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Making Cents of It All – Part V: The Gatekeepers
Posted in: Blog, Social Media by Christian on April 8, 2009
I don’t want to be all “a twitter” (pun intended) about social media. I am a cautious optimist. To me Social Media is great in that it does break down the barriers of the gatekeepers of knowledge to get to the truth, but it also adds to the BS as the old saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes and everybody has one.” It makes the gray area more, well, gray.
For example, journalists have gotten a bad PR rap lately. Whether it is because of the “liberal media” (#) or unethical journalism it is hard to say. However, some reporters who completely fabricate stories only help to further a negative perception. As I said before, “sex sells,” moreover contraversy sells as well. The only thing that doesn’t seem to sell anymore is the truth. I would like to put a lot of the current state of journalism, the current state of our culture, and entertainment in traditional media, but not all, on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp with his creation of the FOX Televison Network (#)(years before FOX News was created).
When FOX first started out in the mid 90’s they were the underdog with programs like the Tracey Ulman Show/The Simpsons, Current Affair, Geraldo Rivera, and Bill O’Reilly’s Inside Edition. While they were OK shows they were not bringing in the ratings. Then with the emergence and focus on its 
news division as an offshoot of its earlier days with Inside Edition it started to gain some ground on the “Big Three.” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) Most of the stories were sensationalistic which boosted ratings while the “Big Three” tried to stick to journalism’s code of ethics. Yes, there is one, but very few seem to use it anymore in order to “get ahead.” It use to be about getting the facts by asking the tough questions rather than quoting other news sources or fabricating stories – doing the legwork! The media (bloggers and pundits) today consists of opinion interjected stories with subjective viewpoints and maybe a dash of fact.
The problem with the big three is that they eventually had to cave into FOX’s style of journalism because of the ratings/revenue game. There has never been a “liberal media” in the sense that it is the majority or only one of its kind. The “liberal media” is a catchphrase developed by political strategists and marketers to distract viewers from the real issues and implementation of the journalistic code of ethics.
The only one more dangerous than Mr. Murdoch is his right hand man, fellow alumni (Ohio University) , and former coworker with my mother in the Nixon Administration, Roger Ailes. In an article in Ohio University’s 2009 summer edition of Ohio Today, Ailes talks a lot about his career and the impact he has had on picking up where Ted Turner left off. 
He also goes on to talk about how, “OU is a little too liberal for me, but that’s OK as long as there’s an additional point of view from time to time so people don’t get brainwashed.”(#) I think the most ironic part about that is a kid from the small town of Warren, in the historically red state of Ohio, calling OU liberal. My father who grew up in Marion, OH and graduated from Kent State told me when he first started teaching high school social studies in Maryland, that he had an early mid-life crisis because everything he had been taught up to that point about black history had been wrong. The fact that he was able to re-educate himself and continue to have an open mind about finding the truth was a testment to getting out of small town thinking. There is something to be said about, “History is written by the winners.” Ailes admits to, “What I did is I changed 24-hour news to something that was watchable, saleable and winning.”(#)
Many times in the article he goes on to tallk about, “looking at both sides of the issues and have an open mind about things.” The problem I have with that is, at least when I was there, we were taught how to learn, not how to think. When your resume includes political consulting for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, as well as working with pundits like Rush Limbaugh, et al., while not having any experience across the isle, essentially towing the party line, it is hard to put much value on “Fair and Balanced.”
Many people will follow these pundits (“opinionators”) because of similar beliefs, but what they say isn’t necessarily the truth, including some of today’s talking heads of politics. These people know their target audience is too lazy or doesn’t have the time to cross reference the truth. Often the target audience is too busy just trying to make a living. On the other hand you have an educated audience that is tired of journalists giving politicians and public figures softball questions when it comes to policy making, and “investigative” journalists are afraid of reprisal and never getting an interview with the public figure again. The only one on a major news network I see asking tough questions anymore, of public figures, is Matt Lauer. You have a lot of pundits asking tough questions, but to me it is more “garbage in garbage out” to the point where the pundits from competing 
networks attack each other and the focus is no longer on the real issues. Spinning a story to benefit one side over the other is big business and right now business is good. Big business bought and paid for the US Government a long time ago with the help of conservative pundits who have hijacked the term “middle America” to distract from the small percentage of self-made millionaires versus wealthy families born into money who use lawyers to keep it. Terms like anti-trust, deregulation, laissez-faire, and corporate social responsibility come to mind. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of left leaning pundits who pander as well. My point is we have to come back to the center with common sense. Bickering like children as we all know solves nothing. Do what your parents told you as a kid and “listen.” It adds no value to the conversation and serves no purpose except to divide us as a nation.