocket of the DNC.
That's not actually what the Wikileaks hacks revealed.
They went after Trump like rabid dogs. Much like you are doing since he won the election. That is very much part of the reason he won.
They went after Trump because he's a horribly unprepared candidate with massive conflicts of interests, and a history of outright fabrications. And they didn't do nearly enough, frankly, as they spent a lot more time focusing on fake scandals about Clinton. I'm no fan of Clinton either but the idea that the press were stenographers for her, when they repeated a bunch of bogus claims against her is laughable.
The press loves sensational stories, no matter which side it's coming from.
Seriously, if these kind of articles continue, I will drop TD from my news reader.
"This kind of article"? You think that calling out someone for arguing the press should be stenographers is a problem? Then go away now. Bye bye.
If I want to read angry leftist rants, I can get that in any newspaper or on 3 of the 4 major TV networks.
Nothing in what I wrote is an angry leftist rant, because I'm not an angry leftist and my views are not leftist by a long shot.
If you can't take someone calling bullshit on Trump, and you have to falsely label anyone who does so a "leftist" then go find a comfy safe space for the bullshit you want to hear. We don't play that game.
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"If you can't take someone calling bullshit on Trump"
I certainly can, because he was not my first choice. But when you call BS on Trump while completely ignoring the same BS or worse on Hillary and the DNC, then I have a problem.
But yes, I will immediately unsubscribe to this blog. Your angry, bitter posts have ruined this place and that is a real shame because you had a good thing going here.
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Re: they went after Trump while ignoring the controversy around Hillary.
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Or is it meant to be ironic humor?
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I'll ask this: what's your point?
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But when you call BS on Trump while completely ignoring the same BS or worse on Hillary and the DNC, then I have a problem.
There's a person who keeps reposting a link on how Democrats lost 900+ seats as a response to any criticism.
Tell me - how long does this site need to focus on Hillary, now that Trump and the Republicans won the executive and legislative branches?
You guys love pointing out how much you won - why do you insist that this site cover the losers with the same vitriol as the winners?
Like it or not, Republicans are in charge now - so you should EXPECT that they're going to be under the microscope. Don't like it? Then tell them to fuck off and find a job more suitable to their tissue-thin skin.
This isn't bias - it's just reporting on what people who "won" are doing.
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I should have added, they went after Trump while ignoring the controversy around Hillary.
This is not even remotely true. The controversy around Clinton's email servers got a ridiculous amount of coverage. It was interesting to us here, because that was an issue that we had strong opinions on, but it far outweighed the seriousness of ths issue, and paled in comparison to coverage of Trump's equally problematic issues.
They ignored Wikileaks almost completely. Just like you are doing here.
Wha....? We covered Wikileaks and the press was ALL OVER Wikileaks leaks. The problem was that most of them were a giant nothingburger. Oh, the campaign had lunch with the press. That's what reporters do. They cultivate sources. The biggest revelation in the leaks was the Donna Brazile sending questions over (something we did cover).
The left are the ones living in their safe space bubble. After all, you don't see conservatives needing playdoh and puppy therapy on college campuses
Huh? What does that have to do with anything that we're discussing.
But when you call BS on Trump while completely ignoring the same BS or worse on Hillary and the DNC, then I have a problem.
That's the fucking problem here. I called out Clinton just as much as Trump during the campaign. And now she lost. There's nothing to cover on her any more. So I'm covering Trump and his idiotic statements just as I would now be covering Clinton and her idiotic statements.
Why don't you understand that?
But yes, I will immediately unsubscribe to this blog. Your angry, bitter posts have ruined this place and that is a real shame because you had a good thing going here.
Ok. Bye. Hurry now. Don't dawdle.
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You are the one asking people to leave so who is it exactly that is looking for a safe space?
The reference to a safe space is because all of you who keep falsely insisting that we've somehow become "biased" because we call out Trump's actions (just as we've called out Obama's) is somehow "bad" for this blog. It's as if you simply can't take anyone calling bullshit on the guy you support, and therefore are somehow demanding that we become a safe space for you. So, yes, I'm mocking the fact that folks who support Trump keep insisting they're against "safe spaces" but seem to be demanding that Techdirt become a kind of safe space.
I'm not demanding anyone leave. I'm just telling those who are threatening to leave as an attempt to make me change what I say that I don't care. I'm not doing this to make this a happy space for anyone. I'm doing this to speak my opinion on various matters, just as I always have. You can stay if you want. I'm not kicking anyone out. I'm just saying that if you're going to scream and whine about how you're going to leave if I keep calling bullshit on Trump, then leave. Don't act like you need to pressure me into changing my views.
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Another example is your article on the recount by Hillary and Jill. They are the fools asking for a recount but you spend 2/3 of the article bashing Trump. If you are calling BS on one and ignoring the exact same sins of the other, people are going to call you on your BS.
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If Hillary had won the election, then Techdirt would be focusing more on calling her out as the new president-elect, but she did not win, Donald Trump did.
It IS the job of the press to call out politicians, especially the President, on their statements. They are supposed to be the ones to make sure the politicians walk the straight-and-narrow, and call out bullshit when they don't.
They are the first line of defense against corruption. Well, they are supposed to be anyways. Many major media outlets haven't been, and bias is definitely one of the reasons, whether it is CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, WSJ, NYT, The Guardian, etc. Many do not actually take the responsibilities of the press seriously enough when the guy they like is in power.
Techdirt has a more narrowly focused slice of reporting, they don't just report anything, but focus on tech-related news and a few other things, but they have called out both Democrats and Republicans on those stories - calling bullshit equally on Bush, Clinton, Trump and Obama.
One of the reasons so many people call out bullshit on Trump is the fact that Trump speaks off the cuff without even checking if he said the exact opposite days before. Because of that, it becomes easier for people to call bullshit on him.
Mike, keep doing what you are doing, calling out bullshit is the press's job.
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I don't think that the poster is tossing out hatred. Rather, he is pointing out the uneven nature of the coverage here on Techdirt. Trump isn't even in power yet, the posts are mostly dancing with ghosts and shadows.
That a number of different people are calling Mike out on it should tell you something. There are even regular vocal supporters of Mike who have said something. It's not hatred, it's just wondering where the "tech" has gone, and why this site has turned mostly to just "dirt".
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Did you not learn anything from Wikileaks?
I learned something about conservatives due to Wikileaks.
I learned that as long as Wikileaks does something to help them out, they will gladly forget about a few key Wikileaks facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack#Campaign_response
So yes, I learned ALOT from Wikileaks - but I don't think it's what you might have expected.
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You learned nothing.
Au contraire.
I learned that classified information matters only when it came to Hillary's emails.
I'm equating conservatives linking to a news site that still hosts classified information as hypocritical, given your "outrage" over Hillary's emails.
That's all. Sorry you don't like that.
But frankly, I don't give a shit. I'm just telling it like it is.
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Just found out Trumpy's talking to Patreus about a potential cabinet position.
Remember him?
He's the one that was *actually convicted* for sharing classified information with his whore.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/23/politics/david-petraeus-sentencing/
Just another little nugget to prove my point.
But you keep fighting the good fight jackass! It'll be hilarious watching 4 years of you guys making excuses for Trump being the dickbag that he is.
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http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jan/25/cokie-roberts/have-democrats-lost-900-se ats-state-legislatures-o/
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Some more politifacts for you, since you seem to love the site so much.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/lists/people/comparing-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-tru th-o-met/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
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Rabid dogs and leftist rants .. that's rich.
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"They went after Trump like rabid dogs."
Much like they did with Obama before he did what the market wanted and bailed out banks and insurance companies?
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TD seems lost.
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Three Tiers of Reporting
The problem is that all sorts of stuff, from blog-style op-eds to baseball scores, gets lumped in as "the media". Off the cuff, there should be 1-3 tiers of coverage per piece.
The base tier is the raw take with a basic, neutral, short synopsis. Covering a press conference? Provide a link to unedited audio or video of the press conference. Covering the latest dump from Wikileaks? Link to the documents that you are summarizing. Covering something that appeared in other media (mass media, social media, whatever)? Provide the raw other material, both as a link and as a screenshot or other capture (in case the original is deleted). Basically, provide the proof behind the synopsis. "Unnamed sources" need not apply -- use that for some gossip rag.
The second tier is fact-checking and cross-referencing. Covering a press conference? Identify the sources of all facts cited at that conference (or indicate that the party making the statements declined to provide evidence), plus provide links to term definitions and other related explanatory material. Covering the latest dump from Wikileaks? Provide cross-references to other supporting material that refer to the same people/places/things/events. Covering something that appeared in other media? Identify the sources of those facts (or indicate that the party making the statements declined to provide evidence), plus provide links to term definitions and other related explanatory material.
The third tier is analysis, which inevitably winds up involving some degree of opinion. This analysis needs to build upon the first two tiers (no hand-waving). Include cross-references to other analyses on related topics.
But the key to all of this is that the results need to be a living document.
The first tier should be able to be assembled fairly quickly. Get it up and posted, with placeholders for the remaining tiers (and ETAs, where applicable). Add in the fact-check/cross-reference work progressively, with timelines showing the changes. Add in the analysis for those topics that warrant after the first two tiers are complete... and if new evidence comes in, update the materials and deprecate (mark as outdated) analyses until they can themselves be updated.
Mass media is too used to creating ephemeral work product: the article, the blog post, the 90-second segment for the 5pm news broadcast. Something a bit more like Wikipedia/Wikinews would go a long way towards showing enough of "how the sausage gets made" to help rebuild trust.
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Morphing into being Talking heads instead of a tech journal
I don't come here for political bullshit. And if that's all that's going to be served up then you're gonna be loosing a lot of readers.
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Better a stenographer than a mouthpiece
If the MSM can somehow restrict communications to/from an administration to go through the MSM, then they can charge monopoly rents for these communications.
This also works out for the administration, which carefully hands out little tidbits to the MSM -- like treats for an obedient pet -- to keep the MSM towing the party line.
Bottom line: when MSM reporters are married to admin officials, lobbyists, Fed officials, and/or party hearty with them, these reporters have crossed the line and can no longer be trusted to provide the public with unbiased reporting.
As bad as social media is, it destroys the MSM rent-seeking business model, and allows fleeting insights into the real mechanisms of the power elites.
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Michael Wolff is largely correct, that if the traditional media wants to survive and not simply get bypassed by new formats, then they need to change back to the formala that led to their success. They need to ditch the front page editorials and TV personalities. "Just the facts, sir."
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He should be picking up a dictionary...
The key difference is who pays you for the work. If the person in power is paying you, you are a spokesperson. If a news organization or the public are paying you, it usually means you are a journalist. Just ask yourself this, whose interests am I serving with my work? If you are not serving the public interest you are not a journalist.
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The Last Word
“