WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE MEDIA, PART MCXLVIII
Frequent readers of this blog know that I do not believe in media bias, because it's not a matter of belief. New evidence piles up daily (see previous post). But frequent readers also know I don't think the liberal-left tilt of many outlets and writers is the only bias making the news less reliable. There's also a bias toward laziness and a bias toward sensationalism. This post deals with the latter.
Sensationalism involves more than friviolous story selection, and I usually don't mind that kind; that's what US Magazine and tabloids
like the New York Post are for. So long as the information is true and presented accurately, it's harmless. But there's the rub -- sensationalism also involves presentation; sacrificing a trenchant interpretation of the facts for a more entertaining or politically correct one.
Mickey Kaus and James Taranto frequently catch the New York Times spinning on welfare reform and crime statistics, issues on which the Times repeats liberal boilerplate. But even tabloids cross the line when they willfully misread survey results. Take for instance a New York Daily News story from this morning:
What's maybe news here is that Stewart is seen as a legitimate source of information (a proposition I shudder at, and anyway don't quite believe) and that story would have been fine. A little stale, but truthful. The writer here apparently wants you to think Jon Stewart is more trusted than actual news anchors, but that just isn't the case. In fact, the Daily News' story isn't even "fake but accurate." It's flat-out wrong.
The only thing that saves it is that it is trivial on its own level; this blog is probably the only one that will point out this story. Yet stories like this accumulate, day after day. I don't know what the overall impact is -- certainly not as much when it's the Daily News as compared to the Times -- but it can't be good.
It's not exactly related to the CBS scandals or the talk show-ification of the news, but I still have the nagging sense that the connection is more than superficial. And remember, it's not that Jon Stewart's respectability has risen to the level of a Rather or a Jennings. It's that they have fallen to his.
Frequent readers of this blog know that I do not believe in media bias, because it's not a matter of belief. New evidence piles up daily (see previous post). But frequent readers also know I don't think the liberal-left tilt of many outlets and writers is the only bias making the news less reliable. There's also a bias toward laziness and a bias toward sensationalism. This post deals with the latter.
Sensationalism involves more than friviolous story selection, and I usually don't mind that kind; that's what US Magazine and tabloids
like the New York Post are for. So long as the information is true and presented accurately, it's harmless. But there's the rub -- sensationalism also involves presentation; sacrificing a trenchant interpretation of the facts for a more entertaining or politically correct one.
Mickey Kaus and James Taranto frequently catch the New York Times spinning on welfare reform and crime statistics, issues on which the Times repeats liberal boilerplate. But even tabloids cross the line when they willfully misread survey results. Take for instance a New York Daily News story from this morning:
Jon Stewart's news gets their voteSo the Daily News runs with the headline "Jon Stewart's news gets their vote" even though the top three vote-getters are well within the margin of error, and Tom Brokaw is technically ahead of Stewart. More significant is that a quarter-plus of all respondents said none. And 16% are missing -- perhaps they didn't recognize any of the names?
America's twentysomethings, who are tuning into politics, trust Comedy Central fake-news king Jon Stewart more than network vets Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, a new study shows.
Asked whom they trust more to inform them on politics, 17% said NBC's Tom Brokaw, followed by Stewart of "The Daily Show" at 16%. ABC's Jennings had 15% and CBS' Rather had 10%.
And most people, 26%, picked "none of the above," according to the survey by Global Strategy Group and Luntz Research.
What's maybe news here is that Stewart is seen as a legitimate source of information (a proposition I shudder at, and anyway don't quite believe) and that story would have been fine. A little stale, but truthful. The writer here apparently wants you to think Jon Stewart is more trusted than actual news anchors, but that just isn't the case. In fact, the Daily News' story isn't even "fake but accurate." It's flat-out wrong.
The only thing that saves it is that it is trivial on its own level; this blog is probably the only one that will point out this story. Yet stories like this accumulate, day after day. I don't know what the overall impact is -- certainly not as much when it's the Daily News as compared to the Times -- but it can't be good.
It's not exactly related to the CBS scandals or the talk show-ification of the news, but I still have the nagging sense that the connection is more than superficial. And remember, it's not that Jon Stewart's respectability has risen to the level of a Rather or a Jennings. It's that they have fallen to his.
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