Do you wonder why the
legacy media are such puzzled otherworldly twits? Why, for example, they had no
idea what was happening in the recent election? Why they seem to know so very
little about America or much of anything else?
Some thoughts from a guy who
spent a career in the racket:
Ask journalists when they were
last in a truck stop on an Interstate, last in Boone, North Carolina or
Barstow, California or any of thousands of such towns across the country. Ask
whether they were in the military, whether they have ever talked to a cop
or an ambulance crewman or a fireman. Ask whether they have a Mexican friend,
when they last ate in a restaurant where a majority of the customers were
black. Whether they know an enlisted man, or anyone in the armed
services. Whether they have hitchhiked overnight, baited a hook, hunted, or
fired a rifle. Whether they have ever worked washing dishes, harvesting crops,
driving a delivery truck. Whether they have a blue-collar friend. Know what the
Texas Two-Step is, have been in a biker bar.
Now do you see why Trump
surprised them?
Next, ask how many went to
fancy schools like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Amherst, the Ivies, Bard. Ask how many
even know someone who graduated from a land-grant school. Ask whether they know
an engineer.
Now look at how much they
write about each other for each other. Look at the endless coverage of what
Maddow said about what Hannity thought about O’Reilly’s harassment of soft-porn
star Megyn and how much she might make at CNN. Ask how much time they
spend comparing ratings. They are fascinated by themselves.
Ask them how many have ever
worried about paying the electric bill, had to choose between a new winter coat
or paying the cable, or known anyone who did.
They don’t know America, and
they don’t much like it.
Ask them whether they are
rich. They will say no, and believe it. Yet when friends drop in, the question
will be whether to eat Turkish or Thai on the Hill. For much of America, dinner
in a Turkish restaurant on Cap Hill, where the waiter puts a white napkin in
your lap and the bill for four with drinks and tip is $180, would be the
adventure of a lifetime.
In Washington, a two-bedroom
apartment in a very old building across Connecticut Ave from the zoo,
with the original steam radiators, goes for $2500 a month. An 835-square foot
two-bedroom condo in Colonial
Village, just across Key Bridge in Arlington, Virginia, starts at
$2450. Fifteen years ago, such a closet sold for $300K..
Now ask how many journalists
voted for Trump. Close to zero. Virtually the entire press corps is of one mind
and slants the news to the point of verticality. In the absence of Trump, they
are almost as heavily Democratic. Most don’t know they are doing it. It’s
just that they are so obviously…right. They are not reporters. They are
advocates.
It is more than having the
same politics. They have no conception of such romantic notions as freedom of
expression or the interplay of ideas. You will never see a policeman given five
minutes, uncensored, to describe what really happens in the streets or a gun
owner, not chosen to be a buffoon, allowed to explain his position. If you told
them that the media are tightly controlled, they would think you a right-wing
loon.
Journalists are not stupid,
running to well above average in intelligence. You could form a large chapter
of Mensa by raiding newsrooms in Washington. However, with a fair few
exceptions, they are not intellectuals, not contemplative, not studious. They
are high-pressure fact-accountants, competitive, comfortable under tight
deadlines, aggressive, combative, quick but shallow. This can be a serviceable
substituent for stupid.
In a curious process of
self-delusion, they imagine a world that doesn’t exist and then try to live in
it. For example, they don’t know what cops face in the ghetto because they have
never been in the ghetto and don’t know any cops. They dismiss anyone who tells
them that things are not as they think. Their confidence is invincible, for do
not all their friends say the same things?
Their ideological attachment
to political correctness is–obviously–strong. This is particularly stark
with respect to race. Week after week, year after year, we read on the internet
of whites beaten, burned, punched, of stores looted by flash mobs and wrecked
in brawls. The perpetrators are always “teens” or “troubled youths.” If you ask
reporters why they never mention race, they say things like “race is
irrelevant. A crime is a crime.” But let a white cop shoot a black attacker,
and nothing matters except race–not truth, guilt or innocence.
They see no hypocrisy in
this. They believe that they are just expressing Right Values. Since they talk
only to each other, nothing contradicts them.
Coverage of most things is
either bad or nonexistent because the media have neither the time,
resources, nor inclination to cover much of anything. Most outlets are crippled
by the nature of their medium, political correctness, narrow focus, and lack of
curiosity.
For example, television is
the medium of the illiterate and barely literate. (People who can’t or don’t
read all have televisions.) It lacks the staff to have specialized reporters,
has to avoid offending anyone so as to keep the advertisers happy, has very
little time to spend on a story which it has to keep at a sixth-grade level to
avoid losing much of its audience. It has to be politically correct so as to
impose appropriate values. It can’t upset big corporations because that’s
who owns it.
Newspapers can assume perhaps
a tenth-grade and better readership, but they too must be PC, worry about the
advertisers, and they too lack staff. Big papers will typically pay attention
to State, DoD, Congress, the political parties, and themselves. Most of the
government simply isn’t covered. When is the last time you saw a story about
HUD, Commerce, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Energy, or Education?
That’s why the mainstream
media are largely vapid and predictable. It is why the internet, not bound by
political correctness or controlled by corporations, able to specialize, to
serve intelligent readers, is now primary.
Fred Reed is author of Nekkid
in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well, A
Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be, Curmudgeing
Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle, Au
Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About VietNam,
and A
Grand Adventure: Wisdom's Price-Along with Bits and Pieces about Mexico.
Visit his blog.