The state of the fourth estate

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May 15, 1996 by Lorraine Calvacca

James Fallows says part of his reason for writing Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (Pantheon Books, New York City, 1996) was to rekindle the debate about the critical condition of the fourth estate. His indictment of a political press that "is not doing its job well" and "is irresponsible with its power" has certainly stirred up a passionate response. In a barrage of vociferous reviews in newspapers and magazines across the country, journalists have both praised and dismissed Fallows' critique, describing it as "intelligent and important," as well as "a much-publicized blast that restates the obvious."

FOLIO: recently spoke by telephone with Fallows, the Washington editor of The Atlantic Monthly, about good news, bad news and misunderstandings.

FOLIO: In your book, you focus largely on the failings of newspapers and television. How do magazines fit into your analysis?

James Fallows: Let me exclude for the moment the weekly newsmagazines, which are a direct part of the political information cycle. I think the rest of the magazine world can look on in satisfaction at the complaints I'm making about other parts of the press because most of the magazine world has already been forced to think about how it can be valuable to its readers.

Where the tension is most acute is the weekly newsmagazines. You can argue that just as TV has forced newspapers into a whole new business, because they can't just report the [past] day's events, newspapers have forced newsmagazines into a new role. Newspapers are increasingly doing what newsmagazines used to do. Newsmagazines are the ones having to scramble hardest to figure out their reason for being.

FOLIO: You write in your book, "Today's journalists can choose: Do you want merely to entertain the public or to engage it?" Are you against mixing politics and entertainment, as in the case of George?

Fallows: I'm in favor of anything aimed at making people feel more engaged in public life in general. If [George] evolves in the direction where it's just personalities, then it doesn't solve the problem of public understanding. If they do more things to get people to care about various political and governmental issues, then that's good. It's a question of how they use their franchise. It's too early to tell. There's a difference between things that are entertaining and entertainment. The entertainment industry is sports and movies and Oprah. To be entertaining, that's part of great teachers, and part of great writers.

FOLIO: Do you think you've been perceived as anti-entertainment?

Fallows: Oh, sure. Some people have reacted to my book without reading it. They'll say, "Oh, this guy wants us never to talk about anything that's interesting. Just have journalism consist of something like the Congressional Record. Have all newspapers published in four-point type. Never have any pictures." That's not my point at all.

My point is that life involves excitement and glamour and the Oscars and sports and sex and murder trials and also things that affect natural life and your taxes and the kinds of schools your kids go to. [But] the news should try to approximate that whole range of peoples' experiences, not just be pure entertainment. When it does deal with real issues, it shouldn't treat them as if they were pure sports. What I mean, for example, is treating the coverage of the recent budget impasse [from the perspective of] whether Gingrich could control the freshmen and how Clinton was positioning himself for the next election, as opposed to where the money was coming from and where the money was going.

FOLIO: You have been critical of media cynicism. Some critics argue that cynicism is an integral part of the reporting process.

Fallows: There has been either a willful or lazy or stupid misinterpretation of the point here. It's not that hard to see the difference between having the journalist's proper skepticism and having a kind of reflexive cynicism.

Suppose the president or presidential candidate or a congressman claims he's going to do x, y and z. You, as a skeptical journalist, should talk about whether that is consistent with what the person did. Reflexive cynicism, by contrast, presents everything as if the only significance is the position--for example, that Dole is talking about medical costs only because he thinks Clinton is vulnerable on the point. That to me is unrealistic and cynical. Politicians have to scramble to stay in office, but they are not complete phonies. Often, the tone of coverage is that they are complete phonies. That is an unrealistic form of coverage.

FOLIO: What kind of impact do you hope your book will have?

Fallows: I have one-and-a-half ambitions for this book. The real ambition is for people not in the business to get a clearer sense of what it is that's been troubling them about the news they get. I have gotten a ton of mail essentially saying, "Oh, yes, now I understand what's annoying about this and that."

The half ambition is to revive a debate in this business. There's never going to be any permanent fix. And I never dreamed for a moment that I was going to be the prophet who changed journalism. But I think that there needs to be a long-term debate--and I want to be part of it. I think it's necessary now, not just for reasons of public morale and people being unhappy in various ways with the press, but also for commercial reasons. There's an increasing market resistance to what we all offer. I hope [the book] will help push the business to some serious re-examination of what it's doing, and not just a reflexive denial that everything's fine.