A game! Spot the odd one out in the following story. This year has been a terrible one so far for those who care about US journalism: The much-loved New York Times journalist David Carr died suddenly on Feb 12; CBS correspondent Bob Simon was killed in a car crash the day before; Jon Stewart, famously the “leading news source for young Americans,” announced that he is quitting the Daily Show; his colleague Stephen Colbert is moving over from news satire to the softer arena of a nightly talk show; NBC anchor Brian Williams, as famous in the US as Jeremy Paxman is in Britain, has been suspended after it was revealed he had “misremembered” events involving himself while covering the war in Iraq; Bill O’Reilly, an anchor on Fox News, the most watched cable news channel in the US, has been accused of being on similarly vague terms with the truth.
News of the Fox News anchor probably sounds like “dog bites man” to most Britons, who remember that this network recently described the British city of Birmingham as a no-go area for non-Muslims. However, this latest scandal involving O’Reilly reveals something quite telling about journalism in the US.
Whereas in Britain journalists are generally viewed as occupying a place on the food chain somewhere between bottom-feeders and cockroaches, in the US there remains, still, a certain idealization of journalists, protected by a gilded halo hammered out by sentimental memories of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
SOUL-SEARCHING
Even while US citizens’ trust in the mass media continues to plummet, journalists enjoy a kind of heroic fame that would baffle their British counterparts. Television anchors and commentators, from Rachel Maddow on the left to Sean Hannity on the right, are lionized in a way that, say, Welsh newsreader Huw Edwards, is, quite frankly, not. A whole genre of film exists in the US celebrating the heroism of journalists, from All the President’s Men to Good Night, and Good Luck. In Britain, probably the most popular depiction of journalists came from the TV show Spitting Image, where they were portrayed as snuffling pigs in pork-pie hats.
So whenever a US journalist has been caught lying, the ensuing soul-searching and garment-rending discovery has been about as prolonged and painful as a PhD on proctology. The New York Times and the New Republic both imploded when it was revealed that their journalists, respectively Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, had fabricated their stories. Their tales have become part of US popular culture — The Wire referenced Blair in its fifth season and a film was made about the New Republic scandal — like national myths that must never be forgotten.
By contrast, when it was revealed that the Independent’s Johann Hari had committed plagiarism and slandered his colleagues on Wikipedia, various journalists wrote bewildering defenses of him and the then-Independent editor initially said that Hari would return to the newspaper. Whereas Hari’s return to the public sphere three years after his resignation has been largely welcomed by the British media, Glass and Blair remain shunned figures in the US, more than a decade after their scandals.
BULLISHLY COMBATIVE
Which brings us back to the O’Reilly scandal, now unfolding in the US. Once it was revealed that NBC’s liberal Brian Williams had exaggerated personal anecdotes — claiming to have been in a helicopter that was shot at when he was in the one behind, for starters — the hunt was inevitably on for an equally big conservative news scalp. Enter stage left: Bill O’Reilly.
So sure, O’Reilly claimed that in his career he has been in “active war zones” and “in the Falklands” when he in fact covered a protest in Buenos Aires during the Falklands war. Sure, O’Reilly’s characteristically bullish defense that he “never said” he was “on the Falkland Islands” — original quote: “I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands” — and that being at a protest thousands of kilometers from combat constitutes “a war zone” verges on the officially bonkers. As the Washington Post put it: “That would mean that any reporter who covered an anti-war protest in Washington during the Iraq War was doing combat reporting.” However, does any of this bother either O’Reilly or Fox News? It does not.
Unlike Williams, who slunk away in shame, O’Reilly has been bullishly combative, threatening journalists who dare to cover the story and saying that they deserve to be “in the kill zone.” Fox News too has been predictably untroubled by allegations of lies: “Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes and all senior management are in full support of Bill O’Reilly,” it said in a statement.
The Williams and O’Reilly scandals are different from those involving Blair, Glass and Hari: This time, the journalists lied about their involvement in a story, whereas in the earlier scandals they specifically lied about the stories themselves. This difference is why some think the fuss about them is ridiculous. Of all the garbage to be heard on Fox News on a daily basis, we are seriously going to focus on O’Reilly’s war record?
CELEBRIFICATION
However, the fuss underscores two things that are becoming increasingly problematic about American news today and Fox News in particular: namely, when news anchors are seen as personalities first and foremost, their personal stories are accorded as much importance as their actual reading of the news. When this happens, self-aggrandizing exaggerations soon follow.
“Look, why don’t we just agree that a good amount of the personal anecdotes from our media figures are seasoned with bullshit, and let’s just move on?” Stewart said this week.
However, this feels a little like a bored cop-out from a man who is halfway out the door of his job. The real issue is why media figures are so encouraged to give personal anecdotes at all.
Just as politicians increasingly labor under the belief that personal stories make them seem more accessible, even if they turn out to be untrue — former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton claiming she arrived in Bosnia “under sniper fire.” Or just weird — British opposition leader Ed Miliband’s anecdotes about people he once met — so (and I apologize for this word) the celebrification of US news figures has led to a similar problem in the media. While Fox News might still be an outlier, its belief that personality is more important than credibility is the endpoint of this game.
“If you can’t trust a news anchor or commentator then you’re not going to watch that person,” O’Reilly opined about Williams before his own untrustworthiness was exposed. However, as we know, it was not the first time someone on Fox News has peddled an untruth.
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
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