The Day Journalism Died

[We interrupt the final 5 days of Miami Vice Month for this important breaking news announcement]

Tuesday, July 25 will forever be known as the day journalism died. It was presumed dead for years, but nobody really knew for sure. Not until Stephen Colbert gave journalism a proper burial on Tuesday night when he responded to attacks from NBC News and ABC News that he was playing politicians for fools on The Colbert Report.

Jake Tapper, a senior correspondent for ABC News, asked: "With the reputation damaging risk associated with an appearance on The Colbert Report, why do politicians keep going on the show?"

Colbert's answer: "This show is the news. Not only is this show the news, evidently it is news. It's gotta be news because you morning shows are the news and you're doing reports on it. So I guess Congressmen come on my show in the hopes that you'll use their appearance on my show on your show."

Forbes, CNN, USA Today, and however many other media outlets joined ABC and NBC in reporting on Colbert's recent interviews with Congressmen Robert Wexler (D-FL) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). Interviews in which he gets them to say crazy things or reveal their lack of knowledge about their jobs. This means all of these so-called purveyors of journalism have absolutely no defense against Colbert's claim. These journalists using a comedy show as a source also means that people should let go of any hope they have that objective reporting of facts is still alive.

Nobody knows precisely when journalism started dying, we just know that it happened while the internet and 24-hour cable news mushroomed. Maybe it was in October 1996 when Ronald Reagan's and George Bush Sr’s closest media advisor Roger Ailes created and launched Fox News – an event which marked the official transformation of TV news from journalism into partisan political strategy.

Or maybe it was January 30, 1998 when Jake Tapper published a Washington City Paper cover story titled I Dated Monica Lewinsky; the piece that ran less than two weeks before the story of Lewinsky's ‘relations’ with Bill Clinton broke, and marked the official transformation of political journalism into global entertainment.

Or it very well could have been in January 1999 when overgrown frat boy Craig Kilborn lost the Daily Show top job to the more politically-minded Jon Stewart. The strength of the Stewart/Colbert satire model has since grown so strong at uncovering and reporting facts, it’s sparked questions as to whether their shows should be considered a news source. But isn’t this debate relevant for all other news sources too?

If formats (satire, humor, entertainment, political strategy, etc) have killed journalism's core tenets of objectivity and balance, now it's just a matter of who presents the most credible information. In a reporting era dominated not by fact but by format, the real question is: who's doing their research? Is it a guy like Colbert who knows more about all our country’s Congressman and districts than just about anyone? Or is it the ABC News correspondent who’s playing Texas Hold ‘Em with a chimp?

And so shouldn't Colbert be praised, not attacked, for challenging Congressman Westmoreland on his lazy, lemming-like policies -- regardless of the format in which he poses these challenges? Or should Jake Tapper just cut his Real Journalist losses and go back to the news-as-entertainment model he used to sneak his way into hard news?

Here's the Colbert Report clip that sparked all of this. You decide.



[We now return to Miami Vice Month on GSunderground, already in progress]