Fear and Favor: Why is everyone mad at the mainstream media?
Politicians?especially conservative politicians, and especially the Bush team?felt free to criticize the press more openly than in past election cycles. Conservatives are relativists when it comes to the press. In their view, nothing is neutral: there is no disinterested version of the news; everything reflects politics and relationships to power and cultural perspective. If mainstream journalists find it annoying that conservatives think of them as unalterably hostile, they find it just as annoying that liberals think of them as the friend who keeps letting them down. Mainstream journalists want to think that the public is aware of?and respects?the boundaries that separate real journalism from entertainment, and opinion, and propaganda, and marketing. If, instead, the public not only enjoys the quasi-journalistic pleasures that lie outside the boundaries, but also doesn?t accept that what?s inside really is distinct and superior?well, that would sting. [...]
Journalism that is inquisitive and intellectually honest, that surprises and unsettles, didn?t always exist. There is no law saying that it must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn?t exist and that have worked hard to undermine it. This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don?t believe in us, don?t want us, anymore?
