Should The Press Pick a Side?
The mainstream media isn't and shouldn't become a counterpart to the right-wing infotainment complex.
New Republic editor Michael Tomasky fleshes out an argument I’ve seen alluded to many times in the comments here, “We Have Two Medias in This Country, and They’re Going to Elect Donald Trump.”
It’s often asked in my circles: Why isn’t Joe Biden getting more credit for his accomplishments? As with anything, there’s no single reason. Inflation is a factor. His age is as well. Ditto the fact that people aren’t quite yet seeing the infrastructure improvements or the lower prescription drug costs.
There is no one reason. But there is one overwhelming factor in play: the media. Or rather, the two medias. It’s very important that people understand this: We reside in a media environment that promotes—whether it intends to or not—right-wing authoritarian spectacle. At the same time, as a culture, it’s consistently obsessed with who “won the day,” while placing far less value on the fact that the civic and democratic health of the country is nurtured through practices such as deliberation, compromise, and sober governance. The result is bad for Joe Biden. But it’s potentially tragic for democracy.
So far, we’re in broad agreement. The news business has always been, first and foremost, a business. They were always in the business of selling more copies of the paper or magazine, getting more listeners or viewers, or generating more clicks—usually because it meant they could charge advertisers more. Further, the culture of the enterprise has generally been to emphasize the new (it’s right there in the name!) and novel. The combination of these things means that “Man Bites Dog” is news while “Dog Bites Man” is not. Ditto the old aphorism, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
But that’s not Tomasky’s main point.
Let me begin by discussing these two medias. The first, of course, is what we call the mainstream media: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the major (non-Fox) news networks, a handful of other newspapers and magazines. This has also been known as the “agenda-setting media,” because historically, that’s what they did: Whatever was the lead story in The New York Times that day filtered down, through the wire services and other delivery systems, to every newspaper and television and radio station in the United States.
Then there’s an avowedly right-wing propaganda network. This got cranked up in the 1970s, when conservatives, irate over what they (not incorrectly) saw as a strong liberal bias in the mainstream media, decided to build their own. Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post. In the 1980s, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon started The Washington Times. In the 1990s, right-wing talk radio exploded (enabled, in part, by a 2–1 decision by a judicial panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals making the Fairness Doctrine discretionary; those judges were Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork). Then the Fox News Channel was launched.
Back then, even with the launch of Fox, the mainstream media was much larger and more influential than the right-wing media. If the mainstream media was a beachball, the right-wing media was the size of a golf ball.
Today? They’re about the same size. In fact, the right-wing media might finally be bigger. Mainstream media audiences and newsrooms have shrunk. Consider: In 1990, newspapers reached 63 million readers; in 2020, that number was 24 million. In 2006, newspapers employed about 75,000 people. In 2020, that figure was 31,000. The right-wing media, meanwhile, has grown and grown: Fox, One America, Newsmax, talk radio, Sinclair and all its local TV and radio news operations, and much more.
So the right-wing media today is, I’d argue, at least equal in size to the mainstream media.
The numerical comparisons strike me as sleight-of-hand. I consume a lot more news than I did two decades ago even though I no longer subscribe to a daily newspaper, two or three newsweeklies, and two or three opinion journals. That’s because of this thing—you may have heard of it—called the Internet. (I believe it’s a series of tubes.) I’d guess that the NYT and WaPo—indeed, the New Republic itself—are actually more widely read now than they were in the olden days because it’s far easier and cheaper to gain access.
But Tomasky’s bigger point still is this one:
The right-wing media has more power to set the news agenda than the mainstream media. It’s vital to understand this fact, and why it’s so.
The success of the right-wing media is by and large due to the way they speak in lockstep, with one voice, and the way they push one very partisan agenda. They promote Republicans and conservatives, and they say nothing good ever about Democrats or liberals (exception: people who go off the reservation and willingly foul the Democratic-liberal nest, like Joe Manchin or some liberal academic or talking head who turns right, like Glenn Greenwald). Their guiding ethos is not journalistic but political: to advance one party and creed and work their readers and viewers into a constant state of agitation about the other party and creed. And in a time when the Republican Party project has little to do with policy and everything to do with fomenting culture war, no matter how trivial, the right-wing Wurlitzer is adept at ginning up a good two-minute hate against something that got tweeted or what Mr. Potato Head is wearing that week—and here, the mainstream media, chasing engagement like a child fields for candy, follows the right down into these rabbit holes.
The mainstream media, in contrast, do not speak with one very partisan voice; they speak in many voices—critically, including many non-polemical ones. Their guiding ethos is not political but journalistic. Sure, they’re “liberal,” in two senses. First, their editorial pages typically endorse Democrats. And second, they are culturally liberal, because they are mostly based in big cities and their staffs include lots of LGBTQ people, for example, and precious few evangelical Christians.
But even with all that, the mainstream media do not serve a transparent political agenda in the way the right-media do. When The New York Times or CNN or MSNBC gets a scoop about serious corruption in the Biden administration, they pursue the lead and, if verified, report it. If Fox got such a scoop about Donald Trump … well, it’s conceivable that there’s someone left there who wants to do real journalism and who might pursue it. I wish that person luck, though, in getting it on the air. And even if Fox were forced to report it, they’d quickly find ways to rebut it.
This is a reasonably strong, if overstated and somewhat convoluted, point. We should always be skeptical of arguments that take the form, “Our enemies are better organized and more ruthless than we are,” in that they surely think the same. And the news side of Fox certainly reported all manner of the Trump scandals—it’s just that the talking heads on the opinion side are more influential.
Still, it’s true that there’s a right-wing infotainment complex that’s united in their hatred of Democrats and that the mainstream press isn’t a left-wing analog. (There is a fairly substantial left-leaning press—Daily Beast, HuffPo, etc.—but it’s likely less coordinated.) So, we indeed have a normal press whose reporters and editors lean left but will nonetheless have an ethos that requires relatively balanced coverage in parallel with a partisan press that doesn’t.
Now—back to Biden and the question of credit. The right-media will never give Biden credit for anything. He could cure Alzheimer’s, and they’d lead with the fact that he failed to cure Parkinson’s. So, in their world, nothing good that happens in the economy can or will ever be credited to Biden.
And in the mainstream media? Yes, Biden gets credit for things, but the mainstream media do not speak with one voice as the right-wing media do. So, to the loud and bumptious anti-Biden chorus that blames him for everything bad, there is no equally loud and bumptious pro-Biden answering chorus speaking as one and giving him credit for everything good.
So, again, this is a category error. It’s not the job of the mainstream press to “speak with one voice.” And, frankly, they pretty much have on the matter of Donald Trump, at least going back to the first impeachment. They routinely call out his lies in a way that is really unprecedented in the era of objectivity.
And with respect to economics specifically, the imbalance is made worse by the fact that the mainstream business press, as Tim Noah pointed out not long ago, tends to accentuate the negative and see bad news nearly always coming around the corner.
That ethos prevailed during Trump’s administration, too, no?
And that’s why today, the right-wing media have become the agenda-setting media: They set the political agenda because, on core issues, they speak with one very loud voice.
This is just a wild leap from a more-or-less reasonable setup. Even factoring in the proliferation of Sinclair-owned local stations, what percentage of the voter population is consuming the right-wing media? I’d guess it’s pretty low and self-selected.
Tomasky and I agree here:
By the way—and I want to stress this—I’m not arguing that the mainstream media should speak with one loud and liberal voice. No—the mainstream media should do journalism. Politico doesn’t exist to provide cover for Democrats, nor should it. It and other mainstream outlets should try to treat both sides equally.
But I remain skeptical of this:
Except … when they shouldn’t. There are times when it’s impossible, from a journalistic perspective, to treat both sides as equals. And the press has to get a lot better at recognizing when those moments arise.
We agree that the two sides are currently not comparable. Biden has many flaws but he’s a generally decent person who generally supports democratic principles and the rules of law. Trump, not so much. But I was able to figure that out without the mainstream press turning into a left-wing propaganda machine.
After a few paragraphs about conservative media critics working the refs for decades, making the major players bend over backward to avoid appearing to have a liberal bias, Tomasky gets to the other part of his headline:
There’s a malignant manifestation, and it’s the one that profoundly poisons our democratic well: the pursuit of “balance” in the coverage of politicians. This is what’s going to help elect Donald Trump.
How? Because media, by its nature, decontextualizes facts. That’s how news is presented. No news outlet ever tells you the full story, because the full story is long and complicated and, often, pretty boring. What’s “news,” on the other hand, is the stuff that’s interesting and that stands out. So outlets run with that, and even when they try to contextualize later, it often doesn’t matter.
Take the classified documents cases. They could hardly be more different. Trump had hundreds of documents with classified markings; Biden, about 20. Trump ignored repeated requests from the FBI to come down to Mar-a-Lago and do a search. Biden’s attorneys, upon discovering a few classified documents among his papers, immediately and voluntarily called the White House, which immediately and voluntarily notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which immediately took possession of the docs.
And yet the story, for a lot of voters, is, “They both did it.” I’m not sure what can be done about this. The right-wing press promoted that line, and of course it lied and lied and lied about Biden, using the phrase “1,850 boxes” as if that number of boxes was full of classified documents (it was the total number of boxes of papers from his Senate career). And lies, as we know, get around the world a lot faster than the truth.
So the right-wing media spread the lies, but the mainstream media were surely guilty of overhyping the Biden docs story—and, for that matter, the Mike Pence docs story. In both those cases, it’s likely that some aide made a mistake. Couldn’t be more different from Trump. Yet the media coverage in both the Biden and Pence cases for the first few days was salacious. There just has to be a way to cover things proportionally.
Granting that I’m an outlier in many ways, I read lots of mainstream press coverage of the documents cases and came away with pretty much the same conclusion as Tomasky. But maybe more casual news consumers would have lumped them all together— especially if they never got beyond headlines.
The bit about de-contextualization is reasonable enough, although I’m not sure it’s true anymore. Half a century ago, Ben Bradlee’s decision to have Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein write long stories on the Watergate scandal, constantly re-contextualizing and putting previous reportage into perspective, was extraordinary and controversial. But the digital age has made that pretty ordinary.
Again, I’m not the typical news consumer but there was more content on the documents scandals than I had time or inclination to read. Even aside from niche venues, places like NYT and WaPo now routinely provide PDFs of indictments, often with detailed annotations. Lots of news stories now link back to previous coverage, either internally or on the sidebars. Context and analysis are available in abundance for those who want it.
And this will happen between now and the election: Biden has been known from time to time to embellish stories. He used to tell a story about being arrested in South Africa some years ago because he refused to use a “whites only” door. He apparently did refuse to use that door, but he wasn’t arrested; he was detained, as he ultimately admitted. But Fox can string together a few of those, and the narrative will become, “They both lie.” What will the mainstream media do about that?
Again, this is a category error. “The mainstream media” and Fox are not analogs. It’s not their job to do something about the narratives in the partisan press. That falls to outlets like TNR.
So, no—on matters like these, both sides absolutely cannot be treated equally. One side lies all the time, and with specific intent. On the other side, lies and exaggerations are sometimes told to gain advantage or gild a lily (by the way, this used to describe the Republican Party as well as the Democrats, but no longer). But for the right, lies are a weapon. The media must recognize the difference, and they must point it out, over and over and over.
I don’t know what that looks like in practice but it sounds like editorializing, not reporting.
Simple rule: When fairness and the truth are in conflict, journalism has to choose the truth. If it doesn’t, there goes democracy—killed off, in part, by the free press that is supposed to be its frontline defender.
Fairness and truth aren’t in conflict. It doesn’t even make sense. Perhaps he means “balance,” of the both-sides variety? Because there I would tend to agree.
A media environment that doesn’t put truth above all other considerations is by definition a media environment that promotes spectacle. The right-wing media—which, again, is now the agenda-setting media—promotes spectacle intentionally. The mainstream media does it unintentionally, but it does it all the same. And we know who benefits from that. Again, another point that’s important to understand: “The media” as an entity, as a sort of self-perpetuating machine, is different from “journalists.” I have little doubt that most mainstream journalists revile Trump, either because of his politics or (if they’re not personally liberal) because he is an enemy of free speech, independent inquiry, serious discussion, and every value journalists cherish.
But that isn’t what matters here. What matters is that the mainstream media, as a machine, loves Trump. Or at least, the machine loves how useful he is. He seeks constant attention, he provokes, he’s self-centered, he’s bombastic; he and the media beast feed off each other. Biden, on the other hand, is none of those things, and he has qualities that the media beast finds uncompelling. He’s serious, knowledgeable, not flashy, not attention-seeking, and empathetic. It’s just not a fair fight.
Again, this seems patently obvious from even casual news consumption. But, yes, Trump’s ability to attract eyeballs shouldn’t lead to him being treated as a normal politician.
So that’s where we are. What should the mainstream media do? I don’t have all the answers, but here are a few thoughts.
Call a lie a lie.
Don’t seek to create false equivalencies in the name of “balance.”
Don’t be afraid to say that one side lies constantly and with the specific intent of muddying facts, while the other side lies far less frequently or maliciously.
Again, it seems to me that the major mainstream press outlets are very much doing this already and have been for some time.
Remember that we are not just in the “news” business. We’re in the information business. We’re in the preservation of the civic fabric business. And we’re in the business of people: Wherever people need the intervention of journalists, we don’t check to see how they voted first. It’s our responsibility to try to build an informed public. This means for example reminding voters of the lies Trump told as president and the norm-crushing actions he took. That’s not “news” per se, but it’s information the electorate tends to forget and will need in order to make an informed decision.
Again, this is both a violation of longstanding journalistic norms and what the mainstream outlets have been doing for quite some time now.
The right-wing media will be out there promoting Trump’s lies and telling their own lies about Biden. The mainstream media shouldn’t cover for Biden—if the law ends up having Hunter Biden dead to rights, it should of course be covered truthfully. But in addition to telling the literal, factual truth on any given issue, the mainstream media must remember that it can’t shirk the larger truth, that American democracy is under grave threat.
If that’s taking sides, well, it’s the side Abraham Lincoln took against a racist, authoritarian regime, and the side Franklin Roosevelt took against fascism. That strikes me as the side a free press, if it hopes to stay free, should want to join.
Lincoln and Roosevelt were politicians, not journalists. But, again, it’s been pretty obvious to me since at least Trump’s inauguration what side WaPo and NYT were on.
I really tire of both news media and blogs reporting on Trump like he actually has “positions” on “policies.” Whatever the “issue,” Trump’s “position” is always the same—his opponents are idiots and everything they propose will lead to disaster; he has a very simple plan for solving the problem almost overnight and he’ll reveal it when the time is right. Sometimes he’ll admit his “plan” consists of nothing more than bringing both “sides” to the table and making a deal (“this thing is going to be solved when we find the right number”); everybody knows he’s good at “deal,” right? Abortion, Ukraine, the deficit, health care, gun control, ISIS, China, North Korea, the Middle East—this is literally the “position” he took on all of them.
Instead of reporting the obvious Truth— neither Republicans nor Trump have any idea on virtually any issue and frankly don’t give a fuck. Trump wants to stay out of prison; every other Republican wants to Trigger Teh Libzs today and tomorrow will take care of tomorrow’s problems.
But, there’s copy space to fill, so Republicans have to have all manner of Serious Plans And Objectives. Pop quiz: What’s the last day both WaPo and NYT reminded readers that Fox is 110% propaganda and absolutely not “news” in any way? There is no “news” side of Fox, there’s a “Two words per hour less propaganda while wearing a more expensive suit” side.
I would be interested in the economics of the right wing media (BTW, aren’t they mainstream by now?). Do OANN, Newsmax, Washington Times or Examiner, or any other dozens of websites make money? Or are they all subsidized by billionaires with agendas? My hypothesis is just that and that the 2017 TCJA which funneled billions in tax cuts (basically borrowed treasury money) are laundered into these far right media as well as PACs.
This is pretty funny.
A couple of days ago, we had an inveterate liar and insurrection fomenter – someone who would end both democracy and the free press in a heartbeat – being invited to spout his weaponized lies and conspiracy theories on the mainstreamest of mainstream television program.
Not surprisingly, Tomasky thinks that maybe the mainstream press isn’t doing the best of jobs right now, if that job is to accurately inform the public. And maybe the mainstream media should take a different approach to deal with a political party that has stopped caring about truth altogether. (Because who needs facts or consistent policies to win over voters if you can just decide to never let the other guys win?)
And while democracy is on the line (precisely because of all these lies and the open abandonment of anything resembling truth), James Joyner is actually concerned that it would lead to too much editorializing if – God forbid – the media accurately point out that Republicans are engaged in an organized campaign to distort the truth. Like, you can point out individual lies, but you cannot point to the structural character of all these lies in the service of one party’s open quest for minority rule. That goes too far and is no longer straight news! (Though it’s demonstrably true.)
A Republic if you can keep it…
Regarding the question “Should the press pick a side?”
The press should be on the side of truth (as much as that is possible) and if one side has stopped caring altogether about what is true and what is not, that should be pointed out constantly and relentlessly.
If that amounts to “picking a side,” blame the liars, not the press.
SATSQ
Hehe. Did Tomasky say the media should be a left-wing propaganda machine? Or is the tell here that support for democratic principles and the rule of law is now left-wing policy, in contrast to the New Right preference for authoritarian criming?
I like that slogan:
Vote MAGA: Crime Time!
@drj: I enjoyed the assertion that Dr. Joyner can tell who the NYT is in the bag for.
So can I, and it’s not the Democrats. Not even taking into consideration the repetitive drumbeat of Haberman’s stenography for Trump, let’s talk about the coverage of her emails compared to, well, all of Trump’s actual crimes.
@drj
That’s right. It’s editorializing and not news. But guess what: You, most OTB readers, and I managed to figure this out anyway!
@drj:
They very much seem to be doing this, well beyond the scope of what they did pre-Trump.
@DK:
The press isn’t supposed to be “supporting” much of anything other than accurate reporting of important stories. In the case of attempts to subvert democracy and the rule of law, they’ve been pretty relentless reporting on this for years and years. Arguing that this is overwhelmingly the agenda of one side is a matter for the opinion pages. But the facts are the facts.
@Blue Galangal:
Haberman was a huge Trump critic openly mocking him on Twitter the entire time she was on the beat. That she also quoted him accurately doesn’t mean she was “in the bag” for him.
When a Fox opinion host like Sean Hannity (Tucker Carlson and before him Glen Beck were more toxic) with an audience of 2 million per night spends an hour dissembling, misinforming and dis-informing those millions of people, THAT’s news. Same with radio hosts like Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt. When a person with a huge audience is deliberately and persistently lying and propagandizing that audience, THAT’s news. It should go without saying that the same is true of politicians….if they are spreading manure the reporters covering them should realize the manure isn’t the news, but the fact that it is being spread, and who is spreading it, is certainly newsworthy.
First, you are hardly the average voter.
Second, are actual left-wing publications like all that friendly to Democrats as a whole? They may be friendlier to Democrats than Republicans in a relative sense, but that’s an artifact of our shitty electoral system.
Mmmm. The press has always taken a position and always will. Even the initial decision about what is newsworthy and “important” and what is not is a biased decision. One of the first things we learned in film school was to consider what the camera is not showing.
For example, Biden’s age is newsworthy, important, and worth polling. Trump’s obesity is not. So sayeth our elitist masters.
They like to pretend they’re just detached observers, but anyone who’s ever studied (or done) journalism knows better. Those who don’t know better are probably being manipulated.
The urge to be “non-partisan” or “neutral” is in and of itself picking a side. Rarely is it the side of the downtrodden or victim. Evil thrives when good men do nothing, after all.
Humans are not by nature impartial nor is “the truth” so obvious and clear cut. The fallacy of the middle is strong and almost always comes with an huge helping of “I don’t wanna get involved because I’m better then that”. Impartiality has its place in delivering facts and information but context is key to understanding our complex world – look no further then COVID to see how simple facts like increasing number of deaths during a pandemic need proper context or they will be twisted to suit the reader’s ideology. Passive tone of voice helps diffuse blame and bothersiderism gives strength to insane arguments. The news cannot be bare facts since there is no such thing. 2+2=4 is clear but 3+1 and -2+6 get you the same truth.
Know where the high road leads? Off a damn cliff or right back down to the level of the low road. Enjoying the spectacular views as impartial observers while the hoards pillage below is not the flex we should be going for.
FOX *is* mainstream and has been for a very, very long time. If you had said “news” instead of “media”, I might have agreed but FOX is the main – if not only- media content for a HUGE portion of this country. They are the news many get as they may not even watch local broadcasts…. which are often FOX related. They are absolutely analogs in terms of function and de facto purpose; the difference lies in honesty and intent of content, not its category on the news scale.
Dr. Joyner, it’s been a long time since you wrote something that pissed me off so much.
Here’s what you have to believe currently to be a GOP Voter:
Trump won the election.
Putin is someone the US should support.
Jan. 6th was a peaceful demonstration.
The Jan. 6th convicts are political prisoners who have been wrongly convicted.
Joe Biden accepted bribes directly from Hunter Biden’s business associates.
Donald Trump is a great businessman.
E Jean Carroll is lying.
All of these are patently untrue. Provably so, yet an overwhelming of GOP voters believe each of these falsehoods. Why is that?
The idea that since you know these are false narratives, [therefore most people know it’s false] highlights the intellectual bubble in which you travel. Out here in the real world, most GOP voters believe that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were literal business partners. They believe that the 2020 election was, literally, stolen from Donald Trump. They genuinely believe the J6 convicted rioters are patriots. You’re way, way, way too smug in your thinking that your knowledge of nuance also applies to the everyday listeners of AM talk radio in places like Sikeston, MO, or Hagerstown, MD. It doesn’t.
Too many Americans now believe shit that is 100% provably false. Why is that?
Because the mainstream media refuses to do it’s job.
It’s news that the GOP front rnner, for President, is a man found liable of sexual assault. Would Trump be leading the GOP if instead of “Former President Donald Trump”, he was always described as “Rapist Donald Trump”?
Now that will never happen. We know that. But it should. Why? Because the GOP is running for President a man FOUND LIABLE of SEXUAL ASSAULT. Yet the “mainstream” media ignores that fact literally every day.
I can’t wait for the General Election, if Trump is the nominee, for those ads. They’re going to be brutal.
I’m so glad, we didn’t have Fox news and the Internet during the run up for WWII, because we now know, that about 30% of the GOP would be on the side of the Nazi’s, but we’d never know it because “both sides are the same”.
Be better, Dr. Joyner.
Yes. The side of the truth.
I think it would be a useful and legitimate service for news media (print, online, video, all of it) that whenever they quote someone, they post a “reliability score” next to them. If someone says that “Democrats want to legalize post-birth abortions”, they don’t have to judge whether or not it is a conscious lie or simply a statement made in contravention of the facts, they simply subtract from the reliability score. They should show their work. How many points were deducted for what statement? How was it shown that it was incorrect?
James, I’m curious: would you find this editorializing?
I mentioned this video the other day, here’s a link. A reminder: that is my wife, she did make the recording, that is her voice and she does not speak French.
This is the future – the very near future. What is needed, what is necessary, is to have a media source which can be relied upon to be absolutely truthful in everything they report. Because we as consumers are no longer capable of believing the evidence of our screens. We need AIs to debunk AIs. We’re going to need New York Times (or whoever’s) AI to pass on the authenticity of rumors and videos and unsourced stories.
Licht at CNN had it exactly wrong. This is not about measuring the distance between Left and Right and finding the midpoint. It’s about the truth. That is the goal, not balance, but truth.
FWIW, I think it has less to do with the mainstream media being in the bag for anyone than a combination of two things:
First, the need to generate reader/view interaction, which in the online age is immediately apparent. What do people click on? Let’s give them more of that.
Second, the dominance of source journalism. I’m sure there’s name for it that I don’t know, but it basically consists of journalists vying for who can get quotes or interviews from the “biggest” names. In order to preserve access they need to reliably serve as a conduit for what the source wants to say. They don’t even have to speak positively about it, just not overly negative. I really think this is the source of much of the both-siderism that is so apparent.
@KM:
This, and hence why it’s important to check-in with smart people whose biases are different from one’s own.
As I’ve said here before, I do miss Charles Krauthammer. Much of what passes for center-right analysis these days is inane or frivolous. How can they not be, when rationalizing House Republican clownery?
James, that’s an odd position to take. If there is an organized effort to spread lies, reporting on it isn’t opinion, it’s fact. Would it have been “opinion” to have reported on the KKK’s terrorist activities, but “fact” to report on individual incidents of violence and intimidation? If the professed aim of the KKK was white supremacy, would it be “opinion” to have reported on the organization’s goals for domestic terrorism?
@James Joyner:
Are you seriously claiming that uncovering the fact of a conspiracy of billionaires and politicos intent on disinformation campaigns leading to authoritarian GOP control of the country is not news!?
Would you feel the same way if the perpetrators were (say) Russia or China? If not, what’s the difference? Or would that also be “editorializing”?
Wow, this Tomasky piece is such a hot mess; it’s hard to know where to begin.
I’ll start with the binary framing for everything, especially the MSM on one side and the right-wing media on the other that speaks with “one voice.” This framing says much more about Tomasky than it does about the reality of the modern media environment. For one thing, partisan left-wing media seemingly doesn’t exist in Tomasky’s world.
Secondly is the absence of discussion about principles or objective criteria for journalism – instead, it’s a lot of hand-waving about “truth.” Journalists are supposed to have a set of objective and transparent criteria or standards for how to report and “contextualize” news and reporting and stick to that standard regardless of whose ox gets gored. That is not Tomasky’s view of how journalism should work, instead, want to have it both ways – the illusion of standards-based reporting that regularly puts its thumb on the scale to “contextualize” that just happens to always go in one direction. And the usage of that thumb is – conveniently – undefined and subjective.
Third is the reality of the “news” and information business model, which fundamentally changed thanks to the internet. The business model is now one of serving small, segmented niche audiences. And to serve those audiences, you need to give them what they want because it’s clicks and subscriptions that pay the bills. This is not exclusively a right-wing phenomenon. Even in a country of 330+million people, there is only room for a couple of national giants like the NYT that can have any claim to still represent the old model. But even the NYT has to cater to its core audience and depends on subscription revenue from people more interested in Wordle and Crosswords than news reporting to be a successful business.
I could go on, but I’ll close with one last point. Tomasky seems primarily concerned with who is “driving the agenda.” Like many journalists and media types, I think they overstate their influence with the public and make the arrogant assumption that if only their voices were heard and not the bad voices, then the American people will follow where they lead. That’s a fantasy. As noted above, the media market is segmented. And the reason it’s segmented is twofold: First, with the internet, news consumption is democratic – IOW, people have much more choice. You can’t unwind that. Secondly, because of the fundamental features of human cognition, people will exercise that choice to gravitate toward media that confirms their own biases and worldview. It’s also why partisans continually get pissed off at the big outlets like the NYT and WAPO whenever they report something inconvenient to the partisan message, and then the howls of bias and “both sides” come out.
In short, the market for people who actually want reporting based on objective standards is pretty tiny for political and culture war reporting. It only continues to exist in greater or lesser degrees in niche areas like foreign news reporting and press that cover specific industries.
@James Joyner:
So demonstrable, objective facts about who is doing what are somehow not facts at all, but merely opinions? Which other facts are not reportable, in your taxonomy?
It’s important to note that this is an extremely small subset of the general population. Most people pay only a small fraction of attention to the news and they are far more prone to subsist on general takeaways rather than studied analysis of news content. I say this as a professional PR person: people do not pay as close attention to the news as the cohort that comments here. Not anywhere close to it.
So, saying “but I get it, so there’s not a problem” is the absolute worst sort of myopia.
1) I think you underestimate the size of the right wing media. Local news shows and radio have tons of right wing stuff that most people on the left never see or hear. It’s very present on the internet and certainly on Twitter/X. It’s everywhere now. It’s very easy to obtain all of your info from right wing sources.
2) By definition, half of the country is below average. People who arent interested in seeking out multiple sources (probably more than half of us) arent going to know the full stories in order to make comparisons like on the documents case.
3) Yes, the news segment of Fox did cover the Trump scandals and as you noted they arent the controlling part of Fox News. However, even on the news segment it would be one minute of coverage of the Trump scandal and 5o minutes of the Dems are evil with lots of Hunter laptop stories or Hillary emails or whatever was current. Even when they covered the Trump scandals they made it a point to also cover the “other side” of the issue by pointing that while the judge was a conservative appointed by Trump they were still suspect because they once dated a liberal in college.
4) I think Tomasky is mostly correct but it’s irreconcilable with our current conservative movement. It’s a given that right wing media, about half of our media, is very partisan. The MSM while having liberal tendencies is obligated to cover the negatives when the left is wrong or errs and when the right is correct about something. This means that the left gets more negative coverage and less positive coverage than the right. The only way around it is for all of media to be either left or right biased. That would kind of suck.
Steve
The age issue is a perfect example:
Biden: 80, trim, in good shape, doing a very effective job.
Trump: 77, morbidly obese, hates exercise, notoriously lazy, unfocused, frequent episodes of near-psychotic rage.
Media: Biden is old, repeat 10000x, then claim ‘Dem voters are concerned…’.
James: “But, again, it’s been pretty obvious to me since at least Trump’s inauguration what side WaPo and NYT were on.”
Take into account Trump’s behavior, and consider how the press would have reported on that if it were Clinton, Obama or Biden.
We have a left-wing propagandist media (No, I’m not talking about the New York Times, et al). I find it uninteresting. I don’t want cherry picked facts. I would rather decide for myself. Because I’m not an authoritarian. I’m not looking for a savior, or a thing that will put everything to rights. Everything is always a mess, always has been, always will be. Humans are involved.
We want our truth to win the day. It will win, but it might not be today, or tomorrow. Which kinda sucks. But keeping a lie going takes enormous energy, which is why they always at least fade away, if not outright collapse.
Right now, the thing that gets me the most worked up is the lies about my family members and myself. The denial of the existence of gender identity. This whole “treatment of gender dysphoria is child abuse” nonsense will collapse, because it’s so stupid and unfounded. I am disturbed greatly by how the NY Times handled it and how by people whom many count as reliable left-wing allies kind of brush off the seriousness of the situation as well. That’s life.
So this whole business is mostly a lament about the asymmetric warfare we are engaged in. Most Democrats don’t want a media that brings them entertaining and validating lies. (Though some do). I certainly don’t.
I don’t place much value on those who “dunk on” right wing figures, either. It’s preaching to the choir.
@Kingdaddy:
The Klan is a very good analogy. There are people who everyone knew were in the Klan and yet you couldn’t say that they were in the Klan, because that was a ‘secret’. And it’s not surprising that Trump was so close to Roy Cohn. Cohn went to the grave officially a straight man who died of liver cancer and not a well-known gay man who had died, obviously, of AIDS.
The GOP has merged together every type of para- organization in the US–from the Mob to closeted conservatives to climate denialism to organized white supremacists, and their party now works like that: everyone is officially doing x but everyone knows they are y. When Gotti was going to trial, people in Howard Beach were like a) the government is persecuting him for doing what every businessman does and b) he’s a real mobster unlike that Paul Castellano who he whacked. Trump’s base believe a) and they believe b), because that’s the nature of the south and closet and corporate hacks. The media treats them, however, as if they honest people.
@Jay L Gischer: Good comment.
Same here. I used to read things like Daily Kos 20 years ago, but I don’t bother anymore.
I hope you’re right, but it’s not guaranteed. It took WW2 to put an end to Hitler’s untruths and decades for the Soviet Union to fall. Propaganda can be highly effective, and the tools and money available to the propagandists today is a scary thing to behold.
When a party tries to impose minority rule by lies, deception, etc. it is the role of the media to passively watch and dispassionately report it, without ever expressing an opinion or making a value judgment.
After all, the sheep might not willingly walk to the sacrificial altar otherwise.
@EddieInCA:
I’m still trying to process James’ position that OTB readers – who simply are not representative of the typical American consumer of media – are able to “figure it out” has even a tiny speck of meaning in the big picture. I go back and forth between thinking that he must live a pretty sheltered life or he is simply a professional “reasonable conservative”.
A large subset of people I grew up with in Uber-liberal Marin County in the 60s & 70s believes some or all of these the things you listed above, along with:
Democrats are communists/baby killers/groomers/pedophiles
Hillary gave our uranium to Russia
Biden caused inflation
Electric cars are planet killers
Ukraine is a hotbed of Nazi bioweapon development
And so on…
@anjin-san: And don’t forget the anti-vaxx movement once was primarily left wing loons from California.
I was thinking of piling on, but after reading the comments I can see there is no need to.
@Scott:
Jesus, I just got off a conversation on lunch with an ex-hippie, liberal AF that had a massive heart attack last year. He was bitching that his doctor wants him to get Pneumovax and the flu shot as well as the COVID booster. I knew he was teetering on the edge of COVID denial but the Pneumovax surprised me – a variation has been around since the 40’s but the more well-known version since the 80’s. It’s not new in the slightest but he was acting like it was a big government conspiracy to sterilize old people (!!!!) and cause dementia. We’ve had this since penicillin was discovered, for god’s sake. I wasted my lunch trying to convince him to get the shots to help save his failing health…. and I’m pretty sure I wasted my time.
This man is not dumb by any means but he’s not well-read. He doesn’t keep up with the news even local, doesn’t “pay attention to politics” and gets his info from family, friends and FOX when it’s playing on public TVs. We had to tell him Jan 6th was happening at the time and he just wandered in, looked at the TV showing the riots, when “huh” and walked away. This is your average voter – doesn’t care and won’t care. OTB is a bubble we choose to swim into but most of America on both sides has ZERO idea of what we know and understand about political BS…. and they’re just fine with that.
A problem with the mainstream media is that they repeat whatever is in the right wing hate machine, because the fact that the right wing hate machine is repeating it so often is “newsworthy”. Even when they have the best intentions*, they like to “cover the controversy.”
And they don’t even put any critical thinking on it.
Right wing says Biden is too old, well that’s the story WaPo goes with, adding some light context and interviews with “concerned Democrats”.
How about digging up some actuarial tables, and reporting that there’s a 1 in 5 (or whatever) chance that if we elect one of the front runners they will die in office? That whoever gets sworn in in 2025 will be the oldest person to take the oath of office?
Just some very basic critical thinking. And this issue should be the easiest because it really is “both sides” and they love that.
If they aren’t able to do it on the easy stuff, it’s really clear they aren’t doing it on the hard stuff. Our trans friends can point out how that panic went straight from the right wing into the NYT’s “reporting.”
——
*: The NYT put more emphasis on Clinton’s emails than Trump’s everything because they didn’t think Trump could win, and the Clinton scandals were thus more important. Morons.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’d say “do it for yourself” but your it seems like your heart isn’t in it.
@KM: I’m using Tomasky’s framing but “mainstream” here simply means nonpartisan.
@EddieInCA: They believe patently false things because they choose to get their news from outlets that peddle to their prejudices. But people who believe that stuff aren’t going to change their minds if the NYT is more tabloid-like in their presentation.
@DrDaveT: “Trump claimed XYZ. Those claims were rejected by X number of federal judges, Y number of whom were appointed by Trump and Z number of whom were appointed by Republican Presidents” is a series of facts. “Trump is a liar” is an opinion. It’s an opinion reasonably supported by the facts but an opinion nonetheless.
@anjin-san: But do they believe these things because NYT, WaPo, CNN, and NBC News are insufficiently boisterous in their assertion of contrary facts? Or because they get their news from Tucker Carlson or Uncle Bob’s Facebook feed?
@KM: I don’t think it’s so much that OTB is a bubble but that the people who spend a lot of time at places like OTB are unusually voracious consumers of the news. Which I freely acknowledge throughout the OP.
Is this a matter of degree? Trump has established a pattern of making statements that are demonstrably false. He clearly lies when it is to his advantage to do so. At what point can one say “Trump is a liar” and have it be a fact? My guess is that what is being suggested here is that since Trump does not lie 100% of the time, calling him a liar is opinion rather than fact.
Put another way, saying someone is truthful is also an opinion, because if they ever say something like “your hair looks nice” when it does not, in fact, look nice that means they aren’t always truthful. So, despite being considered a straight-shooter, that’s an opinion, not a fact?
I guess given the sheer volume of evidence of Trump’s falsehoods, I’m inclined to feel that this has drifted beyond opinion into fact territory.
@James Joyner: It feels as though you’re raising the epistemological bar so high that any conclusion could be stated as an “opinion.”
Here’s something Trump said that’s definitely untrue, from the Wikipedia page cataloguing Trump’s falsehoods:
That statement is clearly untrue. It’s as untrue as saying, “The Nazis sent foreign exchange students across the border into Poland on September 1, 1939. Maybe things escalated after that, I dunno.”
You might say that we don’t know Trump’s state of mind when he said that undeniable falsehood. But again, how high do you want to set the bar? If that statement about January 6 isn’t a lie, then nothing is. Same for all the identical statements he’s made since then. In the face of what we all saw happen, the warnings before, and the years of insight into who came equipped and planning for combat, no one has any grounds for asserting, “There was zero threat.” The fact that there was a threat is not a matter of “opinion.”
Maybe we could get into distinctions about lies (which are intentional), BS (which is a disregard for the truth), and delusions (which may be largely unintentional, except for when you want the fantasy to be reality). But there’s no “opinion” about whether Trump’s statement is false.
@Jen:
Trump is in fact an admitted liar. He claimed it was “just bravado” when he waved those classified eocuments around at Bedminster.
Also, even the most “Just the facts, ma’am” news outlet has to exercise its critical faculties. Your own example shows that to be the case:
If we’re pretending to be a news editor, the clear subtext is, “Federal judges are worth heeding. Random bloggers, members of the Freedom Caucus, and the guy standing on the streetcorner holding up a sign are not.”
Same for the underlying assertion, “The fact that some of these judges are Trump appointees is significant. So, too, are the ones appointed by previous Republicans.” You might even take that last assertion as less than purely factual, since it’s based on an implicit hypothesis that the president who appointed you to the federal bench is a strong influencer of how you rule in cases.
Any presentation of facts involves curation, which engages the little grey cells where critical faculties lie. Sometimes news outlets do a good job of curation, sometimes not. However, it’s not really “just the facts.”
Nor should news outlets have to play some game where they set all the puzzle pieces on the table and say, “Maybe you see falsehood here, hmmmmm?” It’s OK for them to say directly, “That is untrue.”
@James Joyner:
Lying is a fact. People tell lies intentionally. Liars exist in the real world. Perjury is a crime, whereas bad opinions on things like art, politics, or movies is not. Expecting journalism to be confounded by a person who tells their spouse they were at work but instead were at a hotel with someone else is bizarre. There’s no opinion involved whatsoever. What happened was the person lied. What Trump does is no different. He gets caught in blatant lies. Calling it an opinion or an editorial stance is just confused.
The main problem is that the political expectation of journalists is that they should be terrible; nothing more than stenographers. That makes sense from the standpoint of power. But you can’t people who care about things other than power to be like the high point of objectivity is a Saigon press conference in 1966 when everyone wrote down what they were told. That’s insane.
Earlier today I saw a headline on CNN that said “Lauren Boebert breaks up with Democrat who groped her”. I’ve seen the video and it was clearly a mutual groping instigated by her but something something neutral…
@James Joyner:
It’s not a fact that the handling of Trump’s claims by judges is important or newsworthy. That’s an opinion. An eminently justifiable opinion, but an opinion.
A bunch of biases and beliefs underlie the facts a report highlights. That even smart people don’t understand this demonstrates how we end up manipulated by the media’s preferred narratives — left, right, and center alike.
The choices itself to write about, poll about, and gather quotes about ABC not XYC is reflective of opinion-based decisions. Hopefully those decisions are benevolent and more valid than not. But a fact-based presentation is not devoid of opinion.
This does not mean we should go the reflexive contrarion route of seeing conspiracies and “manufactured consent” everywhere. But intelligent people should be discerning about the news media we consume, not just always accept the conventional wisdom without thoughtful consideration.
If more did that, Trump would never have beat the Email Lady, Nicholas Sandmann would never have been piled on, and more would have seen the vaunted Red Wave 2022 was bunk.
Edit: I see Kingdaddy beat me to it.
Since we’re off on the “how do you report on lies?” issue again, let me drop my 2p in here.
To start, I’ve read the comments – there’s a lot of insight up there, and I think James is being dismissive of much of it, to his detriment.
As to whether to report “lies” or call a person a “liar”: If a news program is comfortable calling someone a “convicted felon”, they should be comfortable calling someone a serial liar. Yeah, there’s a period where you can’t really tell whether someone is a “serial liar”, but Trump is so far beyond that threshold that it’s a fact. This is basic framing, and it lets the audience contextualize answers. Imagine interviewing a former Enron exec about the energy sector and just, you know, not mentioning it.
You’re advocating the headline “Local plumber enjoys knife play, privacy” instead of “Serial killer strikes again, manhunt continues”.
@James Joyner:
Um, which particular proposed improvement in NYT reporting from this comment thread would you characterize as “tabloid-like”?
I’m getting the impression that you didn’t actually understand what people are saying the NYT should do differently. “Be more like FOX” is not what anyone has suggested.
I’m sufficiently invested enough in this that I’ve reverted to dictionary definitions:
Fact: noun; 1) that which actually exists or is the case; reality or truth: Your fears have no basis in fact. 2) something known to exist or to have happened: Space travel is now a fact. 3) a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true: Scientists gather facts about plant growth. 4) something said to be true or supposed to have happened: The facts given by the witness are highly questionable. 5) Law.Often facts. an actual or alleged event or circumstance relevant to a case, as distinguished from the legal effect of that event or circumstance.: Compare question of fact, question of law.
Opinion: noun; 1) a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty. 2) a personal view, attitude, or appraisal. 3) the formal expression of a professional judgment: to ask for a second medical opinion. 4) Law. the formal statement by a judge or court of the reasoning and the principles of law used in reaching a decision of a case. 5) a judgment or estimate of a person or thing with respect to character, merit, etc.: to forfeit someone’s good opinion.
Bold added by moi.
There is a built-in social more to not calling out liars for what they are that is anything but impartial. Much like the taboo of not speaking ill of the dead, it inherently favors the terrible and enforces their power longer then their actual reach. I was always told it was because they weren’t there to defend themselves but truth be told, it’s because people don’t want to hear the truth and confront the fact they’re far more willing to let the perpetrator go then admit their silent complicity. Dead people’s words and actions can still do damage after they are gone; a liar remains a liar no matter how nicely you speak around their BS. Society frowns on people bringing abusers, cheats and scumbags to light and calls it “airing dirty laundry”. It helps cover up the fact they let them lie with impunity in the first place.
Lying is a fact – the person said an untruth, that’s what happened. Calling someone a liar only takes on connotations when you don’t want to admit they lied and would rather appear “impartial”. Otherwise all you are doing is stating the historical truth of what happened. If one is really trying to stick to just the facts, the fact that a lie was told IS the fact. The intent or rational may be opinion but what was spoken and it’s veracity is not. Neutrality may not use the word “liar” but must make clear untruths were uttered on purpose when reporting facts.
Least we forget, damnatio memoriae is just as old as don’t speak ill of the dead. Truth is truth and polite fictions about the honesty of a liar are just as biased falsehoods as the original lie.
Late to the discussion, but worth remembering that the MSM goes out of its way to give opinion space to people like Thiessen and Hewitt. There isn’t really any equivalent in the WSJ.