The sorry state of journalism
On a good day, this blog receives about one hundred and twenty unique visitors. On a slow day, that drops to about sixty. A little over half my visitors arrive via google searches (and it is almost exclusively google these days; other search engines fall a long way behind) and read a single page before leaving, never to return. Without doing too much statistical analysis, I believe I probably have 50 or so regular readers; people who either have me saved to an RSS reader, or who visit a couple of times a week to check for new stuff. In other words; my readership is tiny.
So I have absolutely no illusions about the influence of my occasional witterings. If garnering a wide audience was my goal then I’d have given this blogging lark up as an abject failure years ago. And the fact that it has been years and I’m still trundling along with a readership that has remained eerily consistent (excluding that week I got linked from Joss Whedon’s blog and my visitor numbers saw an almighty spike to several thousand per day until the link dropped off the front page of whedonesque, at which point the numbers plummeted just as suddenly) suggests that on some level I’m perfectly happy posting the occasional message here to be read by a handful of people.
I dearly hope that none of you fifty lovely, discerning, cultured (and outrageously good-looking) people feel you’ve wasted your time after visiting, but I must shamefully confess that you’re probably not reading my best writing. My quality control here isn’t always the highest, and certainly there’s very little here that I’d feel happy charging someone money for. This is why, for instance, I felt so uncomfortable when a couple of my pieces were included in last year’s Blog Digest (I could have just said ‘no’ of course, but that would have been too fucking precious for words).
Nonetheless, despite the fact that I don’t give quite as much care and attention to a blog entry as I might to a chapter of a novel, or a poem, or an academic essay; and despite the fact that I’m not charging anything except a few short moments; I’d still like to think that, at the very least, I’m not guilty of foisting complete shit on my readers. This is why I find myself increasingly frustrated with mainstream journalism and the lazy, dreadful writers who seem more than willing to serve up a steady diet of ill-informed garbage.
Take (via Chicken Yoghurt) this reaction from Benedict Brogan of the Daily Mail to the Climate Change protest at the British Houses of Parliament this week: Having picked up one of the paper aeroplanes being thrown by the protesters from the roof of parliament, he revealed it to be…
… a photocopy of an email from someone at BA to a Dept of Transport official about something complicated that I can’t be bothered to read.
This isn’t some junior reporter on work-experience. This is the paper’s political editor! I mean, none of us expects much from the Daily Mail, and while Brogan’s candour is refreshing if nothing else, it still boggles the mind. Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the job of political editor of one of the largest circulation newspapers in Britain entail — oh, I dunno — bothering to read and understand the events of the day prior to writing about them? Is it really too much to ask? (Obviously)
And nor is it restricted to the complicated issues, or even to the crappier papers. The Guardian has just published a piece by one of their music writers (ex-NME hack Steven Wells) which, in essence, defends the right of journalists (music journos at least, but there’s a strong implication that Wells would go further than that) to simply lie to their readers when they can’t be arsed to research the facts. I can’t see how this is anything but a spectacularly ill-judged piece for any newspaper to publish (albeit in the Arts Section of their online edition).
To explain briefly, an American magazine has been forced to apologise to The Black Crowes (an uninteresting rock band) for publishing a review of their new album by a reviewer who — it transpires — didn’t listen to it. The Guardian, as represented by Steven Wells, believes that Maxim Magazine should not have apologised; that it’s perfectly acceptable for a journalist to lie to their audience and write a review based on nothing more than their own personal prejudice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the reviewer should have forced himself (or herself) to listen to the entire thing (in this case, bizarrely, they couldn’t have done as they didn’t have a copy — merely a promo of a single), just that they should be honest… “having listened to one track from the forthcoming album by The Black Crowes, I was unable to bear any more. I guess if you’re a fan of dull, generic stoner-rock then this might interest you, and you’ll probably want to check it out if you liked their previous stuff. Me? I’m going to boil my head instead”.
Y’know…? Isn’t honesty the very least we should expect? I don’t care that Steven Wells is not a particularly good writer, as I can simply choose not to read him; but I do care that the mainstream media is willing to employ writers who clearly put far less time and care into their pieces than I do an off-the-cuff blogpost, and who simply appear incapable of performing the job they’re paid to do (whether that’s a political editor who can’t be bothered to understand an important issue prior to writing about it, or a music writer who doesn’t see a problem with dishonesty in journalism and is presumably happy to submit a review of something he hasn’t heard).
It goes without saying that I’ll be avoiding the writing of Steven Wells from now on (any music writer who can write: “If a band are any good at all they’ll play their best toon first. And that toon will deliver a killer hook in the first 30 seconds…” clearly doesn’t have the faintest idea about music, no matter how many singles he reviewed for the NME). And I’m unlikely to encounter Benedict Brogan again until the next time his drivel is highlighted by a decent writer. But between them, they’ve dragged the reputation of mainstream journalism even further into the pit of filth in which it’s been wallowing. And I’ll be reading The Guardian’s Arts Section with a little more scepticism in future. Can we assume their book reviewers bothered to progress past Chapter 1? Did the film critic walk out after the first five minutes? Seems like it doesn’t really matter anymore.
UPDATE 29-02-08 Uncanny!
This always struck me as a strange delusion of the broadsheet-reading classes. Tabloid readers, in my experience, know that stuff in newspapers is made up, and don’t care, any more than you’ld care that Coronation Street is “made up”; it’s interesting and sometimes informative, but it’s not true. But people who read broadsheets expect them to accurately reflect the world, despite them presenting evidence day-in, day-out, that they don’t. The problem with Brogan’s statement isn’t with his lack of interest in finding stuff out; that’s a sine-qua-non of journalism. The problem is that, because he’s a smug, anti-intellectual reactionary, he isn’t interested in finding out about something that’s actually worth knowing. Steven Wells’s indifference, on the other hand is, as he says “forged in the white-hot furnace of the war against bad pop”; it’s an active rejection of a supposed “objectivity,” an objectivity that, like the foolish trust placed in broadsheets, serves as an alibi for crap. That’s a good thing (Wells is also responsible for the best piece of music writing I’ve ever read, the press notes for a Napalm Death tour).
February 29th, 2008 | 2:00am
by voyou
Well, I gotta disagree voyou. Kind of goes without saying really, what with the above blogpost and all.
Firstly, I’d suggest that you are painting tabloid readers in a rather more favourable light than my own experience would suggest. Not that my experience trumps your experience or anything, merely that when I was in the engineering industry and spending a lot of time on-site, the average tabloid reader tended to take their news content rather more seriously than your characterisation. I have no idea whether my experience or your experience is more representative, but I don’t think it’s as cut-and-dried as you suggest.
Secondly, I agree that we are regularly fed nonsense in the broadsheets as much (or almost as much) as in the tabloids. The problem, however, is that there is indeed “information worth knowing”, as you put it. More than that; there’s information that — in my view, as an environmentalist — needs to be urgently and accurately disseminated. We can only rely upon the mass-media to do this job; as Merrick points out in his near-simultaneous piece on the same topic:
Therefore I see it as important to call media outlets to account on this; whether it’s the BBC’s environmental correspondent describing carbon-capture as a weapon in the fight to combat Climate Change, despite the captured CO2 being used to increase oil output, or the Daily Mail overtly refusing to investigate important issues. Not that I expect any genuine improvement, but raging against the dying of the light has always been a hobby of mine.
On the subject of Steven Wells; again we’ll just have to disagree. I’ll take your word on it that he’s produced some fine writing (though frankly that article on The Guardian site didn’t even hint at it). But I just don’t see how reviewing an album you’ve not heard can be described as “an active rejection of supposed ‘objectivity'”. It’s just plain dishonest. It’s bullshit. I think most readers of an album review are well aware that they’re receiving a subjective opinion; how could it be any other way? But they should be able to expect that subjective opinion to be valid as a subjective opinion. If you’ve not heard the album, then you can’t have an opinion on it. Or at least, not one that stretches beyond your own personal prejudice. And if you want your album review to be nothing more than an analysis of your own pre-existing views about the band, then tell your fucking readers.
I have a very big problem with writers who treat their readers with contempt. And frankly, that’s what the Maxim reviewer is guilty of, and it’s what Wells is guilty of by defending it.
As an aside, the best piece of music writing I’ve ever read is Lester Bangs’ beautiful essay on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.
February 29th, 2008 | 2:35am
by Jim Bliss
Jim, three things here.
first, I’m goosed by our simultaneous posting on the same topic. I’m sure that, if either of us had a readership of any size, someone would suggest we were the same person.
secondly, with you on the Steven Wells stuff. Lazy take the money and run bollocks.
thirdly, I’m with Voyou on the tabloids thing. When I worked on a farm with redneck meatheads, they didn’t care about their paper’s politics. they were sussed enough to treat the Sun and Mirror as comics to read during the teabreak. They were all labour voters, yet most read the then-tory Sun.
I remember seeing a poll in the late 80s or early 90s about peoples politics, the paper they read and how much they trust the editorial line. The closest matches were the Guardian and the Telegraph. Given that their writer lie and fabricate as much as the Sun’s do, it makes the Guardian and the Telegraph far more dangerous newspapers. At least Sun readers don’t believe the bollocks served up to them.
February 29th, 2008 | 3:54am
by merrick
[…] Read the rest […]
February 29th, 2008 | 7:56am
by Jim Bliss: The sorry state of journalism - Chicken Yoghurt
I dearly hope that none of you fifty lovely, discerning, cultured (and outrageously good-looking) people feel you’ve wasted your time after visiting, but I must shamefully confess that you’re probably not reading my best writing.
As a proud and long time member of the Jim Bliss Fifty (a name for a popular beat combo if ever there was one), can I just say that if that’s the case, your non-blogging writing must be something to behold indeed.
February 29th, 2008 | 8:00am
by Justin
I tittered at this comment, a little way down that Wells thread:
>I’ve taken Mr Wells at his own word. I didn’t need to read more than the first two paragraphs to know that he is a talentless cock whose views on music are utterly worthless.
And don’t even get me started on travel “journalism”. Or do, but in the pub…
February 29th, 2008 | 10:29am
by DonaldS
I’ll have to come down on Jim’s side on the tabloid issue. I know a number of tabloid readers who will all say they ‘know’ that the muck they read is mostly fictitious, and should be treated as an entertaining comic, but they still manage to internalise the views contained within despite their own professed politics.
Sure, Freddie Starr may well have not eaten that hamster on that particular occasion – but apparently, hamster-eating by that demographic is on the rise.
I’d say the biggest difference between the tabloids and the broadsheets is in the ratio of opinion to information.
February 29th, 2008 | 1:28pm
by Jherad
As another fully-paid up member of the Fifty, may I suggest you read Nick Davies’ new book, if you haven’t already? In describing how the press operates largely by regurgitating press releases (as do some of our elected reps, of course), it shows that the gap between the Guardian and NME is narrower than ever. It seems that PR companies, for the journo in a hurry, offer a meat-space version of a quick Googling – they’re always on hand with just the right ‘facts’, sliced thinly enough to be easily digestible.
February 29th, 2008 | 4:40pm
by Rochenko
Heh, that’s it. I’ve heard about that book too many times now, so I’ve gone ahead and ordered it. It’ll have to join the to-read queue behind Unspeak and Maximum Bob though.
February 29th, 2008 | 5:15pm
by Jherad
There’s an interesting example of the same sort of thing in the US. Jonah Goldberg writes a blog post on one sentence in an eight webpage review. “Maybe he makes a great case, but informing us about his conscience sounds like the kind of thing a guy who’s actually wrestling with his conscience tends to do.” But the conscience reference comes after
Because the reviewer “made it all the way to the end”. Some people take time before forming an opinion and others don’t. Only one of these is worth reading.
March 1st, 2008 | 9:28am
by Dave Weeden
I must shamefully confess that you’re probably not reading my best writing
That’s not a shameful confession – you talented bastard – it’s a cleverly disguised boast. And you would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for my X-Ray specs.
March 1st, 2008 | 6:58pm
by Larry Teabag
Aw shucks, Justin.
As for you, Larry… dagnabbit! You saw through my ploy, and just when I thought I was being so clever! Actually, when I initially wrote the line, I honestly wasn’t thinking of it in that light, but of course I immediately saw the disguised boast within it and grinned a wry grin as I published. I thought it would be Merrick who pulled me up on it, or maybe John B (given the contrary comments I’ve been posting to his blog), but I can’t say I’m all that surprised it was you.
Rochenko… just like Jherad, I’ve been thinking about getting that book for a wee while and your comment was the final nudge I needed. It’s on the way as I write (though, like Jherad, god only knows when I’ll get round to actually reading it; right now it’s a steady diet of Lacan, Freud and Zizek followed by Jung, Hillman and Edinger for dessert).
March 7th, 2008 | 12:38am
by Jim Bliss