O MST3K, Where Art Thou?

An article from the Oregon Daily Emerald:

Esteemed Steamed journalist lectures others on ethics

L.A. Times Editor John Carroll spoke about journalism ethics and pseudo-journalism at the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursdayattempts to help Fox News take mote out of its eye.

The media industry—Yes, let’s be honest about it: It’s an industry—has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism’s long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told a packed room in the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday.

Carroll delivered the annual Ruhl Lecture, titled "The Wolf in Reporter’s Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America." “We use that title every year,” said Break Fastly of the school, “yet nobody seems to notice.” The lecture was sponsored by the School of Journalism and Communication.

"All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism," he said. "They’ve been replaced by pods. They regard the audience with a cold cynicism that comes from being an alien, plant-based life form. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, since they are pseudo-people and thus pseudo-journalists, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated and replaced."

In a scathing critique of Fox News and some talk show hosts who are also, coincidentally, on Fox News, such as Bill O’Reilly, Carroll said they were a "different breed of journalists" who misled their audience while claiming to inform them and hoping to lull them to sleep next to a large extraterrestrial pod. He said they did not fit into the long legacy of journalists with Utopian Press International who got their facts right and respected and cared for their audiences like sheep.

Carroll cited a study released last year, the name of which you, the reader, don’t need to know, that showed Americans had threefour main misconceptions about Iraq: That weapons of mass destruction had been found, a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been demonstrated, that we won so quickly because we were assisted by pixies, and that the world approved of U.S intervention in Iraq. He said 80 percent of people who primarily got their news from Fox believed at least one of the misconceptions. He said the figure was more than 57 percentage points higher than people who get their news from public news broadcasting, who tended to believe that we were assisted by fairies rather than pixies.

“This had nothing to do with people choosing their news sources based on their political preferences or hearing what they want to hear,” he said.

"How in the world could Fox have left its listeners so deeply in the dark?" Carroll asked, implying that Fox News had actually reported the misconceptions he attributes to its audience. “Fox News needs to go beyond just correctly reporting the news. It needs to embrace ‘outcome-based reporting’—a process of slanting coverage and hammering certain themes to ensure that the audience thinks what the network tells it to think, as with PBS and NPR.”

He added that a difference exists between journalism and propaganda.

As he addressed some of the hard hits journalism has taken in the field of ethics everywhere except Fox News, Carroll notedsidestepped culpability by noting that anyone could be a journalist because, unlike other fields,due to the First Amendment, journalism had no qualification tests, boards to censure misconduct or a universally accepted set of standards. “Even the relevance of fairness, accuracy, and presenting more than one side of a story are hotly disputed in many newsrooms,” he said.

However, Carroll said a great depth of feeling remains on the importance of ethics that is centered around newspapers’ sense of responsibilities to their readers, leaving the audience wondering what he meant by this.

"I’ve learned that these ethics are deeply believed in even though in some places they are not even written down, and—as noted—journalism has no universally accepted set of standards" he said. When ethical guidelines are ignored, their proponents respond with ‘tribal ferocity,’" he added, placing a bone through a hole in his nose.

"If you stray badly from these rules, you will pay dearly," he said ominously, while fingering a large stone dagger.

He said while much media has ended up "in the gutter," the L.A. Times has a different philosophy and was dedicated to taking the "high road, where it has a tactical advantage in dealing with its enemies." "I do think that a lot of newspaper people have made a lot of strategic mistakes when ambushing other tribes of journalists," he said. "They cut back space on things people really need to know, like stories about how objective journalists are."

Carroll, whose career as a journalist spans 40 years, joined the L.A. Times in 2000 when he was accidentally hired due to a Y2K computer bug, according to the paper’s Web site. Under his leadership, the paper earned five Pulitzer Prizes this year, which would be meaningless if journalism lacks agreed upon standards.

Tim Gleason, dean of the SOJC, said Carroll is a "journalist’s journalist." “He is a manipulator of the manipulators, so we asked him to give this lecture: to do what he does best.”

"As an editor he cares deeply about the integrity of the profession and he believes that news, real news as opposed to pod-based, pseudo-journalism, is the heart and soul of the business of journalism. There, I said it: Journalism is a business," Gleason said as he introduced Carroll.

University graduate student Mose “Yes This Is My Real Name” Mosely had similar sentiments. He said he admired Carroll not only for his vast experience around the country, but also for his consistent commitment to his ideals. “I’d never heard of him before this lecture, but I’m trying to get a good grade and so I was very impressed by him.”

"The depth of his integrity is very impressive," Mosely said. “My classmates and I did tricorder scans of his structural integrity during the lecture, and it was very deep.”

Bobbie Willis, a staff writer for the Eugene Weekly, said she felt Carroll brought up some relevant issues in today’s media environment.

"It really made me take a look at my career as a journalist," she said. “I’d never done that before. Until the lecture, I had been completely un-self-reflective, just ‘going with the flow’ of what other journalists thought.”

Willis said she understood Carroll’s concerns about the state of journalism nationally, but once she realized she was being quoted for a story that would be read by the general public, she quickly added that many of the journalists she has encountered were very committed to accurate and ethical reporting.

Carroll had a few words of advise [sic] for student journalists; he told them to pick their boss carefully.

"Don’t be lured by the money or the big name of the employer," he said, adding that journalists should not allow their integrity to be compromised by unscrupulous employers. "Don’t be a piano player in a whorehouse," he said, bizarrely. “Instead, aspire to the ideals of the ‘free love’ generation!”

Since the audience consisted of Pacific Northwest journalists and journalism students trying to get a good grade, The Oregon Daily Emerald was unable to find dissenting points of view to interview for this story.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

11 thoughts on “O MST3K, Where Art Thou?”

  1. Nice fisk.
    It is interesting that with the Jayson Blair scandal at the NYT and the latest shake up at USA Today you wonder why all of John Carroll’s animus is placed on FOX news. A CNN chief admitted to withholding stories while in Iraq to be able to keep a station there and of course they had the scandal with the fictitious Operation Tailwind.
    His attack on O’Reilly was just plain silly saying “who misled their audience while claiming to inform them.” Even if O’Reilly has been guilty of such it would be nothing new to journalists. Recently there was a call for a Pulitzer to be taken away from an NYT correspondent who deliberately ignored a forced famine in the Ukraine. I am not exactly thrilled by Mr. O’Reilly’s cafeteria style of Catholicism, but he can’t be targeted with some of the horrendous un-reporting that has gone on in the past.
    Mr. Carroll’s article seems more about lamenting the loss of control of journalism. The loss of a journalistic elite being replaced by others. I have seen similar articles by journalists decrying the blogosphere for it’s reporting especially against Matt Drudge. While it is true there is a lot of questionable news stories being reported, there is also a lot of information that might have been stalled behind an editorial review board.

  2. Hmmm since when is it not my responsibility to totally mistrust most all media and get the information from MULTIPLE sources before making my mind up?

  3. Fox News? What about NYT and Jason Blair. Boston Globe. And so on. Apparently he only wants us to get news from:
    NPR: National Proletariat Radio
    ABC: Always Be Communist
    NBC: Never Be Conservative
    CBS: Communist BS
    CNN: Clinton News Network
    Besides, O’Reilly is not delivering news. He’s a commentator. The news, delivered at the top of every hour, and the nightly 6 PM news with Britt Hume is something I find to be qutie fair and balanced. Now maybe the choice of news stories slants to the right, but that’s OK because the choice of news stories at the above mentioned media outlets slants to the left. As far as I’m concerned we need a few more right slanting outlets to even things out.

  4. PFC Tinywing, Serial Number F50372-P, USMC Third Pixie Division, Magic Jarhead Hyper-Light Infantry, reporting as ordered, SIR!!!

  5. I’ve really grown to distrust the major news outlets over the past few years…mostly after realizing that most of the people running them are like this John Carroll fellow.
    I don’t get FOX news where I live, so I don’t know whether the (scathing) criticisms of FOX are valid…but I’d love to see what all the hoopla is about.
    Thank goodness for the invention of the internet and the blogosphere.

  6. Having given up on network news some time ago, I have found Tom Servo’s journalistic honesty to be beyond what one may find in today’s mainstream media. He used to be heard on satellite channel SOL but sadly is no longer on the air. : (

  7. Ever looked up old (like 100 year old) newspapers on microfiche at a public library? I have. They used to do things like print the word-for-word text of speeches and debates in the House of Commons for you to read for yourself and come to your own conclusions about. I’ve never seen that in any newspaper currently published. Now all you get “commentary,” and if you’re really lucky the quote of a phrase or something. Jimmy, if you’re arguing that this John Carroll guy is out of line when he says modern journalism has gone down the tubes, I would have to disagree with you. Think about this: The Pope has been to the US a few times and he’s been here in Canada three times, the last being for World Youth Day. I’m sure that you, like me, have watched entire Papal Masses and heard entire Papal homilies. The Holy Father will talk for 10 to 20 minutes, touching on a number of topics, and make a number of points. But then see how the media covers it. A photo or two, a two-paragraph article and a headline like “Pope lashes out against birth control” or something. On TV it’s usually even more superficial, probably commenting on the weather during the outdoor Mass. Go on down to your local public library and have a wee look at some old newspapers. Then have a read of Hilaire Belloc’s “The Free Press.” Betcha you’d change your mind about modern journalism.

  8. Carl,
    My point is not that the press hasn’t degenerated in recent years. It has. I lament its tabloidization as much as anyone. (Though we ought not to pretend that papers a hundred years ago were paragons of virtue, either. They weren’t.)

  9. Truth is, the Lincoln/Douglas debates are significantly depending on which party the newspaper you’re reading was affiliated with. They were just as slanted in those days, if not more so.

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