If the 1980s were my “young and dumb” days, then the 1990s qualify as my “approaching middle age and still dumb” days. Do not ask me which days these are.
During the 1990s my father frequently repeated this observation while watching TV news: why did journalists ask people how they “feel” rather than what they think? I, not even owning a TV set at the time, didn’t know what to think about anyone’s feelings. I just tracked the stories my father watched for the relevance. One broadcast led with five crimes, only one of them truly local, and only two others with a tangential connection to our city. “What do you feel about that, Dad?” I asked. He grunted a non-reply, apparently content with the violence market.
I miss my father; in this, his observations were ahead of his time. I still avoid television, except when I can’t really avoid it, such as in waiting rooms, etc. I still check the relevance and news-worthiness of the segments I watch. It’s still depressing; in a usual hour I might find three minutes of actual news. The rest of it is about as useful as someone describing a picture to you while both of you see it, with no mention of the editing that took place to get the picture on the screen. Then everybody discusses their feelings. It saddens me that we feed people this junk, as I was an actual working journalist in a previous life—my first enlistment in the US Army.
I was trained as a broadcast journalist at the Defense Information School at Fort Benjamin Harrison, in Indianapolis. To this day I admire military training, and how I, with zero background in broadcasting, became a passable broadcast journalist in thirteen weeks. I wasn’t able to use my broadcast experience much at my only post during that enlistment, as Fort Belvior needed a broadcaster to do voice-overs and a daily telephone news update. When the staff learned I could write well, I re-trained on the fly as a print journalist. My degree in Rhetoric proved useful!
I found that the journalism provided in a post newspaper is quite as good and as useful as that in a very good local paper. We were tasked to provide junior enlisted soldiers and their families the facts they needed to serve better: we ran a lot of stories about post housing, we covered nearby events and attractions, and we supported command priorities—which, fortunately for us, included writing the most entertaining newspaper that we could. (Never forget that the post newspaper will always be as excellent as the post commander and public affairs officer intend it to be.) We won awards, which were nice, but the “award” I cared for came in the form of military spouses and family members telling me that we were the only Army newspaper that they ever read.
I am told that local newspapers are dying. Look at our (actual and functional) literacy rates, and it’s not hard to understand why. But journalism, both local and national, is exploding everywhere. It cares how we feel. You can find it in blogs and podcasts, with no TV necessary—all you have to do is look. But watch out: quite a lot of it is unprofessional. Quite a bit of it is false. A smaller bit of it is propaganda.
I was introduced to the Joe Rogan Experience by my brother, who watches some right wing media and regularly lectures me on the dangers of socialism, wokeism, and any other bug-bear that media covers. At first I found Rogan charming, and I was fond of anyone who would preserve the long-form interview. It wasn’t exactly Fresh Air on NPR, but it was okay. When Rogan himself announced he wouldn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine, I told my brother that Rogan was wrong to share that with his audience, and that this sort of editorializing would lead to trouble. My brother wasn’t too concerned about that—he is vaccinated and boosted—and told me that what I think doesn’t matter too much as Rogan has an amazing number of followers and listeners. “So did Father Coughlin in the thirties,” I replied. “Having a large audience doesn’t by itself validate your program.”
Rogan himself seems to be learning on the fly, but I think without the support and guidance I got while learning print journalism on the fly. He’s learning that if he provides time for a guest who has a controversial (or false) view on a topic such as COVID-19, that he ought to host someone who has a different view soon thereafter. He’s learning that his language matters. He’s learning that the way he asks questions matters. He seems earnest about fixing past mistakes; that said, he also clings to the pretense that he’s not a professional, that his show is entertainment, not to be taken seriously. He may not take himself too seriously, but his show might be the only long-form interview program his audience watches. They will glean “information” from his guests whether that was (or was not) his intent. He will be held accountable.
I could have done what he did better, but there’s no way my brand gets more than a small proper fraction of one percent of his. I wish him the best, and I hope he doesn’t care to ask what his guests “feel” about the world around them.