#if you actually understood how journalism works and had specific critiques rather than ingroup/outgroup bandwagoning

[chamerionwrites]

This is a vent post so fair warning for unpopular and irritable (and thus probably unfair at points) opinions, but:

Even as someone with many intense opinions about journalism and a tendency to hold quiet but lasting journalistic grudges (there are a number of otherwise decent reporters whose work I always hesitate to link to because occasionally I’m a petty bitch and there was That One Time They Wrote An Article So Facile That It Outright Offended Me), a solid 80% of the fuss people make about how X media outlet is biased still makes me roll my eyes very hard.  

I’m not talking about freaking Infowars here, and I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t point out editorial slant, or criticize the corporate structure of media or the way economic and access incentives influence reporting. But...listen. It might be a bit harsh to say it this way, but you shouldn’t be letting any media outlet do your thinking for you. “Read critically” should go without saying. “Don’t rely on a single source” should go without saying. “Media outlets (ALL of them) have an editorial slant” should go without saying. I’m not claiming we should never say these things. It’s important to say these things! Tumblr especially is full of teenagers who are growing into their political opinions and critical reading skills, and this is a good thing, not an excuse to sneer at people who are learning. But it’s tiresome when people point this stuff out as if they’ve descended from on high to impart hard-won secret knowledge to the ignorant masses. This is Media Literacy 101. Behaving like these are revolutionary ideas just makes you look like a posturing fool. 

(Again, yes, that’s slightly mean and in my day-to-day life I try to give people the benefit of the doubt for good intentions, but this is a vent post about a small thing that I find intensely annoying. I did warn you.)

The more informed you are about a subject, the less likely it is that ANY media outlet will always report on that subject in a way you approve of. If I held a grudge against every news outlet that’s ever published an idiotic article about Central American politics, then I wouldn’t read the news - which would rather defeat the point. What’s more, a single outlet often runs multiple pieces from different journalists on a specific story, and just because one of them is shallow doesn’t mean another one isn’t smart. Part of media literacy is figuring out which journalists know their subject and write about it with context and care. 

Incidentally this is the reason that I am currently - simultaneously - irritated with the New York Times for removing bylines from its homepage, and annoyed by smug leftists who treat not reading the NYT as a point of ideological pride. Obviously there is plenty to criticize, but criticism that takes the form of “Oh but the NYT is bad” is just...facile. What’s bad? The op-ed page? The puff-piece profiles of white nationalists? Every one of the hundreds of journalists who write articles for them? What about the freelancers who publish in multiple outlets? Do you actually know the names of these people? Would you recognize their byline if it appeared in an outlet you trust more, and would that magically make their reporting more credible (or, conversely, taint the outlet you trust with mainstream media cooties)? A significant current issue in US-American journalism is that reporters who work abroad have a tougher time pitching stories because the news cycle (and the public) is consumed with Trump’s antics; are you willing to forego the coverage of international issues (badly slanted sometimes, yes! that’s what fact-checking is for!) that a big mainstream outlet with a lot of resources can provide? Do I really have to add a fucking disclaimer every time I tell someone to read the NYT, or can I do my readers the courtesy of assuming they’re intelligent adults who are capable of critical thinking without a bunch of leftists concern-trolling in the tags? Because while we’re on the subject, I honestly think one of the (many) problems with today’s journalism is this kind of...low-key contempt for the audience, in which news gets vastly oversimplified (the better to make money off the intellectually lazy), and after a while everyone gets accustomed to engaging with the news in soundbites, which encourages more people to be intellectually lazy, on and on in a vicious cycle that eventually renders our norms of public discourse several sad levels stupider. 

If that makes me a snobbish elitist so be it, but tbh I find it a whole hell of a lot more patronizing to dumb things down to some assumed lowest common denominator of engagement and attention span than to respect your audience and your subject enough to discuss complex topics with complexity and depth.

Anyway I guess the short version is that I have no problem whatsoever with media criticism, but I have an enormous problem with “media criticism” performed as some sort of self-righteous branding exercise in which we wave around our ideological purity credentials like expensive handbags, because (1) it plays right back into the unspoken consumption patterns = personal identity assumption that underlies much of what’s unsettling about our society, and is thus darkly ironic coming from the left and (2) y’all set off allllll my dogma alarms (which are admittedly somewhat overcalibrated by the conservative christian do-not-read-that-or-you-will-be-contaminated-by-bad-ideas upbringing but extra-sensitive does not necessarily mean inaccurate).