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About MediaCrit
MediaCrit turns a critical eye on the mass media (primarily the news media). An archive of encyclopedia-style entries, reported articles, and longform essays, MediaCrit is researched and written by graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Journalism at New York University, under the guidanceof Professor Mark Dery, who launched the site in fall 2007.
MediaCrit approaches its subject using angles of attack associated with press criticism, media theory, cultural studies, investigative reporting, and radical history, to name just a few of the intellectual paradigms employed here. The site's goal is to provide historical context for, and critical analysis of, the corporate influences, social roles, ideological agendas, and cultural effects of the media. More profoundly, MediaCrit thinks deeply about the ways in which the media shape our mental lives, social worlds, economic landscape, and cultural environment.
MediaCrit holds itself to the highest journalistic standards: thorough research, scrupulous factuality (every fact is sourced, every quote attributed), and a good-faith attempt to be fair and balanced (to use a vexed phrase!).
Caveat Lector: However, that does not mean that MediaCrit is governed by the objectivity principle. Growing numbers of journalists and media critics are rejecting the mainstream notion of the reporter as a disinterested observer, dedicated to getting the facts and blind to historical precedent or societal context, as a posture that too often reduces reporters to "stenographers with amnesia," as Jack Newfield put it. In an age when White House spin doctors, Pentagon flacks, corporate publicists, P.R. firms, ideological thinktanks and the quotable experts they deploy are well-skilled in the art of managing the media in order to sell their agendas to the public, MediaCrit contends that journalists must be more than impartial, just-the-facts witnesses to history. They must situate current events within the historical and cultural contexts that enable audiences to make sense---profound sense---of the morning's headlines. They must exercise their critical intellects, refusing the blind "objectivity" that, according to the reporter and media critic Mark Hertsgaard, leaves them virtually unable to call the sky blue unless they can find an expert source who will say it's blue, on the record. Case in point: Global warming. Despite near unanimity in the scientific community regarding the reality of global warming, news reports on the subject have until recently "balanced" statements by scientists with the opinions of thinktank ideologues and energy industry spokespeople.
In contrast to specious balance and uncritical objectivity, MediaCrit espouses a journalism and a media criticism that foster informative, engaging debate---the vigorous exchange of ideas and information essential to a participatory democracy (as opposed to the brain-numbing WWF headbutting that increasingly passes for debate in American media culture). We believe in offering voices on every side of an issue the opportunity to make their cases, but reserve the right (after a careful review of informed opinion and the facts of the matter) to point out that the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction (if it does).
As well, we believe in exercising our critical intellects---calling the sky blue if the evidence of our eyes convinces us it is, whether we can find a Voice of Authority to echo that conclusion or not. For example, if the president utters a patent falsehood, we believe in pointing out that all the best evidence belies his statement rather than simply parroting his claim without comment. If we have ample reason to believe he knew he was uttering a patent falsehood, we believe in a journalism that has the integrity, the courage, and the respect for fact---and for the intelligence of its audience---to say: the president lied.
Parting Thoughts: Allow us a pre-emptive strike against the tiredest canard in the culture wars, namely, the charge of liberal bias. MediaCrit makes no apology for its tough-minded analysis of the media manipulation strategies and tactics of Karl Rove and Roger Ailes or the disproportionate number of conservative voices on TV news shows such as The Lehrer Newshour. The political right has spent decades funding thinktanks, building a conservative media apparatus, and brainstorming strategies to sell its ideas; this is a fact of American political life, amply evidenced in the public record. If MediaCrit highlights that fact in any of its entries relevant to the subject of media bias, it is only because, for much of recent history, the political right has been ascendant and its media machinery far more effective than that of the disorganized, relatively underfunded left. (If you're a conservative on the hunt for media bias, consider that a compliment!)
That said, we'll be only too happy to spotlight liberal attempts at media manipulation. If you're a conservative and would like to bring any such instance to our attention, you're very much encouraged to do so via the e-mail address below.
Comments, constructive criticisms, and suggestions for entries are also welcome.
CONTACT: Professor Mark Dery at mad 13 at NYU dot edu.
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, Sep 21 2007, 8:04 AM EDT
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