Kontextmaschine

25th April 2014

Post with 3 notes

Two addenda to that media post:

First, it’s worth noticing that a lot of the best journalistic applecart-tippers come from expat backgrounds. The Exiled guys - Mark Ames, Sasha Levine, John Dolan(/“Gary Brecher”) - came from the eXile, a Moscow expat paper, and if I remember correctly, some of the neoreaction all-stars are expat journalists from the former British Empire outposts of Asia. Hell, I think even a bunch of the Reason guys back in the ‘90s had been expat journalists in Prague (with Suck.com in between).

Second, for my impending doom fetishist followers (coughcoughbloodandhedonismcough… ahem, excuse me. Like bloodandhedonism, I mean to say) it bears pointing out that the Cold War Sulzbergerian/network news model of journalistic outlets with no explicit partisan alignment - just a general consensusist one - and a sentorian from-above tone (“fair and balanced”, you might say)… Well, there were structural factors behind that, yes. A limited number of broadcast networks producing one product for national consumption, before local political cultures had completely come(/been brought) into line with a uniform bipartisan divide; competition from these broadcasters winnowing the vibrant newspaper ecosystem down to one daily paper per city; the Fairness Doctrine. But also*, there was conscious intent at play. Ideological, party-linked newspapers, operating under the pressures of niche journalism for competitive advantage in a for-profit system, had in prewar Europe played a major part in the pillarisation of the populace into different camps - socialist, liberal, christian democrat, fascist, etc. - which would develop their own economies, welfare systems, even paramilitaries, which would occasionally try to swallow the state apparatus (and sometimes succeed). Competitive journalism of the “yellow” type had pushed America into wars before, luckily against an ailing Spanish Empire and her runty spawn that it could defeat handily, but this was seen as a risk to be guarded against. But pf, history.

None of this will something something.



*“but also”. Between the New Deal and WWII the state and nominally extrastate New Class had significantly intertwined - to great success! - in the Atomic Age “best and the brightest” system that Vietnam later undermined. It’s a little specious to make a firm distinction between the two in this period, and the Fairness Doctrine (est. 1949) was just this elite consensus codified into law. Of course, journalism is held sacrosanct from government imbrication, as we’ve all learned from the schools and media, and the consolidation of news outlets in the hands of enthusiastic supporters of this coalition was merely the result of the causeless hand of the free market.

Tagged: it's mediahistoryjournalism