Journalism: Epic Fail

The House has officially shown it's disapproval of Rep. Joe Wilson for his outburst of "You Lie", which was directed at President Obama during his address to Congress last week.

This whole sorry affair is a window into the way Washington operates, and in particular, the epic failures of mainstream journalism.

For the record, I don't care if Joe Wilson pissed on Joe Biden's desk during the speech; it's just not that important. And if Joe Wilson really believes that the president is lying, well, then he should probably say so.

But the media reaction has been pathetic. I watched an hour or so of cable news the day after this happened, and one thing is clear: they have absolutely no interest in finding out whether the president was lying or not.

Think about this. Pretend, for a moment, that you are a journalist. Your job is to find out important facts and then communicate them to the public. You are watching the president make a speech, when a congressman interrupts him and says that he is lying.

Do you:

A) Investigate whether this important allegation is true?

or do you

B) Spend countless hours bickering over whether it was rude for him to raise the subject?


The answer, of course, is "B". This is the sorry state of "journalism" in this country today.

Mainstream journalists just cover the soap opera. They are concerned with how things will look. They spend hours and days analyzing how they think the public will respond to certain policy proposals. They quote poll after poll after poll on subjects like Afghanistan, or health care reform, or torture, or the bailouts of Wall Street.

But the one thing they avoid like the plague is analyzing the actual policies! I don't care one bit how many people want us to escalate the war in Afghanistan; I want to know if it will work. I don't give a damn if 80% of 30-35 year old southern white Republican males think Obama was born in Kenya; I want to know if he was born in Kenya!

The opinions of all of these people don't matter unless they are informed. And it is the job of journalists to inform them! And they fail miserably at this job. And we fail miserably at our job, which is to hold them accountable for their failure.

Most of us treat politics like a sporting event. We just want to watch politicians score points, and win. And mainstream journalists aren't really much different than the guys on "Around the Horn".( Actually that's not really true; those guys actually do some analysis from time to time.)

Mainstream journalism exists mostly to perpetuate the status quo in Washington. But they know that they have to seem like they are practicing adversarial journalism, so they seize on these stupid, meaningless events (like Joe Wilson's outburst), and saturate the airwaves with endless bloviating about them in order to distract from the real issues.

If you doubt me, ask yourself if you ever heard anyone from the major cable news networks actually investigate and make a definitive statement about whether the president was lying. I will be shocked if you did, because the number one goal over there at CNN and Fox and CNBC is to feed you a steady stream of entertaining nonsense, so that you will feel as though you are doing your civic duty by getting involved in the important issues of today. And all the while, politicians will do what they want since you are not paying attention.

And if Americans really think that Joe Wilson's manners are one of the most important issues of the day, then may God have mercy on our souls.