Sunday, December 31, 2017

New Years Resolutions

It's that time of year. Dismal failures of the reality based journalists in 2016 were followed by improvements in 2017. But the first year of a presidential administration always signals a shift by the mainstream press - from election year forced balance (aka false balance/false equivalence) to speaking truth to power. So whether or not lessons have been learned remains to be seen (as they were once fond of saying) in 2018, an election year for Congress.

Jared Bernstein has his own presciptives in the realm of economics and tax policy in "A New Year’s resolution for the media: Do not let Republicans get away with saying ‘reforms’ when they mean ‘cuts’"

In my italics, some of Bernstein's peeves:
From Congressional Quarterly, "In describing Ryan’s agenda, the piece noted ([Bernstein's] bold, in all cases below) that “the Wisconsin Republican has detailed an ambitious effort to dramatically reshape Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs that the GOP has long targeted as ripe for reforms. … Ryan has said he plans to use the budget reconciliation process for entitlement changes."

Bernstein also calls out CNN reporting on "entitlement reform" and Politico's references to "Ryan’s “obsession” with “fixing” the “ballooning entitlement state” and “tinkering with the social safety net.” Bernstein notes "Who could possibly be against “fixing” something!"

Indeed.

I would ask the reality based media to resist as much as possible two related tendencies:
1. Forced balance, and
2. He said/She said

The NYT is especially guilty of forcing balance in straight news pieces, much more than the WaPo, even though both claim the mantle of objective journalism. Forced balance is now often being called "whataboutism", which, as a term, better captures the irrelevancy of the comparison being made.
This forced balance or whataboutism was not always with us. For those of us who recall the Carter administration, there was widespread criticism, but few if any comparisons with the administrations of Ford, Nixon, or Eisenhower. (The unwritten rule of forced balance is that any criticism of the president/candidate of one party requires as a matter of fairness, comparison/contrast with recent president/candidate of the other party in the entrenched two party system. And, according to rule, you go back as far as necessary for the most apt comparison. For Trump, you first try Obama, and if that does not work, you skip over Bush and try Clinton. That gives you 16 years to work with, so a hit is almost guaranteed.

Forced balance in reporting on Trump should become easier as more time elapses. Avoiding false balance just means trying to report on Trump administration actions and policy without comparing and contrasting with the previous Democratic administrations and, in particular, without comparing with HRC who has not held a public policy post for years.

By way of example, suppose Trump shot his wife with a revolver. Would the New York Times report, "For the first time, a sitting President appears to have shot his wife, according to eyewitness reports of Secret Service agents, though, early in the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton was accused by Republican critics of complicity in the death of Vince Foster which was ruled a suicide by authorities."

So just stop doing that NYT. OK?

And stop reporting straight news as always a "he said/she said" story by avoiding phrases like "Democratic critics claim..." when telling the other side of the story. As an example, the Trump administration has come under harsh criticism from many traditional Republican stalwarts (though few officeholders) , so isolating counterarguments to Trump administration statements and justifications for their actions to so-called "Democratic critics" is false and misleading.

As put forward on many occasions on this blog, unlike the sciences, where reporters are usually not scientists, reporters on politics generally need to be subject matter experts. So they have their own interpretation of the facts which is not necessarily skewed false by their political preferences if they are true to their craft.




No comments:

Post a Comment