It seems to be a bit of a slow weekend ’round these parts, so I’m going to indulge my fixation with media criticism a bit.
Michael Calderone of the Politico links to a very interesting piece, done by a journalism professor at Temple, on media criticism. It features comments from Ken Auletta, Howard Kurtz, Jack Shafer, Glenn Greenwald, Jay Rosen, and Dan Kennedy. Here’s Rosen, perhaps my favorite media critic:
“The news media is an institution with a lot of power and it doesn’t have the accountability mechanisms that we have in other institutions,” Rosen said. “There’s no such thing as throw the bums out.” He said he believed that the “blogosphere is extremely effective at press criticism and has taken a lot of the momentum from [mainstream media]…. The entire blogosphere is a critic in a lot of ways because it examines what the press does and fills in what is missing.”
And here’s Calderone (whose blog I like, though many here don’t):
“The ability to link to primary documents and quickly embed audio and video completely changes how criticism is done. Also, you have online media critics who don’t have the baggage of coming from mainstream media organizations, which can be good or bad. It’s good in a sense that there isn’t the sort of reverence for the press corps that might develop when inside of it for a long time. But it’s bad in that a lot of bloggers who write on media—and never actually worked a newspaper, magazine, or network—really have no clue how things actually function.”
As someone who has never worked in media, I think the last is a fair point. I’m sure I often see conspiracy where there is only coincidence. But at the same time, I think that media critics within the mainstream media have a serious inability to see the forest rather than the trees. Looking at our national media and claiming that the biggest stories are reporters not rising when Bush entered the room or the fact that some weatherman in Omaha gave money to Howard Dean is like looking at Nazi Germany and saying that the biggest problem was that Hitler made taxpayers foot the bill for his summer palace.
I mean, how can anyone look at a system where Cokie Roberts has two high-profile gigs, where Luke Russert it on tv solely by dint of his last name, where the “dean” of political reporters regularly talks about being bored by facts and figures, and not think to themselves “this is fucking ridiculous”? The thing I’d like to know, and I’ve asked a lot of political reporters but never gotten an honest reply, is: do many people in the media feel this way too? And if they don’t, what the hell is wrong with them?
Mudge
Knowing how things function “inside” media is irrelevant. We are the audience and we are the only ones fit to judge their product. If the “function” produces lies or inaccuracies or irrationality, then the function needs to be changed.
Pincus spent an entire column noting how the elite media spend all their time writing for themselves and giving themselves awards. Calderone seems to be a member of that club.
r€nato
Dickhead Cheney said this morning on MTP that Colin Powell is no longer a Republican in his view.
Keep making that tent smaller, Republicans!
brent
@Mudge:
I was going to say almost exactly the same thing Mudge. Mainstream journalist, when they are called on their failures, almost always go to the point that their critics just don’t understand how things work in journalism. I have always found that bizarre. Its like a cook defending the crappiness of their prepared meal by pointing out that the diner doesn’t know how things work in a kitchen.
MTiffany
Mr. Calderone has apparently been huffing his own gas. When ‘the media’ produces crap and calls it ‘news’ then it is precisely the processes of ‘how things actually function’ that ought to be examined and criticized, along with those that in ‘the media’ that have become so familiar with the diseased state of news reporting that they have come to think it healthy.
blahblah
Read this Walter Pincus essay at the Columbia Journalism Review:
http://www.cjr.org/essay/newspaper_narcissism_1.php?page=all
“We have also failed our readers in the way we cover government. The First Amendment not only guaranteed freedom of the press from government interference, it also gave American journalists the opportunity—I believe the responsibility—to find and present facts on issues that require public attention. Our press is not protected in order to merely echo the views of government officials, opposition politicians, and so-called experts. Too often, though, that’s what occurs.
[…]
As we’ve seen, fewer national and local newspapers are in the hands of fewer companies that in turn provide newspapers that are less appealing and relevant to people who have limited time to read them. And with the arrival of first the Internet and now the financial downturn, advertisers have panicked. The result is far less money to support serious journalism.
[…]
In the 1950s and 1960s, when newspapers made single-digit profits, radio and television affiliates could make up from 40 to 50 percent. Newspapers large and small started being swallowed by publicly owned corporations. With that trend came monopoly ownership. Gannett became the biggest. In 1977, as its purchasing of family papers moved into high gear, Gannett stock was around $8 a share. By 1990, it was at $75, and in 2004, it hit $90. At its height, Gannett produced earnings of more than 22 percent on its gross income, and set a standard that other newspaper corporations tried to emulate. When Knight-Ridder showed only a 14 percent profit, its major investors demanded it be sold.
I believe most corporate owners of newspapers made terrible business decisions over the past decade, thinking that the growing profits of the 1980s and early 1990s would continue. Chains paid excessive prices for family-owned papers and went deep into debt. The New York Times Company finds itself in trouble after paying $1 billion for The Boston Globe, over $2 billion to buy back its own stock at the height of its price, and another $600 million for a new building.
And now there is the economic downturn. In this environment, the Web has become both the threat and, to some, the savior. But I look at this differently than some in my profession. The Web has certainly taken an important chunk of classified advertising, but the broader threat seen by many is to me another sign of our own self-involvement. Journalists, probably more than any other group outside the financial community, are mesmerized by the Web. They closely watch it, so they believe others are doing the same.
[…]
But when it comes to editorial content, meaningful news about government, politics, and foreign policy is only one of the saleable elements. Good newspapers have to go back to delivering a daily product that our mass audiences want, and which provides to advertisers a unique means to reach consumers. Like supermarkets, newspapers must deliver quality in all departments.
Yet at the same time, owners, editors, and reporters should push issues they believe government is ignoring. They should do it factually and in articles short enough to read daily, but spread over time. That is how Americans absorb information—by repetition.
They should remember that “newsmakers” are intent on using the media to influence readers, listeners, and viewers to take up their ideas. The electronic and print media today probably have more power over public opinion—and thus government—than they had fifty years ago. But I fear they turn much of that power over to those who create news events to get coverage.
The press should play an activist role. That’s the reason a free press is important. Mine is a romantic and unfashionable view of journalism, but that is why many of us took up the profession in the first place.”
MTiffany
@brent:
Very well said. I wish I had thought of it.
DougJ
Yes, I liked the Pincus piece. It seemed to have a slightly different flavor, though, with more of an emphasis on newspapers, in particular.
bvac
It’s like that someone you know who works at a taco place all day, and when they get home everyone suffers from their stench except them. No one in the press can smell Cokie Roberts’ tacos. So it just doesn’t bother them.
Dave_Violence
It’s not a fair point. Newspapers operate as for-profit businesses, plain and simple. They sell advertising. People buy the papers for content and advertising. Any blogger who spent just a few hours working on a school newspaper – even in elementary school, or someone who’s written a letter to the editor, knows how the media functions: there is someone who takes what you’ve done, changes it as they see fit, and then prints it. That is how things actually function. The talking heads get paid a lot of money because they sell a lot of advertising, nothing more as I, the viewer, am not paying them a thing, other than perhaps a portion of my cable bill.
Thusly, “we” do know how things function and “we” are better at it than the so-called professionals because we open ourselves (via comments) to criticism from everyone, unlike the mainstream media that’s selective in whom it lets criticize, if it allows any at all. What “we” don’t have are expense accounts for trips, official, credentialed access to politicians (but we’d ask better questions), and a 7-figure salary for looking good.
As far as conspiracies go, tell it to the Truthers.
Calming Influence
I’m not a chef, or even that good a cook. But if I get a lousy meal at a restaurant, I wouldn’t feel that my criticism was unjust because I “really have no clue how things actually function.”
I don’t care how journalists do it; I just want their final work product to be well researched and factual. If they can’t manage that they should pick another line of work. It’s really not any more complicated than that.
[Edit: I see I’m not the first to think of the Chef analogy – great minds think alike! I just have to type faster…]
smiley
[shudder] Thanks, I can’t unread that.
Dennis-SGMM
@bvac:
Riffing on your observation; they have convinced themselves that their farts are frankincense and they spend far too of their time trying to convince us to inhale more deeply.
d0n Camillo
The problem with much of the media in the US today, and especially newspapers, is that they take criticism as a vindication of the way they do business. I don’t know of any other industry that wears the phrase “If everybody hates us, we must be doing something right” as a badge of honor.
Brachiator
What a load of self-important rubbish.
But equally rubbish is the false dichotomy of “mainstream media” and “alternative media.” The only distinctions that matter are those between good, accurate journalism and shallow, uninformed and biased journalism, no matter what the political ideology.
But the mainstream media is totally dishonest at how the news has become just another variety of info-tainment (and even some bloggers eagerly look to whore themselves out to the political elites).
And so you have this media kabuki in which politicians and their surrogates engage in pre-arranged conference calls, background interviews, official appearances on talk shows to get their message out and play coy off-the-record games with favored writers. If any real journalism happens here, it is entirely accidental.
And the media is still unwilling to admit the degree to which the NYT/Judith Miller situation was a journalism disaster (although ironically many conservatives are still quite happy). At some point, Miller became a journalistic double agent, writing stories that pushed Dick Cheney’s agenda. And then she tried to use the First Amendment and the need to protect sources not to protect her journalistic integrity but to cloak the degree to which she had become a willing propagandist for the Bush Administration.
Holy guacamole! But Roberts is an example of someone who is on TV only because she is an old guard Washington insider and a “brand name.” It was downright embarrassing to watch her and her fellow panelists pretend to interview Paul Krugman about the economy and then give up all pretense of competence by announcing that the Congress really doesn’t care about economics and move on to other topics, lamely trying to hide their fear of and total ignorance about financial issues.
bago
@smiley: The clams might be tight lipped, but the commentary is rank.
Mike G
Do many people in the media feel this way too? And if they don’t, what the hell is wrong with them?
Having spent some time in the corporate world, I can surmise how things ‘really work in corporate media —
The astute ones with ethical standards who deeply care about the quality of work are revolted by the garbage product their organization produces and either depart in disgust. or if they speak up get pushed out or passed over for the promotions and influential positions.
The vast amount of energy that must be devoted to office politics in such an environment ensures that the ‘journamalists’ who make the big time are the mediocre-minded loyalists, the ones who drink the Kool Aid, cheerlead loudly, cynically ‘play the game’ and don’t make waves. Their priority is their career, not any objective quality of their work beyond the check-the-boxes evaluations of their supervisors. Too many examples on TV and editorial pages to list.
Jay C
Must be media soul-searching (or -bashing) day: Frank Rich takes on something like the same issue in today’s New York Times .
Bottom line: opinion is cheap; news costs money. Problem is: too many consumers opt for “cheap”.
Balconespolitics
@bvac:
Sounds like a good name for a band.
Balconespolitics
@d0n Camillo:
I’ve often had this discussion – sometimes that can mean that you’re just playing it hard and fair enough to piss off both sides.
Sometimes it can mean you’re a hack.
Brachiator
@Jay C:
Consumers often opt for cheap, free or even pirated. That’s just human nature. On the other hand, people willingly pay for value and convenience. So while there are still people who rip tunes from the InterTubes, Apple’s iTunes and other pay sites are tremendously successful because the let people easily, quickly, and economically find the music they want.
And here’s a key to the direction of the new media. People search iTunes by album, by song, by artist, but rarely by record label. I don’t even know if you can search by record label.
In a related way, increasingly people searching for a news story don’t care about the publication it came from.
So one trick might be to find a way to pay Frank Rich and the NY Times a royalty for the story which I linked to from Balloon Juice, since I may not have any interest in reading any other NY Times story in the issue which contains Rich’s column.
People say that they don’t read newspapers but get their news free from the Internet in part because they no longer look at the byline which sources the story. The new media has to find a way to take this reality into consideration if they hope to survive.
Which may be unlikely, since “branding” is all the rage.
asiangrrlMN
I think when you are part of the forest, you can’t see the trees. I don’t particularly care about how a newspaper works. I care about what I read. Let’s take the NYT and the (lack of) WMD arc. When they apologized for not being more rigorous in their duty, years after it would have made a difference, I didn’t know why they had willfully ignored the story–nor did I really care. All I knew was that they lied for years, and I had no reason to trust them after that. I still don’t.
In other words, it’s the results I’m criticizing, not the process. To me, if the result is bogus or flawed, then the process must have been as well.
InflatableCommenter
What the blogoramasphere does well is fact checking and logic validation.
What it does poorly — or deliberately overdoes, really — is portray the media and characterize it on a general level.
Media effect on actual public opinion is undocumented, unsupported by empirical data, and presented as resting almost entirely on proof by assertion. Much of the latter is nothing more than lazy correlation-causation mixups. The media slammed so and so and he lost the election! That kind of nonsense.
True believers in the latter idea — that the media actually “influence”, and whom it influences, and how much, and in what way — won’t brook any challenge to their notions. And they maintain this faith in the great superstions even in the face of rather obvious evidence to the contrary. For example, a presidential election was recently won by a guy who was declared an also ran in the primaries a year earlier, and then doomed several times after that during the campaign cycle. This guy was slammed by a well orchestrated personality destruction campaign on a party-owned media outlet with big ratings …. and won by ten million votes.
Even in the face of that, the true believers keep believing. Personally, I think that media crumminess and criticism of it is an industry unto itself, sort of like the War on Drugs or the War on Terror. War on Media requires you to think that media are hugely powerful, otherwise why pay attention to the war?
And of course, the media are quite happy to tell you just how important they are. So the trick is to believe that, and then slam everything else they say. Heh. That’s where the blogosphere shines. New fashions in cognitive dissonance, delivered daily.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Plural? How odd, I thought they only got one. You learn something new every day.
“Is it shaped like a fish taco?”
DougJ
Nearly everything about effects on public opinion is undocumented. If you don’t believe that Al Gore lost the 2000 election in large part because of the way he was treated by the media, then I think you weren’t paying attention.
You know what’s weird? Your tone in general is almost exactly like Bob Somerby yet you have exactly opposite opinions. It’s fun to read you two side-by-side.
JK
@blahblah:
Great essay by Pincus.
It’s ironic reading this post the day after the WH Correspondents Dinner took place. I didn’t watch the event on C-SPAN, but I’ve read many comments on this blog praising Wanda Sykes for her performance. I like Wanda Sykes, but I’d prefer to see events like this dinner become extinct. With the MSM, especially newspapers, on the ropes financially, the thought of journalists partying like it’s the roaring 20’s is nauseating and disgusting.
For me, the 2 images from past WH Correspondents Dinners and Radio and TV Correspondents Dinners that stand out most are:
David Gregory dancing with Karl Rove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdvHwtRdg_I
George Bush searching in vain for Iraq’s WMDs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKX6luiMINQ
I wish it had been possible to round up all of the journalists who attended last night’s dinner and give them to the Somali pirates in exchange for all of the hostages they are currently holding.
Maybe airing this event is a good thing in that it exposes members of the MSM for who they are: ass-kissing, genuflecting, lapdog courtiers fighting to defend the status quo.
The best work of media criticism I’ve read in a long time is this post by Jay Rosen on he said/she said journalism
He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/04/12/hesaid_shesaid.html#comments
Favorite Media Criticism Websites
http://www.fair.org/index.php
http://mediamatters.org
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com
http://mediabloodhound.typepad.com
http://www.spockosbrain.com
http://www.newscorpse.com
http://www.mediachannel.org/re2
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog
http://www.newshounds.us
http://medialens.org/
Favorite Independent Media Websites
http://www.democracynow.org
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml
http://www.wbai.org
http://www.kpfa.org
http://www.kpfk.org
http://www.alternativeradio.org
InflatableCommenter
@DougJ:
What’s weird is that you would compare my view to some other guy’s view, as if that comparison meant something. That’s the self-referential b-sphere at its best, learned from …. the noise machine. That’s what the rightwing sphere does. You are so caught up in the stuff that you can’t see things on their own merits. You talk like a guy who is all optics all the time, and then wants to call out others for their fascination with optics. You can’t have it both ways. Are you really about the content and the issue? Then you will want to pay attention to my next paragraph.
Al Gore lost the 2000 election because he was a weak candidate with a weak organization, Doug. He presented himself as a preachy dentist in the debates, he ran a shit-poor ground game in the electoral vote war, and he also suffered at the voting booth from the effects of Clinton fatigue. His speeches were boring and his attitude bordered on haughty. And if you don’t get that, then you aren’t paying attention. And by the way, his mistakes were largely repeated by Kerry four years later.
Of course, to finish our story, Gore then got caught in a Florida debacle and was gored — heh — by a SCOTUS decision that probably set the bar for bad judicial judgment and overreach.
Yeah, it was all the media’s fault.
InflatableCommenter
Win! Job security for some people, then.
I see a bright future for the Howard Kurtzes of the world.
Opinion about opinion, as told by opinionated opinionaters.
Nothing is duller than intellectual integrity in the mediasphere.
JK
When 24-hour news on cable first became available, I was thrilled. I thought the programming would resemble PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal in a greatly elongated time slot.
I never imagined it would consist primarily of point counterpoint food fights, trivia packaged as major breaking news: ie Obama and Biden go out for burgers, and desperate searches for young missing white women.
DougJ
Some of your criticism is valid there, some isn’t. You’re wrong about the debates. The sighing, while real, would have been ignored if not for the media. He ran a poor ground game. He suffered from Clinton fatigue. But Clinton fatigue itself was largely a result of the media’s crazy attitude towards Clinton. Do you really think people were sick of 3.9% unemployment?
His haughty attitude? I can’t speak for what he was like every second every day, but I watched pretty closely and didn’t see much of it. And the fact we’re even discussing his supposed haughty attitude is an indication of how deep the character assassination ran.
Let’s just go back to one question: where do you think Clinton fatigue came from?
Nellcote
I find it disturbing that the msm has internalized the media-is-liberal meme and go to great pains to push back against this lie.
DougJ
What does that even mean?
El Cid
There’s a pretty good set of reasons why most powerful establishment media figures think that consumers should not focus on the quality of the product they receive but on the insiders’ testimonies about the process by which they produce what they produce.
Obviously we can have consumers’ organizations which review the quality of the products we purchase when it comes to DVD players, soaps, foods, and the like.
All of a sudden, though, when consumers appear to organize to judge the quality of the products produced by the major news producers, it is suggested that we really have no business judging the quality of what we’re expected to buy.
I feel like I’ve watched these people sell mostly shoddy products with a few worthy exceptions for the last couple of decades (my time of noticing).
N M
If you want a more honest opinion DougJ, how about you dial up Ken Silverstein at Harpers and ask for an interview? He’s generally pretty straight.
DougJ
Not a bad idea…if he’d take my call.
Maus
I don’t see this as a problem. It’s their greatest strength. The bureaucracy has drained all sense of values, priorities and self-checking and replaced journalism with “human interest” glurge, propaganda, regurgitated PR fluff and meaningless postmodernist garbage designed to “sell” whatever narrative is most popular regardless of reality.
geg6
This is all so much bullshit. So, by this standars, I must be one of the few who criticize the media who might have something pertinent to say because I grew up in a home in which my mother was an award winning reporter with a 25 year career and because I myself worked for a newspaper for 7 years. And yet, my criticisms mirror those of all you neophytes. I’d like to hear what these assholes who think only those in the know should crticize have to say about that.
blahblah
@JK:
Let’s not forget Stephen Colbert’s brilliant performance at the 2006 White House Press Dinner:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879
It almost makes up for the fellatio fest that is the White House Press Dinner. Colbert didn’t suck anyone’s cock, he fucked Bush and Cheney up the ass in public. It was wonderful.
Downpuppy
Jay “My anonymous friends think Sotomyer is dumm” Rosen?
Really??
I suppose his keen media insight told him how much evil crap he could get away with…
Cat Lady
@Downpuppy:
You mean Jeffrey “hit job” Rosen, not Jay “PressThink” Rosen, I believe.
blondie
For once I feel qualified to try an answer to one of your questions, since I worked in business for 10 years, then became a journalist for the next 15.
Yes, many people do feel that way, and many don’t feel that way. The business of journalism is not that different than other corporate activities – there are smart people throughout the organization who see what’s going on, what’s gone wrong, and have ideas to fix it. But they tend to be scattered, rather than concentrated, throughout the company, they only have authority and influence within their own piece of the organization, and they’re always trying to balance their personal beliefs with/against the priorities of the company (because their self-interest dictates that they stay employed). And they generally have some awareness of outside perceptions. They are reporters, editors, sales reps, circulation managers, associate publishers, etc.
Then there are many who are purely self-serving. They do whatever will help them with their own goals – money, influence, authority, etc. Some are so narcissistic they are oblivious to how they are perceived by the public; others are aware, but are cynical and don’t care. (I personally would put many of the “name” journalists in this category – they breathe rarified air…) They have all the same jobs as the smart ones.
And then, of course, there are the dumb ones. There are dumb but well-meaning ones (“How come they don’t appreciate us?”), dumb ones who wear blinders (“I know nuffink! Nuffink!”), and the dumb, cunning ones whose main intellectual strength is a lizard-brain ability to survive in any environment. All of these, because they are dumb, really don’t have any understanding of anyone else’s circumstances. And guess what? They, too, can be found in any/all positions in their companies.
I would posit this as a description of the inhabitants of any corporate structure. The difference is in the organizational mission. Think about all the hundreds (thousands) of publicly-traded companies caught up in scandal every year because, in the end, their internal cultures got so poisonous – Enron, WorldCom, AIG, the American auto industry (individually and collectively), Big Tobacco, King Coal, and the health insurance industry, to name some right off the top of my head.
I think one can argue these companies and industries have been (and in the case of the last two) and continue to be just as shortsighted, misguided and corrupt as the journalism business.
The difference lies in what is being provided and who it hurts. Legacy media have traditionally seen “news” as a product; over the years, for many different reasons, they’ve stopped inspecting for e coli or salmonella, and the public is rebelling at being asked to pay good money for something that makes them sick.
There are lots of nuances, and everyone is welcome to disagree. But I think we all tend to confuse the news business with its output; if we think about parallels to our own experiences with corporations, we’ll better understand what’s going on inside them.
Brachiator
@InflatableCommenter:
But how the blogosphere portrays the media is absolutely irrelevant to what the media does or how well or how poorly they do it.
Hmmm. You kind of miss the point here. A newspaper story that results in a police investigation and indictments is effective even if public opinion is unchanged.
It is not just that “media effect on actual public opinion” is undocumented, it is also that it is not a matter of any reductive cost-benefit analysis.
But I take your point that the media is often a convenient scapegoat. Your team lost the election, blame the media. The war on terror is not won in 30 seconds, blame the media. Sarah Palin, the Queen of the Moosekillers, doesn’t guarantee an election win for John McCain, blame the media.
Of course, this is offset by they way that the blogosphere often ignores facts, makes up fantasies, indulges and perpetuates insane conspiracy theories, and actively encourages outright lunacy.
Joey Giraud
“award winning reporter with a 25 year career and because I myself worked for a newspaper for 7 years. “
Ah, that doesn’t make you a Washington insider with a million dollar salary, a Rolodex to die for, and tickets to the Press luncheons!
That’s what he means about how things really function.
DougJ
@blondie
Thanks for your insight.
DougJ
That’s Jeff Rosen. It’s a common name.
Calming Influence
@InflatableCommenter:
Unless you’re asserting that public opinion is not affected by accurate knowledge of current events, your statement is unsupported. Fox News viewers are less informed; wouldn’t you agree this will bias their opinions?
oh really
Tangential comment —
I’m dying to know what those “accountability mechanisms” are.
Funny, when I look at the
recidivismre-election rates of incumbent politicians in this country, I kind of get the idea that our political system doesn’t have much of a “throw the bums out” accountability mechanism either.Throwing Bush out came four years too late and was constitutionally mandated. Yes, he certainly would have lost had he been able to run in 2008, but he probably wouldn’t have run anyway, since he’d pretty much run out of ways to screw the pooch and likely wanted a new challenge (For example, could he be the worst ex-president in history? — an honor to set beside his worst president trophy).
Unbelievable losers from both parties keep getting sent back to Washington to do more damage and service the needs of corporations, the wealthy, and others who already have huge advantages. Would any sane person look at Arlen Specter and think he has any chance at all of winning re-election in 2010? It’s true, Arlen may be in trouble, but is he really the worst of the lot? How about Jim Bunning? Look what it took to get Ted Stevens out? And William Jefferson? Neither of whom suffered resounding defeats. California is a fairly liberal state, but its voters keep sending DiFi back to DC to vote for the Big People. The list goes on and on.
The truth is we don’t take advantage of the few means we actually have to hold people accountable whether they’re politicians or journalists or just plain talking heads.