Early in 2019, a local guy – Raymond B. Wallace – had an opinion published by The Richmond Times-Dispatch in which he fulminated about the distressing decline in quality of broadcast news, especially the cable news outlets. By decline, he apparently meant that the news was not being reported in a pleasing manner, and pleasing was evidently some version of Fox News. The reasoning was more than a tad motivated. Mr. Wallace also purports to outline the history of the spiral downward in reportage that he perceived. The secret behind offering a history of anything is knowing the history of something; the salient facts of this history seem to have evaded his notice. The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t publish my response to Mr. Wallace.
Raymond B. Wallace, “What’s Happened to Television Journalism?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 January 2019, A9 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/ray-wallace-column-whats-happened-to-television-journalism/article_5d8598f6-9edc-548e-b68b-1e89bd73cec5.html).
Raymond B. Wallace’s excoriation of cable news suffers from lack of historical context. The genesis of today’s polarized cable news environment is not difficult to locate.
The FCC in 1987 suspended the Fairness Doctrine, under which the granting of broadcasting licenses was conditioned upon a commitment both to cover controversial matters of public significance and to present differing opinions regarding them. Efforts by the US Congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine legislatively were thwarted by President Reagan’s veto in 1987 and President Bush’s threatened veto in 1991. The quashing of the Fairness Doctrine fostered the proliferation of political talk radio and it is likely no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh’s show first went national in 1988.
The polarization was sharpened with passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Intended to foster media competition, the legislation has had precisely the opposite effect, the concentration of ownership of electronic media into progressively fewer hands. It likewise is probably not coincidental that Fox News went live eight months after President Clinton signed the bill.
Mr. Wallace seems curiously untroubled by elements of the media environment he decries: the nearly monopolistic domination of political talk radio by the right and the concentration of control of local electronic media into fewer hands, control responsible for the sad spectacle last year of dozens of anchors at Sinclair Broadcasting stations mouthing the same editorial verbatim in a “forced read.” One must wonder whether Mr. Wallace’s problem is less that each cable outlet has selected its editorial lane and more that some outlets have the temerity to gainsay and fact-check the notoriously mendacious Trump administration. Whatever the case, he asserts that a myriad of stories goes largely unreported except by Fox; nevertheless, I, no Fox viewer, was substantially informed regarding every story he cites. How could this have happened?
Among letters that never reached print, this is one of the more interesting ones. It responded to an opinion from an in-house editorialist at The Richmond Times-Dispatch, A. Barton Hinkle, who since has decamped for the private sector, Dominion Energy I think. Mr. Hinkle’s op-ed was either disingenuous or clueless or cluelessly disingenuous or disingenuously clueless. His thesis, to the extent he had one, was that the media is dishonest, politicians are dishonest, I do declare, whatever am poor, pitiful I to do? He presented this as a symmetrical affliction of both left and right, an annoying and misleading absurdity.
I sent the letter and it didn’t appear in the paper. There’s no entitlement to have an item printed but this one was especially on point and it touched upon journalism. I was curious about why it hadn’t made the cut and had a polite email exchange with the letters editor. I noted that the tetchiness between politicians and the media had gained a further dimension since the letter’s submission because Greg Gianforte, a GOP congressional candidate, had assaulted Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian. It should be noted, parenthetically, that President World Wrestling Entertainment nodded his approval of Mr. Gianforte’s criminous conduct, the Montanan won his race, and now, after a hot minute in Congress, is the state’s governor.
The editor cited a technicality, that fewer than sixty days had passed since a letter from me had been printed. The point could be contested, but I was invited to resubmit it after the moratorium, which by any mode of counting had passed. I did. It wasn’t printed and, of the stuff on the blog, it has the distinction of double rejection by the same outlet. The relevant wisdom comes from W. C. Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point being a damn fool about it.” This was a wall against which I didn’t need to beat my head.
A. Barton Hinkle, “Who’s Telling the Truth in Washington? Anyone?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 May 2017, E5 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/a-barton-hinkle-column-whos-telling-the-truth-in-washington-anyone/article_63dfa5c6-376e-5a2e-a78b-3e119bcc4c8d.html).
A. Barton Hinkle’s recent opinion piece (“Who’s Telling the Truth in Washington? Anyone?,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 21, 2017, E1, E5) misleads and lacks the balanced presentation of fact which Mr. Hinkle purports to champion.
Mr. Hinkle repeats the tired bromide of liberal bias in the “mainstream” media and then rehearses the canonical list of journalistic missteps. Absent from his excoriation of media is a Fox News network whose viewers have repeatedly been found the least informed, indeed the most misinformed, among consumers of major media outlets and are sometimes better served by no news at all. He likewise ignores a network of right-wing “think tanks” whose goal is ideological advocacy, not dispassionate regard for truth.
These omissions are stunning during a week in which Fox News begrudgingly disavowed its “investigative reporting” surrounding the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy theory dragged from the muck of far-right fever swamps. This correction perhaps represents progress under Fox’s new regime, since the late Roger Ailes would acknowledge only the most egregious errors. Is Mr. Hinkle so transfixed by the mote in the “mainstream” media’s eye that the nearby dangling beam vanishes? The comedian Stephen Colbert’s famous quip has never cut so sharp or true: “It is a well-known fact that reality has a liberal bias.”
Mr. Hinkle’s facile cynicism maligns journalists who toil in good faith against deadline to produce “history’s first draft.” This draft is sometimes messy. Sources can mislead. A journalist, like everyone, harbors political views. A rogue reporter sometimes willfully deceives. None of this on balance invalidates journalism’s service as bulwark against public malfeasance and corruption.
Mr. Hinkle seems to offer only a peculiar informational nihilism. In days when Russian President Putin baldly undermines Americans’ faith in media and institutions and President Trump seemingly admires Putin’s program, Mr. Hinkle’s critique, doubtless unintentionally, reads like useful idiocy.