Critique: Why Americans Hate the Media

Source: atlantic
Authors: James Fallows
URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/02/why-americans-hate-the-media/305060/

What the article reports

James Fallows argues that American journalism — especially Washington-based political commentary and talk-show culture — has become preoccupied with the tactical "game" of politics at the expense of substantive policy coverage. He supports this thesis through four main exhibits: a 1987 PBS ethics panel where Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings revealed troubling detachment from soldiers' lives; a comparison of citizen vs. journalist questions to Bill Clinton in January 1995; a post-1994-election analysis of failed pundit predictions; and examples of financial conflicts of interest among prominent commentators (Sam Donaldson, George Will, Cokie Roberts). The piece concludes that this dynamic is eroding public trust in the press and, by extension, damaging democratic life.

Factual accuracy — Adequate

Fallows's specific, verifiable claims are generally accurate and carefully phrased. The 1987 Ethics in America PBS episode with Ogletree, Wallace, and Jennings is a real and documented event. The 1994 Washington Post "Crystal Ball" poll is presented with a precise and falsifiable claim: "Exactly three" of fourteen experts predicted a Republican sweep of both chambers. The Donaldson subsidy figure — "nearly $97,000 in sheep and mohair subsidies over two years" — is attributed to a named reporter (William Neuman, New York Post), giving it a traceable source. The George Will / Mari Maseng Will / Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association disclosure is specific: "$200,000 as a registered foreign agent."

A few softer spots: Donaldson's "base pay … reported to be some $2 million a year" uses hedged attribution ("reported to be"), which is appropriate but unverifiable by the reader. McLaughlin Group road-show fees are described as "reported to be about $20,000 per appearance" — again hedged but vague. The article characterizes the ABC post-State-of-the-Union poll as finding "eight out of 10 approved," citing ABC News directly; that figure is plausible and consistent with historical polling archives but cannot be fully verified from the text. No outright factual errors are identifiable, but the reliance on "reported" figures for compensation data keeps this below a top score.

Framing — Prosecutorial

1. "Wallace seemed unembarrassed about feeling no connection to the soldiers" — This is an authorial characterization of Wallace's inner state, not a description of his words. The article has just quoted Wallace saying he would "simply" cover the story; it then escalates to a claim about his emotional detachment without further evidence.

2. "The comments were virtually all about the tactics of the speech, and they were almost all thumbs down" — The "virtually" and "almost all" are doing significant work here. The article does not survey all commentary; it cites two Post columnists by name. The generalization is presented as established fact.

3. "What a big fat jerk that Clinton was!" — This is sarcasm deployed as authorial voice to mock the pundits, effectively steering the reader's sympathies. It reads as editorializing rather than analysis.

4. "Talk about not getting it!" — An unattributed exclamatory judgment about the CNN Crossfire promotional ad. No source is cited; this is pure authorial verdict.

5. "they send a message. The message is: We don't respect what we're doing. Why should anyone else?" — The closing rhetorical questions assert a causal chain (pundit behavior → public disrespect → democratic damage) that the article has not empirically demonstrated. It is presented as conclusion, not inference.

One structural framing choice worth noting: the article opens with the PBS ethics panel — a genuinely powerful and documented scene — which functions to morally discredit the journalists before the policy-coverage critique even begins. This sequencing predisposes the reader against the subjects before their professional conduct is examined.

Source balance

Ratio: Approximately 10–12 voices supporting or illustrating Fallows's thesis; 1–2 voices nominally in the subjects' defense (Will's one-sentence dismissal; Donaldson's trespass comment). No journalism scholar, First Amendment advocate, or prominent journalist is quoted making the strongest counterargument — e.g., that adversarial detachment is a deliberate and defensible professional ethic, or that game-frame coverage serves legitimate accountability functions.

Omissions

1. The strongest counterargument for detached journalism. The article quotes Wallace saying reporters must remain "detached" but then dismisses the position without engaging its philosophical grounding. Walter Lippmann's press-as-neutral-witness tradition, or the argument that reporters embedded with any side should suppress national loyalty, goes unexamined. Fallows himself notes Wallace "didn't even make" the arguments for his position — but neither does Fallows make them on Wallace's behalf before rebutting them.

2. Fallows's own institutional position. At the time of publication Fallows was Washington editor of The Atlantic and had recently left a position as chief speechwriter for President Carter. His proximity to political power and his own stake in the media-criticism genre are not disclosed. This is directly relevant given the article's extended critique of undisclosed conflicts of interest among commentators.

3. Evidence that substance-focused coverage produces better civic outcomes. The article asserts that game-frame coverage damages democracy but cites no comparative evidence — no study of voter knowledge, no comparison of civic outcomes in markets with different coverage styles, no international comparison.

4. Historical precedent for similar critiques. Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922), press critics from A.J. Liebling forward, and the long tradition of journalism self-criticism are entirely absent. The piece implies this is a new and worsening problem without situating it historically.

5. The economic and structural pressures driving talk-show formats. The article notes competition and commercial incentives in passing but does not examine the business-model forces (cable proliferation, audience fragmentation, advertising economics) that shaped the formats it criticizes.

What it does well

• The PBS ethics-panel scene is exceptionally well chosen as a concrete, documented, dramatic opening. Rather than asserting that journalists lack ethical grounding, Fallows shows it — "I feel utter contempt" — through attributed dialogue, letting the scene speak.
• The citizen-vs.-journalist question comparison ("What are you going to do about the health-care system?" vs. "How are you going to try to take away Perot's constituency?") is the article's most analytically rigorous move: a direct, parallel, falsifiable contrast using specific named sources and dates.
• Self-incriminating quotes are sourced to the subjects themselves: Kondracke's "This is not writing, this is not thought" and Barnes's "the line between news and fun barely exists anymore" are devastating precisely because they are the journalists' own words, not Fallows's characterization.
• The Times Mirror Center survey grounds the "lost credibility" section in systematic polling data rather than anecdote alone — "two out of three members of the public had nothing or nothing good to say about the media."
• The medical-research analogy — "as if the discussion of every new advance in medicine boiled down to speculation about whether its creator would win the Nobel Prize" — is a clear, apt illustration of the abstraction Fallows is trying to name.
• The piece is admirably specific about names, dates, and dollar figures where it makes financial-conflict claims, modeling the disclosure standard it advocates for others.

Rating