from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 20 Jul 2009 07:29 PM PDT

The death of Walter Cronkite has
occasioned an outpouring of grief for the media personality dubbed "The
Most Trusted Man in America", by the media's own polls. Cronkite, like
Woodward and Bernstein, or Neil Sheehan, served as a turning point as the
media's love affair with itself went from creating its own icons, to
treating those icons as a vital part of the national
culture.

Cronkite's
genial fatherly manner and non-threatening good nature, made him appear
trustworthy; which made him a vital asset for the media's new role, that
of "explaining America to itself". That was the phrase that Newsweek
editor Ellis Cose used when accepting the Honor Medal for Distinguished
Service in Journalism, an award that would normally make one think of
charging into minefields or rescuing the wounded from a battlefield, not
writing articles for Newsweek. It is a phrase that communicates the
media's new role, to "explain" their image of America to the average
American who is not nearly as in touch with his own country, as a Yale
educated reporter living on the coast and working for a major media
syndicate is.

News reporting began with one medium, the printed
press. As technology improved, the transmission of news became more
instantaneous and one medium became many, the media. Radio, television and
the internet have each added a quantum increase in speed, so that
reporting that once took hours or days, can take minutes. This
acceleration in speed has made the media more omnipresent than ever.
Across multiple media formats, the same message goes through over and over
again with terribly trustworthy men and women hard at work explaining
America to itself.

The convenience of the media remains its great
asset. Advertising allows the media to sell access to its readers, but it
is the unofficial product being sold that is the real problem. Across all
the mediums, the message is not simple news, but advocacy. Media bias did
not begin yesterday. When Jefferson wanted to take a poke at Washington,
Hamilton and Adams, he used independent newspapers as a front for a
propaganda war that threw around charges of treason, adultery and worse.
Adams responded with the "Alien and Sedition Acts", which liberal
historians selectively condemn without taking note of what inspired
them.

But as the media has become more omnipresent, its bias has
also become more standardized and absolute. Wire services, network
newscasts, cable news networks, nationwide radio chains that rely on
recorded newsreaders, and finally the internet itself, has eroded
community news. Once upon a time the editor of a regional paper printed
what he thought of a matter first, and then would have to wait a week or
so to find out if the New York Times agreed with him, assuming he cared
about that sort of thing. Today a consensus on a news story emerges within
a very short time, a consensus forged by the biggest media groups with the
most bandwidth. Defying that consensus is risky and demands an effort of
will. A story can no longer be run that defies the consensus without
accounting for it in some way. And that consensus has meant the death of
the free press.

That consensus represents the media's perspective,
better known as "explaining America to itself." Are Americans really such
hopeless dullards that they need their own country explained to them? That
is certainly how the media sees them. Their contempt for the average
American leaks through as pandering and the shameless rise of
infotainment. It comes through in the iconization of newsreaders and
increasingly dumbing down their reporting, while amping up their agenda.
Like a propagandist screaming through a bullhorn, the media doesn't care
if you understand what happened, they want you to take away a simple
message from what happened, their message.

Through the media's eye, what matters about a shooting is
that it could have been prevented with tighter gun control laws. What
matters about a patient's death is that it could have been prevented with
government run health care. What matters about a suicide bombing is that
it perpetuates the cycle of violence. What matters about a homeless man's
death is that we need more government public housing. What matters
ultimately is the media's perspective, and that perspective is ruthlessly
agenda driven. Sometimes it is camouflaged with selective storytelling and
between the lines bias, but lately it is hardly being camouflaged at all.
And that too is the ugliest sign of contempt from the media to
date.

The rise of the internet has threatened the media's
monopolization of the public debate, which is one reason why it has become
so tempting to look at Cronkite as representing a golden age, a mythical
period when all Americans listened to and believed one man. Mostly though
the internet has threatened the profitability of the media, more than it
has threatened it as a monopoly.

The mainstream media's offerings
are still where people go for news, and while more hardy souls are going
off the reservation to blogs, the space off the reservation is often
defined by the media as well. The big media monopolies still have massive
power and brand name recognition on their side, and while newspapers may
be closing, and radio stations may be getting a bit shaky, it will take
more than that to make the media go away.

Yet the internet has
attacked the media's Achilles heel, convenience. Americans did not buy
newspapers, listen to the radio or watch network newscasts because of
trust, so much as because of convenience. And the internet has made
convenience accessible to everyone. No broadcaster could compete with
Cronkite, no one man handbill operation could compete with the New York
Times. On the internet though it's all just content, and while the media
still has the power, that power comes at a high dollar and cents price,
and without the monopoly, its profitability is eroding its ability to
maintain that power. Paying a large staff costs money. So does
advertising. And internet advertising isn't profitable enough to cover
that bet.

The New York Times as we know it will perish. So will
most of the major papers. The monthly news magazines who have banked big
on infotainment and lifestyle features, Newsweek and Time Magazine, don't
have a bright future ahead of them either. Not when their only real use is
as something to read while waiting for the doctor to see you now. The
network newscasts will follow. Cronkite was forced out by CBS and Dan
Rather due to his age. His old seat was turned over to Rather, who was
forced out by CBS due to his own age, and a breaking scandal. His
ridiculously overpaid replacement is Katie Couric who doesn't so much read
the news, as sneeze it. She in turn will be forced out when CBS gives up
hope that she can bring in a younger audience. The CBS newscast today is
the lowest rated of the big three networks. Had Cronkite stuck around for
a few years, he would have likely seen it die as well.

But that does not mean the media is over and done
with. The New York Times may be dead, but Politico is the new New York
Times. Just as the Drudge Report is the new New York Post. The old media
will die, but a new media is being born. And the essential problem of the
media will remain. That problem is the presumption of explaining America
to itself through the media's eye. It is the presumption that just as
doctors treat physical problems and lawyers treat legal problems, that the
job of the media is to treat what they see as America's social
problems.

By reporting not the news, but what it sees as the news,
the media has repeatedly hijacked America's political discourse to put
across their agenda. When the media mournfully looks back at the golden
age of Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein; they are remembering the golden
period when despite the will of the voters and the values of most
Americans; their agenda became the national agenda. And a nation of the
people, by the people and for the people; became a nation of the
politicians, by the media and for those watching the media.