Routing Around Corruption in News Sources

"Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals." - Robert Caro

Apr 26, 2024

Computer network developers have spent a lot of time and effort over the past half century working out how to deal with corrupt data when computers communicate with each other. It's simply a given that glitches occur when moving data across the wire in distributed systems. They've also worked out ways to re-route data when parts of the system become unavailable for whatever reason - power outages, compromised systems, traffic contention, and physical damage to name but a few.

Redundancy and multiple paths from source to destination are hallmarks of resilient, reliable, and ultimately trustworthy systems. This holds true for both computer and human communication. Unlike computers, however, human communication is subject to corruption from active engagement by other humans - sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes malicious. Building trust with human communication systems is significantly more challenging. This has always been the case, ever since human beings first began communicating with each other.

Now imagine Og, a lean fellow from 200,000 years ago, waiving his arms around and grunting at his friend, Sog, in an effort to convey to Sog where a mastodon is located. Sog thinks he's figured it out, sets out to hunt the mastodon, and ends up trampled to death. "Ug!", thinks Og. "I intended to warn Sog to stay away from that angry mastodon over there."

Bad for Sog, but the adverse effect is extremely localized when compared to the hyper-connected world we live in today. Twenty-first century Ogs are much more skilled at crafting the story they want to tell, having learned that doing so can mean the difference of sending their audience to safety or to be trampled. They also have an impressive set of tools for falsely augmenting and embellishing their stories to make them look and sound more believable. An Army of Ogs would be a fair characterization of the people who manipulate present day social and legacy media.

Two items involving journalists in 2020 stand out from the usual noise as having clarified for me what the core issue is with the contemporary Army of Ogs. In point-counterpoint form, the first was Bari Weiss' resignation letter to the New York Times and the second was an interview NPR journalist Guy Raz gave on Jordan Harbinger's podcast a few months later.

I'll start with Raz because it reaches further back in time and sets the stage for Weiss' letter. And, while I'm critical of Raz's beliefs about journalistic integrity, I remain a fan of his work with NPR's How I Built This and the TED Radio Hour. Neither of which are platforms for reporting the news.

Harbinger: I know you got into journalism initially to make a difference...It's like — you'd said, "I didn't get into journalism to not find solutions," but in journalism they're like, hey, just write about the problem. Never bring us a solution because we don't care about what your ideas might be.
Raz: I think it's a little bit of hyperbole when I said a version of that. But really what it is, is that, you know, for the most part — and I think it's changing now — but for the most part, journalism was you were supposed to go call balls and strikes. We were sent somewhere or whether it's in the US or overseas. And you were there to identify a problem or a story, and then just tell it and then move on. And so you would get to a war zone or a conflict area — most journalists would — and something would happen. There'd be an explosion and you'd go and you tell that story. And then there was an explosion somewhere else and then you go tell that story and then you move on and you move on. But the people in these places don't move on, they stay there. And I think that there has traditionally been an inherent — and it's changing now, but there's been an inherent deficiency in traditional journalism, which is that journalists were told to just report on the story. But oftentimes journalists have key insights into potential solutions and key insights that they gain from being observers into how you could actually begin to think about resolving these problems.
And look, I went into this profession for reasons that I think a lot of people go into it, which was, I believe that if I could somehow explain one culture to another culture, or if I could go to Kosovo and tell stories about Kosovar Albanians, but also tell stories about Serbs or Macedonians or go to Pakistan and tell stories about people on both sides of Kashmir. And that somehow if other people heard those stories that would develop empathy, they would develop empathy. And that we could actually, gain a better understanding of one another. And that was what motivated me. That's why I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I want it to cover Israel, Palestine. I wanted to cover these conflicts because I thought if only people heard about the other side in an empathetic and humane way, maybe it will make them more empathetic and humane.
*I think over the course of my career I became frustrated. That what I was doing was not actually having that impact. That was really where I got to. And that's really where I got to this day of how I started to reflect on this deficiency that journalism had the opportunity to offer solutions and we weren't. We were being held back from doing that for fear of being biased or not objective.
(Emphasis added.)

In Raz's enhanced version of journalism baseball, an umpire previously tasked with calling just balls and strikes - hard enough to do by its self - would instead be empowered to call "'Strike' because strikes are under represented!" or "'Ball' because the pitcher is height privileged!" or "'Foul Ball' because this game needs more foul balls!" And as for throwing players out of the game for cause, how's that going to work, exactly?

Raz's decision to stretch the traditional journalistic ethos to include such things as "explaining one culture to another culture" is a haughty form of motivated journalism and skews hard off the rails toward "journosplaining:" arrogant posturing while condescendingly explaining - usually incorrectly and with much more emotion than fact - complicated issues to genuine experts. How is it Raz could possibly understand two diverse cultures to a degree that any stories he might craft would result in shared empathy at a cultural level? By magic, of course:

"...that somehow if other people heard those stories that would develop empathy, they would develop empathy. And that we could actually, gain a better understanding of one another...I thought if only people heard about the other side in an empathetic and humane way, maybe it will make them more empathetic and humane." (Emphasis added.)

Good intentions notwithstanding, in Raz's understanding of cultural differences and global conflict, the path to resolution is just an information and re-education problem. As a reporter, his expertise is, supposedly, in elucidating facts. It's an unchecked transference of credentials to assume a reporter could offer solutions into areas in which they have neither expert-level knowledge or deep (as in life-long and generational) experience. Driven by self-importance and a desire to become part of the story - "to offer solutions" - reporters who cover stories as Raz proposes bypass an important guardrail meant to minimize the reporter's personal bias while enhancing objectivity. In Raz's view, this is a "deficiency" in journalism.

I refer to this as "crossing the Raz Boundary" when I'm evaluating the credibility of any news source. Much like Caesar's crossing the Rubicon, crossing the Raz Boundary represents a violation of journalistic practices meant to insure the complete, fair, and accurate representation of facts when presenting anything packaged as "news." Today, it seems, crossing the Raz Boundary is openly encouraged and even expected. This gets me to Weiss' resignation letter to the New York Times and subsequent events.

With a conciseness I've since come to appreciate in Weiss' writing, her resignation letter outlines her journey from dream job at the New York Times to disillusionment as she began to understand that when it came to the practice of journalism at the NYT "truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else." She continues:

"The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany."

As is usually the case, shifts like this are a slow process. Ten years before Weiss' realization, Jack Shafer seemed to see where things were heading:

"I can’t criticize the Times for dumping writers who ignore its rules. But the paper’s 54-page ethics guidelines—a Rube Goldberg-ian chastity belt that appears to have been hewn by a platoon of lawyers—and the Times’ application of them neglects the most corrupting influences facing its writers and editors: the pressure to conform to the consensus view."

This, I believe, is what happens when guardrails are compromised or removed. Raz granting himself a little wiggle room to circumvent journalistic cornerstones of truth, accuracy, and objectivity incrementally leads to more and more wiggle room until, as we're seeing today with many social and legacy media sources, it becomes an unconstrained free-for-all on the part of a small percentage of practicing journalists.

In the tech and consulting industry, it's long been known that a company's reputation only rises to the level of the least ethical employee within the organization. The same holds for many professions, such as journalism and sales. By your most corrupt practitioners shall you be known. There are many ethical journalists (just as there are salespeople) but their work is being stained by a small percentage of aberrant practitioners who have ranged far beyond the Raz Boundary. The reasons why the tail is wagging the dog are complex and, as Weiss notes, diverse:

"Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry."

Since leaving the NYT, Weiss has gone on to build an influential media company, The Free Press, dedicated to the journalistic ideals she held before being disillusioned by the practices within the NYT. I've been a subscriber to The Free Press since the beginning, when it was called Common Sense, because its reporting reflects these ideals.

As I was working on this article, Uri Berliner, a senior business editor for NPR, penned an article that details the rot within NPR that's similar to Weiss' description of the NYT. This became Berliner's de facto resignation letter as the fallout from his article began with a five day unpaid suspension followed by his resignation. His letter also drew attention to the particularly solipsistic character of Katherine Maher, the current CEO of NPR. From Maher’s TED talk:

"[P]erhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done."

Odd. I've always found truth to be an exceptionally brilliant way to find common ground and a solid basis from which to get things done. The entire talk is one helluva mashup of discontinuous ideas. Like watching a slow motion train wreck, I wonder just how far postmodernist thinking like this will penetrate our culture. Having convinced themselves that "lived experiences" are superior to any effort to seek objective truth, they're actively working to establish the belief that an impartial search for truth is a failed model. And of course, having swept aside the value of objective truth, it is the subjective values and luxury beliefs desired by the elite class that are expected to be adopted by everyone else.

Maher's tenure is barely a month old, so perhaps she'll surprise us. I'm ready to be surprised, but until then, Maher, in my view, personifies the type of character that is more then willing to inspire and support reporters that range far beyond the Raz Boundary. There's no coming back from that. No "fix." I'm not the only one who's noticed. According to Pew Research, NPR's weekly broadcast audience peaked somewhere around 2017, shortly after NPR's switch to caustic news coverage following the 2016 elections, falling from 30.1 million listeners in 2017 to 23.5 million listeners in 2022.

So much of public discourse today happens at the extremes. Its become a challenge to find news sources that aren't peddling "alternative facts," junk science, or choked perspectives carried forward by graduates from elite universities. The life of a political atheist seems to be one of the few viable options for staying informed and mentally healthy. I see only one trail to ride from where we are now, and that's the path taken by re-aligned ventures like The Free Press, Quillette, Substack, and others. The amazing variety of high quality podcasts has more than made up for the programs I once enjoyed from sources like NPR. Their numbers are growing and it will be interesting to see how Berliner and Maher fare in the coming months.

I miss news sources like the New York Times and NPR of old. Once upon a time they were an important counter-balance to other news sources I followed. No longer reliable, they've become the new fringe. I don't trust news sources that are inflammatory, condescending, "inclusively exclusive," or tritely entertaining. I want news sources that dig deep for truth and accuracy while working hard to remain as objective as possible. I trust news sources that practice journalism inside the Raz Boundary.