February 17, 2005

What do 'Journalistic Credentials' Have to do with Good Journalism? CBS News and Eason Jordan

I am a citizen journalist, hear me roar. Why should the old-media be considered more reliable than me? Is it because they have 'credentials'? The Wall Street Journal seems to think so. The gist of this editorial seems to be that the MSM is the grown up media, while we bloggers are the immature. I'll take that as a compliment.

What are Eason Jordan's credentials? What journalism school did Dan Rather go to? How about Josh Howard, Betsy West and Mary Murphy? Did Leslie Moonves go to Harvard? Does any of that make them more 'mature' as journalists?

And the WSJ is up front about its fears: what happened to Eason Jordan could happen to us.

It could. It might. Watch out.

Hugh Hewitt's column in today's online edition of the Weekly Standard (via Michelle Malkin) completely misses the mark before redeeming himself in the end. What was Hugh's mistake? He played the MSM game. He attempts to refute the 'bloggers aren't qualified' accusation by listing the qualifications of a number of prominent bloggers.

That misses the whole point. If what I have to say is informative, credible, well-written, inciteful, etc, then what does it matter what my 'qualifications' are? This is the logical fallacy of resorting to authority.

Believe us, says the MSM, because we are the MSM. Look at our degrees! Columbia, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. Don't take the bloggers too seriously, because they are not qualified like us.

Do any of my readers know where I went to graduate school? Do you care?

I have gone out of my way not to mention it. The only time I mention my profession is when I am blogging on something personal (such as what it is like from the professor's point of view to give a test).

Let what we write be judged according to its merit, not by our 'credentials'.

Hugh, after playing the MSM's game, finally nails it on the head:

redentials, of course, have little to do with facts--either they are facts or they aren't. And one man's opinion, no matter who signs his paycheck, should be judged by the same standards of logic and persuasiveness as all others, regardless of the letterhead on which it arrives.

Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn't over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

To Peggy's predictions I would also ad this, and it goes to the core of why the MSM is afraid and should be. When Oligopolies finally are faced with real competition the inevitable result will be that some of the companies will go out of business.

Which media news empire will be the first to fold? To early to tell definitively, but my money is on CBS.

Credibility? Downward spiral. Market share? Downward spiral. Ad that to a fixed cost structure and you have a recipe for disaster. Either CBS will learn quickly from their mistakes, or they will become the victim of changing market forces.

All early signs, though, point to CBS not having a steep enough learning curve. They play the role of JP Morgan against the blogosphere's trust busting hordes of Teddy Roosevelts.

Two days ago RatherBias broke a story about the continuing troubles at CBS. Josh Howard, Betsy West and Mary Murphy were not going to accept the role of fall-guy for the memogate scandal and go quietly. A New York Observer article on the same subject also seems to indicate that CBS president Leslie Moonves believes that by simply shuffling a few cards around the deck will take care of the whole mess. That deck, though, has been used to build a house of cards, and it is about to fall.

What Moonves does not realize is that the problem is no longer memogate, nor is it simply a matter of a botched report on memogate, it's much bigger now. The problem is the arrogance of the MSM. The problem is that we have seen the inner workings of the 'mature media' and have found that despite their 'credentials' they are no more qualified to be the caretakers of the Fourth Estate than I am.

They pretend to be better than you and me when in fact they were you and me.

Eason Jordan's recent comments reveal what we in Red State America have suspected for years: the MSM is full of bias, and it's not the kind of bias we like.

All people have biases. Most Americans have biases. We are biased toward America. We are biased toward believing our troops. We are biased toward believing the purity of our own motivations. My own blog shares those biases.

The Muslim world also has biases. They are biased against America. They are biases against believing our troops. They are biased against believing the motivations of the US. Al Jazeera shares those biases.

Eason Jordan revealed his biases when he is reported to have said that American troops target members of the media. This is something al Jazeera has been saying for years. They were no doubt very happy to have learned that an influential American journalist agreed with them, so they ran this cartoon.

CNN firing Eason Jordan (or him resigning, conflicting reports) tells me that CNN gets the totality of the threat of the citizen-journalist to some extent. CBS does not.

Yes, we bloggers are biased but I think that can be a source of our power. Why? Because to say you are biased is to be honest. To say that you are unbiased is to tell a lie. If the media is about any one thing it ought to be about truth. In this, bloggers hold a distinct advantage.

UPDATE: John at Metallicity has more.