Journalism in the age of the media stampede

August 24, 2010

With thundering hooves on cable shows and talk radio, raising dust on blogs, the media herd tramples every story in its path. As columnist Howard Kurtz writes for The Washington Post, amid the stampede everyone must form an immediate opinion on the story of the moment and defend that judgment passionately. The quickly labeled “Ground Zero mosque” — an Islamic cultural center that is neither at Ground Zero nor specifically a mosque — is a classic case.

Avoiding complexity, the herd loves to chase stories with colorful personalities that can easily be defended or denounced. The trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich fit the bill. So did JetBlue hothead Steven Slater. Needing noise to shake up a quiet August, media people freighted the flight attendant’s story with sociological baggage and turned it into a clarion call for fed-up workers everywhere — even after his version of events began to fall apart.

The herd isn’t dumb, Kurtz says — it just moves so quickly that snap judgments tend to prevail over nuance. Some stories appear naturally in the pack’s path, but others — like Shirley Sherrod, instantly denounced as a racist before just as forcefully being vindicated as the victim of a setup a couple of days later — are planted there by people with agendas. Escalating rhetoric pushes contrived controversies onto op-ed pages and network newscasts, where they remain until the herd turns to chase whatever buzzes by next. — Greg Beaubien

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