Within the space of a week, the mainstream press in the United States has embarrassed itself at least three times by confusing fact and fiction Not only have many television stations and newspapers managed to attribute unsourced (and patently false) racist remarks to the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, they have also managed to attend a fake press conference without realising that they were listening to actors, and devoted dozens of hours and thousands of column inches to the dramatic story of a young boy borne up into the sky by a homemade balloon, only to discover that he had never been inside the balloon and that the whole incident had been staged by his family.
None of this happened within the context of a high-stakes political campaign – where distortion and misinformation are commonplace – but during the routine newsgathering of a relatively quiet week. When CNN first cut to the “balloon boy” saga, it interrupted coverage of a speech by President Obama, seduced no doubt by the greater visual drama of the strange silvery object tumbling through the sky above Colorado, and the prospect of broadcasting a rescue in “real time”. It took a giant anti-climax and a strange and unconvincing explanation from the boy’s parents — the family had appeared in a TV reality show and staged the incident in hopes of being invited to appear on another— before it dawned on the media, and the police, how easily they had been duped.
The Washington press conference was a similar comedy of errors. Since the event was held at the proper venue and the “spokesman” for the American Chamber of Commerce looked like the real thing, the press corps took everything that was said at face value. Never mind that the speaker made jaw-dropping assertion after another, claiming, for example, that America’s businessmen — having finally seen the error of their ways — would embrace strict environmental policies. All the while the press sat there absorbing this high parody with a straight face. When a genuine representative of the Chamber of Commerce interrupted the proceedings, the press were not sure whom to believe. It was only when the activists could not produce a business card that they decided to unmask themselves and explain the joke. Afterwards, in a further postmodern twist, the Yes Men — the group behind the prank — were soon feted by the media they had just deceived, and stayed on the air for many news cycles beyond their notional fifteen minutes.
Perhaps these two mistakes are excusable given the frenetic pace of broadcast journalism in the age of the Internet, but the defaming of Rush Limbaugh cannot be rationalised away so easily. When he decided to buy into the St Louis Rams football franchise, the press reported widely that Limbaugh had made a series of remarks which clearly showed that he was an unrepentant racist – a slur from which nobody in American public life ever truly recovers. Well known for his provocations of the American left, Limbaugh was an easy target. (After the election of president Obama, he memorably rallied the faithful by saying that he hoped the new president “would fail” – a remark which prompted Democratic strategists to brand Limbaugh as the unspoken leader of the Republican party.) However, despite a long track record of intemperate remarks and innuendos, there was absolutely no proof that Limbaugh had uttered any of the offending remarks. Nevertheless, having been damned in the media, which made much of the fact that Limbaugh’s “racism” would sit very badly with the team’s black athletes, he was forced to withdraw from the prospective purchase.
Unforgivably, as it became increasingly clear that Limbaugh had been falsely accused, instead of apologizing shamefacedly, the press generally took the attitude that it was up to Limbaugh to clear his own name since the fictitious statements sounded just like the sort of things that he might say. This decision to gloss over the mistake ended up confirming a longstanding caricature among millions of conservative voters that mainstream news are bastions of the anti-Republican “liberal media.”
These lapses of judgement are of more than passing interest because the rest of the world has tended to follow America’s lead in consuming the news primarily through images. Although it could be argued that Rupert Murdoch’s egregious Fox News channel routinely produces far greater distortions than any of these examples, that merely underscores the dangerous pseudo-authenticity which infotainment poses to any society that wishes to keep its citizens reasonably well-informed. This is not an abstract problem. Not too long ago, America and Britain launched an invasion of Iraq that was based on fictions just as flimsy as any of these hoaxes. After months of speculation disguised as reportage, the Bush administration’s fictions were powerful enough to tip public opinion towards war. Since then, apart from a few discreet mea culpas when the promised weapons of mass destruction could not be found, there has been little improvement in the US media’s gullibility.
In less developed countries the tendency to take seriously and believe whatever is printed or broadcast by the major media outlets — state-owned or private — is no less troubling. And while sensational but empty stories like these dominate the news, far more important matters, like the progress of foreign wars, or political debates about the economy, education, criminal justice or climate change take place largely out of public view, or get lost completely in the surrounding noise.
With ref to your editorial dd 10-24-09 “Week of Hoaxes” I would like to correct you if I may. Whilst it’s an interesting piece, I found part to be in accurate. Specifically where Rush Limbaugh was mentioned, you went on to say that he never uttered any of the offensive remarks. The truth Is, Rush Limbaugh did state on his daily broadcast show and I quote “I want Barack Obama to fail”. This tape of his radio show was played numerous times on the cable networks news and was very controversial.
Although you are correct Rush said, “I want Barack Obama to fail”. You conveniently left out why he said it. Which is in Rush’s opinion on quote: “I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed because they are bad for America”. See attached link:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011609/content/01125113.guest.html
Simper Fi!
Call me cynical, but media were born in a place of disrepute and constantly exist in and around a disreputable place; ink and pixel stained wretches, but the world values you because that’s the kind of world we have.
The concluding statement in the editorial suggests the writer is as gullible as those media earlier criticised.
You state: “And while sensational but empty stories like these dominate the news, far more important matters, like the progress of foreign wars, or political debates about the economy, education, criminal justice or climate change take place largely out of public view, or get lost completely in the surrounding noise.”
Sensational and empty best describes most of these very stories on the “progress” of foreign wars, political debates about the economy, education, criminal justice, and climate change.
A specific case of the sensational and empty? News stories on CARICOM.
I guess it is very early in the weekend and I am not yet fully recovered from my week. Is there somebody out there who could tell me what this editorial about? To me, it simply makes no sense and lacks coherence. First, it starts by giving prominence to the phrase “mainstream media/press” (MSM).We here in the USA are still waiting for a definition of what MSM is. Excluding Fox News from MSM even though that network has a substantially larger audience than all the other cable news outlets combined still confuses me but apparently it doesn’t confuse Stabroeknews. We just learned that The Wall Street Journal has the largest daily newspaper circulation in the country and yet still is excluded from the MSM, (NY Times classified as such). Rush Limbaugh has the largest radio audience in the country and is excluded from MSM.
Fox News, The Journal, Rush Limbaugh and most of the country’s radio talk shows represent a conservative/republican ideology (or anti-liberal).They have the largest audience by a long way. These entities are so intertwined and are taken seriously enough by each other so that space and program time is shared among them. How could some “small” MSM be responsible for twisting the news when the conservatives (Rush included) dominate the news?
Stabroeknews, Rush Limbaugh’s own words did him in and NOTHING was fabricated.www.factcheck.org & http://www.mediamatters.org (even though tilts left) might be good sources for you before you write this kind of editorial. In short, there is so much information (and misinformation) out there that it has become important for people to sort through the news. Regrettably, this editorial did not and is guilty of just what it seems to be against.
NB: I hope the readers here can recognize from my piece that using the phrase “mainstream press (or media)” is a partisan term not grounded in facts and exposes one who has an American conservative ideology. It is a poll tested phrase that calls this group to action. Just like the words: welfare, affirmative action, illegal immigrants, liberals (they were the whites who lead the civil rights legislation through congress), mainstream media appeals to the racial insecurities among whites,especially the southerners. While it worked during the Reagan years the rapidly changing demographics of the US makes using those words a liability to the conservatives of today for they are seen as a group of white southerners who would see no problem with segregation if it existed today.
Seriously, Mr Moderator,Who is your editor?
who ever wrote this editorial haven’t done their research on Rush Limbaugh all of his races remarks are well documented , all they had to do was to google Rush radio show and all the facts are there to be read.
I was in Guyana and heard Limbaugh myself on ESPN making racist comments about an African American football player. This man wanting to buy into the NFL, two-thirds of whose players are Black, is insulting and he deserved to be shut out, even though his being shut out was in the end really about money.
I was returning from Canada on Friday and, as I often do, I was listening to Rush’s program and he was really ranting at the mouth against Obama on this following topic. Hoaxes exits, sometimes to irritate the heck out of the person/s being targeted.
“Limbaugh Falls for Obama Thesis Hoax” – AOL News
filed under: Political News
(Oct. 25) – A fictitious article that claimed President Barack Obama slammed the Constitution in his college thesis had some people fooled into thinking it was the real thing — including Rush Limbaugh.
The conservative radio show host reported the story as fact on his show Friday after an obscure blogger, Michael Leeden, picked it up from a satire Web site last week, the New York Daily News reported Sunday. But after Limbaugh found out the piece was a fake, he didn’t apologize for his mistake.
Limbaugh sounded off on the false report about a college thesis written by Obama, titled “Aristocracy Reborn.” In it, the report claimed, the president criticized the nation’s Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the distribution of wealth.
“While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned,” the fake report on Obama’s Columbia University thesis said about the Constitution. “While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”
“So here is who we have as our president of the United States: an anti-constitutionalist man who finds it an obstacle and is finding ways around it on purpose, unconstitutionally,” Limbaugh said.
“Much of what he’s doing is unconstitutional, and I’m waiting for the lawsuits to be filed by some of these people at some point,” he added. “How is that hope and change working out for ya, folks?”
Later in the program, Limbaugh learned the report was a fake and alerted his listeners. But he insisted the fabricated thesis was still in line with what the president thinks, the New York Daily news reported.
“So I shout from the mountaintops: ‘It was satire!’” Limbaugh said on the program. “But we know he (Obama) thinks it. Good comedy, to be comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels about distribution of wealth.”
Leeden has since apologized for making the mistake.
“The hoax/satire was written in August, so it’s not connected to any current event. I came across it on Twitter, read the blog, found it interesting, and posted on it. I failed to notice that one of the tags was ’satire,’” he wrote.