Stink Tanks

The more I hear cable news interview members of “Think Tanks” the less I feel like listening to the news. Most disheartening of all, even NPR has become increasingly guilty of this habit. There is something distinctly fishy about journalists’ dependence on expertise from these groups.

Think tanks often seem to be little more than PR departments or advocacy groups spreading propaganda to push whatever ideological agenda for which that group claims expertise. Almost always funded by large corporations, businesses or foundations, think tanks exist both on the Left and on the Right, but seem to be dominated by much more conservative groups, such as the Heritage Foundation (with funding by such hard liners as Richard Mellon Scaife). I have come to distrust any “expertise” coming out of these so-called intellectual institutes.

I can’t find the author of the following, but one writer put it this way: “Think tanks are like universities minus the students and minus the systems of peer review and other mechanisms that academia uses to promote diversity of thought. Real academics are expected to conduct their research first and draw their conclusions second, but this process is often reversed at most policy-driven think tanks.”

So why are journalists depending so much on them? Laziness? The continuing focus on media profits over real investigative reporting? I can’t say.

Jonathan Rowe once said “think tank” is a misnomer because thinking is the last thing they do. “They don’t think. The justify.”

A friend reminded me of an article I posted by Bill Moyers months ago about the decline of journalism and what it means to the health of any democracy. The ever growing dependance on information provided by think tanks makes me increasingly concerned about the future of both journalism and democracy in America.