Meta and the Thin Grey Line

Glenn Reynolds linked to an interesting piece at Command Post where Alan Nelson posted the text of a speech, more or less, that he gave to an audience of newspaper editors. Alan made some of the same observations I made in my Disintermediation post concerning the ditching of middlemen in the information age. We're both right (natch). But there's a cultural change that needs to happen in the MSM that has nothing to do with the internet, though the net will have an affect in making it happen.

Your typical newspaper story is set in a fictionalized world where the newspaper story doesn't exist. I compare it to a movie, in which a fiction is constructed that doesn't admit that there's a camera and crew which is responsible for everything that you see on screen. Indeed, the camera is the only reason you see anything. If there's a mirror on the set, everyone will go out of their way to make sure that the camera doesn't catch a glimpse of itself or of any other element of the production- grips, lights, caterers, what have you. We are only to see the constructed story and its elements- the actors, set, and props.

How often have you read in a story, "when asked by a reporter, some schmuck said..." only to learn later that it was the reporter writing the story who asked the question? I noticed this a number of years ago. Now when I see that phraseology in a story I assume, until told otherwise, that the writer is referring to himself in the third person. When I'm watching a fictional movie, I don't want to be reminded that the whole thing is a constructed reality. The suspension of disbelief isn't necessary in a news article. Unless it's the suspension of disbelief in the possibility of objectivity that is.

Important also is the almost complete lack of detail on the construction of a story in its own telling. You only rarely read about, say, the lengths a reporter had to go to in order to get a fact, unless the reporter wishes to comment on the desire of a person in the story to keep the fact hidden. But what of the desire of the reporter to uncover it?

You can almost hear the j-school lecture about keeping yourself out of the story. Report the news, don't insert yourself into the news, etc. It sounds reasonable, but is it really? How does the lack of meta-information help the reader, listener, or viewer?

Worse than reporters not referring to themselves or their actions, or doing so in the third person if they have to, is the news media's pretense that the news media is not a player in events. Take Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas's assertion that the media are "going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points." This was reported on blogs and in the media devoted to covering the media, but the story doesn't exist in the MSM. Why no reporting of this in the general media? Because the media don't see themselves as part of the story. They're trained not to for reasons of objectivity. But it has also allowed the news media to escape the kind of analysis and criticism to which they subject others (with quite a degree of righteousness, I'll add).

With certain notorious exceptions, the CBS forged memos being the latest, the news media is reluctant to report on the news media. But scandals are easy. They're rare, and they tend to have discrete beginnings and, more importantly, endings. What's missing is the inclusion of the media as part of the story on a day-to-day basis. There's a thin grey line that prevents the media from mentioning the media in an average story. Only exceptional circumstances will cause them to cross it. We're left to reach the conclusion that only rarely does the media affect events.

When you read the average (news or political) blog post, the self-references, the references to the MSM and to other blogs puts you in the middle of a dense field of meta-information that orients you in political space. (Poseur alert!) Read an average news item from the MSM and you're in a meta-information desert: who's saying what and why, and where we, the reporter and editor and publisher fit into all this, is largely left unsaid. This need not have been the case for all these years, even pre-internet, but the rise of the bloggers will change it, if only because most of us haven't been to j-school, and don't know that the news is off-limits as news.

From now on, when you're reading, or listening to, or watching a news report, note the degree to which it is pretended that the people who put it together don't exist, just like that movie camera eye floating in space that has no effect on the environment it's depicting. Note how the story is rarely a part of the story. Ask how it serves us to pretend that how and by whom the information is put together isn't relevant.

From now on, when you're reading, or listening to, or watching a news report, note how the news media pretends that the news media isn't a part of the story, how they collectively pretend not to exist by not reporting on each other's conduct, even as so many stories are artifacts of the media. Ask how it serves us to pretend that the dissemination and distribution of information, and those engaged in it, aren't factors to be considered.