Unpopular culture
I’m at a PBS panel at Reuters on news and the tabloid culture. It starts on a snotty note: a commercial for PBS from its head and sniffing about popular culture, which I find rather disingenuous from an institution that has to exploit Yanni to get money. When people look down on popular culture — aka tabloid culture — they are looking down on the public they supposedly want to serve.
Carl Bernstein argues that “journalism is part of popular culture and we cannot get away from that.” He goes on to say that “I don’t believe that the reporting on the war is as bad as some people, particularly people on the left, say. . . . During Watergate, it took a long time for people to believe in our stories.” The country is turning on the war because they do not believe it’s working and he says they come to that belief because journalists have been dogging coverage of the war.” Yet he turns around to argue that we operate with an “idiot culture” that was once a subculture “but now it is more menacing because it is starting to drown out the process by which people previously have been able to absorb serious information.”
Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair says the problem is that what we in media do is boring. “The form has died.” He also says the economic basis of news is falling apart and that one cannot name a news industry and organization that is not in turmoil.
Poor Janice Min, editor of US Weekly, is being held up as the devil: Ms. Tabloid. She, in turn, holds up TV news as the devil. “I would just rather go online and read the news.”
Todd Gitlin blamed everything on the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, until he was cut off.
Brooke Gladstone of On the Media tells a whining Bernstein that the relationship with media is fundamentally changing. “You can’t use media as a conduit anymore… you have to use it as a conversation.”
Wolff says to Bernstein and Gladstone that “this is all about condescension…. people are reading our news and saying it is full of shit.”
Gitlin launches off on a lecture on Watergate. Wolff jokes that we should get off this Watergate thing. Gitlin explodes and tells Wolff he’s rude. “Gitlin part of the fucking problem with media” is shouting, he shouts. Wolff: “Part of the problem is is a lack of a sense of humor.” Gitlin, red-faced, proves the point, accusing Wolff of “a lack of grace.”
Bernstein asks the room who voted for Bush. Not a single person raises a hand. “This tells us something about we who are producing this,” he says.
A student from NYU says that between Frontline and US is Jon Stewart. I wish some journalism students — someone under 50 — were on this panel (and there are plenty here from NYU and CUNY). That’s the perspective we’re not hearing. Indeed, we heard some sniffing about having the follow the demographic advertisers want: namely, young people. After saying, with admiration, that Stewart should be nominated by his school for a “fake Pulitzer,” Gitlin — looking at media the old, mass way — says that Jon Stewart’s number are “very low” and that “he is not the voice of a generation.”
I do my predictable rant arguing that this is about respect for the people and about listening. When we dismiss popular culture we dismiss the population. We do see Fanning of PBS and Gladstone of NPR making good use of new media to present news but I argue that is less than half the battle (and the head of PBS says that PBS — particularly Frontline — is looking to use new media to open up to new talent and new reporting): It’s about listening to the people.
Tags: journalism
September 26th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Many succeed without any trace of respect for ‘the people’ - See any gross-out ‘reality’ show, very popular. After the 2004 election, I am no longer of the mind that people should be respected. More realistically, if you can dupe the majority with a handful of baseless 30 second sound bites into ignoring 4 years of reality, how is it they deserve respect? It’s no longer about respecting, it’s about manipulating.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
To be more serious than I usually am, I find the writing of serious American journalists and bloggers to be to distant and patronising. The tone is one of high minded detachment and too often I get utterly lost in the convoluted prose Americans use in order to avoid ever actually revealing which side of the fence they will eventually come down on (and I have a degree in English).
The comedy actor and intellectual Stephen Fry commented on this trait recently when, after a stint in Hollywood he said on TV “what I find strange about America is the lengths to which people go in orer to avoid ever disagreeing with anybody. If an American says “everybody knows blue is red” nobody will tell them the proposition is idiotic, that blue is blue and red is red, people would rather say ‘ yes you are right, in some circumstances blue can be red but occasionally don’t you think blue is simply blue.”
A ridiculous example, but I see real examples all the time.
A little humour, a lot more passion and the courage to say outright that people are talking through their arse would do a lot to restore the credibility of quality journalism.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Welcome to the Conversation. Theater of the Absurd.
Gitlin’s pissed. Wolfe is bored. PBS is smug. And Jon Stewart should get a fake Pulitzer. TV’s the devil. No, tabloids are. Wait, I thought Bush was. (Any sulfur smell in that room?)
Once again, there’s nothing more fun than observing Old lefties and New lefites having at it.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Talk about the rant of the dinosauers.
one cannot name a news industry and organization that is not in turmoil.
What about Fox News? Even Bill Clinton is driving viewers to Fox, delivering his anti-Fox rant on Fox!
September 26th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
How utterly depressing, Jeff.
There has never been a better moment for old media to reinvent itself and there has never been a generation (or two) as ignorant of history and of current events and of the world beyond our shores and as interested in finding out more.
In my experience, under-30-year-olds are hungry for information about our world (to fill in the gaps left by their education—gaps they’ve found out about after 9/11). The media could be doing so much to fill that big, gaping hole, and do a real public service.
Like it or not, pop/tabloid culture is our lingua franca—Frontline itself did a documentary proving that, called “The Merchants of Cool.” If anybody knows it, their producers should know that serious documentaries, like books, theater, opera, the dance, etc. are niche tastes. Those niche tastes should of course be served, funded, propped up, and preserved: they’re our heritage, and they make us richer human beings.
But bemoaning the state of “serious” culture is just wasting valuable time that media mavens could be using to improve the sorry state of our popular culture, which always has been and remains absolutely the best way to transmit information (including “the news”) to an audience.
The impoverishment of our pop culture is the real issue. There should be a lot more Jon Stewarts and Sacha Baron Cohens: people who entertain and also challenge their audience to understand their world.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
[...] Not to jump topics here, but Jeff Jarvis' post today from "a PBS panel at Reuters on news and the tabloid culture." He mentions a quote here that I think applies: "Brooke Gladstone of On the Media tells a whining [Carl "I Broke Watergate for the Washington Post along with Bob Woodward"] Bernstein that the relationship with media is fundamentally changing. “You can’t use media as a conduit anymore… you have to use it as a conversation." Beautifully said, and although I'm not the first to even to echo it on a blog, it bears mentioning. [...]
September 26th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
[...] And if you aren’t bummed enough yet, an interesting quote from a recent Jeff Jarvis piece [...]
September 26th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
i’m waiting for jessica simpson to teach advanced physics on pbs.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
You should be attending these panels with a crossbow, like Van Helsing.
September 26th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
The reason there were no Bush voters are because conservatives do not value journalism, or in a larger sense, the arts. They value media that tells them what to think (Fox, Instapundit) rather than media that informs them and possibly doesn’t follow the way they see the world in lockstep.
September 27th, 2006 at 3:24 am
No.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Oliver, I hope you’re being sarcastic. The reason that there were “no Bush voters” in the room is the intimidation factor - why would anyone, even if they had voted for Bush, single themselves out in that venue and subject themselves to certain derision? Bernstein might as well have asked, “Who here in this room has a raging case of VD?”
Conservatives do not value journalism or the arts? They value media that “tells them what to think”? Hilarious! This is exactly the mindset that lost Dems the last election.
Here is the current explanation for why Bush remains President: Democrats, who are much, much smarter (and better looking, more artistic, and open-minded) than Republicans, lost because all of those dumb people (mostly in those confounded, backwards and illiterate flyover states) voted for Bush without thinking. This could be because they were programmed to do so by Karl Rove, but is most likely due to the fact that they are really, really dumb. And those who didn’t vote for Bush are both brilliant and cuddly by default.
What would have been true journalism is if someone–a student, perhaps–in that room had raised their hand, stood up against the tide of BS and said they were a Bush supporter (even if they weren’t). The reaction by the participants as well as the audience would have been the real story.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I was going to echo what Oliver said but Noam Chomsky hasn’t told me what I think yet.
(Boy, Oliver is sure bitter about having driven himself off the cliff of readable, interesting bloggers into the fever swamps of partisan scolds, isn’t he?)
September 27th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Sadly, MBB, I’m afraid Oliver was not being sarcastic. More importantly, whether the rooms’ anti-Bush sentiment was due to intimidation or political conviction doesn’t matter as much as their exposing themselves as a simple homogeneous herd, incapable of Conversation.
It’s this uniformity that makes it so easy to mock mainsteam media, even while blogs are a bubbling caldron of thought diversity. The (likely apocryphal) Pauline Kael quote upon Nixon’s landslide victory — that she couldn’t believe Nixon had won, since no one she knew had voted for him — comes to mind.
So while Bernstein defends Watergate coverage with Gitlin and Wolff worries about form, Brooke Gladstone (apparently without irony) admonishes - “You can’t use media as a conduit anymore… you have to use it as a conversation.â€
This – to a crowd that believes a team is a league.
September 27th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Stephen Fry’s comment is true but only to the extent that it reflects the level of intimidation that has forced most people into the doublespeak spin positions. Our country has become a much meaner and more threatening place to live, where dissent from the conservative norms that have bullied their way to power is greeted by threats. I noticed a distinct shift in tolerance for opposing views as early as the 80s, and found myself saying things to agree under subtle but real pressure. The press has been under the same pressures. Those in power have not been afraid to throw every weapon at their disposal at the freedoms we used to assume easily. It may not be obvious to everyone, but it is to me, that we are living in a fascist state at the moment. When a President can release a report that calls his strategy in Iraq devastating and he says it says he’s doing great, well, I don’t know how you can reason with that and with the absolute power he wields.
September 27th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
I’m sorry Marilyn but it sounds an awful lot like your painting the picture blacker than it is to justify your use of hyperbole.
Let’s see.
“Our country has become a much meaner and more threatening place to live, where dissent from the conservative norms that have bullied their way to power is greeted by threats.”:
Which is why, people like Cindy Sheehan have been put in jail for daring to ‘dissent from conservative norms’. Wait, that’s right she’s been the darling of the international media while sitting outside the presidents personal property shouting at him like he was Pol Pot. (Cambodia….1970’s….forget it. It’ll just confuse you)
“I noticed a distinct shift in tolerance for opposing views as early as the 80s, and found myself saying things to agree under subtle but real pressure.”:
Subtext: When Reagon came into power I actually had to SPEAK with people who didn’t agree with me! Can you imagine the audacity of having to defend your beliefs??? I mean, who DOESN’T know that abortion on demand and affirmative action are by default the right positions. I tell you, it’s chilling. VERY chilling to have to use logic and reason to support your positions.
“It may not be obvious to everyone, but it is to me, that we are living in a fascist state at the moment. “:
Because, as I said before, the government has already read your post, created a file on you, and the guys with white coats (and blue gloves on their hands for you ‘firefly’ fans) are coming to your house right now to re-educate you. You know, like Kim Jong-Il does to his people and Castro does to cubans who dare to question El Jefe’s rulings. Just like Stalin did to tens of millions of soviets and Mao did to all those people during the cultural revolution. You know, all those other FASCIST dictators of yore.
If your idiotic points weren’t so demonstrably false I would pity you more. But since you seem to think very highly of your ability to reason and ’speak truth to power’, pity usually isn’t the first thing that comes to peoples minds.
…..laughter maybe. But certainly not pity. And sadly, pity is what you really deserve.
September 27th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Well, we all can’t be as sophisticated and open-minded as Oliver Willis, can we?
Pretty Olympian standards set there.
September 27th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I’m a conservative, and I want to understand Marilyn’s point of view. But I can’t. To be sure, I can understand vehement disagreement with Bush’s policies–heck, plenty of conservatives tee off on him every day, on pretty much every issue. But to claim that we’re living in a fascist state? Where does that come from? She’s in no danger because of her views; similar expressions are broadcast on cable TV every night of the week. Books ripping Bush are on the best-seller lists every week, and the authors, far from sitting in jails, are appearing on Meet The Press.
Or is this what you mean? I noticed a distinct shift in tolerance for opposing views as early as the 80s, and found myself saying things to agree under subtle but real pressure.
So because you feel social pressure to go along with conservative opinions, America is now a fascist state? This reminds me of the Monty Python routine about gangsters Doug and Dinsdale Piranha, who ruled the London underworld with a mixture of violence and sarcasm. Only this time, there’s no violence–just the sarcasm. But for you, that’s bad enough.
No offense, Marilyn, but the fact that you find the current political climate uncongenial hardly means that you’re living in a fascist state. You’re projecting your own insecurity on the society at large, I fear. It’s an easy trap to fall into; I sometimes do myself.
September 27th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Tigger - This is exactly the kind of meanspirited retorts that are so easy to fling at someone. No supporting evidence. It’s all my problem. Yeah, right.
Thanks for trying to be evenhanded, Jesme. The country wasn’t fascistic in the 80s. However, we now have a president who has been illegally wiretapping who knows how many people, and wants to suppress the information. We have a president who wants to throw the Geneva Convention to the dogs. We have a president who would like to abolish habeas corpus, who condones secret prisons, who has tried to call torture legal, who seems incapable of telling the truth about anything–all in the name of the nebulous, neverending war on “terror.” The first thing a fascist state does is create terror in its citizens. Done. It spies on its citizens. Done. It shouts down, imprisons, and harasses its opponents. Done.
It’s not enough for this administration to turn the country over to corporations, send the National Guard illegally to Iraq to become cannon fodder because they get 2 days of training a year, and then have them guard convoys of KBR/Halliburton employees and property. It continues its assault on the press by demonizing the New York Times, which has been looking pretty corporate and compliant from my point of view. When will it stop? I am absolutely certain that the dossiers you think are a figment of my imagination are alive and well. You know that more than a third of the citizens of East Germany had “a file”? It’s not farfetched to think it could happen here. Anything can happen anywhere.
When my King, I mean, Mayor Daley, whose administration is so corrupt they might have to invent a new word for it, who let more than 800 people die in a heat wave and then said it was their own fault, and who tore up the runway of an airport in the middle of the night because the FAA wouldn’t shut the place down as he wanted, says he admires G.W. Bush, I know we’re in big trouble.
Sarcasm is hardly what I’m reacting to. This is really happening.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:42 am
““he [Jon Stewart] is not the voice of a generation.â€
1) Good god, I *hope* not! He’s a funny guy and all, but any generation that sounds (exclusively) like that has problems.
2) Which “generation” is he not the voice of, I wonder? I was born in 1979, and I don’t know that I’m happy with him being my “voice.”
Besides, isn’t he sort of on the Boomer/X cusp anyway?
… toddle off to wiki …
Yup. Born in 1962. (Which Wiki eerily refers to as a “Shadow Boomer.”)
September 28th, 2006 at 3:47 am
* war on “terror.†*
I think this person is Safely Ignorable. Here’s why.
It’s all about the quotes.
If the whole thing - “war on terror” - is in quotes, that tells you nothing about the writer’s Ignorability. The phrase itself is so cliched that the quotes might just sort of pop up without any special shading of meaning.
“War” on terror is even less dispositive - they could be questioning the appropriateness of the war model, preferring a bit of good old-fashioned police work. Rightly or wrongly, but it’s a reasonable position.
War on “terror”, though - those bunny ears have a decidedly kookier valence.
September 28th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Go ahead Marilyn. Name one person that has been shouted down, imprisoned or harassed by the Bush Administration?
September 28th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Same poor fools re-arranging the same deck chairs on the MSM Titanic.
When you poll a room of journalists and find that not one conservative is represented, how the hell can you continue pretending that content, the overwhelming perpetual lefty slant, isn’t a big part of journalism’s demise?
Marylin’s …” we are living in a fascist state” and Oliver’s…”conservatives do not value journalism” are typical lefties with their idiotic hyperbole and attempts at reducing dialogue to meaningless juvenile memes.
There is no war coverage. Last week, it was reported there were only 9 embedded journalists in Iraq with the military. The remaining hundred(?) assigned there, I assume are running up bar bills in their hotels. AP and Reuters have dishonored themselves with scandals involving local stringers that are disingenuous at best or terrorist sympathizers at worst.
CBS, typical hacks that they are, put vacuous Katie Couric in their anchor chair, then, dropped to last place again in three days. The public has had it with form over substance. If you were really serious about improving the content, adding balance and depth, you’d have to do an honest hand count in your newsroom.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
So your argument is that conservatives are afraid of a bunch of journalists? Give. Me. A. Break.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Time magazine described him as one of the 100 most likely innovators of the 21st century. His name is Tariq Ramadan. Two years ago the University of Notre Dame in Ohio offered him a teaching position but the U.S. government blocked Ramadan from entering the country. After the government refused to state why they rejected his visa, Ramadan sued. In June a federal judge ordered the government to provide a ‘legitimate and bona fide reason’ why Ramadan could not enter the country. Earlier this week the Bush administration said Ramadan’s visa was rejected because he once gave money to a French-based Palestinian charity. The United States claims the organization has ties to Hamas even though it is a legal charity in France. [SHOUTED DOWN/CENSORED]
Ambassador Daniel R. Coats … informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.
[IMPRISONED.]
Valerie Plame [HARASSED.]
September 28th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Nope, Oliver, that’s not my argument, but, then, your reading comprehension skills aren’t too high. Re-read real slowly. You’ll get it.
Marylin, it’s not working for you.
September 29th, 2006 at 4:41 am
Marilyn …
Tariq Ramadan, whose works I’m very certain you have never read (and I’m a Muslim who is pretty much offended at his stuff) is denied a Visa. And that equals censorship? I hope you know that hundreds of thousands of US Visa applications are denied without explanation year after year in every single part of the world and have been for decades. Is each and every one of them a case of censorship?
As for Khaled Masri; I need to see a source for your information. And even from what little you wrote, it is not clear that anything wrong has been done. Where was Masri captured? Was it in Afghanistan? Was it in Iraq? The story also obviously came from anonymous sources - is the information they are giving to whoever it is they are giving it to, complete?
Heh heh heh …
You must have been in a coma for the past few weeks. Armitage’s revelation as the leak has completely collapsed that Left-wing fantasy. Heck, even the Leftist Washington Post editorial page has had to concede that Joe Wilson is an incorrigible farcical liar.
Contrary to your version of reality, Valerie Plame was not harassed.
In fact, she became the most famous CIA employee in history, has got a multi-million dollar book deal and a major cause celebre for the Left.
PS: I noticed that you have not been able to point out any Americans who have been shouted down, imprisoned or harassed by the Bush Administration?
Note that if the person is still writing, talking on TV or making documentaries, that should be enough evidence that he has not been censored. If the person you are going to name as imprisoned is John Walker Lindh, then you’re going to have to prove that he was not picked up in Afghanistan but was simply arrested off the street in San Francisco. If you are going to claim someone was harassed, please make sure that the person you are citing is not simply whining because he called the President a mass murderer and somebody else called him an idiot, i.e. he encountered dissenting arguments.
Try again, Marilyn. Try harder.
September 29th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Maybe Jeff could have two comment threads for every post - one that responds to what he actually wrote about (in this case, old media types who don’t understand new media) - and the other to rehash Left vs. Right yet again.
September 30th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
I understand that you would love to shut your eyes to the thuggish behavior of the President and his cronies. I notice you didn’t say anything to refute my other arguments about the actions of the President and Mayor Daley. Do you think denying non-Americans basic human rights (as our Constitution says is the right of all) doesn’t count? It has to be Americans? But even supposing it should only be Americans, I certainly do consider Valerie Plame a case of harassment, a possibly fatal one. Wilson a liar? Well it seems that some people in the Administration have confirmed the leak. You calling it a Left-wing fantasy doesn’t make it so.
Do you know what I consider harassment? Having secret surveillance taking place (which, of course, the Republican Congress has now made legal after the fact–sheep). I don’t want to worry about my conversations being surveilled. That’s harassment to me.
If you don’t think that preventing a possibly dissenting voice from teaching American college students isn’t censorship, then I need your definition.
My source for Masri is the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301476.html
Oh and hey, Penny, what’s not working for me? That you refuse to believe anything outside your own point of reference? That’s true. That doesn’t work for me.
You know what I am a conservative about? Money. I think you shouldn’t spend money you don’t have. Another way the Bush has betrayed the conservative agenda. We had a balanced budget at least under the corporate slave, Bill Clinton. Bush is still a corporate slave, but he doesn’t know how to handle money. I guess Daddy never let him have his own checking account to find out.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:24 am
Hunter - I’m sorry this went off track. I started on topic in response to another writer, but I can’t leave the baiting unanswered. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place–trying to play nice.
As to old vs. new media, I know how hard it is to see new things through old eyes and to give up a feeling of expertise to a feeling of fumbling in the dark. I do think “old” media may be trying to adjust without losing their jobs. That’s not such a crime, and there is a place for both delivery methods. Personally, I find the Internet sources from old media pretty good and useful. I find some of the newer entrants a little light on fact checking and sourcing. My own new-media editor relies way too much on Wikipedia for links, and it makes me cringe to see that.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:13 am
[...] But listen to this fact from the PBS Panel at a recent conference convened by Reuters on the news. Jeff Jarvis was attending and heard this nugget. [...]
July 11th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I just watched a great video on Carl Bernstein discussing current and past politics. It was really interesting! Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
http://hamptons.plumtv.com/videos/journalists_journey