News In A Hurry
A keen observer of institutional change, Matthew Arnold noted: “Journalism is literature in a hurry.” That was long before television, the Internet, and the 24-hour news cycle, so it doesn’t take much to perceive how proper reflection in the media has been left in the dust of the immediate.
It remains impossible to comprehend the troubling rise of hyper-partisanship without keeping in mind the key roles played by modern media. It would be correct to conclude that while democracy does indeed work sometimes, it often elects politicians who are extreme partisans beholden to those who are their base. Pundits have recently admitted that such a development is true and troubling in the media as well. In Canada, an entire cottage industry has been built around the more extreme versions of modern political expression, with media observers leading the charge. Increasingly they come to the conclusion that our present system itself is flawed and that individual MPs and ministers themselves mere pawns of something far more powerful than they.
It’s understandable that politicians are reticent to agree. So it’s also logical that members of the media offer the same kind of self-defense when similar arguments are leveled at modern journalism. But they can scarcely escape blame. When Arthur Miller stated, “a good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,” he wasn’t describing much of what we see in this country today. It is there, but it’s also rare.
Speaking with numerous reporters, both in print and television, I continue to hear that media itself is undergoing a massive transformation and that many of the new breed entering the field lack the time to better comprehend the political system, its pitfalls and strengths. The deadline - the need to put words into form with little time for reflection - has created a marked division in media circles unlike anything previous. Seasoned reporters and commentators, trained in the skills of proper investigation and a healthy skepticism, are becoming rarer, as they retire and are rapidly being replaced by those who have only an unhealthy kind of skepticism based on scanty knowledge and even less experience.
We are all aware that the media's chief undertaking now is "agenda setting." It instructs us not so much how to think but what to think about. But once it accepts that less reflective role, it lies susceptible to the manipulations of political parties and their ability to capture attention. While a political strategy might indeed have been brilliant and effective, it might also be wrong and evasive. Yet most in the media will have already moved on from that reality because deadlines were calling. The truth will probably never be discovered because the media really don't have the time to undertake that kind of investigation. Political manipulation wins and the truth is obscured or untested.
My last entry focused on how politicians rush so fast that they might be creating an unforeseen train wreck in coming years. We need help to keep that from happening and, like it or not, we look to the media for self-correction. But what if the media is in the same vehicle as we are - traveling too fast to read the map? Such is our present state.
I trust my friends in the media don't take this too personally. I'm just as worried about them as I am about us. As Haroon Siddiqui stated in the Toronto Star last week: "Journalists have a high opinion of themselves, in reverse proportion to the low esteem they are held in by the public. Our arrogance is born of the absence of effective penalties for bad behaviour." If that is true of politicians and media alike, it's best that we - together - take our foot off the accelerator.