HALF THE PRESS IS HOUSEBROKEN. THE OTHER HALF IS FERAL.
One side is scared to death of appearing biased. The other discovered that bias, rage, and humiliation are easier to sell than journalism.
By Tom Hicks — Off Script
I know what reporters are supposed to ask at a presidential press conference. I also know what I would occasionally have to fight myself not to ask.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
That is not the professional version, obviously. The professional version would contain fewer syllables, no profanity, and considerably less honesty. But watch enough politicians stand behind microphones and say things that are false, absurd, cruel, or completely detached from the known world, and eventually you start wondering whether professionalism has become another word for sitting politely while somebody pisses on your leg and disputes the weather.
The reporter asks a careful question. The politician does not answer it, so the reporter tries again with the apologetic tone of someone asking a restaurant manager whether the kitchen might remove the dead insect from his soup.
The politician talks over the question, insults the reporter, changes the subject, complains about the previous administration, and calls on somebody else. Later, six people around a television desk discuss whether the exchange will help or hurt him with independent women in suburban Pennsylvania.
The lie was apparently not the story.
The reporter’s tone was.
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For a long time, I thought the problem was media bias. Then I blamed cable news, which certainly earned its share. Social media deserves to be dragged into the alley for questioning, and Donald Trump has spent years showing how much nonsense a politician can get away with when he possesses no shame, and the people covering him are still trying to observe rules he abandoned decades ago.
None of those explanations quite got me there. They explained pieces of what I was watching, but not how American media could be timid and hysterical at the same time.
Then it hit me.
I was not looking at one broken media system. I was looking at two.
One part of the press has been housebroken. It knows where the food bowl is, who controls the door, and what happens when it scratches the furniture. It has been trained to value access, decorum, balance, respectable language, and the appearance of neutrality, even when the person standing in front of it is lying through his teeth.
The other part has gone feral. It attacks on command, lives on grievance, and expects to be rewarded whenever the audience enjoys the noise.
One side is terrified of appearing unfair. The other has built a business model around unfairness.
We are left choosing between deference without courage and aggression without discipline.
THE PRESS THAT KNOWS WHERE THE FOOD BOWL IS
The housebroken press is not necessarily dishonest. Most reporters at major news organizations are trying to get the story right, usually under brutal deadlines and with fewer resources than the public realizes.
Some of the finest journalism in the country still comes from those institutions. Reporters expose corruption, uncover abuse, force records into public view, protect confidential sources, and keep digging long after powerful people would prefer that everyone move along.
The problem is not that institutional journalism has no standards. The problem is that it has surrounded itself with so many rules involving tone, access, balance, process, and professional distance that the whole operation can start looking like an extremely expensive obedience school.
You can hear it in the language.
A lie becomes “a disputed claim.” A racist statement becomes “racially charged.” A threat to violate the Constitution becomes “a break with political norms.” An official who refuses to answer a straightforward question is said to have “pushed back.”
Pushed back against what? Reality?
I worked around the law long enough to know the difference between an answer and a response. An answer addresses the question. A response is any collection of words that arrives after it.
Politicians have turned the response into an art form. Ask about the economy and they talk about immigration. Ask about immigration and they talk about crime. Ask about crime and they blame the previous administration. By the time the reporter gets another chance, the room has accepted that words came out of the politician’s mouth, so something must have been answered.
In a courtroom, a lawyer can object when a witness refuses to respond. A judge can tell the witness to stop screwing around and address the question.
At a political press conference, the witness owns the courtroom, controls the microphone, chooses the next lawyer, and can leave whenever he gets bored.
That is not accountability. It is a ceremony honoring the memory of accountability.
POINT BLANK
A press conference is not accountability merely because reporters are present.
If the official controls the room, ignores the question, chooses the next reporter, and leaves without answering, the public has witnessed access, not scrutiny.
Everybody gets something except the truth.
The reporter is allowed to ask. The official is allowed to ignore the question. The television network gets its video, the newspaper gets a quote, and the political operation gets another free opportunity to deliver its message.
Everyone technically completes the assignment.
The public goes home empty-handed.
THE PRESS THAT NO LONGER CARES ABOUT FAIRNESS
The feral side does not have a politeness problem because it does not give a damn whether anyone thinks it is fair.
Its job is not to challenge the audience. Its job is to reassure the audience that it has been right about everything from the beginning.
There is always an enemy, usually several. Every election is the last chance to save the republic. Every disagreement is a betrayal. Every mistake by the opposition proves corruption, while every mistake by an ally was misunderstood, taken out of context, secretly brilliant, or caused by the other side.
That is not reporting. It is emotional room service.
The audience orders outrage, and the host brings it upstairs while it is still hot.
Conservative talk radio perfected much of the model, but it no longer owns the patent. Liberal television, podcasts, websites, newsletters, and social-media personalities have learned the same trick. The language changes, and the villains rotate, but the transaction is almost identical.
The host identifies the tribe’s enemies, explains why those people are evil or stupid, and sends the audience to bed feeling smarter than everyone watching the other channel.
That kind of aggression can feel refreshing after you have watched an institutional reporter politely accept a fourth consecutive non-answer. At least somebody is calling bullshit.
The catch is that the feral host usually calls bullshit only when it comes from the other team.
When an ally lies, the lie becomes exaggeration, strategy, humor, trolling, or one of those remarks we are told not to take literally, despite being expected to treat every flattering promise as sacred.
Aggression backed by evidence is journalism. Aggression governed by audience loyalty is entertainment wearing a press pass.
The housebroken side sometimes lacks courage. The feral side lacks brakes.
HOW THE CAGE DOOR OPENED
You cannot tell this story without talking about the Fairness Doctrine, but you also cannot dump the entire mess in Ronald Reagan’s lap and walk away feeling clever.
For decades, the Federal Communications Commission required licensed radio and television broadcasters covering controversial public issues to provide a reasonable opportunity for contrasting viewpoints. It did not apply to newspapers, and it did not require equal time for every crank who could locate a telephone.
The doctrine rested on the belief that broadcasters were using a limited public resource, the airwaves, and that the privilege came with an obligation to the public.
It was never the golden age some people remember. Giving federal officials a role in deciding whether broadcasters had been sufficiently fair carried obvious dangers. I do not want any administration, Republican or Democratic, grading journalism for ideological balance.
Still, when we threw out the doctrine, we also discarded much of the principle underneath it: using the public airwaves involved a responsibility to someone other than the owner, advertisers, and ratings department.
In 1987, the Reagan-era FCC stopped enforcing the Fairness Doctrine. Congress passed legislation that would have written it into law, and Reagan vetoed it. (Federal Communications Commission)
Reagan did not sign a document ordering broadcasters to lose their minds. The media market was already changing, cable was expanding, and the old doctrine had become increasingly difficult to justify.
But 1987 was a turning point.
Rush Limbaugh entered national syndication the following year and showed station owners that political programming did not have to serve a broad public. It could make very good money serving one large, intensely loyal piece of it.
As an old radio guy, I understand why it worked.
Radio is intimate in a way television rarely manages. A good host does not sound as though he is addressing an audience. He sounds like he is talking directly to you while you drive home, sit in the garage, or pretend to work.
That relationship can inform people, entertain them, or keep somebody company on a rotten day. It can also convince millions of listeners that the voice coming through the dashboard is the only honest person left in America.
Once station owners learned that anger created loyalty and loyalty created ratings, nobody needed a degree in political science to see where this shit was headed.
Cable took the lesson, added pictures, and stretched it across twenty-four hours. The internet removed the cost of entry. Social media handed everyone a microphone and rewarded whoever could make the most people furious before breakfast.
The animal was not merely out of the cage.
It had become the programming strategy.
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