Equivocation From Politico

Politico elucidates a telling flaw of the 'both sides have points' journalism paradigm. Ben Smith has apparently been racking has brain to normalize the statistic that half of Republicans believe that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, and that consequently, a massive fraud was performed 50 years ago to fake his eligibility. The Politico leading light compares the shocking 45% of Republicans who believe that President Obama was born outside of the U.S. to Democrats who answered either 'very' or 'somewhat' the question:

"How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?"

This comparison is completely inadequate, inappropriate, and embarrassing for a major media outlet to make, even off-hand at a cocktail party. Ben Smith wrote it on his official blog.

First of all, the facts behind the questions are distinctly different. "people... taking no action to stop the attacks" is not exactly a statement that was contradicted by evidence. Evidence proving that inaction was due to an absence of knowledge is hard to imagine, much less come by. President Bush and his national security team had even been briefed with a daily update titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike U.S." about a month before the attacks. On the other hand, President Obama's birth certificate is a matter of public record, and the contention that "the President was born outside of the U.S." has been flatly contradicted by... well, reality. It would be difficult to disprove the 9/11 inaction theory empirically, though believing it certainly requires believing the worst about American leadership. On the other hand, birtherism requires a dogmatic rejection of reality.

Liberal American ideology would tend to provoke Democrats to believe that someone somewhere in the government had forewarning about the 9/11 attacks. The tendency among the party that erected the Great Society and offered the New Deal is to emphasize the government's capabilities. If someone in the government hadn't had prior knowledge of the attacks, it strikes at a core trust in the capability of the state to protect Americans. The error behind the "Bush Knew" conspiracy theory results from placing too much faith in government.

The pertinent question is: what does the error behind the Birther conspiracy say about the Republican party? Republicans are distrustful of government, sure, but distrustful to the point where they believe that local newspapers, every current media outlet, and the State of Hawaii perpetrate a fraud allowing the country to democratically elect Barack Obama? The only plausible lesson that we get about Republicans is that they believe their political opponents don't legitimately exist. Some democrats had doubts about the intentions of the Bush Administration; some Republicans steadfastly refuse to believe the reality around them. The two statements are simply not similar.

But even if they were equivalent statements (or said something fundamentally similar about the respondents), the numbers don't stack up to make Ben Smith's case.

HuffPo No Better Than Cable News

It's a good thing that I never attempted to set limits on topics that I would touch on this blog, because this post will violate any reasonable standard of what is a worthwhile to blog about.

There's a lot of interesting fall-out in the media from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Most of the commentary is incredibly shallow or plays up the same high noise-to-signal ratio which is my complaint about the modern media landscape. Take the HuffPo noting Keith Olbermann attacks Jon Stewart for "Jumping the Shark" article for example. Keith Olbermann tweeted that Jon Stewart was espousing "naiveté" in suggesting that "everybody on Thr cable is the same," which is a valid position: If Jon Stewart wants to criticize the rhetorical arms race in establishing competing echo chambers/noise machines, the players in the noise game should point out that they are in a dilemma. Hegemonic discourse is probably worse than splintered discourse for the country, even if the tone of the splintered discourse is vitriolic. Olbermann reacts to the criticism of the media environment by pointing out that liberals are forced to engage in this game. I think that Olbermann's and MSNBC's tactics are not optimal in responding to the GOP/Koch Brothers Media/Fox News complex, but that's what they're hired to do. Essentially, the "hate the game not the player" principle applies. That's Stewart's point, and he provides a viable alternative (after all, 200K+ came out to hear a critique of the media which was based on an hour of comedy each night).

And this is precisely the discussion that the Huffington Post could explore by calling a few sources, getting some sides of the story, and writing a thoughtful piece. They could do some basic journalism. Instead, they focus on the non-substantive lead-in to Olbermann's comments, "It wasn't a big shark but Jon Stewart jumped one just now...". That's a pretty annoying example of the media failing to reach the substantive level, deciding to amplify the pointless bickering when in fact Olbermann was trying to get a point across. There's simply no room to get an argument into the media, even for a media start like Olbermann. It seems that in today's media environment, as soon as a message gets outside of your immediate control, you lose all ability to transmit information.

I guess that's why I started a blog- to allow other people's arguments to retain some meaning, as well as provide my viewpoint. It's just too bad that your popular journalism today doesn't attempt to transmit other people's messages. The HuffPo is trying to get hits, and like the Drudge Report, you do that by putting in big simple headlines that seem provocative regardless of the substance of the story. I don't think I should have to produce my own media to avoid this type of avoidance of journalistic responsibility.

Media Upset Jon Stewart Not Focused On Real Problems

An interesting dynamic is evolving in the wake of the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear over the weekend. The media is striking back, claiming that the nonpartisan nature of the rally forced Stewart, Colbert to attack media instead of the real originators of the partisan warfare which has crippled Washington. I kind of agree with the New York Times here, and wish that the rally focused a little more on the obstinate party, but honestly what good would come of that?

In going after the media exclusively, Stewart and Colbert at least forced this article in which the New York Times is decrying the lack of confrontation and real questioning of the failure of the political system in the modern Congress. Of course, the media (the Times included) have facilitated the decline of the political process, so getting them to pen a piece complaining that the rally didn't focus on the structural failures of rhetoric and serious democratic discussion is a massive accomplishment in Jiu-Jitsu.

His barrage against the news media Saturday stemmed from the fact that, on this day, attacking the message would have been bad manners, so he stuck with the messengers.

Of course, the general critique of the media is exactly the same- that the news reporters are too polite. The thrust of last Monday's Daily Show segment with Wyatt Cenac cozying up to lobbyists and noting the incestuousness of the Washington media-political scene struck exactly this chord. The New York Times has been doing too little "afflicting the comfortable." The media, if you listen to anybody outside of it (or inside of it attempting to claim a populist mantle), is complacent. Now they're charging that the Comedy Central News Hour is as complacent. And that's the big story from today's media coverage of the event: journalists are publicly calling politeness a vice.

Depending on how cynical you are, this either bodes well for a burgeoning media self-awareness and reform or is emblematic of the psychoanalytic concept of projection. Of course, companies don't maintain psychologies, but the principle is the same- a component (journalist) of the psyche (corporation) sees a problem, but a supervisory node (editorial norms) attributes the problem to an external actor in order to save face (job security). I'm not holding out much hope that media executives will have the realization that their companies should be filling the void of serious criticism and digestion of politicians' behavior and talking points, but blaming the Daily Show host for not doing so evinces a real unease that journalists aren't doing it.