April 30, 2018
In the words of journalist, Finley Peter Dunne, it is the job of the news media to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted,” but you would never know it from the firestorm that has erupted since Michelle Wolf’s scathing routine at The White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday. Muckraking journalism that seeks the truth “without fear or favor” is essential to a free democracy, but sadly, many of those covering Michelle Wolf’s routine at The White House Correspondents Dinner seem to forgotten the purpose of their craft.
The pearl clutching over Wolf’s takedown of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ mendacity is truly revolting. The shopworn expression of outrage that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was humiliated as a wife and a mother is entirely misplaced. Sanders was not castigated on the sidelines of her kids’ soccer game, but in her job as press secretary to the most powerful man in the world! As Jamilah Lemieux pointed out, the same people rushing to defend Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ honor have been markedly silent in the face of the humiliating Waffle House arrest of Chikesia Clemons last week in Saraland, Alabama.
The truth is, that while many journalists are doing admirable work holding this administration accountable for its corruption, racism, misogyny and transphobia, many of those same journalists are loathe to examine their own role in getting Trump elected in the first place. They would rather not acknowledge how their desire for clicks and eyeballs allowed them to treat Trump as an entertaining sideshow rather than an existential threat to democracy. Too many of them laughed along with the bully as he dispatched “Little Marco,” “Low energy Jeb” and “Crooked Hillary,” without stopping to think that the bully’s ultimate victim would be the United States.
We need to consider how the news business went so far off course that we would see the spectacle of journalists rushing to the defense of the lying mouthpiece for a racist authoritarian. While we lament the modern news media’s predilection for sensationalism over substance, we should remember that Joseph Pulitzer was a pioneer of tabloid journalism. The problem is that this age old tendency has been exacerbated by federal policy decisions that accelerated consolidation in media ownership and eliminated any obligation to present differing perspectives on important public issues.
The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 both helped to create our current media landscape. The Fairness Doctrine, first introduced by the FCC in 1949, mandated that broadcasters allocate some time to the discussion of “controversial matters of public interest,” and that they air “contrasting views regarding those matters,” (Source: “The Fairness Doctrine, How We Lost It and Why We Need it Back,” by Steve Rendall, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting,www.fair.org (1/1/05)). Its reversal coincided with the emergence of the cable 24 hour news cycle, feeding Americans a steady diet of televisions news unfettered by any obligation to present multiple sides of an issue.
Ten years later, The Telecommunications Act of 1996 loosened the restrictions that prevented a single owner from controlling broadcast outlets and newspapers in the same media market. The purpose of those restrictions was to ensure that the public received a diversity of viewpoints. The Act paved the way for a single company to own or control Fox News, Fox 5, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. Today, six companies control 90% of the media that Americans consume. Thirty years ago, it was fifty.
The perspectives presented to us in contemporary news media are a direct result of arcane policy choices made decades ago. Given media consolidation and the pressures of declining profits, it is no wonder that journalists are sometimes confused about whose interests they serve. We shouldn’t be. We all have a choice. We can nod along with those who seek to mollify Sanders and her ilk by scolding Wolf for her “vulgarity.” Or we can support those willing to unflinchingly expose the truth of who these people are, because that’s what REALLY isn’t funny.
Great piece! Love how you moved from tart observations to searing structural critique. So important to connect these cultural phenomena to underlying policies and institutions that are undermining democracy . I learned a ton this morning about what’s driving the unraveling of the free press. Thank you.