Weisberg Redux & Ideology

In this post I want to first clarify a few things, and then talk some more about my new buddy Jacob Weisberg. So, first:

I don’t really intend this to be one of those quick, rapid-news response type blogs where somebody provides their take on the news, mainly because 1. It’s really hard to stay on top of things, and 2. Lots and LOTS of people do that really well already (see here, or here, or here, for just a few inspiring examples). Plus, I’d much rather take my time and get my thoughts in order.

Keeping the focus on specific “liberal” media figures allows me to research and write about things that I find really fascinating (de Tocqueville’s note about how freedom of thought in America leads paradoxically to a narrow range of acceptable opinion, for example), without feeling the need to comment on every little thing that happens. So, while I don’t really have the mind to go digging through the House and Senate health care bills to see how they differ, I will want to talk at some point about the assumptions underlying the media’s reporting of those bills. Without going insane, of course.

To find my fake liberals, I’ll generally stick to those standard, “old media” sources, i.e. the Times, Post, WSJ, CNN and other cable networks on occasion, mainly in order to keep things somewhat limited, but also because those news sources, despite their circulation and ratings losses, are still the means by which an overwhelming majority of Americans get their news (whether directly or indirectly). From my perspective, then, FOX News is not so much a media outlet as much as it is news itself, like a protest on the Washington mall whose size we might want to argue about. I’m only interested in it as an item on which those traditional outlets report.

FOX, of course, was the recipient of an unusually angry smackdown from none other than Jacob Weisberg one month ago. It was part of a larger media freakout that started after the White House Communications Director gave an interview in which she was asked what the administration thought about being called evil commie terrorist Nazis by a 24-hour news network 24 hours a day. When she told the truth, editorials ran in every major paper, and the subject received intense scrutiny from the major networks (and she eventually resigned, of course, which is a whole other blog topic).

Weisberg probably intended his Newsweek column that week to be a stirring call-to-arms, a true liberal defense of Obama’s right to say the obvious truth out loud. And it certainly seems right on:

There is no need to get bogged down in this phony debate, which itself constitutes an abuse of the fair-mindedness of the rest of the media. One glance at Fox's Web site or five minutes' random viewing of the channel at any hour of the day demonstrates its all-pervasive slant. The lefty documentaryOutfoxed spent a lot of time mustering evidence that Fox managers order reporters to take the Republican side. But after 13 years under Roger Ailes, Fox employees skew news right as instinctively as fish swim.

Rather than in any way maturing, Fox has in recent months become more boisterous and demagogic. Fox sponsored as much as it covered the anti-Obama "tea parties" this summer. Its "fact checking" about the president's health-care proposal is provided by Karl Rove. And weepy Glenn Beck has begun to exhibit a Strangelovean concern about government invading our bloodstream by vaccinating people for swine flu. With this misinformation campaign, Fox stands to become the first network to actively try to kill its viewers.

It’s a sad state of affairs when credit must be given to a political columnist for telling the truth, but Weisberg tells the truth here, and he does so with an edge that’s actually pretty refreshing. Let’s see where he goes with this.

That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media.

YES. Absolutely. Maybe I’ve been too hard on this guy. It invades the bloodstream. Wait—what invades the bloodstream exactly? What does he mean by their “model?”

By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.

So close, and yet so far. Weisberg’s problem with FOX—his real problem, more important than the lies and inciting violence and everything else—is that ideologically-based news is popular, and so the other networks have followed suit.

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether MSNBC or CNN(?!) can really be called “ideological” in the same breath as FOX. First of all, that stupid show Crossfire existed way back in the ‘80s until it was destroyed by Jon Stewart's wrath in 2004. Whatever golden age Weisberg is pining for, when all news was fact and nothing was opinion or ideology—it never existed. All reporters have always had their own filters across their eyes about the world. There is no “neutral” reporting. There is always a belief, an opinion, or an interpretation to be made, and the reporter can either be honest and up front about those beliefs, or he can disguise them; he can even ignore them entirely. In this sense, FOX is really not so bad as he makes them out to be; despite the “fair and balanced” label, everyone knows FOX anchors/pundits/producers all have an angle. In this sense at least, they deserve some credit for honesty.

The problem rather lies in his tossed-off phrase “ideologically distorted news." There’s a big bad WRONG assumption about the world going on here. Weisberg believes in truth. Which is a good thing, because plenty of political commentators don’t. But he also believes that truth is something that is distorted by ideology, ANY ideology—whether by Glenn Beck on the right (or wherever he resides) or by Keith Olbermann somewhere on the left. According to Weisberg, these pundits, because of their “ideological biases,” are unreliable. The truth exists of course, but it can be found somewhere in the middle between these two “extremes.”

This kind of thinking is incredibly pervasive, and so utterly wrong. FOX News doesn’t suck because it’s ideological—it sucks because its ideology is driven by contempt and fear and religious extremism, and the policies they promote have had and will have awful consequences for the world. Ideology itself, though, is just a set of beliefs or principles about the way the world works and should work. Neo-Nazis are ideological, and nonviolent civil rights workers are ideological. We can argue about the difference between these two sets of beliefs, but having beliefs, any beliefs, shouldn’t be the problem.

Every mainstream political non-opinion journalist, however, is taught to sublimate their personal beliefs in their work. They are just mere conduits through which information flows, you see. And so on every issue, no matter what, the Times or Post or CNN or whoever will at some point say: “Democrats say this. But Republicans say this.” And because they cannot allow their “ideology” (i.e. their brains) to interfere with the story, they cannot comment on the fact that one side is usually lying their asses off.

Weisberg wants the White House, and “respectable journalists” (i.e. non-ideologues) to ignore FOX news. But that’s what got us into this mess in the first place. If you ignore them, their bullshit sprouts wings and gets in the ether and everybody gets so used to the taste that they can’t tell that it’s bullshit anymore. What liberals need to do is confront FOX forcefully, not just in the occasional column but repeatedly, and systematically, every single time they open their mouths, because being liberal means being against things that are conservative. Explaining why you're against things that are conservative might even help the people understand what's at stake in these battles, and why they might want to consider what liberalism has to offer.

Sure, most political reporters will always report these debates as “he said, she said,” and leave it at that. But if supposedly liberal columnists continue to believe that ideology itself is bad, and that truth can always be found in the middle, well then we end up with a country held hostage to the “non-ideological” whims of people like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman. Which is what we have now.

Which is making me so happy, I can't even tell you.