July 15, 2008
Column: American journalism, still a model
Rupert Murdoch’s arrival at The Wall Street Journal is being greeted by American journalists with roughly the level of enthusiasm with which the Romans greeted Alaric the Visigoth. The Atlantic Monthly proclaims that the day the elderly tycoon took over the Journal was “a date that will live in infamy for a certain generation of American newsmen”.
The Atlantic frets that the Murdoch model will sacrifice “responsible, serious journalism” and damage public life in the process. Mr Murdoch’s defenders regard this as self-important tosh.
Of course, the reactions of anybody watching events at The Wall Street Journal from the Financial Times are bound to be a little complicated. But my first instincts were sympathetic to Mr Murdoch. A lot of American newspaper journalism strikes me as self-reverential, long-winded, over-edited and stuffy.
The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.
So who is the “British colleague in Bangkok”?
US journalism is soporific. Their pens need sharpening. Mass sackings at the LA Times may be the start.
Posted by: Tomansoc | July 15th, 2008 at 3:41 am | Report this commentAfter what the New York Times, America’s most important newspaper, did in the run up to the war in Iraq, the reputation of American journalism is a bit tattered to say the least.
Posted by: David Seaton | July 15th, 2008 at 7:34 am | Report this commentOne of the most curious things of my time at The Economist is how more and more distanced we became from the UK media. The London media…is different [from the U.S. media] in two ways: one, its much less professional, much more sensationalist, even in the so-called quality broadsheets like The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and The Guardian. [They’re] much less scrupulous about sources….The second thing about the British media is that it is more opinionated and therefore…more creative in the editorial positions [than the mainstream American media] and indeed in the way in which news and comment are blurred…
Bill Emmott
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/america/2007/06/bill_emmott_rupert_murdoch.html
Still between the Economist and the FT the UK has two consistently excellent newspapers, on the continent the consistent quality of the NYT or Post is rarely achieved. One must also seek blame with the public itself which has helped shape these papers by consumer demand.
Posted by: Felix Drost, Amsterdam | July 15th, 2008 at 8:40 am | Report this commentFrankly, I prefer the British press, although I tend only to trust the Economist and the FT. And even the instincts of the Economist can fail–for example their support for the Iraq invasion and occupation and their subsequent ‘disgust’: not for the flawed concept of preemptive war (aka aggression) but for the breakdown of public order. The bias of the others–Guardian, Daily Mail etc.–is clear to readers and hence their ‘news’ is taken with the proverbial.
I’ve found the NYT in all its seriousness just as biased, although less obvious, and the Washington Post suffers from Beltway-itis.
Posted by: Mary Cunningham | July 15th, 2008 at 9:46 am | Report this comment1. From your article one could adduce that their are only two countries on the planet: the US and the UK. That is not even a complete characterisation of the English-speaking world, so what is the point of the comparison?
2. (To Felix Drost): How can Bill Emmott (who probably ruined the Economist by making it semi-American) claim that he distanced that publication from the British model, which is much more opinionated? The Economist is an example par excellence of an opinionated publication, even under Bill Emmott, with its “leaders” in the opening pages and holier-than-thou know-it-all attitude.
3. Are commentators really so influential in and of themselves, or do they act as a mouthpiece for whichever sources feed them with filtered information and analyses?
4. There is no such thing as a pure presentation of the facts. The Americans’ pretensions, if they are as you describe, indeed result in dry and boring writing. Intelligent readers should recognise the subtleness involved; British writing (at least at the level of the FT, and once-upon-a-time the Economist too) is more refined, as is every thing else European in comparison to American.
5. If British journalistic ethics are as you describe that is intolerable. What your colleague in Bangkok had done is unforgiveable.
Posted by: RCS | July 15th, 2008 at 10:38 am | Report this commentIt is disturbing that America, a country of 300 million people, has only two decent newspapers (three, if one counts the Boston Globe, owned by the New York Times), now that the LA Times has been destroyed by its new owners. And none of these three can even begin to compare to the FT in the depth of its international and economic coverage, where the American papers are, simply put, in a different and much lesser universe
Even with regard to the top three US papers, the news writing is frequently dull to soporific and the quality of the oped comment (except sometimes for the Globe, the most refreshingly “opinionated” of the three) cannot hold a candle to the FT. This is even more true of the published letters to the editor, though in that case, I have to admit to being biased.
The NY Times, for example, has long felt an inexplicable need to “balance” its roster of liberal oped columnists with “conservatives”, beginning with Nixon apologist William Safire, who was hired just after Watergate in an effort, I suppose, to be “fair” to the burglars and cover-up artists of that period, and continuing, more recently, with the boring and irrelevant center-right David Brooks, as well as its latest acquisition, neocon William Kristol. Cui bono?
The Washington Post, for its part, seems to feel the need to balance its generally not too interesting liberal oped columnists with right wing Republicans like George Will, Robert Novak and the wildest neocon of all, Charles Krauthammer.
There are only two areas where I would put the NYT and the WP ahead of the FT. One is with regard to editorials and the other, as has been mentioned above, is investigative journalism.
The NYT, to give just one of many examples, was the first paper to delve into the scandal at the Justice Department that was touched off by the politically motivated firing of nine US attorneys and ultimately led to the ouster of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. The WP’s recent series on the appalling conditions in US immigration jails was also an historic expose of the depths to which the US has sunk as the result of its current epidemic of anti-Latino and anti-Asian prejudice.
Even though no one seems to have paid much attention to these articles, I believe that they rate in importance along with the WP’s Watergate investigation and the NYT’s publishing of the notorious Pentagon Papers that ultimately brought an end to the Vietnam war.
The only thing I have seen in the FT that might be called investigative journalism of any sort was its tabloid-style vendetta against Paul Wolfowitz. Not that this was a bad idea; good riddance to Mr. W.
As far as the Murdoch papers are concerned, it is baffling to see his name so often in sentences that also contain the word “journalism”. Can someone explain?
Posted by: algasema | July 15th, 2008 at 11:19 am | Report this commentThe US taken as a whole still produces the most accurate, inspiring and meaty journalism on the planet. But you won’t find it on the pages of the quality papers like the NYT and the Post - both deeply boring and shot full of inaccuracies due to being the messenger on earth for the CIA.
The UK does have a hot-house media scene that is frothy with BS and needs to be viewed as such. I agree the Economist is by far the best work of journalism in the country. The BBC is also a quality product. But the sad fact is this: there isn’t a UK equivalent in terms of quality of the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, or Harpers. And that says much about UK brain power these days.
Posted by: Bob Macdonald | July 15th, 2008 at 11:37 am | Report this commentWell RCS, the Economist has grown very rapidly while Emmott was editor, especially in the US, so to argue he has ruined it depends on ones point of view. I find the way in which the Economist never hides its opinion to be refreshing, it is intellectually elitist but so is its audience. I disagree with several of their opinions but rarely find them lacking in substance, facts, willingness to stick their neck out, or ability to seriously represent minority opinions and minor issues. The difference between the mainstream UK press and the Economist (and FT) is that the former cannot sustain such a consistent quality and tend to preach to their own parish.
Anyway it is hard to fault the Economists fact-checking ability, with the truth apparently being so much in the eye of the beholder it is good to see their adherence to a professional ethics.
As for your point 3 yes I believe journalists are very influential, they create descriptions of events, items or people that can be not in accord with the facts and yet gain widespread acceptance. As such they can create false mainstream perception and especially in the UK a fraudulent version of reality which serves the journalists ego and publishers checkbooks rather than professional ethics.
Algasema, can you name any publication on the planet other than the FT (or Economist) that can be compared in terms of quality to the Times, Post or Globe (I tend to enjoy the Monitor’s quality as well)? How disturbing is it that China, a country with roughly 4 times as many inhabitants as the US, has no decent newspaper whatsoever? The number of quality newspapers one free country can produce isn’t only a function of the number of inhabitants.
Posted by: Felix Drost | July 15th, 2008 at 11:52 am | Report this commentWatergate is ancient history and the investigative powers that exposed it have long since been neutered. Consider Bob Woodward’s sycophantic treatment of the Bush administration whose contempt for the constitution, and the law, far surpasses anything Richard Nixon, drunk or sober, could have dreamed of.
American journalism is indeed a model – of self censorship and complicity, silent or vocal. That’s why so many of us have turned, more and more in vain, to the diminishing independence of the British press.
Regarding the American-adored Economist, I am old enough to remember when it was indeed worth reading. The only thing that distinguishes it today from its corporate brethren is its pomposity.
Posted by: CAM | July 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am | Report this commentFelix Drost, you are right about the Monitor. I should have mentioned it as well.
I was not thinking of magazines when I wrote my initial comment, but, even though the ones you have mentioned are all worthy of respect, none can compare with the New Yorker, despite the controversy about its widely misunderstood cartoon of the Obamas in this week’s issue. (See today’s print FT, page 5 of the US edition.)
The Nation is also one of America’s great liberal publications, despite the fact hat it recently ran a couple of ads containing blatant anti-immigrant propaganda, thinly disguised as support for protecting the environment from the supposed evils of overpopulation.
Evidently, The Nation’s editors did not realize that the coalition of anti-immigrant groups sponsoring the ads are far less interested in pure air and water than in maintaining “purity” of a different, and more sinister, kind.
Posted by: algasema | July 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm | Report this commentSorry, I should have written that the coalition “was far less interested”, not “are far less interested”.
Posted by: algasema | July 15th, 2008 at 12:40 pm | Report this commentThat is the word I was looking for, CAM. The Economnist is pompous (and mostly boring).
It was not always like this, at least not this bad. When I began reading it eight years ago (eight years!) I was duly impressed. Either I have become more sophisticated or the Economist has deteriorated. I am afraid it is the latter. Bill Emmott’s philo-Japanism is very telling: under him the design has become too neat and ordered. But his worst fault is his catering to shallow American tastes. For example, technical terms are eschewed in favour of nebulous “popular” explanations. I once learned a lot of economics through the Economist. No longer.
It seems the American excellence GR speaks of has to do with the less interesting (but important) applied side of journalism: the culling of raw data. The FT-Economist duo’s perceived excellence lies in the analysis. Americans cannot excel in that, their cultural ethos is anti-intellectual.
Algasema, the FT is weak in editorials?! The pithy daily tri-partite editorial is the cherry in the cream of the FT.
Posted by: RCS | July 15th, 2008 at 1:04 pm | Report this commentThe New Yorker cartoon of an American presidential candidate depicted as a hated foreigner who worships the devil while he is saluting his terrorist wife has been “widely misunderstood.”
Hard to figure out why.
Posted by: CAM | July 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm | Report this commentI think this discussion is incomplete without any reference to the incredibly dull, safe, bland lowest-common-denominator evening news shows of the main US networks, which seem to have lost all interest in, say, serious foreign news coverage. Here, the British do it better, even poor old dumbed-down ITV. CNN - at least the International version - is almost news free these days as well.
As a European with a liberal cast of mind, it pains me to say this but of the main US outlets to which I have access, especially since the passing of NBC’s Tim Russert, Fox News is the one that really illuminates US politics for me. Of course, the heavily opinionated ‘authored’ shows presented by, say, O’Reilly and Hannity are almost blood-curdlingly right-wing by European standards, but Fox also has some magnificent straight news shows and an excellent stable of authoritative conservative commentators such as Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, whose strong analysis is often surprisingly generous to the other side.
Take all that into account, and I can’t see that it’s worth getting particularly worked up about Murdoch taking over the WSJ, which is deeply conservative to start off with in any case!
Posted by: David Wilkins | July 15th, 2008 at 1:32 pm | Report this commentBy only viewing the US’s options though the dull daily TV news or the dull daily newspapers, is to have a very myopic take on what the US has to offer. Look past those two things, and you find a vibrant web, alternative media, crazy news like Fox, loads of book publishers, indy film makers, bohemians and slackers, and free spirits - all bubbling over with fresh thinking you won’t find in stuffy, class-conscious Britain. I mean, name a single fresh idea to come out of Britain in the past ten years that has taken the world by storm? Gotcha didn’t I!
Posted by: Bob Macdonald | July 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm | Report this commentIf American journalism (including TV journalists) is good, then why are the American public so ill-informed about the world and how was it possible for a tiny and malevolent elite to drag them into the Iraq war?
The truth is that the US corporate media is closely controlled by its ownership and little independent thought or dissidence from the received (imposed?) wisdom is allowed.
CAM says it well “American journalism is indeed a model ? of self censorship and complicity, silent or vocal.That?s why so many of us have turned, more and more in vain, to the diminishing independence of the British press.”
The UK is not much better. The Independent and (to some extent) the FT are different but, for the rest, it is the same old same old….
Incidentally, it was very sad to see how the Economist was ruined at the altar of greed and thirst for American readers and their Dollars. RCS has a good point that it made itself into a semi-American publication which is a pity.
P
Posted by: Pacifist | July 15th, 2008 at 2:19 pm | Report this commentHow did such a well-informed British population ruled by an openly socialist Labour Party get hoodwinked into two wars, and the planning for a third (Iran)? Maybe because the British are smart enough to know they trade overseas killings for backhome benefits. And so Americans traded overseas conflict for downhome prosperity. These are the contradictions of rich societies. People will always choose their own comfort over gestures to help people they don’t know.
Posted by: Bob Macdonald | July 15th, 2008 at 2:34 pm | Report this commentI thought it was just me! I’m so glad to see that the end of my love affair with The Economist really is due to that organ disappearing up its own fundamental.
If you want a good example of a very old magazine that still delivers the goods, try the Spectator. Possibly the best current affairs mag in the UK, now the Economist has well and truly fallen from its pedestal.
Posted by: AYC | July 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm | Report this commentYo AYC / RCS! I am surprised to find myself in agreement with you about The Economist (which I gave up reading about 18 months ago). I think I must go and have another look in case it has become good again and that’s why you don’t like it
Posted by: Pacifist | July 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm | Report this comment@ Bob McDonald
I was talking specifically about TV. There are those other US outlets of course, and I follow them avidly myself. I’m not sure they have much to do with journalism, though.
Posted by: David Wilkins | July 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm | Report this commentCAM, the New Yorker cartoon was meant to satirize the multiple smear campaigns directed against Barack Obama and his wife and to bring this poison out into the open where it can be acknowledged, faced up to, and, hopefully, eliminated from the campaign forever.
Better that than the sneaky, devious and racially offensive insinuations of the O’Reilly and Hannity variety promoted by the Fox News character assassination squad. Unfortunately, most Americans are too dumb to be able to tell the difference between the two, and that is where the New Yorker miscalculated.
If the above makes me a New York Upper West Side liberal elitist, so be it.
Posted by: algasema | July 15th, 2008 at 4:33 pm | Report this commentThe British population, Bob Macdonald, did not “get hoodwinked into two wars.” The British public opposed the wars by the millions. They were ignored.
Your statement that the Labour Party is “openly socialist” was no doubt gleaned from reading American newspapers.
Posted by: CAM | July 15th, 2008 at 4:34 pm | Report this commentRCS, the FT editorials about the EU may be perfectly brilliant for all I know, since, like most Americans, I have no knowledge at all about this topic, which seems to be all-consuming in Europe.
But the FT’s well-meaning editorials dealing with US affairs show little, if any understanding (outside of the economic sphere) of the two most important issues in America, namely the ongoing racism that is poisoning both our immigration debate and the presidential campaign on the one hand, and the undermining of our democracy in favor of the push toward unlimited executive power on the other.
Of course, the FT editorial page is not alone in this. I have yet to see Gideon Rachman or Clive Crook deal with these vital issues either, even though both Mr. Luce and Mr. Ward have, at least occasionally, done so.
The WP and NYT editorial pages are always right on top of these issues, and should be commended for it.
Posted by: algasema | July 15th, 2008 at 5:00 pm | Report this commentNot that they represent their respective countries, but the FT and WSJ have long struck me as mirror images. The WSJ does incomparably in-depth reporting, exposing pervasive scandals and the ways in which whole industries as well as individual companies game whatever systems they operate within. Its op-ed page, on the other hand, offers up a rigidly ideological caricature of analysis. As for the FT, its news reporting seems perfunctory to me, but its comment & analysis pages are the best I know of — fact-based, rigorously analytical, balanced.
Posted by: Xpostfactoid | July 15th, 2008 at 6:14 pm | Report this commentThis article was an amiable and by my lights wildly-incompetent article from any scientific standpoint. Judging the utterly failed and treasonable US unregulated press and their nonexistent, non-objective unAmerican standards by “Watergate” and then comparing that high-point of responsible journalism to a perhaps harmless made-up man-on-the-street British reporter’s Thucydidean statement is preposterous.
Posted by: Robert M. Cerello | July 15th, 2008 at 8:07 pm | Report this commentThe press in the U.S. pretend to be ‘objective’; the Brits do a self-evident far better job of separating facts from analysis. But until attested facts have been effectively separated from myths, standards-based evaluatiuonsfhave been segregated from discontexted attitudes and opinions (and their purveyors forbidden the use of value terms until the standards has been defined) and until science has been separated from unaccountable beliefs, neither British nor US newstwisters will be anything but what they are: a dangerously unregulated gang of corporate tsars’ minions, acting as gatekeeper totalitarians and interposing their shadow agenda of pro-public0interest totaliatrain statism between individuals who need truth and the reality these newstwisters are badly failing to report.
When a constitution is murdered, and two governments invade Iraq
for no military or other sane reason, newsmen have NOT done their job as purveyors of prioritized and truthful facts, standards-based evaluations nor science..
Please, let’s stop arguing whose news reporting was “least worst” and praising rare acts of conscience and concentrate on one simple fact: non-fictional information purveyors are unregulated, pro-imperial-leader postmodernists, reality bashers and reality ignorers without present restraint, without important accountability and without moral-ethical plausibility; operating principles in both countries are woeful, silly and/or abidingly worthless.
And the citizens of both failed republics have been grievously harmed and impoverished for centuries by the pretense at news that has been permitted to be dispensed under governmental aegis in both unhappy nations.
Bottom Line: we and the Brits need real news so that we as individuals living among others in a societal arrangement can make informed decisions; and we cannot much longer survive with the brainwashing tripe we have been fed, brainwashing nonsense that is used to preserve the regimes of incompetents, liars and unrealists in Establishment pragmatic-unrealistic misuses of powers that were supposed to be given to them solely to sustain (not prey upon) individuals’ rights, justice claimed under regulations and hopes for eventual liberty–from foreign invaders, homegrown criminals and from just such governmental treasons.
I recommend Erich Heini’s letter today in the FT, which addresses the greatest failures in American journalism in recent years. To me, the idiotic “defence” posture of the US, costing trillions of dollars for much that is totally unnecessary to protect the country, is a primary issue that is virtually totally suppressed in the mainstream newspapers in America.
Posted by: James Canning | July 16th, 2008 at 6:28 pm | Report this commentAmusing to read all this, since Rachman’s piece pretty effectively dispenses with the hoary old criticisms/cliches that these contributors trotted out anyway. Basically, the leading US media prepares Americans to analyze issues; the leading UK media prepares Britons to strike an attitude. Thanks to so many of you for proving the point.
Posted by: drew | July 17th, 2008 at 5:12 am | Report this commentDear Drew,
I think the post by Xpostfactoid is quite revealing of the American paper that the article started off about, namely the WSJ.
What is the point of all that detailed analysis (how many people have the time to read them everyday?) when the conclusions reached (as reflected in their editorial and op eds) border on hysterical and irrational and occasionally, comical?
The same is true of the CNN coverage which sits on a story for hours but provides no enlightenment or decent analysis and such analysis as is provided is so one-sided that it might as well be propaganda.
All the best,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | July 17th, 2008 at 11:10 am | Report this commentLots of interesting comments. Firstly, I must say that there are many things I like about the UK and that it is a great country in many respects. But as an American, who has lived in the UK for many years, I agree with Gideon, along with many others, particularly Algesama and Drew. The British press needs a lesson in accuracy and ethics. The self-regulating Press Complaints Commission does not work.
Before I lived in the UK, my view of the British press was the FT and The Economist, the best that Britain has to offer and very good indeed. I then started reading other British papers and found them to be a more interesting and lively read than their American counterparts, including the broadsheets. I was amused.
Whenever I returned to the US, I was often bored reading The Boston Globe (my home paper) and the New York Times. How I missed the punchy English writing (not sure if there is a Welsh or Scottish element!) in the days before papers were available online.
My love affair with the British press came to an abrupt halt when I made a flying visit to Islay, Scotland, to see a prominent City grandee about a personal matter. Unbelievably, I was then systemically defamed across the British press. I was in shock. It was not pretty. I was devastated and I continue to be devastated. What happened next was even worse. I could not get an adequate right of reply. This was when I realised, to my utter disbelief, just how inaccurate the British press could be.
This was indeed readily confirmed just this week with a record libel settlement for Robert Murat against several British newspapers. They were mostly tabloids, but the extent of the defamation and character assassination was horrific and unedifying for a country with one of the world’s oldest democracies. Just where is its accurate and responsible press?
A few years ago, the British Library had an exhibit and lecture series about the press. One lecture was on the US press and reporters from Time Magazine and the Wash Post said just what Gideon is saying. They would never publish a story without two sources. They could not believe the stories that got into the British press and said that one was more likely to get defamed in the British press, even though they have the world’s strongest libel laws.
Strange indeed, but I can certainly confirm that as I continue to struggle on with several libel claims, particularly against The Daily Mail. Fortunately, I already won one against The Express. The late, great and sadly missed American journalist, Tim Russet, who recently passed away, inspires me to carry on. What a journalistic standard he upheld.
As for my home paper, The Boston Globe, I no longer care if it lacks punch, I now revere it for its accuracy. It should be noted that every 4th of July, it publishes The American Declaration of Independence on its editorial page. It is always helpful to read it again and be remindered of the immense struggle made by others to get the rights most of us take for granted. How I also now revere that document, after being devastated by the actions of the British press and their obstinance in setting the record straight.
As for the attitude of the British papers once one is defamed, no American would believe how unreasonable they are. Rather than immediately offer a correction and apology, even with overwhelming evidence, the only way to get them to listen is to issue libel claims. Then they get their lawyers to do what English lawyers do. Now that is a topic for another day and another blog: the difference between English and American lawyers. Over to you Gideon.
Posted by: Elaine Decoulos | July 20th, 2008 at 3:32 am | Report this commentIt is so funny to see so-called “free press” distorting truth in every issue which is sensitive to West.
You talked so much about propaganda in USSR, but now as I live is America, I see no difference at all, not a slightest difference, between US and USSR. Self-censorship, repeating of lies, lack of bravery to look into the facts of your own givernment to be totally incapable, incompetent and hidden but so ovious desire to present the facts so as they support your viewpoint and - OH SO DIFFICULT to admit that your country has screwed up completely.
I love America exactly because it is so much like the superpower I lost.
The only problem is, it looks like the lies are going to bring it down.
So funny Bush repeating newslines without even giving it a thought. How could America elect such an IDIOT, I always wonder.
Posted by: Vladimir Butnoputin | August 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm | Report this commentAgree. Several years ago, I was at the Marriott in Moscow. The barman chatted me up and then offered me an international catalogue of prostitutes, many of whom were sitting behind me.
When I declined each of his delicious-sounding offers, he leaned into my face and asked what I really liked in the bedroom. I was stunned and finally indicated my displeasure. A pleasant guy, he laughed and said, “This is not America! It’s Russia and we have free speech!” He then explained how sexual harassment was something invented in the US and brought to Europe, but not Russia.
He also described how the US FBI director, William Frie (I think at the time), had sat in the same seat and inquired as to the price list of the offerings (out of academic curiosity), but how his aides interrupted and finally insisted he not discuss this subject.
There is a story to be told about the phenomenon of disinformation we can observe in US-originated media. This evening is a fine example.
Posted by: wcm | August 13th, 2008 at 11:40 pm | Report this comment