Tuesday, February 6, 2018

The Middle Ground is Unsafe

Josh Marshall makes an important point in The GOP and Big Lie Politics:

"The biggest impact of the Nunes Memo – and the accompanying wave of propaganda – is that conventional news and commentary is incapable of handling willful lying in the public sphere. This is a pattern we’ve seen again and again. It’s one of the hallmarks of this political age. It’s worth saying it again: conventional media is not equipped to deal with willful lying in the public sphere."

In this piece on Talkingpointsmemo, Marshall distinguishes between Fox's propagandistic reporting and reality-based reporting.  His first example of faulty reality-based coverage is Chris Cillizza . We have called out problems with Cillizza's reporting in Running on Empty and Confusion about Confusion. The problem with Cillizza is a tendency to lean to the middle in his analysis, which is similar to false balance.  False balance dictates that if you have a story that presents a narrative that seems to favor an outlook that is more to the left, then, as an "objective" reporter, you need to offer up your own arguments that might come from the "other side", regardless of  your own assessment of the reality. So it is a matter of saying - "here is the story from the left, but here is the story from the right." And the implication for the reader is OK, here are two stories and you decide which is faithful to the truth.

The problem with Cillizza is, like some other pundits, the inclination to head straight to a narrative that hugs the middle - sort of like the "Third Way".

TPM quotes Cillizza on CNN today:

"I think ultimately – I’m actually with [former Trump advisor Jason Miller] in that – I don’t know that either of these [memos] are the smoking gun that either side wanted. I know conservatives insist the Nunes memo – I shouldn’t lump them together – some conservatives think the Nunes memo, now that it has been released, proves once and for all that everything is totally fine and that Donald Trump is exonerated. I don’t think that’s so. I don’t think the Schiff memo is going to say, oh, my gosh, here it is, the smoking gun we have been waiting for."

But that mischaracterizes the reality by presenting a case of two dueling memos that start equally out of the gate, are both to be taken seriously on their own terms, and then the public decides what to believe based on these memos. The Democrat's memo was only necessitated by the Nunes memo. Democrats did not want to have to write any such memo. They are concerned with the danger of releasing classified information solely for rank political purpose. Nunes, of course, had to recuse himself early in the investigatory process when he was caught collaborating with the White House even as he was charged as head of the committee with leading the investigation. And so on. In this environment, Cillizza feels compelled to navigate to the middle.

TPM does not quite capture the worst problems with Cillizza, but Marshall's explanation of the problem of the reality-based press is expressed well, reading in part:

"This is actually quite black and white. There’s no evidence of politicized intelligence or law enforcement or counter-intelligence work at all. Actually not any. All the evidence is based on false claims, logical fallacies or intentionally misleading representations of how standard law enforcement procedures work. There’s also a high brow version of this which redirects the conversation toward longstanding and legitimate concerns about whether the FISA system is consistent with the rule of law in the first place. This is a grave error which only confuses the situation and makes general considerations about the rule of law into a tool of someone trying to trample on it."

By insisting on balance in reporting or, as in the Cillizza case, reporting directly from the middle as somehow representing the "safe ground", reality-based reporters, even while acting in good faith, fail miserably because bad actors - think Fox News - can so easily outmaneuver their definition of objective journalism.

Another recent example of the weakness of the objective journalists is illustrated by the NYT piece:

How Our Reporter Uncovered a Lie That Propelled an Alt-Right Extremists Rise

Despite recent history the Times still believes that calling out a lie matters - in this case, a neo-nazi's lie claiming military service in Iraq and doubling down on the lie when caught (remind you of anyone?) As if that matters. The nazi's followers are supposed to care about the lie and, what, ask him about it? Stop following him? Stop being neo-nazis? Sorry NYT, that is not how this works.  He got himself a profile in the Times. That's all that matters.

What did the Times expect?

The Times reporter tells us:

I had pictured the phone call going a lot of different ways, but I hadn’t quite prepared for this.

I thought he might swear at me and then hang up. Maybe he would try to turn the conversation around, attacking me and the credibility of The New York Times. Or maybe he would become contrite and emotional, and finally answer some real questions. But I never thought he would just deny it."

Contrite and emotional? Really?

Unfortunately, at the NYT, reporters are slow learners. They have been so steeped in their belief of a rational universe, that they can not believe that the world is populated by vast numbers of basically irrational people who begin with a strongly held belief and then collect facts (or lies, it doesn't matter which) to support that belief and who feel free to rely on logical fallacies to inform their views.

Will the NYT ever learn? Will Chris Cillizza? Not likely. Not any time soon.

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