2-15-06

Digression:  An Odd Anniversary
This Valentine's Day marked an odd but significant anniversary in the comics world.  As of February 14, 2006, the Cerebus Syndrome is 85 years old.  "How can that be," you ask?  "Cerebus the Aardvark began in the Eighties so surely the syndrome that carries the comic's name can be no older."  See the thing is, the Cerebus Syndrome is older than that.  When Eric Burns coined the term he needed an easily identifiable analogy, and the well-known (and strangely painful) process by which Cerebus crossed from a one-off joke series to a semi-serious serial was the best, most resonant (to his audience) one available. 
          But Cerebus was not the first.  Many comics made the transition before Cerebus was even a working idea.  Before Cerebus, before Pogo, even before Li'l Abner, there was Skeezix.  On Valentine's Day, 1921, Frank King, the comic's original author, left a baby on the doorstep of the main character of his one-off gag cartoon about a bunch of grease monkeys, and changed Gasoline Alley and the comics world forever.
          Happy birthday Skeezix, and thank you Messrs. King and Scancarelli for your wonderful feature.

New Media Part 2:  A Fine tradition of Objectivity
So, okay, last time we talked about the false sense of community on the web.  Not the good sense of, "Hey, I'm not alone." but the inflated feeling of normality one gets from encountering large (but statistically small) groups of like-minded people.  It's one thing to share your muffin recipes, but quite another to believe (because you found a community to support that belief) that al other bread products are heresy.  Anyway, the point was made.  People flock to the net and find an amazing amount of support,both good and bad, for whatever happens to cross their mind at the time.  But why do they flock to the net in the first place?  With Newspapers, radio and TV, aren't we already inundated with information of the passing world? 
          Well, of course, laziness has a lot to do with it.  Regardless of the lack of portability, and the computer's failures in terms of human multi-tasking, it's much easier to research information by a simple Google or Yahoo search than it is to look for follow-ups in the paper.  It also helps that you're neighbor is unlikely to steal your Sunday MSN News page.  The main reason for the ongoing migration away from traditional news sources, however, is the perception that mainstream journalists have somehow violated their ethics lately, or so the "New Media" would have you believe.  A 2004 Gallup poll showed that just 59% of Americans believe what they read in the daily paper. 
           It's all a matter of perception.  People seem to think that the "Old Media" have somehow violated some traditional ethical standard.  Tales about abuses of public trust like the Blair incident at the New York Times and 2004's MemoGate at CBS highlight the traditional press's failures in maintaining objectivity and source-checking.  Considering the bashing the Blogosphere has received, especially over the fabricated memos, they're certainly guilty of a certain amount of hypocrisy.  But the thing is, the "ethical standard" that you hear about never really existed, and even the perception of it is fairly recent, the product of a few strong editors, most notably at the Washington Post and the New York Times.  They created a perception of accuracy by maintaining a reality of accuracy.  They were an aberration, not the norm.
          Common Knowledge would have people believe that the purpose of the First Amendment freedom of the press was to allow journalists the freedom of action and investigation necessary for them to bring in accurate information and topple corrupt regimes with the facts.  The fact is, the foundation of the principle, the John Pete Zinger case, had very little to do with facts, or even "news".  Zinger's broadside contained small bits of local news on its front page, but that wasn't what he was tried for.  On the back, he included several "ads" and "letters" supposedly submitted by members of the public, that aimed to spread rumors and slanders about the person Zinger had been hired to slam.  In the 1830s, newspapers across the fledgling nation turned a clerical error in an election year scandal, alleging that sitting President Andrew Jackson was an adulterer and his wife a bigamist.  William Randolph Hearst is credited with once telling a photographer, "You bring me the photos, I'll provide the war."  Whether or not he actually spoke the words, it was the impression he and his editors created.
          Hearst, however, represented a shift in the way papers worked.  Prior to the Edwardian-era news giants, newspapers (technically broadsides, since they rarely exceeded a single sheet of paper) were funded by wealthy politicians or businessmen with an axe to grind, and were distributed freely (although the "boy" who sold them often received a tip).  Hearst and his competitors realized that newspapers could in themselves be a source of income, and a big business. 
          Similarly, television and radio news, previously a public service required of the stations and networks under the Federal Communications Act for their free access to the public airwaves, suddenly turned profitable in the late sixties and early seventies as a result of televised coverage of the Viet Nam War and the Watergate hearings.  By the Eighties, TV news stopped being journalism and became entertainment (or Infotainment, if you like catch phrases).
          By that time, newspapers and broadcast news had become paragons of journalistic integrity, spearheaded, as I mentioned above by a few editors who were wise enough to temper sensationalism with accuracy.  The public likes their scandals, but they prefer them to be real, and those papers unable—or unwilling—to maintain the standard became relegated to the tabloids, and very often died out.  By the end of the Seventies, most cities in the United States had one or two newspapers, all more or less adhering to some loose standard of accuracy in reporting.
          The problem with news as a business model is that people don't buy news.  At least they're not willing to pay enough for it to cover the costs.  That means that media outlets are forced to play a form of double dodge to earn a profit.  When you pick up a paper, you become a product; your eyes and attention are being sold to advertisers.  The news is just bait.  Advertisers (for some reason) prefer that their ads are seen by as many people as possible.  The best way for a media outlet to gather that audience is sensationalism.  Ask the publishers of the National Enquirer; they've never even pretended to give more than a nod to accuracy in reporting, and they claim to be best-selling newspaper. 
          Some time around the eighties, a shift also occurred in advertising.  Advertisers and the companies they worked for realized that they had a little influence where news outlets were concerned.  News lives on ads, but the companies who buy the ads don't necessarily need the news media.  Pepsi would sell just as well without dancing soda cans;  the cigarette industry continues to thrive despite a 1971 ban on broadcast advertising and a ban on their sponsorship of sporting events.  Advertisers learned they could influence the news by threatening to pull their ads.  Presidents Reagan and Clinton both altered the world of news by controlling the flow of news out of their offices.  Reporters who asked too many of the wrong kind of questions often found themselves ignored and ultimately shunned—the White House Press Corps is no place for an idealist.
          So, it seems to me that the problem with the Mainstream Media isn't that they violated the Public Trust, but the the public ever trusted them to begin with.
next time:  How to read a newspaper