Today’s Journalists: Truth Seekers? Or Hired Hands Ready To Report Anything To Stay Employed?

Mainstream journalism in 21st Century America has somehow morphed from the gathering and sharing of information into half-assed snarkiness. Not even the good kind of snarkiness, either. Not even the kind that’s thoroughly detailed and delightfully blistery. Not even the kind that’s vaguely intelligent. No, today’s snarkiness is just ho-hum, expected snottiness that any kid on the playground could pull off.

My progressive idealism blames Rupert Murdoch for this current state of pseudo-journalism, but that’s another, longer story altogether. So today, I’m focusing on Gloria Borger’s latest rant on President Obama.

That’s what most journalism had become nowadays: ranting. Along with huffing and puffing. And unchecked hyperbole. And let’s not forget that all-important mandatory alignment with all-powerful forces of money and influence -- so you won’t lose your job.

Today’s employed journalists have forsaken fact-gathering, information-sharing, and truth-seeking. They’ve traded in their integrity for job security. They want to keep working so badly that they’re willing to “report” whatever their bosses want them to “report.”

No, The Man may not directly state what he expects his hirelings to report or write or broadcast. But money and media ownership almost always mean G-O-P. And that means non-stop criticism of that Democratic Chief Executive otherwise known as President Barack Obama.

The name of the game nowadays is staying employed, and for current CNN correspondent Gloria Borger, it’s become the only game in town.

When I turned to the Internet and came across her latest rant disguised as political op-ed, I was repulsed...yet fascinated.

How does a reporter at CBS leave to “spend more time with her family,” only to turn up as Chief Political Analyst on CNN?

I don’t get it. It’s downright mystifying that a journalist who can’t see or smell a stinkbug at an ugly bug ball keeps finding work. Especially when her latest editorial is entitled “Obama defeated by his own bureaucracy.” That title alone reveals just how weak her skills at political analysis really are. It also hints at how willing some reporters are to let The Man seize control of their ideas and opinions -- and to allow their work to be regurgitated into more anti-Obama ideology.

In Gloria’s case, it’s hard to say what’s wrong. Is her writing hopelessly stuck in some 8th grade level of expression that substitutes hyperbole, false syllogisms, and emotional catch-phrases for lucid analysis? Or, is she so determined to deliver the political opinions she thinks her bosses want that she’s forgotten how our government actually works?

Before you start accusing me of snarkiness, dear readers, let’s go over some examples of Borger’s piece to illustrate what I mean.

First, let’s look at the title: Obama defeated by his own bureaucracy.

There’s a real underhanded disrespect for the current Chief Executive when you refer to the sitting president by his last name only --and not his title. In this case, it’s President Obama. There’s an even sneakier invalidation going on, though, when the very next word in the title AFTER Obama is defeated.

Whether you like it or not, Barack Obama won the last Presidential Election, he’s presently living in the White House, and his title IS President Obama.

Second, let’s examine Borger’s curious allegation of defeat. Well, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. This President still has over two more years before his term officially ends. It’s too early to claim he was “defeated” by anything. Even if you firmly believe her notions of defeat are valid, you have to also acknowledge how insidiously subjective her judgement really is. Besides, there’s usually a good chance historians will arrive at a completely different conclusion after President Obama leaves office.

But now, we finally come to a phrase that only could have come from a pro-GOP think tank: “...his own bureaucracy.”

How, exactly, did this President come to own a bureaucracy that’s been 238 years in the making? Why is our system of US government and its operation suddenly his sole responsibility only when it doesn’t work the way people expect it to work?

According to Borger, it’s because President Obama has told the American public that he wants to change things and wants government to work better for everyone.

What’s wrong with trying to make changes? Apparently, in Borgerworld, it’s a crime. “Government is unwieldy and difficult and hard to tame, sure,” she writes. “But if your presidency is based, in large part, on telling Americans that government can work for them -- which it can -- you need to make it work.”

How? How is one man in our system of checks and balances supposed to affect all the changes that Borger wants?

There are so many things wrong with her emotionally-charged, logically-challenged diatribe that it would take another essay to faithfully address her faulty reasoning. And that’s the whole point of overloading your op-ed with so many questionable -- even false -- statements.

There simply isn’t enough time anymore for readers to read through various materials, let alone ponder what they’ve read.

The less time there is to read and reflect, the less readers will question what they’ve read. And when readers start reading a lot of opinionated, subjective material that’s filled with innuendo, gossip, unfair criticism, and lies they need to start questioning the material. They need to turn on their s**t detectors and keep them running.

Without enough time to properly assimilate reading materials, readers become more accepting. They stop wondering. They stop questioning.

Then they let these key words invade their consciousness without filtering or doubt. In this case, Borger peppered her op-ed with language that raised all kinds of doubt about President Obama’s competence as Chief Executive -- regardless of how little sense it made.

Key words like government, unwieldy, difficult, hard to tame, defeated, bureaucracy, civil libertarian, personal nemesis. Words that were deliberately devised to stay in our minds and question this president’s performance -- whether we were aware of the psychological tactic or not.

 Of course, as a thinking reader, I must question a lot of her points. Is government really unyielding? Is President Obama’s presidency actually “based in large part, on telling Americans that government can work for them...?” Is that really it? Is that really all his administration is about?

And how can Borger rationally claim that “By nature, bureaucracies are hard to trust and even harder to tame” when American government has been operating pretty well as a bureaucracy for over two centuries now?

Borger took the negative connotation of the word bureaucracy and ran with it.

Bureaucracy, by its very definition, is not negative. Too many politicians and pundits (mostly Republicans), however, see it that way and like to depict it that way.

Bureaucracy, by its actual definition, though, is not bad. It’s not evil. It’s not destructive, either. It’s merely a form of government. Bureaucracy can be defined as “government marked by diffusion of authority among numerous offices and (often, but not all the time) adherence to inflexible rules of operation.”

Like most people, I’m not a big fan of red tape...or any other “adherence to inflexible rules of operation.” Who, really, is? But not all bureaucracies smother citizens in red tape. Not every single bureaucracy is mindlessly inflexible. Moreover, no bureaucracy HAS to be that way, either.

Remember, a bureaucracy is simply a way of governing that spreads its authority out to different offices, departments, and branches. In other words, it’s the way the United States government operates.

In America, our system of government shares its power among three branches: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.

So how could one person in one branch of our government --say, President Obama in the executive branch -- seize control and “tame” government the way Borger expects?

It couldn’t happen. Our founding fathers specifically designed our system of government so such a thing would never, ever happen. They constructed a system of checks and balances to be “tyrant-proof.” If President Obama ever took charge the way Borger wanted, he’d be a dictator, not an American President.

Of course, I’m sure when President Obama talked about making changes for the commonweal, he was talking about doing it in a legal, constitutional manner. He wasn’t talking about any unlawful government takeover or bloody coup. I’m also sure that his exuberant idealism led him to believe he could at least be a catalyst -- if not a prime mover -- of change. He wanted effective, beneficial changes in government for all citizens. So it’s absurd to fault President Obama for wanting changes and for attempting to change things in Washington.

There’s no way that President Obama -- a rational, reasonable human being if ever there was one -- could have possibly foreseen the irrational, unreasonable tactics that the Tea Party had planned to unleash. This President probably never dreamed that such an ugly Republican backlash would take place on his watch.

Never, in modern times, had so many legislators adamantly refused to ratify a president’s appointees, or to approve a federal budget.

Never had so many public servants selfishly blocked change so often, then blamed the President when everything went wrong and government wasn’t working the way it was supposed to work.

So let’s not scapegoat President Obama too much, Gloria. Especially when you evidently kept falling asleep in Civics Class.

Look, if you want to sell out and keep trashing the President, all right. You go, girl. But please, don’t try to pass off your pre-approved fluff as good journalism. It isn’t. It never will be, either.