I don't give a shit about Tiger Woods. But it's Masters Week and (seemingly) all eyes are on Woods. But this is not really a post about him.
On Friday night, I stumbled across Larry King Live where Jesse Ventura was filling in for Mr. King. At some point the conversation turned to Tiger Woods. Mr. Ventura blasted the media for their coverage of TigerGate in a rant that would have made Sarah Palin proud (she who has recently lambasted the "lamestream media"... you see what she did there!? That is hilarious!! *sigh*).
My problem with this is that Mr. Ventura seems stridently libertarian. But when the public en masse have obviously decided that they DO give a shit about this story and the media (which it should never be forgotten is a private, overwhelmingly for-profit enterprise driven by a quest for eyeballs so as to generate advertising revenue) works to satisfy public demand for information about a philandering golfer... who is really at fault here?
The answer, I think, is really "no one" (or "everyone" if you prefer). This is just market forces at work and it's completely ideologically inconsistent to be for a free market and for a free press and then be indignant when market forces work to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This has truly been a blind-spot for the conservative movement in recent history... certainly going back to Reagan and probably much further back... (Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show?) The social conservatives (the so-called "family values" crowd) align themselves with the Republican Party who are, to their core, deregulatory corporatists; and, yet, the conservatives still don't seem able to make the connection between the free market/unrestrained capitalism and what is produced by entertainment companies and media conglomerates. It should be clear that I don't state this is as an argument for regulation... it is merely an observation that it's ridiculous to be for a free market and then be so irate about the market result.
So while the media is a safe and easy target and, admittedly, they don't always get it right (i.e. the lead up to Iraq War), I would argue there are a lot of journalists out there really doing a fine job on issues such as health care (Ezra Klein), the environment (Thomas Friedman), economics (Paul Krugman), world affairs (Fareed Zakaria), the wars (Richard Engel, Lara Logan, Michael Ware) and it is, in my opinion, a tired and lazy take to just indict the media as a whole when you don't like what they cover. Of course, if they do a lousy job covering the Tiger Woods Story, that I would not defend but I don't know if they are or not because, you see, I don't give a shit about Tiger Woods.
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