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An Exemplar Of Media Sanity
By Bradley Vasoli, The Bulletin
Jeremiads against the media are all, at one level or another, self-critiques. (Media critics, by definition, belong to the media.) The journalistic conceit about staying independent of government, business or whatever is the target du jour loses some force when writers, broadcasters and documentarians try to police their own. Usually moralizing and self-important, most of their efforts deserve skipping over. But not James Bowman’s.
Readers familiar with his work would expect as much. As a movie reviewer for the American Spectator, Mr. Bowman has never fallen prey to the lure of Hollywood schmaltz. As a media critic for the New Criterion, he has never joined in the news industry’s false high-mindedness. In the age of Barack Obama, typified by sugary platitudes and shallow romanticism, his levelheadedness makes him a true standout, almost a throwback. Throughout his book Media Madness (Encounter, 134 pages, $20), he gives his readers a wide-ranging eyeful of all he finds objectionable about that omnipresent behemoth we call “the media.” One marvels at how he did it in so short a book.
You’d expect the conservative Mr. Bowman to concern himself with bias, that great journalistic bugaboo. He does, sort of, though he would solve the bias “problem” not by discouraging it, but by ratcheting down the pressure on journalists to feign neutrality. He writes, because someone apparently must point it out, “Our way of looking at things determines what we see. In setting out to explain the media’s way of looking at the world, I first have to take account of the curious fact that the media almost invariably deny that they have a way of looking at the world.”
Indeed, the posturing reporters engage in to portray themselves as impartial observers makes for painful listening, as when — true story — a prominent member of the Harrisburg press corps declared himself on the Pennsylvania Cable Network to have no views on tax policy. Surely such a statement reveals either dishonesty or poor judgment. (There are certainly enough reporters with either or both.) Mr. Bowman’s own examples similarly provoke nausea or, for the strong-stomached, mere laughter. Politico’s John Harris, for instance, responded to the Bush administration’s noting a reporter writing about federally funded antidrug commercials had once worked as a marijuana-legalization activist by saying, “The story was motivated by journalistic interest, not his particular views on the subject.” Chortle, chortle.
But give the news media its due: Many of its members have spent much time and money in their youth acquiring an impressive-sounding credential, the journalism degree, which gives them cover to assert this nonsense. Schools of journalism supposedly teach their attendees to view every detail of their surroundings beyond the mists of emotion and partisanship. Reporters don’t postulate or argue, but describe and clarify. Who wouldn’t endure a little college-loan debt for these priceless intellectual gifts?
Mr. Bowman states the issue superlatively: “Journalism is a trade whose basic intellectual tools can be swiftly acquired and are best learned through apprenticeship, yet grandiose schools of journalism have been set up at universities throughout the country in order to create the impression that being a newshound is like being a lawyer or a doctor. It isn’t. Unlike law or medicine, journalism does not require the mastery of any body of scholarship or knowledge. The relevant knowledge for a reporter is not of journalistic technique and precedent but of whatever it is that he’s reporting on — business, sports, politics, the arts, fashion. If instead of learning these things in preparation for his calling he seeks a ‘professional’ qualification, it is because of the existence of ‘J-Schools’ alongside schools of law or medicine is meant to suggest that you can learn the mysteries of journalism, including objectivity, as you learn those of real professions.”
People who go through all this so they can authoritatively discuss public affairs have a famously spotty track record, but Mr. Bowman highlights some blemishes the more conventional “watchdogs” have missed, for example the media’s fantastic indulgence of those who accuse President Bush of having lied America into Iraq. Hardly anyone in the major press outlets seemed to notice the illogic of it.
“The most frequently cited example of presidential mendacity, the danger from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a particularly feeble one,” Mr. Bowman writes, “as, if the administration knew that there were no such weapons, it hardly made sense to lie about it in order to justify an action whose success was itself guaranteed to expose the lie.”
Where else, these days, can you find such saneness? Certainly not in the absurd ravings of the unjustly better-known media critic and Nation columnist Eric Alterman, who Mr. Bowman has the extreme forbearance to criticize only once (and far too kindly) in his book. Mr. Alterman, you may recall, wrote a book several years ago titled What Liberal Media? that argued the media lean right rather than left. Many other news analysts share his urge to browbeat the news business into becoming even more thoroughly progressive than it is, and have already done so with considerable success.
James Bowman deserves our gratitude as an articulate counterweight to all this.
Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us
Readers familiar with his work would expect as much. As a movie reviewer for the American Spectator, Mr. Bowman has never fallen prey to the lure of Hollywood schmaltz. As a media critic for the New Criterion, he has never joined in the news industry’s false high-mindedness. In the age of Barack Obama, typified by sugary platitudes and shallow romanticism, his levelheadedness makes him a true standout, almost a throwback. Throughout his book Media Madness (Encounter, 134 pages, $20), he gives his readers a wide-ranging eyeful of all he finds objectionable about that omnipresent behemoth we call “the media.” One marvels at how he did it in so short a book.
You’d expect the conservative Mr. Bowman to concern himself with bias, that great journalistic bugaboo. He does, sort of, though he would solve the bias “problem” not by discouraging it, but by ratcheting down the pressure on journalists to feign neutrality. He writes, because someone apparently must point it out, “Our way of looking at things determines what we see. In setting out to explain the media’s way of looking at the world, I first have to take account of the curious fact that the media almost invariably deny that they have a way of looking at the world.”
Indeed, the posturing reporters engage in to portray themselves as impartial observers makes for painful listening, as when — true story — a prominent member of the Harrisburg press corps declared himself on the Pennsylvania Cable Network to have no views on tax policy. Surely such a statement reveals either dishonesty or poor judgment. (There are certainly enough reporters with either or both.) Mr. Bowman’s own examples similarly provoke nausea or, for the strong-stomached, mere laughter. Politico’s John Harris, for instance, responded to the Bush administration’s noting a reporter writing about federally funded antidrug commercials had once worked as a marijuana-legalization activist by saying, “The story was motivated by journalistic interest, not his particular views on the subject.” Chortle, chortle.
But give the news media its due: Many of its members have spent much time and money in their youth acquiring an impressive-sounding credential, the journalism degree, which gives them cover to assert this nonsense. Schools of journalism supposedly teach their attendees to view every detail of their surroundings beyond the mists of emotion and partisanship. Reporters don’t postulate or argue, but describe and clarify. Who wouldn’t endure a little college-loan debt for these priceless intellectual gifts?
Mr. Bowman states the issue superlatively: “Journalism is a trade whose basic intellectual tools can be swiftly acquired and are best learned through apprenticeship, yet grandiose schools of journalism have been set up at universities throughout the country in order to create the impression that being a newshound is like being a lawyer or a doctor. It isn’t. Unlike law or medicine, journalism does not require the mastery of any body of scholarship or knowledge. The relevant knowledge for a reporter is not of journalistic technique and precedent but of whatever it is that he’s reporting on — business, sports, politics, the arts, fashion. If instead of learning these things in preparation for his calling he seeks a ‘professional’ qualification, it is because of the existence of ‘J-Schools’ alongside schools of law or medicine is meant to suggest that you can learn the mysteries of journalism, including objectivity, as you learn those of real professions.”
People who go through all this so they can authoritatively discuss public affairs have a famously spotty track record, but Mr. Bowman highlights some blemishes the more conventional “watchdogs” have missed, for example the media’s fantastic indulgence of those who accuse President Bush of having lied America into Iraq. Hardly anyone in the major press outlets seemed to notice the illogic of it.
“The most frequently cited example of presidential mendacity, the danger from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a particularly feeble one,” Mr. Bowman writes, “as, if the administration knew that there were no such weapons, it hardly made sense to lie about it in order to justify an action whose success was itself guaranteed to expose the lie.”
Where else, these days, can you find such saneness? Certainly not in the absurd ravings of the unjustly better-known media critic and Nation columnist Eric Alterman, who Mr. Bowman has the extreme forbearance to criticize only once (and far too kindly) in his book. Mr. Alterman, you may recall, wrote a book several years ago titled What Liberal Media? that argued the media lean right rather than left. Many other news analysts share his urge to browbeat the news business into becoming even more thoroughly progressive than it is, and have already done so with considerable success.
James Bowman deserves our gratitude as an articulate counterweight to all this.
Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us
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