Is there any real “objective” news? Koppel, Olbermann, and the Hitler Channel

The recent pissing match between those two icons of the small screen, Koppel and Olbermann, inspired my response. For reference, see:
Koppel:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857.html
Olbermann:

I don’t think “objective” news has failed us, but false equivalency has, so Olbermann has one well-taken point. His ad-hominem criticism of Koppel’s failure to expose the propagandistic nature of the Iraq War arguments is beside the point (everyone, including MSNBC, largely blew that story), and that criticism ignores a larger failure of television news, including MSNBC and Olbermann.

To equate some of the inane ideas that have been proven wrong time and again (that we can raise more revenue by lowering taxes, etc.) with sensible policies is a disservice to the citizenry. And guess who pioneered that tactic? Ted Koppel, whose show was often cited for frequently skewing audience perceptions with their screen titles — for example, he’d put a government official, with full title, as the counterpoint to an activist, with no title, as opposed to an NGO president or something, who could make the same point and seem to have equal authority as someone from the gubmint. And 75% of Koppel’s guests were what could be called “establishment”, either government officials, or party leaders, or captains of industry — so, in a sense, Koppel’s “obejctive” reporting was partial in a more insidious way, in the same way that media only takes “third party” candidates seriously if they are self-financed millionaires (which to my viewpoint, makes them suspect representatives of an anti-establishment movement).

I would have expected Olbermann to make the point that newspapers were started in this country by people with a distinct point of view (and were explicitly protected by the First Amendment because of this), and that the “objective” reporter was a concoction of the 1950s, which would be true in a sense. I do think that, for example, a trained viewer knows to consider the source, and most MSNBC watchers are clever enough to do this. I’m not sure most Fox viewers, like Hearst newspaper readers of the previous century, have this same skeptical view of their source. I wouldn’t ever take Daily Kos as gospel, but there is some range of opinions there, while Rush Limbaugh listeners proudly proclaim themselves “ditto heads”.   It’s interesting in a different way, because it’s an almost counter-cultural social advocacy of  “anti-American” conformity and  establishmentarianism. (hee hee)

That  Tea Party tone of rebellious dissent (which is a theme prevalent among both right wing conservatives and left-wing zealots like me) is what makes me certain that we are NOT a “center-right country” as some like to proclaim. If you are really confident you are in the majority, you don’t get angry and frustrated, you are much calmer, which is why the corporate flacks that pass for pundits these days are always relatively calm. They know that the game is played mostly on their field, with their rules, and it’s hard for anyone to win but them — and this is equally true for Democrats as for Republicans. Think about how much intra-party outrage there was about someone as marginally outside the mainstream as Howard Dean, and you know their stance.

So I am somewhat ambivalent about the end of “objective journalism”, because I think it, too, was a sham that pretended to show THE truth, when what it generally showed was A truth, at least the corporate / establishment version of it, and in that respect, Olbermann is correct. It became clear to me when all the coverage of the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle was of a handful of people who broke windows of Starbucks, and not of the amazing diversity of the crowd, and any of the policy points they were making (and which are being once again echoed by the Tea Party, in a different meme).

That’s why my feeling is that anyone with any sense gets their information from a variety of sources, and also occasionally, for important things, gets unfiltered data (I read government reports and foundation reports quite frequently, last weekend I read several viewpoints about the deficit to try to determine what part of it is structural, and came to the conclusion that we need to let all the Bush tax cuts expire and get the fuck out of Iraq and Afghanistan if we ever want to balance the budget).

You also should note that all this gnashing of teeth about MSNBC is happening 12(?) years after Fox appeared on the scene. Where was the crying for objective journalism then? I didn’t hear Koppel complaining about Brit Hume moving to Fox and becoming a proto-fascist, or Glenn Beck staying at CNN and channeling Father Coughlin, years before he became Fox’s star du jour. These things existed long before now, why is it only being discussed when the cow is out of the barn?

Why now the deficit discussion, after we tried to run 2 wars without a tax increase or even a special bond issue, and suddenly NOW, after almost 8 years (and with Democrats in control) it’s suddenly a concern)?

Just like the disingenuous discussion of the deficit (which, for the record, I think is a worse problem than the Democrats purport, but not the major crisis that the Republicans decry), most “news” has to be considered thoughtfully rather than digested whole, with the sources fully acknowledged and considered.   For a corporatist like Koppel (who owes his entire career, frankly, to the Iran hostage crisis) to smear Olbermann, who is simply trying to counterweight the manure that Fox puts out, and in a much more thoughtful manner, is nonsense. If Koppel’s brand of reporting was so unbiased and based upon investigative research, he’d be working for Frontline or Now! on PBS right now, instead of on a channel right next to Animal Planet on cable.

Any time I’m tempted to take Koppel too seriously, I just imagine him without that (authority-implying) hairpiece. That usually does the trick, them he looks something like a slimmed-down Dom DeLuise, which is about how “serious” his journalism was. He had 22 minutes to talk to pundits, which was the only saving grace of his program — its brevity.    Now on cable, they talk to the same 2 guys through 3 different programs for 3 hours minus commercials, which means they repeat the same things for 132 minutes of air time instead of 22.

Real reporting, and I’ve said this time and again, would take advantage of the 24/7 capabilites of cable and do in-depth analysis and investigative journalism, provide context by showing the raw interview footage of stories that get edited down to 2 minutes on network news, and include charts and graphs that help explain the political arguments being made in terms of their policy impact instead of their horse-race political impact. Instead, what we get is something akin to propaganda, which is true even on network news, but at least it’s brief and doesn’t grind us down with repetition, and torture us into agreeing.

I’d love to see what Mother Jones could do with a cable network.  Just give them MSNBC for the weekends, instead of running stupid sensationalist “documentaries” about life in prison — we get it, it sucks and it’s brutal. It reminds me of when A&E was new, and didn’t have enough content, it ran World War II footage (including a lot of Nazi propaganda film), so much so that I started calling it “the Hitler channel”.

What we need now is less summarization and simplification for simple minds, and more presentation of complex ideas that aren’t as clear-cut as the pundits would have you believe. Fat chance in a world where “American Idol”, where contestants sing along to well-known songs, is considered an “entertainment” program instead of just a way for wealthy publishing companies to squeeze a few more dollars out of tired old pop hits.