Here at DailyKos, we do our fair share of handwringing over the often skewed, usually superficial, and always fickle institution that is our establishment media. The concern is logical and very well-founded, as public opinion is the lifeblood of broad-stroke politics. And, recognizing the lazy acceptance of Orwellian frames and the abandonment of objective reporting in favor of "you decide" pundit wars that now masquerade as the journalistic standard, it scares the hell out of us.
Well folks, I, for one, am done being scared.
(More below the flip)
What is the secret to my new-found courage and stoicism, you ask? Well, it's fairly simple - I don't care anymore.
Strike that - I care as deeply about the gaping flaws in our democracy as I always have. It's just that I've been mentally and emotionally grappling with this 3-million-pound gorilla that is "public perception" now for longer than I can remember, and I've come to realize that I'm fighting the wrong battle.
The establishment media has always done, does, and will always do its best to tailor its frames to what it perceives as the "American consensus". When people go to the polls every two years, they elect not only their politicians, but also the media frames they will be receiving during the next term, subject to some pundit's interpretation of what the election "meant". That's comparatively good news for Democrats as Bush-administration malfeasance will now get less of a free pass, though unreasonable expectations with regard to the "fixing" of the Iraq quagmire will burden us as well. But that's not really the point. I don't just want my horse to be leading the race - I don't want it to be a horserace at all!
The net result of all my anxiety over media mediocrity is nothing. Don't get me wrong - I'm not so megalomaniacal as to have thought that my personal opinion would shape the media landscape. But I have realized that the media will always be mediocre. The 3-million-pound gorilla that is our media and, in a broader sense, the dilemma of public choice in a mass democracy, can never be defeated, it simply is.
So, while I still strongly support efforts to push the gorilla in directions that will help rather than harm us, I hereby divest my emotional and cognitive resources from the wasteland that pretends to be our national townhall. Instead, my news and information consumption will now be geared toward one thing and one thing only - the enrichment of my own personal knowledge.
Thus, fellow Kossacks, to bring an end to this perhaps somewhat solipsistic contribution, I lay out the terms of the Tipsy-media divorce settlement:
1. I will never deliberately watch television news again. This includes the networks, cable (even you, Keith, forgive me!), and, very sadly, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
2. For general-sweep news coverage I will now rely on those print outlets I judge to be the most thorough and objective, supplemented, of course, by some of the better sites to be found on the internets.
3. For in-depth coverage, I will turn to books and academic journals. If the issue is extremely important to me, I may even engage in some primary research.
4. I will never allow the media to tell me what I should and should not be interested in again.
5. "Journalists" who deliberately spin the news or simply do a very poor job are no longer my enemy. They are simply dead to me.