something nice about the media

JON CARROLL ~ SF CHRONICLE

Back in the day, it seemed as if newspapers would be a fun profession to get into. Excitement, camaraderie, occasional access to glamour, daily discussions of important issues, plus a chance to write and get paid for it. And maybe: hats at a rakish angle.

Well, lordy. Now apparently we are all untrustworthy hacks under the influence of vile outdated philosophies, rushing to judgment, sensationalizing the news (although: How exactly do you sensationalize the Michael Jackson story? It's hard enough just to report the damn thing without writing kiddie porn), making errors, lying on expense accounts, and none of it really matters anyway because newspapers are dead dead dead because of that Internet thing. I've probably left a few things out.

Well, I don't believe a word of it. I do not think newspapers are dead, I do not think newspapers are filled with errors, I do not think the press is "liberal" -- a word that has in any event lost its meaning to all but a fringe group of chat-show morons -- and ... OK, maybe people are lying on expense accounts. I wouldn't know; I work at home. What am I going to expense? Purina cat chow?

The word "liberal" has come to imply wild, outside-the-mainstream ideas and beliefs. Let's see whether the American press can fairly be described that way: The American press supports the idea that democracy is the superior system of government, and if all the nations in the world were democracies, it would be a better place. The American press supports the stock market and believes that it is vital to the continued functioning of the free enterprise system, which it also supports. The American press believes that religion is an important part of American life. The American press supports members of the U.S. military and believes that they are necessary for the maintenance of freedom, which it also supports.

The American press was and is anti-communist. The American press was and is opposed to terrorism. The American press is owned by corporations, mostly large corporations, and supports the continued consolidation of media power. The American press does not use dirty words, does not support sex among underage citizens, does not support illegal drug use and does not support the desecration of any religious institution, building or icon.

It does often give a platform to, and sometimes supports, people who advocate the right to abortion, gay rights, free expression and safe sex. These are not minority or radical opinions. In order to "prove" that the American press is "liberal," you have to select a very few trees from a very large forest.

And yet, a lot of American newspapers and broadcasters are going out of their way to prove that they are not liberal. They are accepting the premise. They are being bullied by zealots and by a few powerful operatives who have slithered into positions of power in the Republican Party. They are not standing firm. Perhaps they are afraid of declining revenues. If they are changing their positions because they fear declining revenues, they are not run by ideologues -- they are run by businessmen. Of course they are run by businessmen. Get a damn grip.

So what's going on? I think it's possible that any discussion of race, religion or class is considered "liberal." I think the idea that there are two Americas, one rich and one poor, and that in a democracy things should be done that improve the lives of all Americans -- I think that's a "liberal" idea. I think the idea that race is at times an insurmountable handicap in American life is a "liberal" idea. I think that the idea that what class you belong to largely determines your economic future is a "liberal" idea.

I think when the new president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, detects liberal bias in public television, he is talking about reports on environmental damage, government cover-ups and inadequately supplied U.S. soldiers. These things are not "liberal" any more than a rock is "liberal," but reporting on them is.

Tomlinson wants balance, and the media scramble to say, "Oh yes, we want more balance, yes, balance, we are for it." And yet if toxic chemicals are spilling into San Francisco Bay, it would not be journalistically ethical to produce a report that says that toxic chemicals are not spilling into San Francisco Bay. If soldiers are using improvised sheet-metal shields on their vehicles in Iraq, it would not be journalistically ethical to say that they were not using sheet-metal shields.

Truth is probably not knowable, but facts are knowable. It is either 72 degrees outside my window or it isn't. You can't balance the report on 72 degrees with one that says it's 58 degrees -- that's stupid. And all of the journalists I have known in, oh God, 44 years in the business have wanted to get the facts right. All of them.

And yet, of course, they don't succeed. The media make mistakes every day. There are incorrect things in every newspaper and on every news broadcast. These are fallible human institutions. They get stuff wrong. Let's talk about that on Thursday.

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Maybe what we need is a magazine about the media that talk about the media, a sort of meta-magazine that prints pre-apologies for sins yet to be committed.

Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream, separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream? jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

------------------------------------pt. II--------------------------------------

Long ago in another galaxy, this paper ran a front-page story with the headline: "A Great City's People Forced to Drink Swill." It was about the bad coffee served in many fine San Francisco cafes, and I believe undercover urn inspections were part of the investigative procedure.

I can only imagine if that headline were to run today. The next day, the following correction would appear:

"The Chronicle erred when it said that residents of San Francisco were forced to drink a beverage. All residents did so voluntarily; any implication that unlawful detention or extortion took place is incorrect, and The Chronicle regrets the implication. 'Swill' is defined as 'kitchen refuse given to swine,' and at no time were any coffee urns filled with kitchen refuse given to swine. The Chronicle regrets the error. The population of San Francisco is approximately 786,000, and thus is not 'great' in the sense of 'wonderfully large or sprawling.' If readers inferred that, we regret the error. In fact, The Chronicle regrets the whole thing and wants to lie down on the daybed."

Look: Newspapers are a human enterprise run by fallible beings. Surgeons make mistakes; accountants make mistakes; journalists make mistakes. As Steven Winn pointed out last week, we apologize too darn much for making mistakes. Of course we're sorry, but the quest for perfection is just that, a quest. We never get there. You never get there. We hate hate hate it when we get facts wrong, but we are actually after bigger game.

Look: Last week I wrote that the town of Cordova in Alaska is east of the town of Cordova in Alaska, which is very Zen, but I meant Anchorage. It was an artifact of rewrite, and I'm sorry, but it was a good column anyway. On Monday I wrote that 100,000 people were killed in the flu pandemic of 1918-19; actually, it was 100 million people. Sloppy sloppy sloppy.

Mitch Albom, a columnist in Detroit, was almost fired because he said two basketball players attended a game that they had not, in fact, attended. It was wrong, but -- who was hurt? What damage was done? The United States is hiring untrained teenagers and making them prison guards in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mitch Albom is the problem? Come bloody on.

The media are under attack because we try to find stuff out. We are under attack because we say what we believe to be true. (Even more annoyingly, we are protected by the Constitution.) We are a reality-based institution in a faith-based culture, and we are paying for it. Journalists die doing their jobs, which is more than you can say for lobbyists, TV commentators or corporate lawyers.

The problem is that we are fair-minded. We know that we make mistakes. We want to get better. The fair-minded have no chance against zealots. Zealots lie because the ends justify the means, and we say, "Oh, gosh, we're going to investigate and strive and improve." Are the zealots going to investigate and strive and improve? Of course not: They have an agenda, and the agenda does not include self-assessment. The zealots are working out of the Che Guevara handbook, friends.

Do the media do awful stuff? You bet they do. Should the media strive to get better? You bet they should. Should they stop cravenly caving in to every hack with a megaphone? Absolutely -- we do our best, and without us, citizens would really be in trouble. We're a goddamn bastion, and it would be nice if we acted proud of that once in a while.

And also, if I could say, what we do is very hard. Not me; I just sit at home in my bunny slippers woolgathering about red-necked phalaropes. But I respect the actual folks who go get the news, find the sources who know what the news means, find other people with different interpretations, read documents of unparalleled tedium, and then produce 800 words formed into sentences and paragraphs that tell readers something they did not know already, by 5 o'clock, with a jackhammer going off outside and a kid down with the flu.

People are forever writing me: "How come the media isn't covering blah." Well, if you even know about blah, it's probably because you read about it in the media. Sometimes maybe it was KPFA or thesmokinggun.com or "7 on Your Side, " but the media covered it.

And if we don't cover it initially, we cover it eventually, and we cover why we didn't cover it initially. Reporters get lazy and editors get distracted and total horse droppings get into the paper, but literal horse droppings occasionally show up in our fresh vegetables and spinach is still good for you. It is so easy to slag the media; such an abdication of responsibility. Officer, the media made me do it; I am but putty in their hands.

You should not believe everything you read, but you should be grateful that there's stuff to read at all, and that people care about whether that stuff is right, and that they will keep caring next week and next month and next year. Be different, be revolutionary -- say something nice about the media.

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I even collect newspaper errors. The New York Times spoke recently of "towing the line," which is not right unless you're writing about the Volga boatmen.

This looks like a job for me, so everybody just follow me, 'cause we need a little controversy, 'cause it feels so empty without jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.