Dan Froomkin gives his media masters some flawless advice. Froomkin explains the appeal of bloggers and comedy news as a manifestation of our willingness to ‘call bullshit’. This is absolutely true. Calling bullshit probably constitutes 95% of everything I do. It’s why people sometimes mistake me for a ‘serious’ person. I’m not really very serious. I don’t know how often I hear, “If your readers knew what an a-hole you are, they’d never visit your site.” That’s not true, of course, I am actually quite lovable. I’m just not always that nice. And a large part of the reason that I am not that nice is that I have a tendency to call bullshit. I do it when it is socially inappropriate. It’s a character trait I seem to share with the majority of other bloggers I know. We are not strictly cynics, we’re too young to be curmudgeonly, but we are serious about calling bullshit. Froomkin explains:
Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. The relentless spinning is enough to make anyone dizzy, and some of our most important political battles are about competing views of reality more than they are about policy choices. Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy.
It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography. I’m convinced that my enthusiasm for calling bullshit is the main reason for the considerable success of my White House Briefing column, which has turned into a significant traffic-driver for The Washington Post’s Web site.
I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.
If you poll blog readers you will quickly discover that they tend to share a disdain for ‘passionless stenography’ as well as mealy-mouthed ‘on-the-one-hand-on-the-other’ journalism. Let’s face it. We are in Iraq because journalists did not call bullshit. Bush got re-elected because the press treated minor flaws in Kerry as equal to glaring sociopathic tendencies in the administration.
If the old media wants to revitalize themselves they need to start calling bullshit…and do it with great enthusiasm. People won’t necessarily like you any better, but they will respect you…and read you.
