This may seem a peculiar piece to return with, but I stumbled on it this morning — at Bruce Bartlett's Facebook page, which, by the way, is one of the finer roundups of political news — and I found it intriguing, so there you go. The piece is from Jay Rosen, journalism watchdog; its title is, "So I will try to explain why the Trump candidacy has been so confounding to our political press"; and, though you should read it there before proceeding here, its dismayed, yearning thrust is this:
The work of the journalist cannot be done without a commitment to the act of reporting, which means gathering information, talking to people who know, trying to verify and clarify what actually happened and to portray the range of views as they emerge from events. A primary commitment to reporting therefore distinguishes the work of the journalist. Declining to express a view does not. Refusing to vote does not. Pretending to be ideology-free or "objective" on everything does not. Getting attacked from both sides? Nope.
Rosen's nestled tautology — "A primary commitment to reporting therefore distinguishes the work of the journalist" — is amusingly jarring, in its self-evident truth, and yet indispensable. That a reporter should report (gather information, corroborate, clarify) is an axiom in journalism schools, but an on-the-job phantom. Why? Rosen notes the decades-old academic thesis (brace yourself, or close your eyes) of "institutional isomorphism," which simply means professional mimicry: News "organizations," in our case, "tend to model themselves after similar organizations that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful." This journalistic phenomenon is akin to Hollywood's apishness — one studio's superhero blockbuster will compel all other studios to churn out superhero sagas, until the genre is unprofitably exhausted.
And that's what intrigued me. Mr. Rosen, his fellow journalistic watchdogs and academics are of course disapproving when it comes to the aping groupthink of mainstream news media. So am I. But aren't we being unfair? Mass journalism is no more about journalism than entertaining movies are about entertainment. They're about profit. If for-profit CNN discovers higher ratings and thus enhanced profitability by relentlessly covering Michael Jackson's death, MSNBC would be financially irresponsible in not doing the same, next celebrity death. Likewise, if CNN discovers that gathering information on Donald Trump (or Carson, Cruz, Clinton) — then corroborating it, clarifying it — causes a mass yawn, CNN would be financially irresponsible in doing its journalistic duty.
Put more bluntly, for-profit networks and print outlets don't decide what to cover and how to cover it. Viewers and readers decide by viewing and reading. And they have already decided what to watch based on preceding journalistic "decisions," which, QED, were based on what the viewing and reading public demanded.
We can't even blame these circular journalistic mediocrities on capitalism and beastly corporatism. For they are only living up to their nature. There they are, that's what they are, and we should expect no other. Can we instead blame the public? Yes indeed. Yet such blame changes nothing, since those targets of blame are fixated on some other celebrity death or petty scandal or titillating whatever. They are indifferent to thoughtful journalistic analyses of Donnie Trump's brilliant manipulation of both populism and the Fourth Estate. Frivolous entertainment is king, and the emperor knows how to profitably fill the Coliseum.
It scarcely needs noting that what Jay Rosen and I and no doubt you more deeply long for is what the historiography of our founding era has labeled "republicanism": responsible citizenship, civic virtue, political engagement, an informed republic. Its pursuit was perhaps possible with a three-millionfold body politic. Is it possible with 300 million so easily entertained because of the vast accessibility of easy entertainment? How to start? There's the rub; and that, it seems to me, is the question.