David Carr Misses The Point On Stewart/Colbert Rally

David Carr is a smart guy and he certainly doesn't care whether or not I agree with him. He writes for the NY Times and I write primarily for a web site that has a few hundred thousand readers and not much of a public profile.

Still, none of that disqualifies Carr from being wrong. And he certainly is mistaken in his recent piece on Jon Stewart and the Rally To Restore Sanity.

The headline of the piece reads Jon Stewart Rally Shifts Blame To The News Media, and it is the latest example of what has become a sub-genre of commentary defending the media. Call it the "hey, we're too small to influence public policy" meme.

Carr notes that Stewart and Colbert focused much of their scorn on Saturday in the direction of the news media. And darn it, that's just so unfair:

It was a beautiful day on the Mall, and who doesn’t like kicking the press around, but speaking of ants, media bias and hyperbole seem like pretty small targets when unemployment is near 10 percent, vast amounts of unregulated cash are being spent in the election’s closing days, and no American governing institution — not the Senate, not the House of Representatives, not even the Supreme Court — seems to be above petty partisan bickering. Mr. Stewart couldn’t really go there and instead suggested it was those guys over there in the press tent who had the blood of democracy on their hands.

Carr argues that targeting the cable news networks is pointless, since only a small sliver of the electorate watch the channels:

But here’s the problem: Most Americans don’t watch or pay attention to cable television. In even a good news night, about five million people take a seat on the cable wars, which is less than 2 percent of all Americans. People are scared of what they see in their pay envelopes and neighborhoods, not because of what Keith Olbermann said last night or how Bill O’Reilly came back at him.

While it's true that the three major cable news channels only have a few million viewers, their reach and influence resonates in every corner of the political landscape. These channels dominate the D.C. Beltway agenda and the arguments that you hear on Beck or Maddow today are the ones that will spread out to every local radio call-in show and weekly newspaper by the weekend. In much the same way that an influential priest can influence an entire neighborhood outside his congregation, Fox News, MSNBC and CNN help set the media agenda for all of their print and web competitors. And with the number of related radio shows, books and guest appearances by the various cable news personalities, their ability to influence politics is nearly unbridled.

If the size of the audience was an accurate reflection of influence, then even the NY Times could be dismissed since it only reaches a fraction of American society. But the Times impacts the public discourse for the same reason that MSNBC or Fox does--it's not the number of people who listen, it's the identity of who's paying attention. Stories bounce from Politico to cable news to local TV and back to talk radio at nearly light speed. Conventional wisdom becomes political dogma within hours.

In a perfect world, Stewart and Colbert might have been better advised to target the political news class of both sides who seem to spend their days talking to each other through the mass media. But that argument is a bit complex to make in front of a couple of hundred thousand fans.

Carr has it right that cable TV news isn't the cause of the anger we see from both sides of the political spectrum. But is it part of the larger anger-distribution system and that makes it fair game for critics.

I know a bit about Carr's background and I suspect that he might not be comfortable being thought of as a media insider. But he is just that, in the same way that Beck and Olbermann are on cable news. Reach and distribution matter in this cluttered media landscape. You don't need to have 100 million viewers (or readers) to set the political discussion parameters for the entire country.

Yes, the level of petty political anger in America today can’t be laid entirely at the doors of the cable TV news networks. But in much the same way that texting isn’t the cause of every car crash, it’s still worth targeting cable news as one of the culpable parties in today’s pissy political climate.