Monday Smackdown/Hoisted: FLASH: Clive Crook and Jack Shafer Upset Because People Informing People Are Claiming to Be Journalists
Hosting this from last year: FLASH: Clive Crook and Jack Shafer Upset Because People Informing People Are Claiming to Be Journalists: Non-DeLong Smackdown Watch
I think it says something very important about the cognitive deformations and the cowardice that America's professional centrists inflict on themselves:
Let's take a break from the DeLong Smackdowns even though there are now a number in the queue. And, no, I don't have the guts to yet read another page of David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Mistakes. But two things did cross my desk last week that offend the shape of reality itself and really do deserve to be smacked down.
The first was from Jack Shafer:
Jack Shafer: All the President’s Explainers: "Klein and Yglesias...
...are less interested in interviewing Obama than they are in explaining his policies... insert[ing] infographics and footnotes that help advance White House positions... end[s] up looking and sounding like extended commercials for the Obama-in-2016 campaign. I’ve seen subtler Scientology recruitment films. Explainer journalism... purports to break down complex policy issues into laymen-friendly packages that are issued from the realm of pure reason.... If you’re going to be partisan about your journalism, if you’re going to give the president an easy ride, you’ve got to be clean about it! You can’t pretend... that all you’re doing is making the news ‘vegetables’ more palatable by roasting them to ‘perfection with a drizzle of olive oil and hint of sea salt.’ Klein and Yglesias are like two Roman curia cardinals who want us to believe their exclusive interview with the pope is on the level....
Are there no upsides to interviews with the president, even toadying or hagiographic ones? I suppose durable White House contacts can be made by landing one, but will these contacts be useful in chasing real news? Not likely...
If I have understood what Shafer has to say, it is that:
- All interviews of the president are bad.
- Klein's and Yglesias's interview is worse than most.
- It is worse because they actually explain what the president's policies are, what problems they are in response to, and why the president thinks they will work.
- By claiming that the president's policies have some correspondence to reality--are along some dimensions real responses to real problems that have a real chance of making the world a better place--they become partisan advocates.
- How dare people say that the president's policies make sense! How unethical! How much like 'a Scientology recruitment video'!
Do you see what he did there?
Do you see how Shafer thinks that actually trying to inform readers--in this case, about the logic behind policies--is a bad thing to do, and not covering 'real news' that journalists ought to cover?
Everyone has a view of the world. If a journalist's view of the world is such that it thinks that one politician's policies are pretty good ones, then naturally explaining what that politician's policies are--conveying what the journalist believes to be information to the readers--will look to Jeff Shafer like 'extended commercials... I’ve seen subtler Scientology recruitment films...'--and the more information is conveyed, the worse it will look to Shafer.
But, says Shafer, this is unethical--the equivalent of a Scientology recruitment film!
No, Shafer: It is only unethical if journalists tune their views of the world and what they report to please politicians, not if they tell what they think is the truth about where policies do and do not match up to reality.
Shafer's opinions-of-shape-of-earth-differ view from nowhere is the most tuned-to-politicians world view possible, and thus the least ethical.
Following this across my screen immediately was Clive Crook:
Clive Crook: Without 'The Daily Show,' I Have No Reason to Live: "It's good to mock politicians...
...But somewhere along the line 'The Daily Show' cast itself, or allowed itself to be recast... as a competing supplier. Stewart... became another anchorman, smarter and funnier than the rest.... The show began to take itself seriously.... Stewart... attacked Jim Cramer, the hysterical loud-mouth stock-tipper, saying he lacked journalistic integrity. Cramer turns the dull world of investing into entertainment; Stewart turns the dull world of politics into entertainment. You see the difference...
You see what he did there?
Jim Cramer turns the world of investment into entertainment--but if you listen to him, join the day-traders, and invest on what he tells you, you find that you lose all your money fairly quickly.
John Stewart turns the world of politics into entertainment--but if you listen you find that you learn true stuff about the world.
So why does Clive Crook literally not care about the fact that John Stewart tries hard to say things that are both funny and accurate, while Jim Cramer, as best as I can judge, takes no effort to mark his beliefs to market, but rather aims at keeping his viewers engaged by saying whatever will scare the piss out of them and churn their portfolios into zero balances?
No. I do not understand how this reflex 'opinions of shape of earth differ' journamalism acquired such a hold on Clive Crook's and Jack Shafer's minds.
I do not understand why this reflex 'opinions of shape of earth differ' journamalism is all they can think of to do.
And I really, really do not understand why this reflex 'opinions of shape of earth differ' journamalism is all that they think anyone should ever do.
Can anybody help me here?
