MSM Fail: Does Iran fit the narrative?

Two days in, Iran rages in post-election chaos. What may be the newest member of the nuclear club is in the midst of an uprising, but watching the cable networks, one wouldn’t know.  As of last night, Fox News was running taped programing on Bernie Madoff and MSNBC was re-running it’s meat grinder of Maddow and Olbermann. At least I think they were,  I was a little blasted. Nothing like drunk-viewing the Shia proletariat as it tosses Molotov cocktails at the thought and religion police. For one small moment, I wished I was living in Iran.

Sunday shows air, I figured at least token discussion of the matter at hand. Instead coverage was weighed heavily toward President Obama’s healthcare reform. Understanding  healthcare reform and its subsequent consequences is mightily important, but a strategic country is in the midst of tearing itself apart and because there wasn’t any good video, just plain apathy or any myriad of reasons, the producers didn’t feel the need to deviate from the script set in Wednesday’s meeting.

If Obama suddenly slipped in his bathtub and knocked himself to amnesia, would this fit in on Fox at 8 p.m. on Saturday? Would MSNBC interrupt coverage to tell us how Obama is even more clear-headed? Given the millions Roger Ailes and company have poured into the production, at least one weekend anchor should be up to the challenge of purveying historical international events to the public. At least MSNBC could have broke in and explained how it was George W. Bush’s fault.

I found most of my Iran info from Reddit and a list of Iranian twitter accounts relaying details across the globe. Iran successfully downed Facebook as the election came to a close, but it couldn’t wrangle everything. Andrew Sullivan quit talking about Trig Palin’s DNA long enough to go to work as a journalist. Using readers with knowledge of the region, Sullivan was able to publish directives translated from Farsi to English and pour details into the space the cable networks failed to. Michael Totten, he of the one-man Pay Pal and pocket change show, pumped numerous video from YouTube of demonstrations and protest and was updating faster than almost any MSM Web site.

In a somewhat bizzaro instance, Hugh Hewitt, Andrew Sullivan and Juan Cole rallied together and blasted the cable networks for refusing to abandon the tape and roll with history.

None of this is surprising to the right. Tea parties have been regular occurrences for months, yet nary a word except on tax day, when events were turned into a more clear-cut narrative. Fox News decided to show up as head cheerleader and draw attention away from the organizers and those who brought the issues to the forefront. Suddenly, it was something both sides of the ideological bubble could sink teeth into – purity for Fox News, with hosts at the scene. We all know what CNN thought.

Narrative journalism is killing journalism. The script is written and its followed with all I’s dotted. It’s disaster media, coming to a town near you, where no missing blonde is less important than an international crisis. The news always determined the news, not what B-roll is available. Instead of finding the story, networks seek it out, assumptions blazing.

Maybe it’s ratings driven. Maybe viewers would rather watch video of Madoff hauled away in handcuffs than watch history unfold. I’d like to doubt that. Granted, too many would reach for the DVR and pop up “American Idol,” but for the few of us still engaged, it would be nice to be informed.

The outlets that did well were a unique mix of new and old. Wall Street Journal, the New York Times  – all kept the situation abreast. But those floundering cable nets, with that 24-hour hole to fill, couldn’t find enough dirt with Iran to get the shovel out of the garage.

Instead of relaying facts and information, it was the same so-so weekend lineup on every channel. CNN, the supposed international leader, who traded favors and hid stories from public view to curry favor from Iraq, was absent – we probably know why.

Instead, the dominant nets continue to live and breath in their bubbles, feeding its viewers from the trough. It’s mind numbing. Even as someone ideologically lined up with Fox News, I find the channel useless in terms of gathering information. Almost everything can be found on the internet beforehand. MSNBC is a travesty, at least Fox allows airtime for those counter-pointing the hosts during late-night puerility sessions.

But what can we expect from a media who can’t decide what facts will remain facts. Kyle Smith spent a day on the couch last week watching the cable nets twist and turn with the Holocaust Museum shooting.

Exit your media bubble to discuss the news with a friend from an alternate reality, and you may not even make it to normative policy ideas (should something be done about hate speech that may lead to violence?) because you can’t even agree on the basics. Each of you will dismiss extremists you’d rather not be associated with as crazy and irrelevant while playing “pin the extremist to the other side.”

If you didn’t read Hot Air, you might not realize now is the time to start hoarding frozen bacon: Obama and Co. “are preparing to dictate your food and leisure choices.” If you didn’t read Daily Kos, you wouldn’t know that Congressman John Boehner might be guilty of “verbal terrorism?” for saying, after a Guantanamo inmate Ahmed Ghailani was transferred to the US, “This is the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America.”

Was Krauthammer right to be pleased with a country gone “fractured”? Today the discussion of serious public policy subjects is as surreal, as stuffed with contradictions, misunderstandings, denials and real or phony outrage as the Yale literature studies seminar where I first heard the name Derrida. We have many more roads to the truth, but no way to be sure we’ve arrived.

Since the Rathergate incident, we’ve been told that the layers of fact-checkers, investigators and editors can’t be replaced. But in a real-time environment, a handful of people using connections, its own readership and available technology outpaced most of the veterans. It should be a wake up call. June 13, 2009 should be taught in every Journalism class in America.

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