Spinners

Billmon has an interesting post up about how the AP is trying to report on reality, while not straying too far from the approved narrative of, "Bush had a really good two weeks!! huzzah!!" Making the News Fit the Spin. The important part of the post comes at the end, where Billmon sums up just what is wrong with our media.

My purpose here is not to rag on the AP, or the reporter in question, who's far from the worst of the bunch. As Juan Cole says, he is trying to correct the record -- he's just not being very direct about it. But all that only goes to show how thoroughly the official propaganda continues to shape the coverage -- even when the journalists involved understand that the propaganda is misleading or flat wrong.

Breaking the cycle would require the herd to challenge the spin and disinformation they're being fed, instead of letting it become the baseline that has to be timidly corrected later as the facts come to light. The burden of proof, in other words, would have to be put on the spinners, instead of reality. And it would have to be put there by the journalistic herd as a whole -- or at least, by the dominant group within the herd -- and not just by a few mavericks and dissidents.

But of course we no longer have that kind of journalism in this country -- and never really did, other than for a few brief years after Vietnam and Watergate. An experiment in journalistic truth telling (or at least, lie debunking) that today's corporate media bosses and the watchdogs of the authoritarian right are both determined never to allow again.

I suspect he's right. Depressing, isn't it?