Curious Cockfight

Battles or uproars in the Media tend to remind me—because they’re so visible—that all of us inhabit artificial worlds, worlds produced by habit and assumptions. The dark aspect of this is that we think ourselves immune, but we’re just as benighted as everyone else.

The example, this time, comes from CNN. There Lou Dobbs has apparently decided to continue his bombastic fulminations from another but as yet unannounced media platform. Evidently he was nudged in this direction by CNN itself which, inside its own bubble, believes that it is a balanced purveyor of news.

Now the odd thing is that, no doubt, all three parties involved in this latest controversy are undoubtedly sincere and, in some way, right. The three parties I have in mind are CNN, Lou Dobbs—and myself as the outside observer. To get specific:

CNN clearly views itself a practitioner of traditional, down the middle, thus objective journalism, bringing facts to the public and letting the public itself draw whatever conclusions it wishes. CNN is undoubtedly also aware of the fact that it is a competitor in a bare-knuckles commercial media competition and that its ways of presenting the news are simply a sober adaptation to the demands of the market. It looks around and judges itself by the behavior of its competitors, not by some absolute or obsolete standard of old.

Lou Dobbs—as best as I am able to infer—sincerely believes that the media should be more active in response to the news and should reflect the value systems of the culture. Thus the mere reporting of the facts, as if they were entirely value-free, is a form of dishonesty. When Lou Dobbs feels indignation or feels that an injustice has been perpetrated, he feels it entirely right to give such feelings well-reasoned and forceful expression.

Now here I am, the self-enrolled third party, a septuagenarian male of European extraction. My own standard for journalism is very severe and, arguably, has never been practiced anywhere, at any time, not in print, not over the radio, nor yet on television, not in the days of raucous nineteenth century pamphleteering, not in the more sober times of the post-World War era, nor since the Berlin Wall fell and the New World Order dawned. Nobody has ever lived up to this imaginary standard of mine, but it is the vocalized absolute standard. Under it fact and opinion must be strictly separated in reporting, each labeled what it is.

This standard of mine also has, underlying it, a never-openly-articulated assumption that a sober and adult elite is or should be in charge of the direction of public affairs—and that the representative figure for this elite is the mature, serious, and well-informed man or woman on the street. This mythical person will be well served by my mythical journalism: the facts presented fast and clean, summarized in a lead sentence and elaborated in successive cascades of ever more detail. Considered opinion will be placed on the editorial page and designated to be what it is. Now, despite my constant fulminations against the New York Times (too bad mine are not rewarded as Lou Dobbs’ fulminations are) I consider the NYT a pretty close approximation to this ideal. And the network news (NBC, CBS, ABC) also stay close to the ideal in the barely visible slices that they devote to news.

Now the fact is that the mythical man or woman on the street, while he or she actually does exist, is so tiny a fraction of the actual population nowadays as to have virtually no influence on affairs at all and—if viewed as the economic support of the media—would cause those poor media to file for bankruptcy (and instant bailout) immediately.

Therefore my criticism of CNN or Lou Dobbs rests as much on a great illusion as their own views, respectively, of journalistic objectivity or righteous crusading. The journalistic silver thread is, indeed, still there in the CNN reporting, but it has become a mere thread. The flashing phantasmagoria Wolf Blitzer producers under the name of “Situation Room” is such that the container completely hides the content. Despite expelling Lou Dobbs from Olympus, CNN still, and with tender, loving care, is building its programming around personalities. Its editorial choices are not decided by a sober assessment of what the people ought to hear. They are decided by picking content the largest public will eagerly lap up. And Dobbs, in turn, is merely saying that CNN’s real mission, amassing viewership, would be better served if CNN simply let Lou Dobbs unleash his own disgust and indignation. And, as Dobbs appears to believe, that indignation might actually do some good.

Cockfight? Yes, it is—and not merely between the networks but in each program too. The new way of objectivity is to pit two or more personalities of the most extreme type against each other and let them, for a limited period, claw, scratch, and attempt, at the loudest decibels, try to destroy each other. The action is so furious, the feathers and blood flying so thickly in all directions, the public need not actually pay attention to the underlying substance at all. It’s all emotion, and if you learn to watch these programs well, you’ll pick your cock and root for it with all your might, fist flailing at the screen. And when the ads come, you let out a deep sigh of relief.

This is the state of our media affairs: great clouds of illusion in a hopeless turbulence, clash, and mix. It is not at all surprising that the public, caught up in these airs, seeks refuge in second lives and in other collective computer games where, with concentration and with efforts, you can get virtual satisfactions for real money.