For example, let's look at this Washington Post article published yesterday, on the eve of the government shutdown. Do the journalists focus on the non-controversial and easily understood fact that a small faction of obstructionist right-wingers are successfully holding the federal government hostage over ideological and irrelevant grounds? No. Instead, the article leaves the reader with the impression that each political side has a legitimate argument against the other; that somehow, blame can be bestowed upon members of both parties, or worse, Congress as a whole. So, rather than being filled with righteous rage against an extreme wing of the Republican Party, scores of Americans are instead imbued with the apathetic, "Gumm'nt cant do anything right, lol" disillusionment that leads to lukewarm libertarian purgatory (more on that later).
Am I biased? Of course. Each time an issue presented in the media, a bias is present. What a journalist chooses to report on is in itself a bias. Often, facts are just facts; there is no counter-argument or meaningful opposing opinion. If the media wasn't so afraid of being accused of bias, and instead embraced it as an inevitability, False Equivalence would not be such an omnipresent menace in journalism. Presenting information as it is, without the contrivance of superficial counter-argument for the illusion of balance, is essential to an informed electorate and a flourishing Democracy.
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Notice, too, how the Post article's focus is to speculate on how the shutdown will be perceived by the public and, by extension, its effect on each party's fortunes in future elections. What's missing is an awareness that the public's perception will be dictated in large part by the coverage, including the article itself. To the extent that the article portrays the shutdown battle as a simple back-and-forth blame game--and, crucially, portrays the stakes as purely electoral, while ignoring the economic, ethical, and constitutional implications--its effect on the discourse can only be to reinforce those portrayals. This serves to influence the very same outcomes the article purports to concern itself with measuring, both when it comes to assigning blame for the shutdown and when it comes to considering why, and how much, the shutdown matters. The failure of the press to understand and reckon with its role as a powerful contributor to popular debate, rather than a detached observer of it, is endemic.
ReplyDeleteClosely related is the tendency to behave as if political events only matter through their effects on the parties' electoral prospects. Notice that the article has a section called "Long-Term Impact." You might expect to find an exploration of potential economic damage the shutdown could inflict, or a discussion of the legislative precedents it may set. However, the Post's definition of "long-term impact" seems to be "impact on the 2014 Congressional elections."
Also, James Fallows has a great roundup of this issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/a-bountiful-harvest-of-false-equivalence-analyses/280452/
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