Matt Taibbi visits Ithaca College

On February 9th, Rolling Stone's politics writer Matt Taibbi spoke to students at Ithaca College during a lecture titled "Independent Journalism Amidst Conformist Media." Taibbi is known for his scathing indictments of the powers that be, their hypocrisy, corruption and deception. He earned the National Magazine Award for commentary in 2008 and contributed to coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign for HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Early in his lecture, Matt Taibbi dropped a bomb on the student audience, a large percentage of which were journalism majors: True objectivity is impossible in journalism, he said. According to Taibbi, it's not only individual reporters that are biased -- the corporate system is biased too. For example, a paper will be reluctant to run a story that casts a company in a negative light if it's receiving advertising dollars from that company. Taibbi, therefore, likes the Russian style of journalism, where reporters are allowed to voice their social and political beliefs and biases upfront so that readers know from where and from who their news is coming. "People will trust a reporter more if they have some sense of what he's like," he said. American journalism's false pretense of objectivity is one of Taibbi's biggest beefs with corporate mainstream media. He despises the terse, emotionless style of American journalism; the flat, neutral tone reporters are encouraged to use. Concealed within dull American journalism, Taibbi sees the hidden biases and propaganda of publication editors and owners. Taibbi believes journalism would be more open and honest if journalists were allowed to write in "a human, colloquial style."

Taibbi said that while college students are taught the "rules of journalism" in regards to proper writing format, they won't learn about the "politics of journalism" until they enter the workforce. Young journalists working in America soon discover that they are only allowed to fully express themselves at full volume if their editors agree with what they're writing. Compared to Russian journalism, American journalism is both stylistically and ideologically rigid, said Taibbi. Instead of offering an accurate projection of reality, American journalists are subconsciously trained to reflect the ideological character of individual publishing institutions, advertisers or the government in their writing. But Taibbi believes people prefer the "unscrubbed, unsanitized version of reality." Journalists should take a "raw, truthful approach" to reporting.

The best way to be an independent journalist -- independent in the sense that your work doesn't play into the hands of corporate or government interests -- is to make your personal voice evident in your writing, said Taibbi. Good writers are direct, use the clearest imagery at their disposal, and use "one voice -- the writer's own voice." "Good writing and good journalism are not the same thing," lamented Taibbi, who was an English major at Bard College and wanted to write the next great American novel long before he became a journalist. Taibbi's voice comes through in the humor of his writing. He hates that humorous stories only appear in opinion or "news of the weird" sections, or in 30-second fluff clips at the end of evening newscasts. Life isn't compartmentalized, so why should reporting be? The news presents life without sarcasm or irony -- a distorted projection of reality, in Taibbi's opinion. There are several famous examples of how Taibbi has used humor to comment on American journalism and politics: he's smeared a reporter's face with horse-spunk pie, followed John Kerry around in a gorilla suit, and dropped acid and wore a Viking helmet during a campaign interview.

Read Taibbi's Rolling Stone articles and blog. His interview with Scholars and Rogues is also pretty interesting.