The Natural Consequence

by digby

Eric Boehlert wrote an essential column this week about the media's new "problem" convincing the American public that their reporting is serious. This is a very important insight, one that I had just sort of been circling in my mind and hadn't homed in on:

Fact: Between Monday and Friday of last week, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC aired more mentions of "lipstick" than they did "Fannie Mae." You know Fannie Mae, that's one of the two distressed mortgage giants (along with Freddie Mac) that the federal government had to take over last week in order to fend off insolvency, an unprecedented move that was fraught with dire economic repercussions.

But yes, the lipstick story was more newsworthy on cable television last week. It wasn't even close. Lipstick was mentioned more than 350 times, while Fannie Mae was mentioned approximately 230 times, according to TVEyes.com.

Were some of those lipstick mentions on TV made while criticizing McCain's empty ploy? Absolutely. (See NBC's Chuck Todd.) But that still didn't excuse the media's Pavlovian response to the McCain whistle, of embracing and spreading the phony story in the first place. The proper response would have been to essentially ignore the so-called story and keep moving. Or to note that McCain's camp tried to float the phony lipstick story. But turning the soggy affair into the day's top news event was an embarrassment.

The media's failure to do so wasn't surprising. The press throughout this race has walked away from any semblance of traditional standards, yet journalists seemed oblivious to the long-term implications of their chronic embrace of fluff.

Why their embrace? Because that's what the media feel most comfortable with; that's what they're good at. (They think.) They're good at speculating for weeks on end about who might be selected as a candidate's running mate and what that hypothetical matchup would mean on Election Day. They're good at ruminating about polls. They're good at trying to read politicians' minds.

But now we're seeing the dire consequences -- when the press wants to inform voters about outrageous campaign conduct (like the Bridge to Nowhere, McCain's untrue claim that Obama plans to raise "your" taxes, or even in the margins the lipstick fiasco), the press no longer wields the same authority, in part because the political press has consciously folded its work into the larger entertainment culture.


As I watched the peculiar sight of Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman getting all enraged over John McCain's lying, I couldn't quite put my finger on why it all seemed so futile. Yes, it's certainly an improvement when they don't just pass on lies uncritically as they usually do. But there was something strange and dissonant about it that made it almost seem like I was watching a Reality Show rather than a news program.

Boehlert hits the nail on the head. These pundits are so lacking in authority, that even when they are doing their jobs, it no longer matters. It's all part of the same entertainment program whether it's over lipstick on pigs or Fannie Mae collapsing or blow jobs or weapons of mass destruction. They've managed to debase information itself and turn it into just another commodity. I don't know how you fix that.

It will be interesting to see how they do during the rest of the campaign, which has taken a complicated turn. Will they be able to sustain any interest in a difficult but extremely important story that has no possible tabloid element? I don't know, but I can't see how they can ignore it --- and I can't see how they can sex it up. Stay tuned.


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