Bless the press for being able to see a world in a grain of sand. After all, the number of events that occur in the country on a given day are finite, and if covering foreign events is not interesting to viewers, the way to meet the demand for content is to distend political commentary to new and Tourettic heights.
The problem arises when commentary and news marble so finely together it becomes difficult to distinguish fact from opinion. For example, if you watch CNN, you may notice their particular Jeopardic tic in which they confound these two by phrasing a ridiculous statement in the form of a question.
It’s actually quite clever, because like the Barbara Walters approach (”some people think you are ___”), it discharges the speaker from most measures of journalistic (or legal) responsibility: Is Obama {really a Christian/sending a secret message with the ‘bump’/really a time traveling leprechaun}?
It’s also strangely captivating; it’s a guilty pleasure, like licking the fake butter from the microwave popcorn bag. What off-color remark will Glenn Beck say next? Who will Rush Limbaugh verbally accost today? At least these particular specimens often forgo the courtesy of ‘Jeopardizing’ their commentary, allowing people to more readily identify it as entertainment first, news second. And if not, at least John Stewart will point it out for us.
But I think we know all this. The main purpose for this introduction is to serve as a contrast to the Canadian press, who remains markedly behind the times in this trend. For example, instead of speculating if Obama is sending a covert communication to terrorists by fist bumping his wife, the Canadian Press would simply chide Prime Minister Harper as being ‘dorky’ and ‘robotic’ for shaking his childrens hands on their way to school. Had they wished to pursue true journalistic hipness, they could’ve ‘Jeopardized’ it like this: “Is Harper cutting backroom deals to further his son’s lemonade stand’s interests? Find out next.”
One way in which the Canadian press has been modernizing itself is through another marbling: journalism and blogging. But like apples and mustard, not all combinations leave a good taste in one’s mouth. Whereas most bloggers answer to no one (and are likewise paid by no one), journalistic works were at least traditionally held to a minimum bar of notability. Now the Canadian press has discovered blogging, and the results are, in my best Eric Cartman voice, “seriously weak.” I can only describe it as a sort of journalistic narcissism–a growing self-fascination with the journalistic process.
I first noticed it during the Beijing Olympics. The reporters began running blogs promising a faster, more frequent, inside look at the Olymics. What their readers recieved instead was an inside look into the daily life of reporting. One particular post (the link escapes me) detailed the daily security screening the reporters had to endure. That may be interesting at some level, but the story invariably became an auto-biography. The reporter noted that as he pulled the keys out of his pocket to pass through the x-ray machine, a Beijing security official rushed up to him with a crushed-velvet lined dish for him to place them in. Then came the eloquent narrative of the grueling bus ride to the stadium. Perhaps a story about the athletes bus rides would have been a greater contribution (albeit not much). The fact is, we read a blog about the Olympics to hear about the atheletes, not the reporters. (Oh, and no, the fact I’m not writing about Punchscan on a Punchscan blog hasn’t escaped me.)
Now that Canada is in an election campaign the blogging hedonism on behalf of real reporters (ones who are presumably paid to write this stuff) has reached a new high. I think the best example of this is CBC’s Political Bytes blog, where some of the top journalists in the country pepper our feeds with as many stories about themselves as the political campaigns they’re following. One reporter lamented she would be missing out on being fed lobster on the campaign plane. Another rejoiced their hotel was across from a Starbucks since the political campaign they’re following makes bad coffee. Often expressed (in various ways) is the sentiment,
Keeping reporters well-fed and watered keeps them less grumpy.
The suggestion, from their own ranks, is that reporters can be “persuaded” to file more positively toned pieces when they are pampered. Except of course when they are pampered, they get huffy about it.
I wouldn’t expect Glenn Beck to divert bandwidth from his political sermon to tell us, just pretend: ‘the Obama campaign chef totally massacred a good prime rib with what was the worst reduction I’ve even tasted. Oh, and that red had such an overbearing nose, it overtook all the swing states.’
Well at least the Canadian press is grooming a media elite of its own. It may not be neo-con Jeopardy, but at least it’s as informative. I just wish they’d spend more time breaking the ‘fourth-wall’ of politics, not journalism.
