What Kristol doesn't know about media elites

William Kristol in his Monday column in The New York Times says some things about media elites that cannot be left unchallenged.

I take it personally, for one thing. I hate it when anyone, William Kristol included, goes off half-cocked about who I am. I am a media elite. After 35 years in the business, I know way too much about media to be anything but an elite. Call me Mike the Media Elite. Go ahead, mock me on “Saturday Night Live.” I have written enough newspaper stories to fill several books, and I teach 200-225 students annually the principles on which, in time, they may become media elites.

Kristol says media elites like telling readers “what’s going to happen,” because it “puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.”

If The New York Times gives Kristol a column to write, it means he must be some kind of media elite himself, and I cannot find a way to square that stature with his words in the last paragraph. Unless he is lying. Otherwise, he wants me to believe he understands no more of the media-public relationship than an 18-year-old freshman walking into the classroom on the first day of the semester.

One of the first principles the freshmen learn about media – in this case, journalism – is the Definition of News: “News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.” Immediately upon learning that, students are taught that the media did not create the Definition of News. Do you know who did? PEOPLE. Most of the core principles, rules, and definitions of media were created by people long before the media existed. When the technology became available, the media came into existence because it took those people-created principles, rules, and definitions and turned them into a business.

The business was providing people – readers – with information they needed, or information they wanted. Why? Because information was not only the original human need, it was an instinct: Where’s the food? Where’s the water? Still possessed of the damnedest instinct to survive, people still insist on information, and they insist that we media elites provide it for them.

Back at the origin of these instincts, people were infatuated, perhaps not intellectually, but viscerally, by the threat to the status quo. The change to the status quo is anything that has happened. The threat to the status quo is anything that MIGHT happen. I don’t know when humans hit on the thought of the crystal ball, but I would nominate a night up under some dark, semi-protected ledge with lightning crashing, water rushing, volcanoes erupting, the ground shaking, and big mean hungry cats howling all around.

It’s not so much survival now, but humans STILL are fascinated by the threat to the status quo. Most of a later media business development, the entertainment business, is built directly on the threat to the status quo, and humans, knowing they aren’t going to get chomped, eat it up. They are addicted to it. And who do they count on to feed the addiction? The MEDIA, William! If “elite prognosticators” try to “stay ahead of the curve,” it’s because those so-called simple-minded people insist that’s where we position ourselves. They don’t like your “delusion of choice.” They would much rather know who is going to win. Millions of these people face two more weeks of actual physical agony before the election. Who do they look to for a breath of promise that it may go their way?

As a media elite, I wish the people knew why they felt this way. It would be so much better if they had some education about their role in what the media does, and why, but they don’t. It isn’t a required subject in the American educational system. It’s not healthy for the media, either. Technology has all but obliterated human patience, creating the media race to be first. U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics from May, 2007, identify about 1.5 million media professionals in the United States. That means that roughly 270 million Americans age 5 and over are functionally media illiterate. Or 270,000,001, counting William Kristol.