Like a lot of folks of my particular political persuasion, I've been watching the developments at CBS News pretty closely over the past week. And while I have to admit enjoying the discomfort Dan Rather has been experiencing recently, a lot of the reaction around the Blogosphere is beginning to bug me a little bit -- and I'm glad I'm not the only one who is noticing.
First, Orin Kerr over at the Volokh Conspiracy:
My sense is that bloggers are embracing Memogate to the exclusion of other things, as if it were an enormous relief to be able to lose ourselves in the story. The story lets the right half of the blogosphere feast on some of its favorite themes: damn that liberal media, blogosphere to the rescue, etc. Don't get me wrong, those are good themes. But at some point the hearty appetite begins to look like escapism. And I think we've reached that point, if not passed it long ago.
And how many times have we seen similar complaints about the mainstream media? Abu Ghraib, anyone? But that's only the start.
Here's Virginia Postrel, amplifying a point that she's made before, but one that some of the more triumphant bloggers ought to be paying close attention to:
Good journalists care intensely about avoiding mistakes, and, despite all the blogosphere media bashing, there are a lot of good journalists. (You tend to notice the ones who get stuff wrong, for obvious reasons.) Reporting is a hard job, much harder than it looks from the outside. Digging out stuff people don't want you to know--not my sort of journalism at all--is particularly difficult.
Reading this, it wasn't hard to remember my days as a student journalist, as I ascended from covering Women's Basketball, to Sports Editor, to News Editor, and finally to Editor-in-Chief at my small college weekly.
And as I moved up, I couldn't help but be struck by one thought: Editing, though a critical discipline, is a lot easier than reporting. Sure, experience as a reporter was important in becoming a good editor, but it will always be far easier to poke holes in somebody else's work than to have to go through the drudgery of actually reporting a story yourself.
This isn't to excuse sloppiness or outright bias -- something that I, among many thousands of others, am not chary to point out. It's just that at times, I think bloggers shouldn't be nearly as impressed with themselves as some seem to be. And that we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that we're not susceptible to the same temptations and errors as those we slag with such relish.
Back to regular scheduled sports blogging, already in progress.
UPDATE: Junkyard Blog has some issues with Kerr's argument.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Looks like a rough day for Mr. Rather.
I don’t think anyone is questioning whether or not reporting is hard work. The issue here is that it appears no work was done to verify the authenticity of the documents. Rather has an agenda, and ran with something that supported the agenda, even when warned by experts about the possible forgeries.
And, I think the blogosphere has plenty to celebrate-would any of this have come to the public’s notice without Powerline and Little Green Footballs? I doubt it.
There’s an old saying: “Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.”
So many people have bizarre conspiracy theories about the media. If they’d spent one day in a newsroom, they’d know how ridiculous they are.
I have hundreds of things I’d improve about the media. (Political bias is pretty far down the list; I think a far greater sin is the timidity of today’s media, which the Daily Show has exposed beautifully.) But I know they all fall into the “easier said than done” category. And given viewership and readership habits these days, the people who do it right are probably the ones who’d go broke the fastest.
Very nice post, Eric.
As a news director for a radio station, my primary problem with CBS right now is that they haven’t admitted their mistake. They continue to stand by their story, even though the story isn’t the point anymore. The point is they have likely referenced fake documents.
Everyone is prone to mistakes. But what salvages the reputation of mistaken judgment is owning up to the error. I have no problem with the CBS reporting efforts, but the network has no business trying to sucker its audience by sugarcoating the situation.
The ratings are reflecting what most Americans think about their pride.