If you think government is too big, politicians too irresponsible, and lobbyists too influential now, just wait until there’s no one left to keep them accountable.
For decades, conservatives have been railing – at times with justification – against a left-leaning mainstream media, or “MSM.” Rush Limbaugh has taken to calling it the “drive-by media,” likening the press to a “drive-by shooter except the microphones are the guns….” In an interview with Sean Hannity, he claimed, “They go out and try to destroy people’s careers. Then they get in the convertible, head on down the road and do it all over again, while people like you and me are left to clean up the mess with the truth. So I call them the Drive-By Media.”
Unsurprisingly, then, conservatives have watched with glee the rapid demise of the mainstream press. Major newspapers across the country, stung by the loss of advertising revenue and readership to the internet, have been losing money, shedding jobs, and cutting back on investigative news. This week the New York Times Company, which owns the storied Boston Globe, threatened to shut down the paper, which is projected to lose $85 million this year. The Washington Post is offering retirement buyouts and threatening layoffs, while the Los Angeles Times just fired 300 workers, including 75 newsroom staff.
Conservatives may be beaming, but they’d better be careful what they wish for.
The mainstream news media really emerged after World War II. By its heyday in the ’60s, the hegemonic media of Cronkite and Brinkley had long since developed the standards which guide students of journalism still today – a separation of opinion and news, accuracy in reporting, confidentiality of sources, balanced reporting and so on.
While at times the press failed in its obligation to impartiality and to serve as a check to unaccountability in government, consider the alternative, coming soon to a major city near you. Already mainstream investigative news stories are conflated with opinion pieces on blog rolls, while millions consider talk radio a viable alternative to Limbaugh’s “drive-by media.”
The problem, however, is that even an army of bloggers and talk show hosts don’t have the sources, the training, the financial resources, and the standards necessary to provide an adequate check on government unaccountability. For all his gifts, Rush Limbaugh can’t produce the deep, investigative stories that Bob Woodward can. Matt Drudge doesn’t have a Moscow bureau chief. And Sean Hannity doesn’t have the Rolodex of sources a good AP reporter does. They are legitimate opinion leaders, but good journalism – the kind we need for an educated population and healthy democracy – requires more than just opinion. It needs investigative news. For that, we need the mainstream press.
Consider where current trends will take us if left unchecked: Government spending is reaching levels not seen since World War II. Politicians are safer in office today than they have ever been. Corporate lobbyists are spending more to buy their votes than ever before. And all this as the one institution capable of reporting on these trends, mainstream journalism, slashes resources. It’s a recipe for corruption, undue influence, and runaway government.
We’ve been here before. In the late 19th century – a time of unparalleled political corruption – few newspapers exercised the kind of standards we have come to expect today. Political parties and corporate interests had their own, partisan news outlets, which they regularly used to libel opponents and whip up their followers. Few expected news that was fair or balanced, which is why no one got it. That was when government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product was in the single digits (this year it will near 30 percent).
For all its faults, we need the mainstream media, today more than ever. Rather than celebrate its demise, conservatives should consider what a world without the MSM will look like.
Jim Burkee is an associate professor of history at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon.
