Connections: The Blindness of Cultural Arrogance

The Connection

Here’s a theme that lies at the center of all three stories: A blindness stemming from cultural arrogance.

See it on display in Kinsley’s piece about news writing where he makes some huge assumptions about readers and some dangerous assertions about how we should place trust in news organizations.

IN KINSLEY’S world, readers of news on the Internet don’t need context, they don’t need background information; they only need the latest update. Backward newspaper writers, he states, assume they have ”readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine.” Kinsley appears to assume that news junkies on the net know an issue like health care reform very well; context is clutter.

Unfortunately, reality doesn’t really bear that out. (In fact, no news organization on the Web or off has done a very good job explaining the American health care system and its coming reforms. Other than an excellent piece on This American Life. I highly recommend it.)

Kinsley falls prey to the notion that the way he consumes news is the way other smart people do. The problem isn’t that news writers are trying to provide context, it’s that they’re doing it badly. It’s like arguing that Jesus was wrong because centuries after he died the Catholics slaughtered Muslims in his name.

Kinsley makes good points about how far journalism has strayed from its roots, and what some of the advantages of technology are for delivering news, but his perspective is still one colored by the way he experiences the world as a critic of the media who ravenously consumes its product yet is still part of it.

Finally, let’s take a look at his notion that we shouldn’t rely on news organizations to seek out experts to explain context. “Cut out the middleman,” Kinsley exhorts. We either trust the news organizations like the New York Times or we don’t. Too bad the Times isn’t monolithic. I may trust the paper most of the time but its reporters often go far afield — Judith Miller being the worst but certainly not the only transgressor. I want to know who the Times’ sources are. You may dismiss that as needless context, Mr. Kinsley, but some of us hold journalism to a higher standard.

My perspective is certainly colored by my training in journalism and as a writer for The Associated Press, where brevity, comprehensiveness and accuracy were so highly prized. Context and the use of the inverted pyramid (Kinsley condemns a “ruthless adherence” to it) were a valuable part of my transition to writing for the Web. Kinsley’s sometimes keen analysis ultimately suffers from an unquestioned faith in his own sense of reality.

Next: Cultural blindness cuts both ways »