Jack Shafer dives deep into a Pew Report and surfaces, gasping, with this self-contradictory tidbit:
Over the last two decades, the Pew people have plotted a steady decline in the credibility of newspapers among its survey respondents. In 1985, 84 percent said they could believe most of what they read in their daily newspaper, but by 2004 that number was down to 54 percent....Over nearly the same interval, survey respondents gave consistently favorable marks to their own daily newspaper! In 1984, 88 percent of those familiar enough with a daily newspaper to give it a rating gave it a favorable grade. In 2005, 80 percent still did.
Decades of Republican attacks have done a Dirty Harry on the abstract concept of journalistic credibility, but they haven't done much at all to pry Americans off of their daily newspapers, to get them away from the television, to rip the radios from their cars. NPR has 20 million listeners, Fox News, for all its success, is a joke compared to the audience for the Big Three networks. Regional media, with all its varied biases, is still delivered by the present generation of paperboys, and the very same adults who don't trust the elite media still suck down their Gazette's editorial page.
The media, however, didn't escape nearly so unscathed. All but a few outlets tiptoe around stories, worrying about a blast fax from Brent Bozell or a mean word from Scott McLellan, who might scold them for insufficient attention to Muslim sensibilities moments before announcing that President Bush will veto any congressional attempts to guarantee humane treatment of Islamic prisoners. If the media were smarter, it'd stop presenting itself as subservient to the political world it covers and instead refashion its image into an independent set of ass-kickers who, when challenged by partisan politicians, are just eliciting the fully expected howls from hurt political hacks.
That was, after all, Fox News's innovation. Bill O'Reilly seems like the kind of guy who, if you accused him of right wing bias, would spit in your face, sleep with your wife, and steal your car. That image protects him because, in the same way that Republicans contest facts to fill unpleasant subjects with static, dismissing the partisans attacking your credibility makes their scolding seem like just so much sleazy political background noise. On the other hand, reacting as if it were true, complete with internal investigations and pledges to "seek balance" -- whatever that is -- make their attacks sound true, not because the charge makes sense, but because the victim looks so guilty. Bill O'Reilly, a former anchor on a celebrity gossip show, had the experience to figure that out. Newsweek should take a lesson.
