By Stephen Smoot
In 1988, CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather sat in the catbird seat of global journalism. The Marine had earned his way to the top, taking on tough and dangerous assignments that demonstrated his great abilities. In 1981 he took over the anchor desk from his august predecessor Walter “the most trusted man in America” Cronkite, absorbing the carefully crafted reputation of his predecessor who in turn had absorbed the professional credibility established by the legendary Edward R. Murrow.
Dan Rather’s reign coincided with the golden era of network news. If breaking news of national or global consequence, or a serious disaster occurred, his calm and steady baritone eventually appeared to both inform and to reassure the audience.
And he gave that credibility away in the name of hubris as he seemingly pursued a vendetta against one of America’s most powerful families.
In 1988, CBS News invited presidential candidates to submit to a general biographical sketch interview by Rather. Vice President George H. W. Bush, probably one of the most grandfatherly/kind uncle type political figures in the living memory of most Americans, accepted.
Rather planned an ambush on the Vice President, wanting to surprise him with questions on the Iran-Contra scandal that emerged in the waning years of the Reagan presidency.
Most forget that Bush had earned four medals for courage under fire, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. He also served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency at one point. In other words, try to hornswoggle or intimidate Vice President Bush at your own risk. Rather risked it and it went about like one would expect.
Bush’s staff gathered intelligence about the interview and quickly discovered it was not as advertised. The intended prey flipped the script on the would-be predator Rather during the live interview, both rhetorically eviscerating and professionally humiliating him. Later on, Rather’s career would end when he used faked documents to try to disprove that President George W. Bush had served in the National Guard.
Online users quickly determined that the font used in the documents did not exist in the time period, proving the documents false.
Journalistic objectivity, never a perfect art or science, lasted about 100 years. During the span from the 1880s through Rather’s attempt at derailing Bush I’s march to the presidency, journalism held objectivity as the gold standard of the field. Rather’s failure, plus the Stephen Glass scandal at New Republic should have served as coal mine canaries warning of the consequences of the creeping opinionizing of news.
Glass drew from his own personal world of pure imagination a series of entertaining stories for the unabashedly left/liberal publication that entertained his superiors while also aligning with their ideological biases.
Since the 1990s, even lip service to objectivity has disintegrated. Journalists with ideologies on both the right and left found ready and eager audiences preferring to have their biases confirmed to being informed and educated. Outlets like MSNBC (originally the “conservative alternative to CNN) and Fox News set the tone for a more opinionated television news format. Ted Turner had originally intended CNN to follow strict ethics of objectivity, but that emphasis evaporated when he gave up control.
Over time, all restraints faded save those imposed by Sullivan v. New York Times. This case law established minimum liability standards for covering public and private figures. By the time Donald Trump won his first term in office, the ethics seemed to be “anything you want to do, do it.”
CBS News and Paramount’s recent courtroom loss to Trump showed how far they strayed from real journalism into manufactured political theater.
Those who strived to use their words to transform, rather than inform, opinions fell into the modus operandi of “want to change the world? There’s nothing to it.” Just shape and mold opinions through encasing biased narratives in news.
Reporting on President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill shows how broken the system of news gathering, news writing, and news consumption has become. A wall of media coverage escalated fears instead of mollifying them, stoking the fires and oiling up the machinery of political manipulation instead of reporting facts.
One of the problems lies in overreliance on “experts.” At both the state and national level, organizations have formed to promote an agenda. Some serve as stalking horses for the Democratic Party while others stalk for the conservative movement. While Left and liberal activists usually treat the Democratic Party as an equal and respected partner, most ideological conservatives seem to often regard the Grand Old Party more like a secret paramour with a penchant for picking up social diseases.
To rally the public against the bill, these organizations used state “experts” who in turn quoted national “experts” whose statements on this issue usually involved general numbers and extreme speculation about what might happen if the bill passed.
Most reporting honed on speculation most likely to frighten their readers without even including President Trump’s stated order to Congressional Republicans that no Americans would be arbitrarily cut off of Medicaid in any bill he promoted. This would have reduced the fear and satisfied the basic tenet of objectivity by providing the relevant sides of the story.
If the bill had actually gone on to defy Trump’s statement, now that would be a news story.
One of the tricks that discerning consumers of journalism should look for is the “man on the street” point of view. If the article only contains one man on the street opinion that is not countered by an equally well articulated opposing viewpoint somewhere else, one can assume in most cases that the quoted opinion stands in for the reporter’s own beliefs on the subject.
Another trick lies in vague reference to “sources” that fails to give much, or any, clue as to who those sources are or why anyone should trust them. The twin term to “sources” is the word “experts,” also way too often used without any clue as to who the “experts” are. A journalist can easily find any “source” or “expert” to confirm the bias they will put in the story. Journalists learn early on that they should have as much description of the unnamed figure as is possible and that they should avoid simply using “source” or “expert” alone.
Matthew Continetti, a conservative journalist, called these and other tactics “combat journalism” when he edited the Washington Free Beacon. Until recently, both sides’ publications engaged in this on the fringes with more established publications sorting through the materials to see what should be investigated further. His publication spent tremendous effort to search in the backgrounds of Democratic figures to find material to undermine them.
One reporter spent weeks in a successful search through archives in Arkansas to find decades-old information to undermine Hillary Clinton. This mirrored Washington Post reporters holding up evidence that Mitt Romney got into a fight in junior high school like a trophy of war during the 2012 presidential campaign.
A place exists for the “red meat” journalism of activists whose work fits neatly into ideological niches and pushes agendas harder than the ideal of objective reporting. They can and do come up with important information that more mainstream publications should examine and vet before passing it on to their own audiences – as opposed to simply quoting and forwarding it to their own readers.
That said, general publications should work toward objectivity – and not just political objectivity either – in story selection, story reporting, and story writing. Obviously, this does not extend to editorials. They appear in a separate section to differentiate the opinions of the newspaper and its staff from the actual news content.
Since objectivity is a perfection and perfection in the earthly realm is unattainable, those editing and reporting must keep in mind Socrates’ highest form of wisdom, which is “Know thyself.” We as journalists need to keep biases in the forefront of our thinking when putting out news on any event.
The loss of objective journalism has cost both the profession and the audience. As news degenerated, especially on television and the internet, into competing choruses of discontent, the audience has lost all trust in journalism in general.
Topping off the bad behavior in coverage of actual news comes the disgusting parading of Mary Lou Retton’s DUI arrest captured by police cameras. Since one rarely sees DUI arrest videos of unknown individuals, this smacks of exploitation of a human being who has gone through tremendous physical and mental pain.
All of this has left the audience with no one they could look to as inherently trustworthy, like previous generations did when they read a newspaper or watched what was once called “the national news.” People now must wade into a sea of words available online with differing abilities of discernment; many come away with a higher likelihood to believe conspiracy theories or their own ideas of what actually happened.
Waters get muddied by those putting out videos online that purport to share “news.” Too many of these are trolls, agents from foreign organizations like the Chinese Communist Party, or others trying to sow trouble in some way. Online videos saying “breaking news” or offering “updates” on hot button issues, but have no concrete reference to source material do little to discern and much to divide. They often lie outright.
One probably should trust most online social media based video “news” as far as one could throw Spruce Knob.
News consumers do not turn to conspiracy theories or questionable sources out of foolishness, lack of education, or lower levels of sophistication. They do this because they have jobs, families, and other obligations that prevent them from investing the time that others have to get fully informed. Yet they still need to know and understand the world around them.
The world has changed and journalism is broken, but citizens still need their news. Even with the best of intentions toward objectivity, however, mistakes can be made. Never place one’s trust fully in any news or outlet.
Our advice to news consumers is this: always take in the journalism and information you consume with a grain of salt – even this newspaper.
Full disclosure. The author of this editorial worked as Director of Academic Programs for National Journalism Center in Washington DC from 2011 to 2014. National Journalism Center is a project of the conservative activist organization Young America’s Foundation.
