The Media vs. The Masses
By K. Daniel Glover | May 21, 2009
There is a serious and seemingly intractable disconnect between grassroots America and the nation's newsrooms right now.
We saw it writ large earlier this year in the approach to covering "tea parties" across the country. Big Media's first response was to pull down its collective green eyeshade and ignore the tens of thousands of average Joes and Janes who rallied against government spending and taxes.
When that didn't work, journalists took cues from liberal bloggers and started smearing and mocking a large and diverse swath of the population. Ultimately, journalists like Susan Roesgen of CNN sank to a level of unprofessional behavior that even their colleagues wouldn't defend.
This week, the media-vs.-the-masses divide has been obvious on a smaller scale in California, and once again, the wedge is the government's penchant for taxes and spending.
On Tuesday, a small but very vocal minority of Golden State voters rejected five ballot propositions aimed at addressing the state's fiscal crisis by extending tax increases, among other things. Voters approved only one proposition, and it is in keeping with the current anti-government mood -- it will deny raises to politicians and other state officials during deficit years.
Most California media outlets, on the other hand, supported the propositions. Matt Welch of Reason's Hit & Run blog aptly called the string of newspaper endorsements for them a "festival of Yes Indeedies" and a "convincing demonstration of editorial board impotence.
But such criticisms have not deterred the deep thinkers on the professional media circuit. Journalists both in California and beyond have reacted to Tuesday's vote in one of two ways:
1. Chastising voters for taking a stand against more taxes and spending (hat tip to Instapundit).
2. Or writing sob stories designed to make voters feel guilty about demanding responsible budgeting from their governments. (Expect more like these in the weeks ahead.)
The most egregious display of post-election journalistic arrogance occurred on the Web site of the Sacramento Bee. This morning, the newspaper's editorial board published a childishly scathing attack on voters for daring to exercise their democratic rights at the ballot. Here's a sample:
Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you've gotten that out of your system?
You wanted to show the state's politicians just how mad you are at them. And you did. Boy, did you ever. ...
[Y]ou're sick and tired of all this political mumbo-jumbo. So you showed those politicians who's in charge. You. You're now officially in charge of a state that will be something like $25 billion in the hole for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
So, now that you've put those irksome politicians in their place, maybe it's time to think about this: Since you're in charge, exactly what do you intend to do about that pesky $25 billion hole in the budget?
The Bee eventually yanked the editorial offline and republished the piece that appeared in the print edition, which put the blame where it belongs -- on the governor and state Legislature. A note at the bottom said the first version was "posted in error" and was just "a draft prepared for internal discussion."
Fine. Those kinds of errors do happen. But it was a most revealing error.
It offered a glimpse into a mindset that is evident in newsrooms across America -- that government can solve everything and that "the people" are stupid sheep who need to be led. "We the people"? What a bunch of revolutionary nonsense! "Government of the people, by the people, for the people"? That's so 1860s. Abraham Lincoln is dead; get over him.
These days, the "press" that our forefathers so wisely and prominently saw fit in the Constitution to protect from the government has decided that its role is to defend the government from the unruly, clueless mobs who give them power.
How did the media become so disconnected from the masses? The same way politicians do when they spend too much time in capital cities -- they forget their roots.
Today's journalists have far more in common with the people they cover, including salaries they did not expect when they got into the news business, than with their news audiences. They spend more time hobnobbing with bigwigs on the party circuit or gazing at each other's navels than trying to understand why taxes and spending have become such a burden on so many people.
That's why so many editors, reporters and anchors were willing to first dismiss and later deride the tea parties. They clearly don't share the perspective of the average taxpayer. But worse, they aren't even curious enough to explore it honestly and fairly.
Until the journalistic elites adjust both their attitude and their behavior, the chasm that separates the people and the press will remain -- and the "professional" media will continue the downward spiral that has them dreaming of a government bailout.
K. Daniel Glover is a project manager for Accuracy In Media. He has worked as an editor, writer and new media specialist in the Washington area since 1991, spending most of that time at National Journal and Congressional Quarterly.
8 Comments | Post a Comment
I figured out in the 70’s that the media was out of touch when I saw reporters give Prez Carter a standing ovation after a press conference. Never trusted them again. (Dan Rather excused such behavior by saying “reporters are Americans too”)
Problem is that there are elements of the media that are hellbent on the destruction of other elements of the media. Notice the recent attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Savage.
Let us also not forget that in March 2004 on ESPN’s “Around The Horn”, then-“Chicago Sun-Times” sports columnist Jay Mariotti (now on AOL Sports) called for the shutdown of FOX Sports Net (FSN).
We must also not forget that there are people of one media company who are hell bent on destroying another media. This is mainly with Time Warner trying to destroy NewsCorp. These people include Bernard Goldberg, Chip Caray, Frank Caliendo, Pam Oliver, Kyle Petty, Larry McReynolds, Nina Easton, Ralph Sheheen, Bill Webber, Matt Ycoum, Dick Stockton, Jane Hall, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and Adam Lashinsky. It would not surprise me real soon that they get pumped up full of scopolamine or sodium pentathal by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta to send their friends down the river.
Another to be noted is Clark Howard who works for HLN, but also has a radio program on WSB-AM in Atlanta. Howard could send his friends Neal Boortz and Herman Cain down the river as well.
During Desert Storm, pilots braved the flak to get rid of Saddam’s broadcasting ability, his “pep talks”...a well known news broad-casting system (you remember who) gave Saddam a platform from which to speak. My son was in Deserst Storm and I felt they essentially, in part, undid what the military had accomplished.
One particular live broadcast, the 2 “hosts” spoke of a scud being approximately too far to the
left/west/whatever (giving an appoximate distance) from an important building. I tried to call that network to ask them if they were “spotters” for the enemy’s scuds/bombs. It
was, in my maternal belief, nearly traitorous.
To date: I believe they, and their liberal comrades have only shown themselvea to hold intelligent, patriot, Constitutional-following masses in distain, and only that which they can liberally digest and then reguritate across the airwaves, will the ‘report” as news. We’ve been more informed of Obama’s dog than his unshown,
locked in a vault original birth certificate.
Picture THAT if it was a Republican, LOL!
The MSM was relentless against Republicans…
Quayle’s misspelling, Lott’s cajoling words to an
old political warhouse: Thurmond. Yet with Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Murtha, Rangel, Clintons, et al: zilch. A fertile field left fallow.
No wonder they are so focused on silencing “talk radio” and a free internet! And,
people…this is only the FIRST 100 days. Will there be anything left of American at the end of
the SECOND 100 days?
The Masses. They are just that, “The Masses”. The “Mass Mind” is a product of the Socialist International. Communism is alive and well in America. Another Paul Revere would be too late. He would be ignored by the Masses anyway, just as was Jesus.
Comment from the article:
“How did the media become so disconnected from the masses? The same way politicians do when they spend too much time in capital cities—they forget their roots.”
I think this applies to just about every type of fairly well-defined “group” and “sub-group”, political, professional, social, cultural, economic, religious, etc., in existence in the U.S. today. It seems like a lot of the population is divided into various kinds of “interest groups” which often seem totally “disconnected from the masses” - - IF, in fact, there still IS a more-or-less “typical” or “average” or Joe and Josephine Sixpak-type “mass” to actually “connect” to. (???)
Informal Mass Media of the Socialist International takes hundreds of different forms of mind altering propaganda. Know any politicians who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)? The DSA infiltrator of our government at the moment.
Shut up Beaner! You will open a real Can-O-Worms with that one. Shut up!
May 22 at 7:32 pm | #1 | Link
Media is disconnected. You only have to look at Media agreeing with Obama that waterboarding is torture, but it is nothing compared to the torture babies in the wombs experience with agony of pain in being aborted.