"Slanted" by Sharyl Attkisson

I graduated with a degree in journalism in the 1970s. It was the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Woodward & Bernstein, and it was a heady time to be in journalism. The prevailing philosophy in journalism education was that of Walter Lippmann’s modernism and objectivity. For someone like me, to pick up a daily newspaper today is an exercise in bafflement and mounting concern. It bears little if any relationship to what I understood and learned about journalism. 

It’s not good when I can read what’s presented as an Associated Press news story and easily identify the reporter’s opinion, bias, slant, and sometimes even factual errors.

 

Sharyl Attkisson was in journalism school some 15 or so years after I was. Her journalism credentials are rather stellar: CBS News, CNN, PBS, five Emmy awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting, and covered presidential administrations from Clinton through Trump (and now Biden).  She’s as baffled and concerned about the practice of journalism as I am. 

 

Attkisson’s Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism details that concern. The primary focus is “the narrative,” the story that national and other journalists believe about events and personalities, controversies, issues, and themselves. The narrative isn’t neutral; it has a definite philosophy, belief system, and principles of both inclusion and exclusion. It can be just as much as what is not covered as what is covered in journalism today. 

 

She writes an engaging story of what has happened, using example after example and anecdote after anecdote. Part of her story is her own, as in what happened to various stories she reported at CBS News. And part of it, the larger part, is about what has happened to such major media channels at The New York Times and CNN. Included in her analysis is how the narrative is played out through pundits and opinion polls; how every headline seems to have morphed into a “bombshell;” how the media correct other media when anyone goes off-narrative; and how many times the media got the story wrong – so often that the untruth becomes embedded in our consciousness as what happened. 

 

She makes a compelling case. Look no further than what she calls “the mother of all narratives” – the Trump / Russian collusion allegation. For years, it was reported as fact, when it was not. It was reported as fact long after the media could no longer sustain it, and it was the national news media which sustained it. It was because of Donald Trump that the media went completely off the rails, she says. You can read one of the appendices, which details 130 “major media mistakes in the era of Trump.”

 

One question that isn’t answered: when did it become okay for news reporters to blatantly insert opinion, and even snark, into news stories? Did it start in journalism schools or did they follow what was happening in the professional world?

 

Sharyl Attkisson

Attkisson paints a dark, and even darkening picture, but she sees hope. She includes a rather extensive list of organizations, publications, and individuals who are still getting journalism right. Many, but not all, are on the conservative side of politics. Some journalists have left their employers and now have their own space on Substack. One or two of her recommendations I might quibble over – I agree with her about the Wall Street Journal, but only with its business and editorial pages. The general news pages are sounding more and more like everyone else’s narrative.

 

Attkisson has more than three decades of experience working in news reporting. She is also the author of Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington (2014) and The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote(2017). She and Don Vaughn are the co-authors of the forthcoming Writing Right for Broadcast and Internet News. 

 

We can “fix” our own immediate angst over the narrative by canceling a subscription or turning off network pundits. But journalism matters. We need a free press. We don’t need, and are ill-served, by a press that promotes a narrative. Perhaps we can begin by asking ourselves, how much of our own understanding comes from well-reported news, and how much if it comes from the promoted narrative. 

 

Slanted is an important book. The news media will most likely largely ignore it – which tells a story by itself. 

 

Top photograph by Markus Spiske via Unsplash. Used with permission.