PressThink: Too Much Reality: Is There Such a Thing?

Too Much Reality: Is There Such a Thing?

Yesterday I was interviewed by a reporter from BBC television about everything happening in politics and the media these days, the closing days of the 2004 campaign. I had to apologize several times for being so inarticulate, letting my sentences run on and on without coming to a clear point-- despite his polite request for short answers....

… During the interview, I was tripping over my words, repeating myself, messing up and starting over, or just talking without making sense. There were no short answers. And there were no good answers. There were lots of confusing and hopelessly abstract answers. It was embarrassing because I’m supposed to be a professional; I’ve done several hundred interviews like this. So what happened, just a bad day?

I don’t think so.

There’s too much happening. The public world is changing faster than we can invent terms for describing it. Here are some of the things the BBC reporter and I were trying to discuss:

Political attacks seeking to discredit the press and why they’re intensifying
Scandals in the news business and the damage they are sowing
The era of greater transparency and what it’s doing to modern journalism
Trust in the mainstream media and what’s happening to it
Bloggers, their role in politics, their effect on the press: their significance
How the Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news
The collapse of traditional authority in journalism and what replaces it
Amateurs vs. professionals; distributed knowledge vs. credentialed expertise
The entrance of new players of all kinds in presidential campaigning
The producer revolution underway among former consumers of media
Jon Stewart and why he seems to be more credible to so many
“He said, she said, we said” and why it’s such a bitter issue in politics
The “reality-based community” thesis and the Bush Administration
The political divide and the passions it has unleashed this year
Why the culture war keeps going, this year reaching the mainstream press
Why periods of intense partisanship coincide with high involvement
The problem of propaganda and the intensity of its practice in 2004
Why argument journalism is more involving than the informational kind
Assaults on the very idea of a neutral observer, a disinterested account
And then there’s this: the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters

Every one of these things is related to all the others. But there is no over-arching narrative to contain them all. I spend much of the day trying to figure out what the connections are, and how best to phrase them. It’s exciting; it’s exhausting.

What I really wanted to say to the BBC guy was: There’s too much reality rushing over us every day just now. And it’s pushing me to the limits of my own vocabulary. That’s why I talked a lot but didn’t say anything in the interview.

Can anyone help? Do you even know what I’m talking about? Hit the comment button and tell us: what connects the items on my list?

After Matter: Notes, reactions and links:

Steven Den Beste writes in comments:

Technological change has always had profound social consequences, but few inventions in history have caused more political and cultural change than movable type printing. Before Gutenberg, “truth” and “history” were largely properties of the Christian Church (and there was only one Christian Church, then).
Movable type printing took away control over “the truth” from the Church and placed it in the hands of a secular elite.

Now the Internet is taking away that secular elite’s control over “the truth” and giving it to the broad populus.

That’s the connection. Everything you listed is a side effect of that fundamental change. (Link.)

Doug Kern, Here I Blog, I Can Do No Other

Then as now, a new technology gives ordinary people unmediated access to the truth. The Western invention of the printing press in the late fifteenth century and the subsequent dissemination of Bibles written in the vernacular gave lay believers the opportunity to read holy writ and draw their own conclusions about it — just as the Internet gives ordinary people direct access to facts, information, and commentary….

Peter Johnson in USA Today takes on a similar theme (Oct. 24): Media have become the message in a bruising political year.

Just a few years ago, many of these issues would have been fodder for low-circulation academic and trade journalism magazines. Now, those topics get headlines and airtime in major news outlets, driven by partisans who keep a particularly close watch. “The press is living a mirror image of the politicians we cover,” says Auletta. “There’s something healthy about that: Maybe it’ll teach us some things about what it’s like to be a target, make us more sensitive and improve our journalism.”

The Control Revolution. Jeff Jarvis (who was interviewed by the same BBC reporter, Tom Brook) responds at Buzzmachine:

I say it’s about control: If you give us, the people, control of our media — and government and markets — we will use it (see Jarvis’ First Law of Media). If we do not think we have control, then we’ll turn into passive spuds. But once we do have control — whether from the remote control or the TiVo or our blogging tools — everything changes: We demand to be part of the conversation. We compete with the once-powerful. We question their power. We establish new relationships of trust.

PressThink reader, blogger, and newspaper publisher Stephen Waters takes my list, moves the sentences around, adds a few phrases and comes out with a story. Then Waters creates a chart attempting to show what causes what.

The Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news. It has caused bloggers to have a role in politics and a significant effect on the press. Distributed knowledge has enabled both amateur and professional bloggers, blurring brand. The effect is to enable real-time checking of main stream media, which journalism is only just beginning to appreciate. Scandals exposed by online real-time checking, exacerbated by the media’s reluctance to concede the points, has caused brand erosion. This, in turn, has made readers and viewers wonder if there ever was a neutral observer and a disinterested account.

At samizdata.net, Brian Micklethwait, writing from London, responds to my list and to Stephen Waters: The mainstream media, he says, “are the practitioners of a skill that has now become superfluous. Their stock in trade is wrapping up whatever is their preferred personal/global agenda in the language of National Common Sense. (Hence the National Common Sense suits and hairpieces and voices.) But such wrapping is now waste and nonsense. Nobody needs it any more, or responds to it any more, with other than derision…”

Blogger and Clue Train author David Weinberger in comments:

The entertainer is the pivot here because I think part of the new — but transient — narrative is that “The media are the last to know”…and in particular, the last to know that they’ve lost their pompous, false claim on our trust. “The media are the last to know” is a comic trope since, obviously, they’re in the knowing business. Hence, the narrative has become comedic. Their every protestation of seriousness — from Dan Rather’s apology to Sam Donaldson’s toupee — now only makes them look more ridiculous. (Link.)

Doc Searls, also a Clue Trainer, recently wrote a blog post sending a message to Michael Powell of the FCC, and it bears on all of this. One snippet: “The Net’s architecture is end-to-end, on purpose. It has been described as a World of Ends. In ways as deep and essential as the core of the Earth, it’s something nobody can own and everybody can use. Plus one more thing: it’s a place everybody can improve as well. Which is why it keeps improving.” There’s a lot more there, so read it.

In illustration of several items on my list, but especially the first, Eric Boehlert in Salon, Team Bush declares war on the New York Times (and, of course, Ron Suskind.)

Jeff Sharlet, editor of The Revealer, Our Magical President: How Bush goes beyond the Bible to create his own reality. (The Revealer’s most viewed post ever— 13,000 readers.)

Jay Fienberg in comments: “There is news, and there is the reporting of news, and there is the broadcast system that delivers the reporting of news. The broadcast system becomes so encompassing that it names what it broadcasts ‘news’ and becomes convinced of what is a classic system delusion: the chart is the patient…” (Link.)

Andrew Cline at Rhetorica tries to answer my question: what unites all the items on my list? He says it’s The changing noetic field…

Posted by Jay Rosen at October 23, 2004 4:04 PM Print

Jay,
Surely much of the difficulty comes from how the source of reality production is both the site and the object of the propaganda wars. A propaganda war is precisely a battle of competing master narratives, over how to map the territory.

The corporate media/Iraq as colonialism view is one master narrative. From this perspective, the Republican party is the party of militant deregulation, cartelization, and the promotion of imperialism. The Democratic party is the party of responsible, internationally minded promotion of US power. The Keynesian compromise with capital rather than the neo-liberal mainlining of the pure stuff. On the corporate media model, Thomas Friedman's "one dollar equals one vote" thesis from the Lexis and the Olive Tree is a transparent confession that owners and shareholders do and should rule the rest of us.

A second master narrative gives more credit to technology: The media is disoriented by the new media landscape and frequently can't even recognize its own enlightened self-interest. Republican talk radio, the right wing echo chamber, and media recentralization in the guise of deregulation, have pulled us back toward a 19th C. economic model with 21st C. technology at its disposal. Jon Stewart's Daily Show parodies the hapless dinosaur quality of mainstream media political coverage's move toward info-tainment even as it frames this pap as ultimately a self-marginalization for the sake of ratings. From Stewart's view, the MSM has effectively become the servant of the ruling political party because all it cares about is entertainment and profits rather than the public welfare. It is in this accidental respect that the MSM becomes a tool of the Republicans from Stewart's perspetive.

The third master narrative is the Agnew/Buchanan (his speech writer) thesis: Liberal elites trample the preferences of the silent majority by distorting the public discourse in favor of the traitorous values of a ruling elite that mysteriously works its magic unaffected by Republican control of all branches of government. If the fourth estate is discredited, there will be no site from which to question the imaginary data Bush Republicanism runs on and uses to legitimize continued control of all branches of government. Obviously this general offensive goes back decades, transcends any one candidate, and was originally more ideologically coherent than the scattershot series of quid-pro-quos (health insurance relief for business that doesn't relieve anyone else, for instance) and wedge issues Bush and Rove have chosen to rule and run on.

Each of these theses in turn has a take on the war in Iraq. The domestic propaganda war situates the wartime propaganda claims of the Vietnam war that shaped the culture wars to begin with.

For the corporate media view, Iraq is one more colony, albeit a break from the Democratic party's use of international law FOR colonial purposes. From the second master narrative, Bush's colonialism is illegitimate because it has despised the Cold War structure that made international law do the work of US colonialism. It has broken the Cold War diplomatic machine Kerry has to put back in place. The Agnew/Buchanan culture wars thesis says the US has to kick ass to get respect, then capitulation, then peace, in that order. The slightest hint of humanity in the meantime will encourage would be challengers to US hegemony. The Project for a New American Century calls for eliminating all potential rivals BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY BECOME RIVALS. It is actually an argument for policing international thought crimes, i.e. the temerity to oppose the US in any matter, for any reason. In that respect, they are perfectly consistent in taking out Saddam Hussein because he possessed the intention of opposing the US someday, someway. You don't need actual WMD to commit thought crimes against the US.

There isn't ONE master narrative to describe the ground war because the ground war is precisely a battle over what will prevail as the master narrative and who will be recognized as possessing the authority to legitimate it. All of these things are up for grabs at the moment. And each advocate of each alternative master narrative is a player as well as an interpreter. Who do you love?

Posted by: Ben Franklin at October 23, 2004 4:48 PM | Permalink

Jay, here's a reordering of your list, tweaked. I matched them in a table here. This order may be a useful jumping off point:

The Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news.[5] It has caused bloggers to have a role in politics and a significant effect on the press.[4] Distributed knowledge has enabled both amateur and professional bloggers, blurring brand.[7] The effect, is to enable real-time checking of main stream media, which journalism is only just beginning to appreciate.[2]

Scandals exposed by online real-time checking, exacerbated by the media's reluctance to concede the points has caused brand erosion.[1] This, in turn, has made readers and viewers wonder if there ever was a neutral observer and a disinterested account.[17]

The result is a cynical mistrust of mainstream media[3] that can be played upon by commenting entertainers like Jon Stewart who is credible simply because he mirrors the critical observations of viewers.[9]

Jon Stewart presages, if not a collapse, of traditional authority in journalism,[6] at least a weakening of it, requiring a change to improve, or it will face being replaced.

The crumbling of traditional authority has diminished journalists' influence as arbitors between candidates differing statements. This, combined with the extra channels of communication provided by the Net, have encouraged "He said, she said, we said" and made it such an issue this year.[10] The opportunity for many voices has encouraged the entrance of new players of all kinds in presidential campaigning.[8]

The Net makes some things easier. Argument is participatory[16], accentuating the political divide and its passions[12], its very expression drawing greater attention to the cultural war, even drawing in the mainstream press,[13] galvanizing partisans to action.[14]

The net also makes easier propaganda and the intensity of its practice in 2004[15] can happen, but if we respond to it quickly next time, the same technology can ameliorate it to a degree.

Meanwhile, the medium allows an easy increase in noise such that red herrings like one political aide's comment can be elevated to seriousness, as in the "reality-based community" thesis and the Bush Administration[11] or a poll describing the ostensible the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters[18] with peculiar phrasing can, if believed, possibly draw a few votes.

Posted by: sbw at October 24, 2004 12:12 AM | Permalink

I would venture to say most of the distrust of media goes back at least 30-40 years. So we can't chalk up the distrust itself to the new media.

Jon Stewart and the Daily Show are new media in the sense that cable allowed viewpoints beyond the three broadcast networks to get broader exposure, and, like Fox, the Comedy Channel finally allowed expression of a long and widely held disgust with the sixth grade level of so much media coverage, for example the weekend Washington journalists roundup that seemed like such a pathetic and clueless little club of navel gazers.

C-SPAN and CNN were both revolutionary because they displaced the press and the broadcast networks as primary sources of news, especially in Washington. We could now watch a congressional hearing or debate on a bill and then read the surreal misdescription of it in the press based on what we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears.

That is the kind of experience that leads to a loss of mainstream media authority and credibility--because it often no longer serves the function of primary source that once allowed it to claim that authority and credibility. The internet has magnified that displacement by enabling more competing sources of information and more possibilities for expression of alternative narratives.

That leaves editorializing as a potential niche not covered by CNN or C-SPAN and yet it has explicitly attempted to distance itself from what seems to be the only useful function they might by embracing the view from nowhere understanding of their function. So part of what is happening is the mainstream pretending to tell you about what you have already seen and know about from other sources (in even more detail with the internet). So the joke is on them because they still imagine they are bringing you raw data when they are actually telling you the third or fourth version of a story if you follow news seriously. The Fox approach is logical in this sense in that it recognizes its place in the media infrastructure--it is not informing you, it is bringing you the added value of Republican-friendly editing and newscopy that C-SPAN doesn't perform for you (although CNN increasingly does what it can).

Still, it is important to remember that the Agnew/Buchanan strategy won elections in 1972 and 1980 and 1984 as well as the congressional elections in 2002 (with Bush running away from it in 2000, compassionate conservatism, etc.). Perhaps we need to consider more carefully what hasn't changed as well as what has.

The Democrats have lost institutional control of Congress for one important change. The Democratic party tyranny thesis has lost a central aspect of the historical situation that once made it plausible.

The claims for elite liberal conspiracy have shifted from government to media because the challenge to the right from federal and state government has largely been contained. So we have a strikingly consistent, continuous strategy of forty years with the focus more exclusive shifted to the media.

Now the web offers yet another new media platform for execution of the tried and true strategy previously conducted through direct mail and sped up by cable but now directed exclusively at the media rather than ALSO at the media.

Posted by: Ben Franklin at October 24, 2004 2:08 AM | Permalink

What a provocative list! Certainly all of us feel overwhelmed right now.

A couple of observations first: I am fascinated that the best "news" this year is from comedians: Jon Stewart, Air America, Garrison Keillor, the Onion. It seems to me that the key to your puzzle lies in the comic mind. Psychologists propose two main theories of humor. Freud argued that we laugh at what makes us anxious (so we laugh at jokes about bad things about to happen to others, eg.) Others propose that humor arises from incongruity--from discrepancy between two concepts or objects. For example, we laugh when the Onion has headlines such as "Documents reveal gaps in Bush's service as President" or "Cheney vows to attack America if Kerry wins." Why are these funny?

A second comment, from a different angle altogether: Psychologist Robert Kegan proposed (in "In over Our Heads)stages of human consciousness, analogous to Piaget's stages of cognitive development. At each stage there is a reorganization of reality to accommodate greater complexity. A small child is egocentric--s/he views everything from his or her point of view. They can't take the point of view of another. In the middle stages we adopt the POV of our tribe--we can describe the characteristics and behavior of our tribe and how we fit or do not fit into the tribe, but we don't really have a good understanding of the Other group. At the highest (postmodern) stage we can see ourselves and the members of our groups objectively and can compare the characteristics and behavior of our group with that of others.

Comedians are effective when they can operate at the level of the post-modern mind--Kegan's top stage--spotting the inconsistent and absurd in the characteristics and behavior of our group. I'll get back to this shortly.

I see three underlying factors in your list. Competing worldviews, disruptive technologies and "telling the meta-story".
So what connects the items on your list? I would start with the complexity of the modern environment (by which I mean everythng in our lives not trees.) This complexity is challenging American's ability to keep up. Key features are the rapid pace of change, massive migration of people & overpopulation, the dying out of the Western culture, environmental degradation/resource depletion the media and communication technology. At an intellectual and material level, we live in a society of excess: We deal with complexity, strangers, too many choices, loss of community and so on. In addition, much of our experience is mediated through films and TV: We carry vivid memories of things that we have not experienced first hand. We all saw the Twin Towers fall, but for New Yorkers, it was real; for me it was a horrific reality TV show.

It seems to me that it is not a coincidence that Kerry support comes from the parts of the country that are best educated and most densely populated. These are people who have had the most experience dealing with the "Other" and complexity. Bush support comes from the traditional rural heartland. If you look at the bubble that surrounds Bush you can get a sense of how he is stuck in that middle stage of cognitive development. But, of course, neither GWB nor his followers think that they are out of touch with reality. But because they don't have a well-developed sense of other groups, their representations of those groups is fictional, the stuff of fantasy and fairy tale. So, you get culture wars between those who have accommodated the extreme diversity of the modern world, are more fact based, and know more, and those who still live in their tribal group unchallenged by the other except in their fantasies and on TV. Bush or Cheney just make stuff up, and their believers don't question them, because they live in a created reality which involves a fusion of what they see on TV, their everyday experience and their imagination.

So you get arguments over who gets to tell the "story." If the media tell the story so it makes sense to metro people, the traditionalists feel outraged--why is the media not telling the created reality. And vice versa. So everyone attacks the media for not telling their story.

Furthermore, the internet allows a level of communication and expertise that simply wasn't possible in 1990. The old linear, hierarchical narrative that was permitted by books and in which the modern media grew up no longer applies. In a book, you read from the thesis through the evidence and conclusions, and the author was an expert, and s/he controlled the narrative. Only a few were priviledged enough to be authors. The media adopted that model--they were the experts, we sat through their reports. The media, much of it, has grown irrelevant because they are still using the old hierarchical model, but they have grown decadent over the past decade: They have become entertainers, parroting events to sell papers & ad time, celebrities rather than expert. However, today we use parallel processing--hyperlinks and blogs. We take in smaller bits of info, synthesize more sources, are more visual and everyone has a shot at being an expert. So we can all go off to our bloglands and bitch about those we disagree with. Yet, the opinions of a Rush Limbaugh is equated with the opinions of an expert. We have lost our way to evaluate and compare factual, realistic, substantiated arguments from emotional, fictional claims. Conservatives have been embracing emotional, fictional claims--creating their own reality--beause they have not been able to keep up with the reality.

The media has been stuck in an old paradigm. The reason comedians seem to be telling the best story this year is because they alone are trained to tell the "meta-story"-to step outside and name the discrepancies between the word and the deed. The media in the past several weeks--since the 2nd debate--seem to be adapting and learning to tell the meta-story.

Sorry for the length of this. I see what you mean about no short answers!

Posted by: PTate in MN at October 24, 2004 4:44 AM | Permalink

sbw, could you offer some examples of questions, or phrasings of questions, that might result in as perverse an effect on Kerry supporters as you think the PIPA survey did on Bush supporters, or could you rephrase the PIPA questions in a way that you think wouldn't have produced that effect?

Jay, if you haven't already you should take a look at the recent CCJ survey of its members' opinions of the election coverage this year.

The unsurprising consensus is that the coverage sucks, and the narrative ends plaintively: "The larger question in many ways is why, if these concerns are raised campaign after campaign, the press seems unable to address or correct them."

I agree with sbw that the PIPA survey and the "reality-based community" paradigm don't really belong in your list, although my reasons are very different from his.

I think the web and blogging have altered the center of gravity in journalism in a couple of ways.

One is that as an institution, journalism is amnesiac; it doesn't hold on to memories much longer than the hero in Memento, and it's much less interested than he was in making the attempt. Bloggers armed with Google and huge hard drives are beginning to forcibly imbue the institution with a long-term memory. At some point, probably when a major player realizes it's easy, fun and profitable, the press will assume that responsibility themselves.

(As a horrid indication that the day may be long in coming, reference Bill Keller's remark that he hadn't really paid much attention to his paper's Iraq coverage before he got the executive editor's job, and didn't intend to look back; an admission that past isn't prologue for him.)

What may accelerate that process is that bloggers have become newsmakers. The press haven't for the most part done any better covering the upstart newsmakers than they have the traditional ones—there's still a bunch of unexplored territory on the CBS story, and while you can bet that some curious souls in academia and concerned ones in the corporate world are building detailed timelines and flow charts of the Sinclair boycott, I doubt that anyone at the Times or the Post is—but the reality is setting in.

A number of your concerns are, according to me, almost identical with one another. You've got a handful of largely psychological issues, among which I'd include the attraction of argument journalism, the connection between activity and intense partisanship, propaganda, the escalation in what amount to attacks upon the concept of journalism, and the culture wars pollution. None of these things are new, but I think all of them were greatly magnified in the wake of 911.

Then you have a handful of professional issues that I'd classify as self-inflicted wounds. Scandals and trust are intimately related. Erosion of authority is what happens when you're not authoritative, which relates to the "he said, she said" abdication of responsibility, which relates to the assaults on the notion of impartiality.

I'm not sure that political attacks on the press are escalating so much as that people are more responsive to them now, which loops back to the authority issue. The press are afraid to exercise their authority. They're afraid to accord this election the importance that people on both sides of the divide believe it deserves. They're afraid to make a call.

Jon Stewart seems more credible to many people because he is more credible. He actually says things we know the press are thinking but won't say, and he uses press figures such as Wolf Blitzer to highlight their own corruption. He popped Begala and Carlson on Crossfire like a couple of cheap balloons, and they're still screaming bloody murder about it. He's of limited value as a source of information, but he's a superb mirror.

The "reality-based community" and the PIPA survey are significant because they point up that a great many people in this country are, for all practical purposes, psychotic.

Posted by: weldon berger at October 24, 2004 7:16 AM | Permalink

PTate in MN:

I like what you're saying, but it doesn't just apply to humor. Creative work of any kind. Wisdom also. Good humor, to my mind, includes these other aspects. There's a playfulness and a wisdom at the same time. Making reality thereby more bearable?

I would add that the idea of different stages of cognitive development, as well as the generation of both new paradymes and true creativity, come about through a painful process, such as Jay described in his post. It's a process of holding paradoxes in mind. Tolerating the paradoxical - until some new synthesis is forged, some new vantage point.

Archimedes said he could move the world with a lever and a place to stand. Any one of us, going through these cognitive shifts - whether related to our particular profession, politics, the internet, our lives and relationships - we are all searching for that lever and that place to stand.

Amateurs or professionals (depends on where you're standing) and the idea of distributed knowledge versus credentialed expertise (perhaps the lever?)

But what we are really discussing here is who has the right to report events and generate social commentary. Well, on events we can trust our own eyes and ears and the internet allows us to contact people from all over the country and the world, thus having access to lots of raw data and filtering that based on our professional expertise (of whatever type), our cognitive stage, and our personhood. We're at the point where many of us are recognizing, gee... I have my own perspective and I want to share that.

Of course I too am overwhelmed by the deluge of data. I too need the help of reporters or experts to synthesize the information and provide background and commentary. But then my own mind goes to work!

I don't presume to tell you journalists how to do your job. But I've found to my suprise that I have an interest in what I now think of as political psychology. And I am intrigued by the questions being posed here and the efforts to track down the "truth" versus the "propaganda" in what we hear and read.

And I am bending my wits this way and that to try and comprehend the people who believe the "created reality" in spite of all the deluge of contrary facts as well as to keep up with the "reality-based" community of thinkers and fact finders, posting theses and doing activism and hoping for sanity to prevail.

And I say "Bravo!" And also, "I feel your pain."

Posted by: Mary Ann at October 24, 2004 7:35 AM | Permalink

Mary Ann; "But what we are really discussing here is who has the right to report events and generate social commentary. Well, on events we can trust our own eyes and ears and the internet allows us to contact people from all over the country and the world, thus having access to lots of raw data and filtering that based on our professional expertise (of whatever type), our cognitive stage, and our personhood. We're at the point where many of us are recognizing, gee... I have my own perspective and I want to share that.

Yes, thank you for your insights. Actually, I am a psychologist (industrial/organizational) not a journalist but it seems to me that psychology has a great deal to contribute to this discussion (In other words, "gee...I have my own perspective and I want to share that!")

One famous psych study c 1951 showed students and Alum of Princeton and Dartmouth a film of a controversial game between P & D. It was a vicious game, lots of penalties. The loyalty of the viewers resulted in what can only be described as perceptions of a different game by Princeton fans and Dartmouth fans although they all saw identical footage.

A football game assumes two sides, but in most world/national events we look to our common leader to explain what we see. In George Bush, however, we have a president who appears to be deliberately uninterested in what you and I might call "reality". His POV is all that matters. So the PIPA reports comment is useful: "One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them." George Bush is cultivating ignorance. He chooses to see what he wants to see, and he just makes stuff up when it makes persuasion easier or more convincing. Your comment upthread that "Psychopathology [is] trickling down from the top, seeping into the society." is echoed by Weldon Berger's comment: "The "reality-based community" and the PIPA survey are significant because they point up that a great many people in this country are, for all practical purposes, psychotic" Americans are being misled, intentionally, by those in power.

Weldon Berger also makes an excellent point that seems to me to be very relevant: "...as an institution, journalism is amnesiac; it doesn't hold on to memories much longer than the hero in Memento" This reminds me that one of the essential features of scientific thinking could be described as memory--going back and considering what previous research has found and building arguments based on past findings. Scientific thinking is what differentiates the Bush WH from people in the "reality-based community." When we analyze judiciously (as it were) we are reflecting, evaluating, considering previous actions/findings/events.

Journalism in the US has not had to have a memory, because journalists could 1) count on the implicit memory inherent in a shared culture; 2) assume that leaders valued evidence (facts) & expertise and would speak the truth and provide explanations that accounted for reality. Basically they could assume that everyone was on the same team or a fan of the same team, playing by the same rulebook and in the game.

But the media today operates in an environment in which 1) the culture is comprised of many POV and competing values (with avenues for expression such as the internet); 2) a President and his men who don't care tuppence for "objective truth" and will deliberately mislead the electorate and just make up stuff to consolidate their power. How does journalism change when we have two teams and one of them, say, the Princeton team, is no longer willing to play by the rules? One would hope that the President of Princeton would clarify and challenge the partisan instincts of the fans, but instead he is encouraging the rivalry. The fans of each team will see different games, although the footage is identical, and no one has stepped forward to call them back to a common understanding of the world.

So, back to Mary Ann's point "But what we are really discussing here is who has the right to report events and generate social commentary, I would add to that that we also discussing who has the responsibility to provide the memory (or narrative) that helps us understand events in appropriate context. Our leaders, who can be expected to do this, are failing or, worse, are deliberately choosing to mislead. In the void, comedians like Jon Stewart are providing context for interpreting facts, naming the meta-story. The pressure is on the media to pick up some of the slack.

Again, my apologies for such a long post. I promise I won't do this again. Interesting topic. I am confident the social psychologists will work on this for a long time to come.

Posted by: PTate in MN at October 24, 2004 2:30 PM | Permalink

Much of what is presented here as new doesn't strike me as all that new. Jon Stewart is to American culture in 2004 what Will Rogers was a couple of generations ago and Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken were a generation or two before that.

The blogosphere, in large part, is simply taking over the role that second- and third-tier newspapers used to play in most cities and that alternative weeklies have played since then. Real-time fact checking is a potential blessing, but it pales compared to the fact checking that competitive media once exercised on each other.

Bloggers may in fact be a bigger immediate threat to traditional media alternatives than to the oligopolies that run major media these days, because the big companies have the clout to buy off competition and control the regulatory environment. Anything that hurts big media hurts the little guy first.

Moreover, in my (admittedly limited) experience, the blogging elite are a much more elite group than the working journalists I have known. The few prominent bloggers whose identitities I know seem disproportionately to be people who:
1. Are already part of the "media elite."
2. Hold advanced degrees and jobs in academia.
3. Work as consultants and lawyers.
4. Publish books and own companies.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, and I'm not saying there aren't plenty of exceptions, but to suppose that bigtime bloggers represent some sort of democratic alternative to the days when reporters were high school dropouts who wandered from job to job and kept a flask in the desk strikes me as a perverted understanding of what it means to be elite.

What's really changed is that the internet makes it possible to do what I have just done: fire off leatherheaded opinions in real time, without the reflection required to type a final draft and find a stamp.

Posted by: David Crisp at October 24, 2004 4:54 PM | Permalink

One connecting theme, IMHO: the colossal broadcast system and its antics, vs those that hack in or around the system to fulfill what it can not.

There is news, and there is the reporting of news, and there is the broadcast system that delivers the reporting of news. The broadcast system becomes so encompassing that it names what it broadcasts "news" and becomes convinced of what is a classic system delusion: "the chart is the patient".*

Large scale politics functions significantly in the realm of this delusion: what's real is not what has happened; what's real is what is broadcast about what is reported to have happened.

Jon Stewart hacks in the system: he broadcasts reporting that is absurd, and it shows how the brodcast + reporting system's autopilot mode works by keeping the system at a safe distance from the turbulence of facts.

Bloggers hack around the system: they are small enough to maneuver close to the facts, and only sometimes need the broadcast reportage for weather reports. The broadcast system tries to make a spectacle out of predicting the weather, but bloggers just grab the data, both from the broadcast system and more directly, and make their own predictions.

"Any large system is going to be operating most of the time in failure mode".*

"When big systems fail, the failure is often big. Colossal systems foster colossal errors".*

* quotes come from the book, The Systems Bible (aka "Systemantics"), which I recommend. I think it's good insights into general system problems apply well to the problems of the broadcasters.

Posted by: Jay Fienberg at October 24, 2004 4:57 PM | Permalink

I'm not an expert on rhetoric, but I thought I'd take an amatuer's shot at applying the noetic field (see Cline) to the thread.

There are two striking lines of thought in this thread:

1. The Bush administration has plunged us into an enterprise that can only be described as Wilsonian and progressive. "Reality-based" was the domain of conservatives criticizing the etheral marketing claims of progressives and liberals. The ideal, perfection, utopia, where crime, poverty, racism and joblessness could be defeated with one more bureaucracy, one more government program, was not the domain of the "reality-based community". Dreamers, yes. Reality-challenged, perhaps.

The Bush administration is engaged in an idealistic pursuit of democratization, globalization and capitalism. They are, like many administrations before them, marketing a war and a campaign personified by the President. FDR was not a member of the "reality-based community". He was an entrepreneur, envisioning both the New Deal and WWII. Both containing major failures and successes.

This is the contribution of the Bush administration to a different noetic field made possible by a massive distrust in what was "known" as reality on 9/11/2001. The rhetoric of "everything changed" leaves much of what we understood and trusted about reality behind. But there is a more dynamic flow of information today, and more information available.

2. Some projects are reality challenged, and strain our ability to grasp the bounds of a noetic field. Has anyone ever been involved in a project where management, or perhaps marketing, were "reality-challenged"?

We have developed tools to map progress and productivity toward well-defined goals. An engineer takes the imagined and fictional and breaks it down into smaller, necessarily solvable problems. Each step is built upon something that came before, but may represent a leap from what was previously possible.

I can remember my grandfather laughing at the reality-challenged community that talked about rockets and space and the moon. He was a reality-based, hard working man with both feet planted firmly on the ground.

Again, the Bush administration has plunged us into a project which is "reality-challenged". He did it in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But we, as a nation, are not working from the same milestones or risk assessments. We have different noetic fields with a smorgasbord of information available and a post-modern arrogance to see ourselves as Lippman's "omnicompetent" citizen.

Bush is to blame for some of the dissonance, but not all of it. There are some who are now proclaiming membership in the "reality-based community" that are really dreaming of a different nonexistent reality than the one being pursued by this administration.

Posted by: Tim at October 24, 2004 10:12 PM | Permalink

I'm not ready for more complex explanations where simpler ones help.

PressThink is a microcosm of the greater reality. If Jay turned off comments, his blog would recreate the traditional main stream media world complete with minimal, delayed feedback and Jay's choice whether or not to share that feedback with readers. Turn on comments and the habits of the readers, previously throttled back, become contributions, much like multi-channels in today's greater world.

In the microcosm, PressThink the medium isn't the problem. Nor is its technology or the multiplicity of world views. To find the problem, just review previous messages to find some contributors for whom playing for keeps is more important than collaborating to understand. Weblog microcosms are reluctant to recognize that kind of behavior, label it, and encourage its improvement -- or, when logic fails, to either isolate it or laugh it down.

Project that to the greater world, where the political stakes are so massive the universe around the campaign gets warped; where leaders of both parties got where they are by playing the game for keeps, not for collaboration. What goes is anything you get away with -- For both sides. The difference technologically is that with the internet, more people are looking and more people are talking. Just not effectively yet.

Just like in the microcosm, in the larger world the media isn't the problem. Nor is its technology or the multiplicity of world views. The problem is our reluctance to recognize short-sighted behavior, label it, and encourage its improvement. Or, when logic fails, to laugh it down -- the way Jon Stewart recently did.

Mary Ann asks "who has the right to report events and generate social commentary." The answer is everyone, of course, for our own safety's sake. Good journalists do not write for objectivity, but to stand up to scrutiny. We need to help people learn to scrutinize. Until then -- until it no longer works -- spinsanity.org will have much to write about.

Until then people like Ron Suskind will be able to get away with accusing Bush -- for arriving at positions that you and I could reasonably reach by rational means -- of belief in magic with no more evidence than that which led to the Salem Witch trials.

Posted by: sbw at October 24, 2004 10:53 PM | Permalink

Jay: Every one of these things is related to all the others. But there is no over-arching narrative to contain them all. I spend much of the day trying to figure out what the connections are, and how best to phrase them. It's exciting; it's exhausting.

I'm wondering if it would help to categorize the list in three parts? I don't think this is correct, but a first try? Much of this list seems based on pathos, inflaming and fueling passions, and mythos. There seems to be a longing for an emphasis on ethos and logos.

Top Down

There's Signal in That Noise: The White House, the Reality Principle and the Press
Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That."

The problem of propaganda and the intensity of its practice in 2004
Political attacks seeking to discredit the press and why they're intensifying
The "reality-based community" thesis and the Bush Administration
And then there's this: the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters
The political divide and the passions it has unleashed this year
Why argument journalism is more involving than the informational kind
Assaults on the very idea of a neutral observer, a disinterested account

Caught Between

Multiple essays on CBS, Sinclair, Karen Ryan, Transparency, ...

Scandals in the news business and the damage they are sowing
The collapse of traditional authority in journalism and what replaces it
The era of greater transparency and what it's doing to modern journalism
"He said, she said, we said" and why it's such an issue this year
Amateurs vs. professionals; distributed knowledge vs. credentialed expertise
Jon Stewart and why he seems to be more credible to so many

Bottom Up

Multiple essays on Bloggers, Public Journalism, ...

Trust in the mainstream media and what's happening to it
Bloggers, their role in politics, their effect on the press: their significance
How the Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news
The entrance of new players of all kinds in presidential campaigning
The producer revolution underway among former consumers of media
Why the culture war keeps going, this year reaching the mainstream press
Why periods of intense partisanship coincide with high involvement

Posted by: Tim at October 25, 2004 12:55 AM | Permalink

We are experiencing a perfect storm based upon four colliding fronts: technological, cultural, biological and political.

Technological advancement is demanding a shift in our culture as to how we access, manage, evaluate and distribute information. That has been occurring everywhere, particularly in the business world for the last several years - it is nothing new, nor unique to this election season.

The current politics, being what they are - significant and polarizing, are magnifying the issue for parties who have not yet had to confront this evolution in our world. And, important point, it is not a "revolution" as many characterize it, but merely an advancement within a society that has been experiencing such advancement since we first started scratching out images on cave walls.

In short, all of our "rolls" are shaking out and the anxiety realized any time that happens on a broad scale within a culture makes it all seem, at times, a bit overwhelming. It needn't be.

The technology will stay and continue to advance; individuals and institutions will struggle and eventually redefine themselves sufficiently within the contemporary landscape; the current magnification being experienced as result of a hotly contested and immediate political reality will subside; and our biology will adjust, just as it has to reading, building, driving, flying, etc. Note, when first confronting the written word society experienced great panic with persecution as the result of threats to established institutions from individuals changing within the broader culture.

In short, relax, nothing is really changing all that much - we just "think" it is. Get over it. The vast majority of our population do not even realize, or think about this - and they don't need to. It is process - and when you attempt to take process apart to the Nth degree from within, you cultivate a sense that you are losing your footing because you are taking apart the very thing within which you currently exist. It can't be done, at least not well, and that's why we have a wonderful thing called "history" to do it for us.

Our Grandchildren may well love reading about it, but, alas, for us, we are all but small players in the currently evolving grand scheme and we'd likely fair better if we learn to simply enjoy the ride, as opposed to trying to extract every penny's worth of value from the wonderful free ticket we've been given for having been born here and now. Take the dog to the park and spend some quality time with the kids - you'll be the better for it. And the "revolution" will be here when you get back, if you're still so inclined as to want to write about it.

Posted by: Dan at October 25, 2004 5:49 AM | Permalink

Jay, it is NOT a "culture war" -- it is a Moral Superiority War.

When is it moral to fight evil? When fighting evil means killing; AND dying; AND even killing some innocents?

Do Human Rights really supersede "national sovereignty" in a moral order? If yes ... who enforces the human rights?

The UN failed in Rwanda. And in Cambodia -- where Peace and genocide was supported by Kerry instead of (endless?) fighting evil.

Enforcing morality has moral costs. The Left refuses to accept any responsibility for immoral results from their policies, but are double-standard quick to criticize imperfections and big errors of the Reps.

The big big lack of coverage is examination of tradeoffs. More security costs freedom -- freedom comes with less security. Better stuff costs more, and there is a limited current budget.

There is also an appalling lack of "standards" for success. Neither group is providing a reasonable way, in advance, of judging their own performance.

Bush has 5.4 unemployment; some 3% inflation. Those are GREAT numbers -- but somehow "not good enough". In who's dreams?

The Press, being PC Bush-haters, have put themselves and their "objectivity" in play -- by being so obviously biased. The new technology is showing the bias -- but as the 60s anti-war boomers have become "establishment", their elitist dismissal of alternative views, and especially their anti-Christian views, causes increasing objections to such "nattering nabobs of negativity".

But morality evaluations are the base -- what is good, and evil, and why? (Without God, it's all relative, just a matter of opinion. Majoritarian or otherwise.)

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at October 25, 2004 6:05 AM | Permalink

random note: I notice Instapundit linked to you.

Lately, similar questions have been on my mind on the effects of the Internet and blogging on journalism.
I ended up reading "Which Technology and Which Democracy?" by Benjamin Barber recently and brings up a lot of potential pitfalls in the Internet and democracy. While I see the potential in blogging to rejuvenate democracy, there's also the huge potential for blogging to damage democracy in several ways.

1) Overload of information. We get information so fast that we can't process it or put it in a framework that a large number of people can handle. Added danger is incorrect information.

2) Larger media/"power" influencing the direction of the Internets by either purchasing or co-opting bloggers into the mainstream. This may put undue pressure on bloggers to not say what they think.

3) The potential to segment society further by control of information. While I would argue that this segmentation has been in play for decades now. The Internet and blogs may end up being a double-edge sword as their use can end up going either in the direction of further segmentation, or in the direction of rebuilding diverse communities.

The obvious bonus of blogging is that it puts the mainstream media's "feet to the fire" to eliminate the memory hole in journalism and force them to become more responsible in creating an authoritative narrative about the world (which may not be possible for various reasons).

Like you said, all those questions you asked are impossible to answer in a short post, but probably the most important thing I have to say to people is here: Please use blogs to expand your viewpoint. You don't have to spend scads of time looking, but make sure you get a diverse set of beliefs and don't give up on reading people if they displease you. It's important for democracy to function properly to keep a steady diet of opposing arguments.

Posted by: Steve at October 25, 2004 6:56 AM | Permalink

Different views of reality?
One: The press is elite in training and often in background, so they never hear a different voice. The people therefore do not see their point of view in the press and seek it in less credible places.
Maybe we should go back to the days when copyboys from working class families became reporters. The press cannot see the forest for the trees. The last decent "report" on this was "red state blue state" in the Atlantic...but usually, blue staters are framed as "the other" rather than "one of us"...Class bigotry is rampant and ignored.

Two:is it a coincidence that bloggers tend to be from Tennesee, Minneapolis or other places usually ignored by the press? Blue state Oklahoma is assumed to be pro Bush...but not once have I seen it discussed why we have a Democratic governor. Hint: Economic matters. But Blue dog Democrats, Koch Democrats and pro life Democrats are unwelcome in the party...again the press in their elite cocoon seems oblivious to this...

Three: Kerry is quoting the bible to support socialized medicine, but not one reporter questioned why these issues were not solved by eight years of a popular Democrat, nor if a monolithic socialized medicine is the answer (I work for a federal system. Hint: Look at the VA)...

Four, Viet Nam...the Swift boat veterans bring up Kerry's open opposition of the war and his branding of Vietnam soldiers as baby killers as an issue, but since few reporters are either Nam vets or Vietnamese refugees, they have left Kerry get away with playing both sides of the issue. The press never brings up the ten million Cambodians killed because of American disengagement in the war...would the same thing happen in Iraq if we disengaged? Again, a class difference.

Five: few veterans in the press. The Mainline press sits in Baghdad...spinning a new VietNam... But in this war, many soldiers are blogging, so when the press prints the 120th AbuGrab story, we can read a different point of view...and guess who we believe?

Six: when things are actually "discussed", nuance is not done, only polarization. So the demagogues spin...but few really discuss things...so I get my news on the net, and when these "discussions" start, I thank God for the remote, and thank God for Animal Planet.

Seven: Religion. The press is clueless as Archbishop Chaput found when his nuanced interview was spun to make him appear to the right of Pat Robertson...thanks to the internet, the full interview was published and publicized, but not discussed. Why? Because the press doesn't know what to do with an articulate bishop who doesn't fit their preconceived notions that all religious people are nincompoops (traditional believers are usually represented by obvious southern obese demagogues, not articulate Potawanami Catholic bishops. Why?)

Posted by: tioedong at October 25, 2004 7:36 AM

T.S. Elliot has a verse in the "Four Quartets" that goes something like "humankind cannot bear too much reality."

He also struggles in the poem with how anyone can try to write about reality, which is always moving. He writes: "Words strain,/crack and sometimes break, under the burden,/under the tension, slip, slide, perish,/decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,/will not stay still."

Can't find the exact quote about reality at the moment, but the entire poem may bear rereading right now. Another line: "The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless." (that's from memory only)

Trying to be in reality, to cope with it, that's the task of mystics, of philosphers, of therapy. Gargantuan. We are all struggling here.

I wish I could say more at the moment. But maybe this helps somehow.

Posted by: Mary Ann at October 23, 2004 4:46 PM | Permalink

This year has been a challenge for "objective" and "neutral" media-types because so much of the discourse is based on raw emotion, mostly hate, and it is hard to report on emotion. It seems people, with TOO much information at their fingertips, seem inclined to seek out knowledge to reinforce their emotion, hence the rise of the blog and the credibility of bloggers. It almost seems like the creature of Bush-bashing is feeding on itself.

Of course the mainstream media is assaulted on both sides of the aisle claiming "bias." This ploy doesn't seem to be as clever as it used to, I hope, people see that is a diversion tactic to steer the electorate away from the real issues. The CBS-Rathergate fiasco is a great example -- the Bush team was able to spin the story away from the President's service record and on to the authenticity of the actual documents.

Professor Rosen, I too feel like I'm a click away from drowing in the dirty waters of Election coverage.

Posted by: Dan at October 23, 2004 4:56 PM | Permalink

Maybe you should visit PIPA's (The Program on International Policy Attitudes) site, www.pipa.org and look at their new study of the differing perceptions of Bush and Kerry supporters. The results explains at least for me many strange things in American politics

Posted by: TSarkka at October 23, 2004 5:31 PM | Permalink

Its not the world that's changing faster; it's always been incomprehensibly complicated. As Ben Franklin aptly notes above, its the narratives which we use to simplify and make sense of the world that are multiplying and diverging.

Paradoxically, that makes things more complicated, especially for someone whose job it is to understand and compare all the narratives. The obvious solution is to pick one ideology and slip into it like a warm bath. So soothing. So... simple.

Posted by: Andy at October 23, 2004 6:16 PM | Permalink

Jon not John Stewart

I've found the same thing - there's a lot of shit flung at us. We're spending a lot of time ducking and still trying to see what's ahead of us.

Posted by: Temple Stark at October 23, 2004 7:00 PM | Permalink

I just read that PIPA report. What stood out for me was this sentence: "To remain loyal and bonded to him (i.e. bush) means to enter into this false reality."

Reminds me of victims of abuse. Must be what happens in a dictatorship. Think of Stockholm syndome, where a captive takes on the perspective of captors (Patty Hearst, for example).

May be "soothing" and "simple" but it bodes ill. Think of "Hitler's Willing Executioners."

I'm a therapist, not a journalist, but what is going on now makes it hard to feel I can shut the door of the "consulting room." Psychopathology trickling down from the top, seeping into the society. Very worrisome.

Posted by: Mary Ann at October 23, 2004 7:45 PM | Permalink

Technological change has always had profound social consequences, but few inventions in history have caused more political and cultural change than movable type printing. Before Gutenberg, "truth" and "history" were largely properties of the Christian Church (and there was only one Christian Church, then).

Movable type printing took away control over "the truth" from the Church and placed it in the hands of a secular elite.

Now the Internet is taking away that secular elite's control over "the truth" and giving it to the broad populus.

That's the connection. Everything you listed is a side effect of that fundamental change.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 23, 2004 7:48 PM | Permalink

Yes, partisanship. Jon not John Stewart. Thanks.

TS: I added that PIPA study to my list. Thanks.

Andy: Part of my "distress" is that if I slip into a partisan skin almost all the problems on my list disappear-- as puzzles, I mean. So yes, "the obvious solution is to pick one ideology and slip into it." I guess I don't like to be that obvious. Plus, it's another way of saying: spin is all there is.

Steven: Thanks for that nugget. "The Internet is taking away that secular elite's control over 'the truth' and giving it to the broad populus." I do see that happening. That we're in a Gutenberg moment explains a lot. But I also think power is up some new tricks with Truth too. That means the people in power are.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 23, 2004 9:19 PM | Permalink

This is about feedback systems and how short the relaxation phase between output and the next input has become. This is about the skills people have to manage that input. This is about how schools only casually teach tools for thought.

This is pressing, but not intractable. Fortunately, new metaphors and examples make theaching this stuff easier than it used to be.

Posted by: sbw at October 23, 2004 9:53 PM | Permalink

BTW, Before you get carried away with the PIPA Report, the phrasing of the questions was directive. Different questions would have led elsewhere. Similarly directive questions to Democrats would have had an equally perverse effect.

Posted by: sbw at October 23, 2004 9:56 PM | Permalink

I would characterize this as a Luther moment, not a Gutenberg moment. 95,000 bloggers are nailing their complaints on the doors of the main stream media cathedrals.

The Church didn't want to lose control, and it fought back. The secular elite also don't want to lose control, and they're fighting back too.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 23, 2004 9:56 PM | Permalink

I think several here, particularly Steven, are on the right track, but there is a convergence effect here.

1. As we near the tipping point for online publishing adoption (usage and creation), the information flow is being rapidly democratized. But, nature abhors a vacuum, and the market wants some order to the data flow. (Face it, unlimited information is almost as uselss as no information.) Which brings us to the second point...

2. Like many industries do over time, the traditional media market has passed maturity and entered decline. It is largely coincidental that this has happened just as the technological democratization above bears fruit. That condition has created a perfect storm that has the market practically screaming for a revolution.

And the Luther analogy has been done:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/100504B.html

Posted by: Peg at October 23, 2004 10:06 PM | Permalink

What a wonderful list of ideas! (If you were like most bloggers, you wouldn't care about how these concepts fit together.) It sounds like you are about to write an extremely interesting article, and I can't wait to read it.

Posted by: shrinkette at October 23, 2004 10:12 PM | Permalink

Jay,
I linked to the PIPA report yesterday. I'm curious why it didn't register.

I'm assuming it has something to do with rhetorical style. Perhaps I framed it as ideology rather than explanation and you found that uninteresting ("Just as SBVT defends an imaginary Vietnam war, Republicans support an imaginary Bush")?

But can we really read it any other way? This is no big thing, it just piqued my curiosity.

Posted by: Ben Franklin at October 23, 2004 10:21 PM | Permalink

Steven de Beste is making the McLuhan/Eisenstein media shifts as technologically driven argument, master narrative #2. This is basically a more historically deep version of the Thomas Friedman, F.A. Hayek argument about neo-liberalism and globalization, that it distributes and decenters knowledge.

Yet your comments also point to a way in which this master narrative of decentered power operates to further CONSOLIDATE the power of certain elites. "But I also think power is up some new tricks with Truth too. That means the people in power are."

Does technology really explain this? Or is it simply one condition of possibility? I'd say the latter. Elites can't be taking further control in the name of democratizing technology without technological change, but that change alone doesn't mean they can or will succeed. In fact it runs counter to the globalization/ neo-liberal/ communications revolution narrative of broader empowerment.

There is an empowerment of the people effect accompanied by institutional consolidation and centralization that the technological change argument not only doesn't account for, but actively interferes with our ability to see.

Posted by: Ben Franklin at October 23, 2004 10:36 PM | Permalink

Weldon Berger: sbw, could you offer some examples of questions, or phrasings of questions, that might result in as perverse an effect on Kerry supporters as you think the PIPA survey did on Bush supporters

Sure, here's one of many possibilities [Remember, this isn't trying to justify Bush or Kerry, but to call into question the PIPA poll phrasing]:

"Perceptions of the Duelfer Report... As you may know, Charles Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector selected by the Bush Administration to investigate whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, has just presented his final report to Congress. It it your impression he concluded that [Then substitute this comment]:"

Sanctions had been and likely would continue to be effective stifling Saddam's WMD ambitions.

---
Weldon, Duelfer's key findings, (Google it) actually found Saddam was actively undermining the sanctions and had conveyed to his lieutenents his continued interest in pursuit of WMD.

Posted by: sbw at October 24, 2004 10:33 AM | Permalink

Great list, and I agree with Shrinkette: Sounds like you're gestating the blog entry we're all waiting to read.

I think you can see one of the pivot points in Stewart's refusing to be CrossFire's "monkey": The journalists want to entertain and the entertain wants to tell the truth.

The entertainer is the pivot here because I think part of the new -- but transient -- narrative is that "The media are the last to know"...and in particular, the last to know that they've lost their pompous, false claim on our trust. "The media are the last to know" is a comic trope since, obviously, they're in the knowing business. Hence, the narrative has become comedic. Their every protestation of seriousness -- from Dan Rather's apology to Sam Donaldson's toupee -- now only makes them look more ridiculous.

(I wrote about this here.)

Posted by: David Weinberger at October 24, 2004 11:34 AM | Permalink

John Coulter must have missed a comment or two above aboutthe PIPA Poll. Someone want to explain to him that what was asked was to phrase a poll question that could just as easily lead Kerry supporters to believe something that was not necessarily true.

Posted by: sbw at October 24, 2004 1:42 PM | Permalink

The uproar in the conventional mass-media news is the result of the sin Stewart committed: He commented on the (news)kings' (lack of) sartorial splendor. As I discuss here, Stewart, in his role as court jester, is among the few conveying "The Truth": That which upsets the applecart.

But he also demonstrates another reality (also discussed in the above link): Both the end, and the beginning of mass media - "A mass medium was once thought of as one in which a mass of people experienced the same thing at the same time from different locales. It was typified by broadcast – radio, television and the early incarnation of the Internet, whose first use as a new medium was the emulation of the old media. But now, we can further refine our understanding of mass media culture as it is emerging today – that which allows massive participation in the creation of cultural artefacts at different physical times, from different physical locales, with the individual perception of simultaneity and immediate proximity."

Posted by: Mark Federman at October 24, 2004 2:08 PM | Permalink

Jay, I have the same feeling. I'm doing my graduate research on this thrilling nexus of the Internet, participatory democracy and journalism. And there's just no way my research can keep up with all that's happening. Although it's fun to try.

No surprise, I guess, that the research has given birth to a blog (The Participant). It just seems like the best way to keep track, even though one can't possibly get to everything.

Posted by: Joe Stange at October 24, 2004 2:22 PM | Permalink

Weldon, the Volokh Conspiracy shares my concern noting, "You'd need to do a study which includes errors that would seem appealing to each side, and then see whether Republicans fall for the errors that would tempt them, and the Democrats resist those that would tempt them. But I haven't seen any such study, and the [PIPA] study ... certainly doesn't try to do this sort of balanced analysis."

Posted by: sbw at October 24, 2004 2:28 PM | Permalink

I don't think Den Beste is right at all about the Protestant Reformation. Luther was attacking the Catholic Church from the right. He was arguing that the Church had strayed from the literal teachings of the Bible, and promoted a more fundamentalist interpretation. His goal was to eliminate the middleman, to tear down the high clergy that he thought was injecting too much worldliness into Christianity. The printing press, then, didn't start out as a tool for the "secular elite." It ended up that way, but it began as a tool for fundamentalists.

Posted by: praktike at October 24, 2004 3:01 PM | Permalink

At the top of this comment thread, Mary Ann's "Humility" quotation from T. S. Eliot is from the poem "Burnt Norton", available here in "Four Quartets". Thanks for the delightful quote made all the sweeter for me for my having consistently presented both humility and the concept of time and one's place in it as key to understand how to frame experience and respond to it, which I've included in my old early draft on Simple Wisdoms.

Posted by: sbw at October 24, 2004 5:04 PM | Permalink

How to test whether the "reality-based" folks would continue to believe an error?

What comes to my mind is Clinton's lie. Now, I don't have any data here, but I never believed what he said about his sexual dalliance with Monica. Maybe somewhere out there in internetland, there is a poll from back then, indicating the percentage of Democrats (or Clinton supporters) who believed the president and so on.

We can't just make things up to see if people would believe an error. In the PIPA poll, people were asked about "current events" and their beliefs about what had occurred or not. There are likely other events which might be utilized. (Some may arrive next month!)

I'm also wondering if these two different ways of thinking are based on two ways of gathering information. For example, (a) is the "reality-based" view more dependent on going to the source documents (Taguba report, you name it) while (b) are those endorsing the "created reality" more apt to seek out "authorities" who assertively make claims (however far from the facts they may be). This may be too simplistic but it does bear consideration.

I also wonder, given that sbw in the post above has mentioned "time," whether the fact that all of us can have a "conversation" which extends over time and is not dependent on place may somehow play a role in all of this. We each go about our lives, pondering, responding, and this very discussion itself becomes an aspect of the issues Jay has raised.

Posted by: Mary Ann at October 24, 2004 8:53 PM | Permalink

Mr. Rosen: What I really wanted to say to the BBC guy was: There's too much reality rushing over us every day just now. And it's pushing me to the limits of my own vocabulary.

The Gutenberg/Luther emblem for our (still) emerging cluster of Web technologies is something I've considered a fair bit, also. Particularly through the lense of Lucien Febvre's The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800 within which it is argued that the adoption of a new technological epoch is still affected for a time by the epoch preceeding. For instance, in the early years of the printed book, most people still read standing, as was the practice when reading scrolls. In other words, we are now still a 'book/newspaper culture' trying to become what will follow it.

In that vein, I ask you to consider the works and contributions of another individual, perhaps not as well known -- Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan: the father of modern library science and a pioneer in subject classification and indexing.

Considering the democratization of information and our shared condition of 'rushing reality,' perhaps the product or service of the journalist of the future is akin to librarianship on-the-fly. By that I mean the tasks of collection development/authority control (what's good, what's not and is it reliable), indexing (what belongs with what), and cataloging (how do I get to it the next time), with a diminished responsibility for Op/Ed or 'scooping', and yet an increased reliance upon journalistic credibility.

Anyhow, this is the wall I'm climbing, and it seemed to touch on several of your points, as well.

Posted by: Billducks at October 25, 2004 2:17 AM | Permalink

soldiers need to know history and then what the motives of their paymasters are so should those who have chosen the pen rather than the gun ...

Posted by: Shahadat at October 25, 2004 5:39 AM | Permalink

Too Much Reality?

I've noted the discordance, too. Here's my shot at it.

Their liberalism has been nurtured for years in resentment of U.S. military power and the "imposition" of American pop culture on more "pure" cultures.

Then came 9/11. Their brains told them to be grateful for our military strenth and that our culture is superior to one which would carry out and celebrate such attacks. But, over time, their hearts wouldn't cooperate. They reflexively pounced on every mis-cue by the military and have never found the words to totally denounce tyrants like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. They have proved incapable of celebrating the miracle of the Afghan elections. They say they honor the troops, but their "blame America first" instincts keep bubbling to the surface.

Thus, the dissonance is in their own heads. They recognize the newly dangerous world. They just resent that America is the hero in this tale.

Posted by: JeanneB at October 25, 2004 6:24 AM | Permalink

Seems to me the divide is between those who still hold to the existence of absolute or objective truth, exogenous to themselves, and those who regard truth as a personal, existential construct with the consequent that "truth" can be molded to meet pragmatic ends. This dichotomy corresponds (but only roughly) to the current liberal-conservative paradigm. In terms of the press, I think that some who are part of the first group are being exposed as, in the language of the second group, liars.

I too have seen the analogy to Gutenberg. Again the great unwashed have been given reason to distrust the keepers of knowledge and are looking for other sources of guidance. When the monolith can't be trusted the only viable alternative is a wild and woolly fallback to decentralized, sometimes feuding and often uncredentialed individuals.

Posted by: Kevin at October 25, 2004 6:47 AM | Permalink

What do you think, Jay and others, about this: reality or illusion?

http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2004/10/good-news-from-iraq-part-13.html

P.S. Thanks for the link to the T.S. Elliot poems.

Posted by: Catherine Ellen at October 25, 2004 6:49 AM | Permalink

(This is what I get for trying to be coherent at 4am.) To clarify, my point is that there are some in the press now being exposed via the Internet as viewing "truth" as a tool for pragmatic ends. Many among the masses, not being quite so "nuanced", aren't buying it. Indeed, many are offended.

Posted by: Kevin at October 25, 2004 6:58 AM | Permalink