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 "They’ve been replaced by pods.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.