THE DREADED J-WORD: JOURNALISM

Melissa Harris-Perry models tampon earrings.  Really.

It was a very embarrassing -one might say “humiliating”- week for journalism. One reporter wore tampons as earrings, live on air. Another tweeted a photo of himself almost nude, and a third reporter asked a highly respected scholarly researcher how he, a Muslim, could justify writing a book about Jesus.

Could it get any worse for the broadcasting business? Well, yes it could. In addition to all of the above, which I’ll detail in a moment, there was beleaguered, way-past-his-expiration-date Rush Limbaugh who said this of Huma Abedin, wife of serial sexter Anthony Weiner: "It's relevant to point out here by the way ... Huma is a Muslim. In that regard, Weiner ought to be able to get away with anything.

“Muslim women don’t have any power, right?” he continued. “Muslim women are beheaded, stoned, whatever, if they drive, have affairs. In certain countries, Muslim women, if they’re raped, are killed -- it’s their fault."

Hmmm..did you know we behead Muslim women in America? I did not know that. Oh, and did someone forget to tell Rush that Huma Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan?

Meanwhile, none other than anti-journalist Glenn Beck rented a series of rooms in a downtown Salt Lake City hotel to display his collection of Nazi memorabilia, including hooded KKK cape, a swastika banner that was used at Nuremberg, a copy of Mein Kampf signed by Adolf Hitler, the love letters of Hermann Göring, a satin handkerchief with Hitler’s blood.

Oy.

If you’re already starting to hyperventilate at all of the above, calm yourself and read on. First, about those earlier-mentioned earrings. Melissa Harris-Perry, a relative newcomer to the cable news circus, hosts a Sunday round table talk show on MSNBC. After state troopers confiscated tampons, maxi pads and other potential projectile items from those entering the Texas state capitol building recently, Perry made light of the civic debacle this way:
                       

Upon seeing Harris-Perry don tampons on her lobes, satirist and cultural commentator Dennis Miller tweeted, “David Brinkley turning over so rapidly in his grave you could make chicken shawarma in it.”

"70 is the new 50"...Not

Oh and about that above-referenced journalist who tweeted an almost-naked shot of himself: That would be Geraldo Rivera, 70, of Fox News. Rivera, whose checkered career spans five decades, tweeted the selfie with the tag line, “70 is the new 50.” No Geraldo, based on what we see in the photo,
70 is 70, and my unsolicited advice goes like this: Get dressed.

Compounding the tasteless episode were Rivera’s own words of attempted justification. He began by explaining he had had a long day at work, and he had a couple of drinks before breaking out the camera. Then he said, "And I never do tequila when I'm alone, but I had this new bottle that someone had given me. That second my fate was sealed. I said, 'Dammit, I like that picture.' I had learned how to use Twitter a couple of weeks ago and there I was."

Yes, Geraldo, there you were, but what about us? Do we really need to know that when you’re alone you like to do tequila shots and take naked self pics?

Then there is the case of Lauren Green, also of Fox News, who conducted an on-air interview with religious scholar Reza Aslan. Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life &; Times of Jesus of Nazareth, thought he was to be interviewed about the research he did and the content of the book. But Green inexplicably decided to interview him about how odd she found it that he, a Muslim would write about Jesus. Watch:
The Twitterverse exploded following Green’s disastrous interview. Tweeted one viewer: “Me: ‘I’m an oceanographer.’ Green: ‘But you live on land.’”

It bears mentioning that all of the broadcasters mentioned herein are experienced adults who were most likely hired in part based of their editorial judgment (except perhaps Harris-Perry, who has no background in media, according to her own bio). Of course one can also be fired for editorial judgment issues – does the name Don Imus ring a bell? Why then, would any of these professionals say or do what I have described here?

In part, this can be explained by a lack of oversight on the part of news directors and the editorial brass. The game today is all about attracting and retaining viewers or listeners. Watch cable news networks often and long enough and you will see a plethora of incidents just as tasteless and unprofessional as the ones I have described here.

You are observing the pioneer days of the 24-hour news cycle. It may not seem that way, but consider that even the granddaddy of all round-the clock news, CNN is only 33 years old. Others, like Fox and MSNBC didn’t arrive on the screen until 1996. By then, the average household in America was either wired for cable or just about to be, which meant the American viewer was on the threshold of remote control roulette. After decades of having just three or four stations from which to choose, suddenly we were in the TV driver’s seat with up to 200 channels. Heady stuff.

From there, cable news stations went into what we could term a “cultural decline.” And now, this many years later, a host is wearing tampon earrings, another is naked on Twitter and a third evidently hasn’t read her interviewee’s book, so she decided to try to discredit the author instead of discussing his work. Ugh.

According the a new Gallup poll, Americans’ confidence in TV news is down to 23 percent of those who responded. That matches our lack of confidence in newspapers. To give you an idea of how bad the numbers look, in 1996 our confidence in TV news was at 46 percent. In 1980 our confidence in newspapers was at 51 percent. (These figures area based on responses when asked if consumers have “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in these entities.)

Jon Stewart -- The New Cronkite?

If that doesn’t disturb you, you should also know that among young people, high profile news broadcasters are not trustworthy. Who will ever forget the TIME Magazine poll in 2009 that found Jon Stewart of The Daily Show the most trusted newscaster in America. Huh?

Therein is the danger of cable news networks putting people like Harris-Perry, Rivera and Green front and center. As if the journalism profession were not sullied enough by its own historical missteps, by promoting individuals who value entertainment over substantive content, the viewing public comes to equate their broadcasts with any other white noise that comes from our increasingly technologically- sophisticated televisions. The technology is at an all-time high while the content of what it projects is in the gutter.

I remember about a zillion years ago when I was in journalism school, NBC anchorman John Chancellor came to speak to us. He said, “You are about to enter the most noble profession there is. Keeping the citizenry informed about the issues that directly touch their lives is as important as any job can be. It’s a big responsibility that carries with it a rich history to which you will now contribute.”

Those were some wise words. Compare that with a quote from Geraldo Rivera: “I’m old, but I’m still cute and strong…and very butch.”

Fellow TV viewers..we’re doomed.

GLENN BECK, PLEASE GO AWAY

Three years ago, when I started this blog, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to provide Glenn Beck any more ink than the mass media already had. It had already become, by 2008, journalistically trendy to stir the pot by writing defamatory words about Beck. I tried to honor my commitment to myself not to write about him, no matter how objectionable his rhetoric or disgusting his persona. But casting caution to the wind, here it is – a full lead story on Glenn Beck. Sigh.

He is, after all, the most extreme broadcast character America has seen or heard since Dr. Laura Schlesinger (below, left). Schlesinger, you will recall, unceremoniously ended her own career by indulging in her now infamous “nigger, nigger, nigger” rant, live on air in 2010. Schlesinger resigned soon after. But Beck has been hanging on for quite some time now. It was way back in 2009 when he called President Obama a racist who had “exposed himself as a guy” with a “deep seated hatred of white people.”

This happened on July 28, 2009. By the first week in August, Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble and Progressive Insurance, three of Beck’s major advertisers had pulled out of his show. What followed was the snowballing of cancelled advertisers, which ultimately numbered just under 300. Yet Fox saw fit to retain Beck’s services until this past month, when they finally, and mercifully, deleted him from the airwaves. However, even if his face is no longer visible every afternoon on television, his voice is heard daily on radio. And since losing his television show, the vitriol he espouses on his radio show has hit new lows, even for him.

This week, after the tragic shootings at the youth camp in Norway, Beck saw fit to compare the victims to “Nazi youth.” Listen:

Aside from the obvious poor taste he exhibits here, his unseemly comments are an affront to the families of all of those young people who were assassinated. And that was, without any doubt, Beck’s mission. Now that he no longer has access to millions of viewers every time the little red light blinks on the camera, Beck is desperately amping up his rhetoric on the radio. Essentially, he is begging people to listen to him by saying the most outrageous words he can muster.

What we see when we watch or listen to Beck is a man who craves attention in an almost sociopathic fashion. In February of this year Beck called reformed Judaism “radicalized Islam.” This was also the year that Beck feigned vomiting, on the air, when he saw a public service spot about skin cancer in which Megan McCain was supposedly nude (right). That was just after he encouraged people to leave their churches if the clergyman mentioned the words “social justice.” Just last month Beck warned his audience that Obama is out to “de-develop” America and cut average income to $14,000/year. That was the same program in which he said Obama is more corrupt than Richard Nixon and might kill 10 percent of the U.S. population.

Aside from the obvious extremism and lack of factual material, Beck’s on-air persona has certainly cheapened broadcasting in a way no one else has in recent memory. His audience seems to eat it up. But statistics show he is preaching to the choir. According to Quantcast, a company that measures audience traffic and characteristics, Beck’s audience on Clear Channel Radio is 95 percent white, with the largest contingent over the age of 50. Sixty percent of his listeners are male. Beck’s TV audience had actually been cut in half over the past three years, according to Nielsen, from a high of about 2.8 million viewers to a closing audience of 1.6 million.

As usual, one could surmise the numbers tell the story. But do they? One and a half million people is still a lot of people, and how many more do they influence or represent who were not home in the afternoon to listen to Beck’s inane ranting? The history of the broadcast industries in this country suggests that audiences perceive on-air personalities as powerful. (Remember Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America?”)
Entertainers are seen as powerful in that the audience looks up to them in a socio/cultural fashion. But people like Beck, who present themselves as more journalist than entertainer (although he is clearly not a journalist) are often perceived as knowledgeable, wise and authoritative. That above-mentioned choir that Beck amassed over the years showed up in the thousands last year when Beck summoned them to Washington for his “Restore Honor” rally (above, left). He has followers. And we all know how dangerous it can be when a true extremist has followers. They drink the damn Kool-Aid.

At a minimum, Beck is second only to Ann Coulter in his disrespect for Americans. After all, it is he who said, “You know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims’ families…When I see the families on television, I’m like, oh shut up…I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining.” But at an extreme, Beck’s rhetoric is incendiary at a time in America when masses of unemployed and marginalized citizens are easy prey for a preacher of paranoia and doom. He is an absolute case study in abuse of the First Amendment, and use of the airwaves to promote a personal agenda. His agenda is attention. He lives for it.

Beck’s self- described American hero, Orson Welles (below, right) was in his own way an extremist, but he made it clear he was not political and his mission was drama. Beck, on the other hand, would have you believe his mission is saving America from itself. In the end, Beck is a fraud who needs a spotlight more than he needs clean air to breathe, who craves financial and material wealth to an extreme, who says whatever it takes to force the public to focus on him, rather than the issues, and whose own megalomania will most likely be his undoing. But on the road to that end, he remains inordinately influential in an oversize segment of middle America. It is that audience that seems vulnerable to uninformed rhetoric that assaults the imperfect system that nonetheless offers them the most freedom of any country on earth.

Glenn Beck’s shtick is the stuff of great performance art. Webster’s defines performance art: “A nontraditional art form often with political or topical themes that typically features a live presentation to an audience or onlookers.” Cambridge says this: “A type of theatrical entertainment in which the artist's personality and the way in which they create and develop their ideas form part of the show.” Sounds harmless enough, right? That is, until it becomes propaganda, and until it works to the detriment of those who view it. Glenn Beck’s curtain needs to come down, the sooner the better.

TRACKING THE TEARS OF A MEDIA CLOWN

Have we had just about enough of Glenn Beck yet? Really. I have forced myself to watch this guy on FOX several times now. I did that because I am a journalist, and a cultural commentator [read: ‘blogger’], and I need to be up on who’s saying what to whom about what. Glenn Beck is saying not much to a lot of people about nothing.

Interestingly, Beck is not the first of his kind. He is just the latest. Does the name Joe Pyne ring a bell? No, I didn’t imagine it would. Pyne had a television talk show in 1960s in which he was known for insulting not only his guests, but individual audience members who could step up to the mic and comment on the topic at hand. I remember as a kid watching Pyne conduct his TV circus and being strangely drawn to the confrontational moments so common in each episode. Here’s a clip that shows a typical Pyne exchange. This time he was interviewing radical student activist Jerry Rubin:


Pyne died in 1970, but it would only be a historical nanosecond before one Morton Downey, Jr., emerged, also confrontational, and more often than not, offensive. With his ever-present cigarette burning between his fingers, Downey was loud, crass and sometimes uninformed. Like Glenn Beck. One could safely assert that Downey was Rush Limbaugh’s predecessor. Like Limbaugh, Downey was not a journalist, not really terribly well informed about the issues of the day and not prone to civil discourse. To give you an idea of Downey’s politics, one of his favorite and oft-used phrases on his television show as “pablum-puking liberal.” Here’s part of an episode of Downey’s show with guest Pat Buchannan:

What these media clowns had in common was a decidedly right-wing ideology, a lack of decorum and no filter between their brain cells and their speaking voice. What Beck adds to this mix is extreme narcissism. While his predecessors filled their shows with raucous audience participation and guests they could humiliate on air, Beck likes the camera all to himself.

Advertisers left in droves after Beck declared President Obama a racist. No matter. FOX chose to keep him on, because the ratings are through the roof. The ratings excel because the public at large is generally not as aggressive in its communication about major issues. There is some sort of twisted vicarious thrill a lot of people experience through a Glenn Beck. But are his chosen issues major? The other day Beck delivered a 10-minute rant about Obama’s plea for citizens to volunteer their time for worthy causes. Somehow Beck found something bad in that presidential request.

When words do not seem to have the emotional largesse that Beck desires, he resorts to tears. Evidently he can cry on demand. When he cannot cry on demand, such as in a recent publicity photo shoot, the makeup people carefully oil the skin under his eyes to make him appear tearful. When words and tears do not carry the necessary emphasis, Beck interviews someone remotely with their image appearing on a large screen behind him. When the interviewee says something disagreeable to Beck, he looks into Camera 1 and mocks the person by making sarcastic faces.

I envision Glenn Beck going home after work, sitting around in sweat pants and a t-shirt, eating potato chips and onion dip and watching “The Bachelor” or something equally innocuous. In the morning, I suppose he gets up and puts on his “Glenn Beck” disguise and goes back out into the world to simply piss people off for money. Reportedly lots and lots of money. I like what Jon Stewart said of Beck: “Finally a guy who says what people who don’t think are thinking.” That’s Glenn Beck.

So here we have a reformed drug addict and recovering alcoholic, the son of a drug addict/alcoholic divorced mother who killed herself, a college dropout who converted to Mormonism simply because his second wife-to-be said she wouldn’t marry him unless he had a religion. Beck simply knows how to yell a little louder than the rest of us and how to feign passion about issues that he seems rather unclear about. And if you just can’t get home in time for the late afternoon Glenn Beck show, and you don’t have three hours every single day to listen to Beck on the radio, maybe you can catch him on his standup comedy tour. That’s not a joke. He goes on tour and tells funny liberal people jokes. He packs them in, and they love it when he constantly repeats “us conservatives.”

Beck found a schtick that works in a time that was fully ready for a mediocre right-wing stand-up comedian to appear on a news network and belittle people who do not agree with him. Nothing about him is distinctive or original – not his tendency to yell over his guests’ comments, not his lack of solid research on the issues he attacks and certainly not his narcissism. At a time when the average American citizen feels his or her voice is not heard, Beck offers them a voice, even if he says things that in their hearts they know do not live up to their own moral code.
Pyne was a novelty late night guilty pleasure. Downey was a loud mouth, educated lawyer who pretended to be one with the working middle class. But Beck? Beck is a full-blown media superstar right now. So, what makes a tearful, semi-informed extremist into a bonafide superstar these days? See for yourself:

ARE YOU THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM?

I went to journalism school way back when, when we still used manual typewriters and carbon paper (I swear!). Newsrooms were defined by three things: the sound of the typewriters, the smell of cigarettes and really bad coffee. The journalistic holy trinity. By then, journalism, as a discipline and profession had not really changed much for a very long time. It went kind of like this: Editor would say, “Go to 9th and Elm and cover the fire.” Reporter would grab a tablet and a pencil and rush downtown, talk to people/cops/bystanders/witnesses/victims at the scene, hurry back to his manual typewriter with carbon paper, light up and write up the story. Sometime that night or even the next day the story would appear in the newspaper and the public would gasp and then wait another 24 hours for updates.

Unbelievable, right? Today, if there’s a fire at 9th and Elm, we see it happening live, and not necessarily through the eyes of a professional journalist. Today, your average man/woman on the street might be the conveyer of critical information. It’s called Citizen Journalism, and I may be one of the few professional journalists who truly like it. A lot of my colleagues are very bummed out about Citizen Journalism, tossing about words like “amateur,” “untrained,” and even “dangerous.” I disagree. Technology has made it possible for anybody to communicate anything at any time. What irks the pros in this field is the idea that a guy who never went to journalism school can scoop the professional journalists. Think about it: If you are a Twitterer or a Facebooker and you just happen to be at 9th and Elm when the fire breaks out, you can show and tell the whole world about it way before any editor can dispatch a reporter to the scene. And the reason journalists find this “dangerous” is that they believe you will put too much of a spin on the event, or inject too much perspective, rather than straight, objective reporting.

Newsflash: Every story you have ever read in a newspaper or seen on a broadcast news report has perspective/opinion/spin – call it what you will – already. It is next to impossible for a human being to report anything to anybody without conveying some perspective on the event. So, to the pros, I say, “Chill.” Citizen journalism is a democratic alteration in the social structure of information conveyance that enables all people to contribute to the mix of ideas.

Enter Jason Linkins, a Huffington Post political and media reporter who has been put in charge of a new project called the “Media Monitoring Project.” In a nutshell, the project encourages readers – like you – to monitor television news and information shows that you typically watch, and then report to the Post anything noteworthy. This could include gaffes, highly incendiary content, great in-depth reporting that you would like more people to see, or whatever you think is relevant to spread to the masses. This is citizen journalism at work. And you are invited to participate. I like it. A lot. I want to hear more voices from the crowd out there, and some of you have been itching to get in on the national conversation. Maybe you just didn’t know how.

Right now, this project is innovative. I predict that in short order solicitation of content from viewers/users/listeners/consumers will be the norm, rather than the exception. To date, most of those opportunities have been limited to feedback and comments at the end of a story. Going forward, I have a feeling many of you will be generating ideas for the stories, and ultimately contributing your own stories. It is, in my opinion, the biggest paradigm shift in the journalism business that has ever happened. Naysayers will use the same argument that researchers use when they badmouth Wikipedia, the online “encyclopedia” that allows anybody to contribute anything about anyone or anything. They will say the information may be flawed or inaccurate. Agreed. So, smart consumers will cross reference and check information for accuracy. Consumers will have to do what reporters have been doing since…well, since we used manual typewriters and carbon paper. Oh wait, I forgot…you have already learned that. After all, who among you does not know that news you get from Foxnews.com, for example, will be skewed conservative? Or, that news you get from Huffington Post may lean heavily to the left. You have to get your information from more than once source. That’s a given.

So, the moral to this story? Speak up. And do it to a large audience that is increasingly hungry for information. Why should your perspective on current events carry any less weight than the ladies on “The View,” or Oprah or Diane Sawyer or Bill O’Reiley or Geraldo or Brian Williams? It’s like I have always said – everybody has a story. It may just be time for you to tell yours.

This Week: Two Major Innovations in the Evolution of Online Journalism

Online journalism is advancing at breakneck speed, and this week brought news of two new ventures with huge potential.

The Huffington Post announced its new investigative journalism division, which is particularly good news since the one area of reporting that has been roundly dethroned since media went digital is deep investigation. Find me an online publication that would support a long, slow investigation like Watergate, and I’ll buy you the best fried shrimp po-boy to be had in the entire city of New Orleans. So, hearing that the digital queen of innovative reportage, Arianna Huffington, had clicked her heels together and raised almost $2 million to fund the new venture, is truly exciting. The ten reporters who will staff the new unit have a golden opportunity to take online reporting to the next level. In its claw and scratch climb toward full credibility, online journalism needs to skillfully cross the investigative hurdle and break something big wide open. Not only that, but the Huffington Post pledges to make the work these reporters produce available to any other site at the same time it is published on their site. You can take it to the bank that Greenberg Rants will be posting some of this work on the site at the first opportunity. I can’t wait.

The same day the new investigative unit was unveiled, Fox News debuted its new opinion and commentary site, Fox Nation. All of you committed liberals out there who were breathless just one paragraph ago should stop turning up your noses right now at Fox’s new venture. This is good news, all of it. This is the way to pump up the volume on the public discourse about issues that matter. Let’s hear all voices – liberals, conservatives, libertarians, evangelists, fringe extremists – it shows the media consumers are fully engaged for the first time in a long time. Fox Nation will necessarily lean right. That doesn’t faze me. But there are two elements of the new site that do concern me: First, will the communicators allow their message to get lost inside of their volatile expression? Really, does anyone truly listen to what Glen Beck has to say, as much as they hang on the novelty of his tearful, histrionic delivery? I want Fox Nation to make its point journalistically, not theatrically. Second, the aesthetics of the site are pedestrian and unimaginative. That I do not get. With the stunning graphics available now, it baffles me that they would opt for such a milk toast façade.

Further, it will be incumbent upon the site to truly understand the importance of immediacy. On April 1, one of its front page 10 top “Justice” stories was “Police Detain NFL Player While Mother-in-law Dies.” That was a March 26 story. In online journalism time, that story was a senior citizen by April 1. In fact, by the 1st, the player and his wife had already appeared on GMA and forgiven the offending cop, who had, incidentally, quit on April 1. None of this was mentioned on Fox Nation. To truly garner the ongoing, loyal audience they will need, a greater sense of urgency and a better journalistic follow up will have to develop – fast.

Fasten your media consumer seat belt – you’re in for the ride of your lifetime if you just pay attention to what’s happening online right now. Has there really ever been a more dynamic moment in the history of the fifth estate?