Rich Lowry Comes to Campus

National Review editor Rich Lowry came to campus yesterday, and his talk was a great supplement to Arianna Huffington's speech two weeks ago. Though Lowry and Huffington are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both had similar sentiments about our current media climate.

Lowry noted that "legacy media, an artifact of institutions, corporations, and technological limitations," is quickly coming to an end. He pointed out many of the flaws of current corporate media, such as the selectivity of soundbytes and the bias of video. While many would argue that video is proof of what is the truth, I particularly liked Lowry's comment disputing this claim: "Video can lie, depending on how it's edited and how much you see." Currently shooting, editing, and producing a 30-minute documentary for my TV Workshop class, I know how true that statement is. I constantly have to consider the implications of soundbytes taken out of the context of full interviews.

Lowry talked about how today's new media is actually returning to the ideals of the earliest journalism. Historically, newspapers were partisan. Somewhere down the road, the myth of objectivity was born. New media prides itself on being unabashedly partisan, and Lowry sees this as one of its assets: "They don't even try to be objective. And from where I sit, that's a profoundly good thing."

Why? Lowry referenced John Stewart Mills's marketplace of ideas and the theory that only through the collision of adverse opinions will truth be obtained. When asked during the question and answer session whether partisan new media will result in "splintering" and people reading only what they already agree with, Lowry admitted this is a possible problem, but then added that alternate views are easily accessible for those who are curious. Our professor, Jeff Cohen, chimed in to say that internet journalism often brings both sides of an issue to the forefront because the subject of criticism is frequently linked to. Links, rather than videos, are becoming the new evidence of truth.