After the debate last week, I was struck by the rush of media navel-gazing that followed. The loudest--and most critical--voices came from the blogosphere. Words like narrative, meta-narrative, and meme (the fashionable word of the week) endlessly flowed across my screen. The outlines of the critique were clear--the problem was the closed nature of old mainstream media. Here were celebrity journalists--in the employ of corporate interests like GE, or Disney, or Viacom, or the Tribune Company, or Fox--shaping political reality for the rest of us. The alternative media / blogosphere--by contrast--was the place where the authentic debate was taking place, where real people were having a real conversation about real issues. I don't deny the basic outlines of this, but I am disturbed by the self-congratulatory nature of this analysis. By way of example, I offer my experience this weekend with The Huffington Post.
As a reader and sometimes responder on The Huffington Post for a while now, I've noticed a spike in restrictions being appled to viewers who choose to respond to a given item. The Huffington Post has sharply limited the number of characters available for a post, imposed a oversight policy that often moves at a glacial pace, and casually "bans" bloggers for unclear reasons. The Huffington Post's FAQ page notes that common offenses that can lead to being banished include obscene posts, ad hominem attacks, and off-topic postings. But, given the river of bile that flows from the keyboards of The Huffington Post bloggers, it seemed as if much was tolerated and there was little that was unacceptable.
Why do I care? That's right, I have an axe to grind. Yes, I was banned from The Huffington Post. Recently, responding to a column questioning whether national news figures could possibly speak with any authority to the lives of working people in America, I wrote this posting:
"I agree, national media figures--particulary members of the pundocracy--have very little portfolio with regards to the working classes. When national correspondent's children attend elite schools alongside the children of prominent politicans--when reporters, acting as pundits on shows like Hardball, Race to the White House, etc., commonly refer to politicans by their first names (ex: "Well Charlie (Rangel) has some trouble at home as his wife supports Obama")--when reporters dance on stage with Karl Rove at clubby gatherings--when members of the Washington-based print and electronic media all troop over to the Vice-President's house for some holiday cheer--perhaps overly familiar relationships are revealed. Given the role of the press--to investigate the exercise of power--familiarity can easily drift into corruption. There is no doubt that effective reporting relies on access, reliable sourcing, etc. But access can be seductive and may create a vested interest in journalists--an interest to protect their access, to protect their status as insiders.
National media celebrities--and the legion of second-tier pundits who come and go as they audition their analysis on the cable shows--have class-based ambitions. There's nothing wrong with that as such, but those ambitions are almost inevitably tied to--and in support of--extant power relationships. The danger, then, of corruption is always present. Corruption at a petty level is sometimes starkly clear. For example, journalists with high media profiles can leverage their celebrity into lucrative book deals--writing mostly lightweight, synthetic, derivative, and disposable studies--that are then flogged relentlessly on each other's shows. This, in turn, encourages memes (there's that high-falutin word of the week again...heck I even heard Tim Russert use it on his Saturday show) that enter the cultural/political bloodstream, reinforcing the journalist's insights and expertise. The result is often a feedback loop that creates its own reality, just as it crowds out other voices. (This happens in a more tranisient way throughout the pundocracy. Watch an interesting or unique insight articulated on a Monday become conventional wisdom by Friday as pundits repeat it over and over again). There are exceptions, of course. Recent books from outstanding journalists like Dana Priest, Tom Ricks, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Fred Kaplan, and Samantha Power come to mind. More seriously, corruption and co-option can be disaterous. The Judith Miller affair is an example of this.
All this said, it is difficult to then believe that journalists--even those who claim an authentic "childhood in the working-class"--can claim any real insights into the concerns of working people. The journalist's concerns, grounded in their own class or status ambitions, are different. They can report--but they run into trouble when they analyze."
Because of space restraints, my post to Huffington was an edited version of the remarks above. At any rate, this post earned me the terse message, "Sorry, but you have been banned from commenting." (italics added) Well, The Huffington Post was polite, but not polite enough to respond to an email--and another, and another--asking about my crime and punishment. True, I can still view The Huffington Post--and I can continue, if I wish, to clean out the cookies they put on my hard drive. So what and who cares?
Hey, I know The Huffington Post is a piece of private property. But the conceit is often advanced that sites like The Huffington Post are America's new town squares. The web, it is argued, has a democratizing effect and allows new voices to find an audience. This certainly can be true if your're blogging from Tehran, or Baghdad, or Beijing, or Lhasa, or even Detroit, or Pittsburgh, or Marin County. But it is equally true that some large sites like The Huffington Post are anemic examples of the democratizing power of the web.
In a sense, sites like The Huffington Post are more similar to a shopping mall than main street or the commons. Malls are aggresively private spaces where no activity takes place that is not sanctioned by the owners. Malls are also aggresively panopticon spaces--highly regulated and highly surveilled. And, sites like The Huffington Post are--like private malls--commercial enterprises engaged in the business of marketing and selling. Arianna Huffington--who owns the means of production in this case--uses her site to advance her financial interests and enhance her pundit power. Here's the first line from her blog on Sunday, April 20th:
"In my new book, Right Is Wrong, I show how the lunatic fringe of the right has hijacked the media (along with our democracy) -- not via Fox News and the blowhards of talk radio, but through the complicity of high-profile enablers in the mainstream media."
In her "blog" the title Right is Wrong is--of course--directly linked to Amazon where the viewer is invited to pre-order this volume. (And double-up--receiving a 5% discount--by buying Huffington's last book as well).
So what's the payoff for bloggers on a site like The Huffington Post? Sadly, given the space restraints imposed on bloggers, and the opaque rules as to what is and is not acceptable (while allowing an endless stream of invective), I fear that The Huffington Post--like a mall--is about building an audience, building a brand. Yes, you're allowed to make brief comments--if they fall inside some murky guidelines--but this strikes me as more like bread and circuses and less like conversation. What is the purpose of allowing massive amounts of mindless and often obscene ranting if not to simply spike anger? Raising the temperature of the viewer--and then allowing him or her to make a brief statement as to how angry they are--seems like a classic marketing campaign to keep the consumer coming back again and again. By controlling content--her right as an owner--Huffington is then shaping the discourse in the same way she decries in others.
Take it as a cautionary tale, take it as half-baked analysis, take it as a question rather than an answer. Who can say? End of rant.