How the Media Creates the News

It has taken me a long time to realize this, even though my degree is in journalism, and I was a journalist for a time, both in college and afterwards. But there's something everyone should understand about the media in this country: They do not report the news. They make the news.

What you think about anyone famous is largely decided by how the media creates the story. They admit to following the "arc" of a story, or the "running commentary", like that arc is naturally existing and they're just following it. That's not true at all. The media follows the arc that it creates.

Let's try something: Let's come up with names for the story arcs that the media has chosen for the candidates.

We would like to believe that these "stories," the ongoing streams of news about one or a series of events, are merely reflections of reality. We think, for example, that the arc of one story, let's name it "McCain's Terrible Campaign", is merely the reflection of a terrible campaign. And to some degree it is the reflection of McCain's mistakes. But the media gets to decide how it is going to portray any story, and eventually, any story arc. Both candidacies can have difficulties and successes. The media gets to decide whether, and how, and how often, and how long, to cover every success and every failure. This is how this running commentary is created.

Let me be clear that this is not some conspiracy. It's just the result of who reporters are, the kind of people who decide to take a low pay, relatively influential position. They tend to be democrats. That reporters and editors are heavily democrat is beyond debate. When people of a certain outlook report things, they decide what to report and how to report it, and their bias creeps in. Sometimes it is well suppressed, sometimes it is obvious. Someone like Brit Hume or Brian Williams conceals his bias well. Someone like Keith Olbermann, not well at all.

But the trend is clear. A story arc called "McCain's Terrible Campaign" is much more likely to develop than a story arc called "Obama's Terrible Campaign," even if both have the same campaigns, because the former is the one that the reporter finds compelling, and therefore is the one that he is most likely to pursue. Looking closely at his preferred candidates mistakes is uncomfortable. Looking at his opponent's is exhilarating. It's fun to cover the opponent's mistakes, and tempting to find more. It's uncomfortable and unpleasant to cover your candidate's mistakes, and you do not actively pursue them.

To hear the media tell it today, Palin's choice as VP was a catastrophe. Biden's was... well, it was just a choice. Biden literally says ten times as many embarrassing things as Palin. But Palin's story arc is "Totally Unqualified Ditz", and Biden's is "Experienced Statesman who Creates Harmless Gaffes." Palin refuses to answer what newspaper she reads and is portrayed as stupid, uneducated and uninterested in the world. Obama refuses to answer questions about William Ayers and he is not portrayed as secretive, hiding something, untrustworthy - the media simply stops asking the question and ignores it. Palin stumbles through an answer and it gets wide coverage. Biden makes a bizarre claim about an attack on America if Obama is elected, and the running commentary is that it is harmless little screw-up, just another "Bidenism".

Biden is just a harmless klutz. Obama is a great speaker, but private. McCain is "erratic" and "maybe a little senile". Palin is dangerously unqualified. These are the running commentaries.

Note that "unqualified" is not the story arc that Obama got. His story arc could be named "Historic Candidacy." He's as unqualified as Palin, arguably, and he's pursuing a much more important office. But his story arc was never going to be "Dangerously Unqualified" with a friendly media. It has been "Historic Candidacy" from day one.