What is news? As a hard news reporter I think it’s truth, or as close as I can get to it. It’s context and fact and expert opinion. I’m in the minority in this view.
Many people in the news business believe that news is whatever sells. Truth doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. Context doesn’t matter. Only demand matters.
Editors and producers often use this as a defense of their own decision making. They shove gruesome footage or rumor and innuendo into the pipeline, then excuse themselves because it’s what the audience wants to see or hear or read. They use this excuse because it’s impossible to argue against the idea that there’s a large market for sensational stories. It’s also impossible to argue against the idea that there’s a large market for fast food, drugs and prostitutes.
Editors and producers aren’t just in a position to decide which stories do or don’t get passed along. They’re in a position to prevent facts or context or expert opinion about a story from being passed along. Editors and producers can withhold or downplay information, and in so doing make a story seem more important than it really is.
Yesterday’s big story was about a mysterious missile launch on the West Coast. I watched the video clip a couple of times and concluded it was an airplane. I don’t think that was a hard conclusion to reach. Today more people have come to the same conclusion: see examples here and here.
Despite the plausible and simple explanation that what the video shows is not a missile but an airplane, the missile story took off yesterday in a big way, and was still being hyped this morning. Here’s a headline from late last night, on the L.A. Times site:
Puzzling lack of answers to ‘mystery missile’
Buried in the story, but written as if there was an ongoing conspiracy, was this:
The Pentagon has not shed much light on what happened, but one official said an examination by multiple U.S. government agencies of radar data, satellite imagery and other sophisticated monitoring technology has turned up no conclusive evidence that a missile was fired in that vicinity and at that time.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said that Federal Aviation Administration records showed commercial airliners were flying in the area at the time, and that most government experts were coming to the conclusion that the condensation trail was caused by an aircraft.
“The best we can tell, it was probably caused by an aircraft,” the official said.
So every available means of tracking a missile showed no missile. But the headline describes this as a “puzzling lack of answers”. Here’s a headline from the N.Y. Daily News this morning:
Pentagon still stumped by California ‘mystery missile;’ bloggers say it was just an airplane
The mainstream media stays focused on the idea that the video clip is a mystery, on selling that mystery, and on the idea that only a government source can solve the mystery. Even as the media grudgingly acknowledges that there may be no mystery at all.
Is it really credible that in all the news organizations across the country, no one concluded that it might be an airplane?
Did any news organization have independent confirmation of a missile launch from any other source than the video clip or the person who shot the video?
Did any news organization find, or try to find, more footage showing the same object from a different angle?
Did any news organization find footage of the same object from a different angle and suppress that footage because it clearly showed the object to not be a missile?
Is it any wonder that bloggers and independent journalists often seem to have as much or more credibility than entire news organizations?
Does the mainstream media know how badly it undermines its own credibility with stories like this? Does it care? Do you care?
This is your modern media. Helpless to make a determination on its own. Helpless to pass along all of the information that it knows. Helpless to do anything but feed you mysteries in the hope that you’ll keep coming back for more.
Do you believe everybody in every news organization that ran that clip thought it was a missile? I don’t. I think they thought it would sell. And it did.