Failing Upward: The Narrative and the Journalists Who Advance It
Last night, Glenn Reynolds featured the “Blog Comment of the Day,” which could be found at William A. Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection site:
“Fascinating that a man shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ as he mows down 35 people on an army base isn’t motivated by Islam… but a guy who has the same name as hundreds of others—and says nothing as he fires—is obviously a Tea Party zealot.”
As Glenn replied, “It’s all about the narrative.”
W. Joseph Campbell, the veteran journalist and author of Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, who blogs at his Media Myth Alert Website writes that the MSM is “Slow to learn: Lesson for journos in Brian Ross’ egregious error on ABC.” But they’re only lessons to be learned if the MSM considers itself to be in the reporting business. They do not — they’re in the business of advancing narratives which help advance the right (read: left) politics:
How did Ross — a veteran television reporter whose ABC biography unabashedly declares him “one of the most honored and respected journalists in the country” — come to disseminate “information before it was properly vetted”?
ABC’s apology didn’t say.
It may have been that Ross was excessively eager to be first in reporting a linkage to a conservative political movement. He may have been unable to restrain his ideological inclinations. He may have been misled by a producer.
Whatever the reason, his error on a television program that attracts 4.5 million viewers was inexcusable — and eminently preventable.
In the swirling uncertainty that invariably marks the hours after a disaster, journalists are well-served to show deliberation and restraint, to be mindful that error and distortion often blight the first reports of dramatic events.
I discuss this phenomenon in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, noting that “it is a near-certainty that erroneous reports will circulate in a disaster’s immediate aftermath.”
I also point out in Getting It Wrong:
“By recognizing that implausible rumors and exaggerated casualty tolls almost always are among the first effects of major disasters, journalists may spare themselves considerable embarrassment and their audiences great confusion.”
Getting It Wrong revisits the badly flawed news reporting of Hurricane Katrina’s assault on New Orleans in 2005 — which offers enduring if unlearned lessons for journalists about the near-certainty of error in disaster coverage.
The reporting about Katrina’s destructive assault, I write, “was in important respects flawed and exaggerated. On crucial details, journalists erred badly, and got it wrong.”
The MSM’s response to all of that would be a loud, “So what?” As always, the narrative trumps all. From their point of view, Katrina wasn’t botched; as the New York Times said the previous year when it dismissed Dan Rather’s RatherGate debacle, it was merely “fake but accurate.” The media’s truthiness in Katrina ultimately served a higher purpose, which could be seen in the election results the following year and in 2008.
And so what if Brian Ross is fired from ABC? Vivian Schiller of NPR can fire Juan Williams for a thoughtcrime that he expressly stated he didn’t act upon, recommend Soviet-style psychiatry for him, and bounce back on her feet (or “fail upward,” as Stacy McCain recently put it) as “Chief Digital Officer” at NBC News’ Internet division. If you thought NBC was rather biased now…
And speaking of Rather-biased, Dan Rather is still working on TV, albeit he’s now found in the bowels of your DirecTV guide instead of at the top of it; and to bring a decade worth of disastrous network news “reporting” full circle, recently wrote — or at least put his name atop — a new article at CNN.
Ross will do fine, whether at ABC or some other bastion of old media “journalism.” From the point of view of either his current or future employers, his was a job well done yesterday.
Related: From Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner, “A Short, Incomplete History of Media Trying To Tie The Tea Party To Tragedies.”
Update: Yesterday, Jim Treacher wrote:
This goes beyond speculating about a murderer’s motives. This is slandering an individual who had nothing to do with a terrible crime, while the families of the victims are still reeling, just because of his political beliefs. You’d think liberals and the media (pardon the redundancy) would’ve learned something after Gabby Giffords and all those other people got shot, and somehow it became Sarah Palin’s fault. But again, learning from their mistakes: What’s in it for them?
Check back in November for the answer to that. Or ask Jay Carney.
Who says it was an error? Every Tea Party activist all across the country is on notice that big media will link your name to anything criminal that they can. Brian Ross did this very deliberately. Assisted by ABC “News”
Even the notion there’s bias: partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation, is a foolish if not stupid explanation in this day.
“Whatever the reason, his error on a television program that attracts 4.5 million viewers was inexcusable — and eminently preventable.” This is a non-judgment judgment that has to stop. MSM journos have to be called out not only for what they do but who and what they are.
Observing the same level of care and journalistic standards as ABC “News”, Iowahawk has reported on a series of crimes committed by Brian Ross, including assault, robbery, child molestation, and public drunkenness. Remarkably, these crimes have occurred in states all over the country, often almost simultaneously. Can this one man crime wave ever be stopped?
Having been briefly in politics and the subject of news stories, I can say that I trust nothing that is not in quotation marks and, even then, with plenty of context. The news media are liars and propagandists.
They have never been reporters and will never be reporters. They are Democrats, first, last and always.
The Left does a Mukden on America regularly. Duke Lacrosse, Giffords, Trayvon Martin, Katrina, and in much subtler ways almost every day.
I no longer watch news on TV and I refuse to visit ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/NYTimes on the internet. Like Jeffersonian said above, “the news media are liars and propagandists”, and I despise them.
>I no longer watch news on TV and I refuse to visit ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/NYTimes on the internet.
I’ve done the same and refuse to subscribe to HBO or watch any TV series or movies with an leftist bias. That pretty much cuts out 90% of propaganda, er entertainment these days.
This bit of “reporting” is so blatantly irresponsible that it demands a detailed explanation of how such a smear was presented on the air, and not just a so-called “apology.” Since no detailed explanation has been offered by the perpetrators of this smear, we are entitled to conclude that it was intentional.
This Brian Ross character, according to information dug up by Iowahawk (see his twitter entries from yesterday) seems to be a master criminal. Of course not all the evil Iowahawk discovered using a Google search could have been done by this particular Brian Ross, but the weight of it looks bad, very bad.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to check out how much of all that crime was committed by him; even more unfortunately Stephanopolis hasn’t asked Iowahawk to describe his discoveries on a national news program.
The really sad thing, if you dwell on the subject for a moment, is that the news media people willingly subordinate their supposed jobs to report the news and inform the public, in part so democracy can function properly, to the propagation of their own political viewpoints. Rather than allow the electorate to make up it’s own mind about issues and candidates, they actively propagate a false impression of events and subvert the ability of the voters to make their own choices. There is no other organ of society which can fulfill that function. Do we have a true democracy if the electorate does not have accurate information upon which to base it’s choices? Are we really in a better situation than the Germans under the Nazis (or any people controlled by totalitarian government) when it comes to getting accurate news?
If you’re waiting for soul-searching by the legacy media, you’d better bring a bedroll.
It’s easy to guess what happened — Ross typed in the key words, and then like a Powerball player who sees his six numbers come up, only to not pay attention that they’re for last night’s MegaMillions drawing, went running off to the GMA set with his “I’m First!” news when he came up with a Jim Holmes connected to the Tea Party.
His bias was so intense in hoping that he would be the one to finally expose to the world what a bunch of psychotic murderers the Tea Party really is, that whatever journalistic training about double-checking, confirming a report and any modicum of restraint went out the window, along with any thought of what the consequences might be for Brian Ross if Brian Ross was wrong (though I suppose Ross’ mindset could have been so poisoned against the Tea Party that he believed nobody at ABC or outside the network who matters would give a damn if he made a mistake and slandered some Tea Party lunatic, since even if this Jim Homles didn’t pull the trigger at the movie theater, he probably in his bloodthirsty mind wishes he did).
All these people who say, gee, you’d think the media would have learned their lesson after Katrina, or after Gifford, or after any number of other vicious hatchet jobs they have perpetrated. But they did learn their lesson. They learned that they can get away with it and that it has some positive effect on advancing their narrative. The important question is whether enough of the American citizenry is learning its lesson about what the media have become: active propagandists of the radical Left, who will advance the cause of the Left by any means at their disposal. They must be starved out of business and publicly exposed by as many people as possible every time they try it.
“the MSM … — they’re in the business of advancing narratives which help advance the right (read: left) politics”
The propagandists are in the business of advancing propaganda, i.e. narratives which help to advance the propagandists’ politics.
“The narrative” isn’t quite the only thing. There’s also revenue, which depends on sponsorship and aggregate viewership.
The vileness of Old Media tactics in promoting favored narratives (and slandering prominent opponents thereof) can be countered by denying them adequate revenue to continue. Indeed, it’s the only counter-tactic that will work. Moreover, their sponsors can be detached not only by reducing their viewership, but by emulating the Left’s tactic of refusing to patronize their sponsors and letting the sponsors know it.
We must use all the available weapons, lest weapons that fire supersonic lead become our only remaining recourse.
Let’s leave Ross alone! His action and the similar actions of others of his ilk are hastening the day when the word “journalist” will be as acceptable as the N word.
There is a reason some of us refer to the Old Media, ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/NYTimes/etc., as the LSM, Lamestream Media.
The Journalista’s are alive and well. Any story, however empty of fact, to pay homage to the regime.
As soon as I heard about the Brian Ross smear against the Tea Party, I went to Spokeo.com and looked up James Holmes. There are 24 of them in Aurora alone, and another 244 in the nearby areas. Yet somehow Ross only found the one on the Tea Party site. Did Ross look to see if any of them were associated with Occupy, or SEIU, or the DNC, et al? Silly question, I suppose.
Their mealy-mouthed faux-apology is not accepted. Both Ross and that former high-level Democratic hack operative Stephanopoulis, who was magically transformed into a “news” “professional”, should be fired. Stephanopoulis, if you recall, was caught doing morning phone calls with a number of other big-name Democratic hacks to coordinate the narrative every day.
But, as the poster notes, both would do fine, as the leftlings take care of their own, especially if they fall on their sword to advance the cause and/or protect higher-ups. Like Van Jones, they’d soon show up with a high-paying gig at some “non-partisan” “public interest” 501(c)(3) “non-profit” funded by Soros or a blog site like Politico. If Holder ever gets sacked because Obama finds it useful, he will as well.
Republicans though abandon those who have been disgraced, even unjustly. Anyone seen Scooter Libby lately?
There should be a law that “unbiased” “objective” “journalists”, editors, newsreaders, “reporters”, columnists, pundits, talking heads, “non-partisan” expert guests, et al, must lead off their articles/appearances by self-identifying their political philosophy, what party they vote for, and who they donate to. Enough with the “unbiased” BS already.
Brian Ross is a convicted felon. What? Not that Brian Ross? Oh, never mind.
James Holmes is a registered Democrat. What? Not that James Holmes? Oh, never mind.
Emily Litella.