Fact-based reality vs. punditry

I’ve written about this before, but dailyKos has another interesting piece today, exploring some of the dilemmas inherent in the right-wing attacks on the press. One of the issues raised has to do with the difference between being critical of journalism but still respectful of the need to describe evidence, and being critical of the whole notion of journalism as having any relevance at all. dailyKos notes:

"We've heard for a long time about the conservative battle with the "liberal" press -- working the umpires, is the popular term. But the reasons why conservatives differ from other observers so profoundly on what a "good" media would look like cuts to the heart of the new conservative movement:

In general, liberals value journalism, or facts, and conservatives value punditry, or opinions. Far-right conservatives are indeed obsessed with the press, because they see the reporting of facts as being inherently "liberal".

Don't believe me? Look at Fox News, lynchpin and self-proclaimed shining light of the conservative-style press. Look at any of the "conservative" publications, either on the web, or in print. The first thing you'll note is that the conservative media revolves around punditry and opinion; conventional newsgathering, when present, is largely relegated to being whatever momentary prop is necessary to provide vague credibility to the point at hand. So-called mainstream journalism attempts, at least, to cleanly separate factual reporting from opinion, even though sometimes (I'm thinking of the Wall Street Journal here) it results in admittedly hilarious juxtapositions. But it is, or was, a core tenet of journalism: report the facts, and expose the truth, and leave opinion out of it. That's anathema to conservatives. It's not what they want; it's not what they have demanded; it's not what they institute, in whatever "mainstream" media hollows they have themselves carved out.

And it largely explains, for example (or at least is demonstrated by) the studies linking Fox News viewers as the least informed about the world around them of any major media consumers. Fox News viewers are more likely to repeat proven untruths -- such as an alleged Saddam connection to 9/11 -- than any other members of the public. Is that by accident, or network design?"

What this analysis ignores -- although I suspect Hunter would agree -- is that punditry is a whole lot cheaper to produce than investigative news. And in a world with increasing media consolidation, where bottom line profits matter to a large extent, investigative journalism is rapidly becoming too expensive for the bottom line. It remains to be seen if the cost of losing true investigation is a cost our democracy is willing to bear -- I sincerely hope not!

Those of us on the progressive end of the spectrum have deep critical concerns about the corporate subversion of our media, but we still believe investigative journalism is possible and important.