THE PLANK FEBRUARY 8, 2008
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For many years now I've been wrting about the odd media double standard whereby reporters refuse to make judgments about policy disputes, even when they involve objective factual questions, but are wildly judgmental about questions of personal character. A couple weeks ago I pointed out this example from the New York Times. John McCain, the Times reported,
proclaimed himself a believer in the notion that cutting taxes increases revenue for the government by spurring economic growth. “Don’t listen to this siren song about cutting taxes,” Mr. McCain told supporters gathered here under a tent in a driving rain. “Every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues."
Of course this is just a demonstrably false factual statement, but the reporter made no effort at all to point this out. I have a chapter about this in my book -- reporters, for some reason, simply don't feel it's their place to inform readers about the truth of politicians' claims about policy.
But character -- well, that's a different story. There reporters feel free to pass off completely subjective judgments as fact. Today's Washington Post offers a classic example. A front page story reports, "McCain will also run on a biography that has shown character and courage and a willingness to buck convention." That's a fact? Doesn't McCain have critics who think he's a hypocritical opportunist?
I'm not saying I don't think McCain has shown character and courage -- he has, though other times he's shown the opposite. But this is a perfect example of a completely subjective judgment passed off as fact. And it shows a major reason why McCain will be such a formidable candidate. McCain is weak on policy but is perceived to have strong personal traits. The rules of the media game thus benefit him enormously.
--Jonathan Chait
13 comments
One thing I love about this site...you guys find the perfect photos to illustrate every story. Even when it doesn't have much to do with the story. (General hilarity compensates.)
- CharlesFosterKane
February 8, 2008 at 12:22pm
I've just realized, that photo of McCain hugging Bush? Used correctly, it could sink his entire presidential bid.
- bcbaird
February 8, 2008 at 12:36pm
Now this photo should have been the subject of a caption contest...
As for the main point; how much of the problem is simply that the average reporter has no clue whether Joe Pol is telling the truth or not?
- cspencef
February 8, 2008 at 12:42pm
cspencef, that is in fact a major problem. At press conferences, President Bush regularly makes minor statements of fact that are simply not true. Numbers that aren't even close to accurate, especially. He never gets called on it. Either most political reporters just don't really know very much about what they're covering, or they don't care about factual accuracy and objective truth.
But to the photo, is John McCain really shorter than George W. Bush? Dubya is on the short side for a modern president; if McCain is shorter we could be on the verge of history, with three straight elections being won by the shorter candidate. Unprecedented!
- rhubarbs
February 8, 2008 at 2:04pm
All I can say Jonathan is thank you very much for again pointing this out.
This guy must remind a lot of folks in the media of their favorite uncle or something. Whenever I see Russert interviewing the guy, I half expect that when the camera turns to Russert, he'll be naked with a come-hither look in his eyes (Sorry for ruining everyone's good night's sleep).
I respect McCain deeply. He's an American hero and I don't think anyone can imagine what he went through as a POW. It's a testament to both his strength and toughness. But those qualities alone do not a President make.
As for the maverick stuff, I think a lot of that is manufactured. I can't think of any time that he actually changed much of anything through his stance. I'll give him his props on McCain/Feingold and sure, a couple of Bush's conservative judges got dropped through McCain's blustery "middle ground" compromise. In the end, though, we still got Roberts and Alito who are going to have a lot more influence than some judge in the middle of Kansas, Texas, or wherever (I don't remember which nominations were dropped) would have had.
And when is someone going to ask McCain about being a member of the Keating Five? Ancient history for some, but I think it's more pertinent than speculation about whether or not Obama was exhibiting expert bongsmanship skills in the same era.
- Lundell
February 8, 2008 at 2:53pm
Bingo Lundell. I was wondering if I were the only one who remembered the Keating fiasco. That
needs to be brought up, if anything to counter the non-scandal Whitewater was for the Clintons.
We all know that somehow the pube slime machine will bring up any non-scandal as a
scandal in the fall. If the pubes want to dredge up things ala swiftboating, hit them harder and
with no mercy.
I'd love to see the above picture with a caption to the effect of "Can we afford 4 more years of this?",
or some pithy slam , on billboards plastered across the country.
- tnmats
February 8, 2008 at 3:29pm
What this picture shows me is that McCain's maverick schtick is nothing more than garbage time lay-ups. When the game matters, he runs the conservative plays like everyone else of his stripe. He's probably pissed a lot of conservatives off for being a late-game ball-hog and I think that's what a lot of this hemming and hawing on the right is about. His preachifying about being a moderate when he's really not is what is ticking conservatives off. He gets the best of both worlds--a conservative record and the image of a moderate "fighting maverick."
Blech!
- Lundell
February 8, 2008 at 4:22pm
I stole the Republican playbook for the fall election. If the economy is doing well: cut taxes for the rich. If the economy is doing badly: cut taxes for the rich. It there is a war: cut taxes for the rich. If there is peace: cut taxes for the rich. If it is rainy: cut taxes for the rich, if it is sunny: cut taxes for the rich.
And it goes on like this for 30 pages.
- blackton
February 8, 2008 at 7:15pm
Jonathan Chait once again points out what's wrong with the media -- amplified by the commenters. *They don't know what they're talking about most of the time.* Of course they talk about character, because that's all they know. And they don't even know that.
Those of us who lament the decline of newspapers and the rise of the blogosphere (insofar as the latter is replacing the former) is that the mainstream media, we suppose, offers broader perspective and actual hard reporting that you can't get in your echo chamber of choice, except when borrowed or linked to. But when the mainstream media doesn't do its job, then our argument for its continued importance goes out the window. Nobody needs newspapers for impressions or punditry. (Quality punditry is great, but there are countless outlets for it.) What we *need* newspapers for is to sort out the bullshit from reality and offer an objective (understood correctly) account of what's really going on as it happens. If they don't have a grasp of what's really going on, then what's their value?
One of the main problems, it seems to me, with how news organizations go about their business, is that "politics" is a beat. The big political stories are covered by people who, supposedly, know about *politics.* They don't have a clue about underlying substance -- about what politics is about. All they know is the horse race. Moreover, I doubt that many political reporters -- those who cover policy debates -- even conceive of it as their job to know much about policy, at least beyond the superficial level of "some say x, others say y." I don't know what would be the best way to address this problem, but it needs to be addressed.
- jhildner
February 9, 2008 at 12:40am
The veritable liberal media bias as shredded by Chait. Excellent job.
Last night on Fox Newt Gingrich made the observation that conservatives failed to criticize Bush, implying this failure formented some of the worst of Bushes banal failures. I was surprised. For starterers I thought conservatives only criticize their own as an afterthought. What was Newt thinking?
- Bukharin
February 9, 2008 at 9:54am
I stole the Republican playbook for the fall election. If the economy is doing well: cut taxes for the rich. If the economy is doing badly: cut taxes for the rich. It there is a war: cut taxes for the rich. If there is peace: cut taxes for the rich. If it is rainy: cut taxes for the rich, if it is sunny: cut taxes for the rich.
And it goes on like this for 30 pages. - blackton
Great post, funny and true.
Of course if Republicans get wet while it is raining they blame liberals.
- Bukharin
February 9, 2008 at 10:19am
..." reporters, for some reason, simply don't feel it's their place to inform readers about the truth of politicians' claims about policy.
But character -- well, that's a different story." - Chait
Do the vast majority of "reporters" have an undergraduate degree in journalism? I really do not know. What are the prerequisites for such a degree? I don't mean to over emphasize credentialism although it seems when push comes to shove too many reporters revert to nativism in their prose. Always disturbing, forever short sighted.
- Bukharin
February 9, 2008 at 10:35am
jhildner - spot on, though I'd note that when the subject of a political reporter's article really does cross the orbit of his expertise, the results are usually stunning. See Ryan Lizza's stuff recently, or Michele Cottle's excellent work on Hillary's campaign, or Kirchick and Ron Paul, or Chait or Cohn or.... None of them (aside from Cohn) is an "expert" on his or her subject, but all of them have first-rate minds allied with **first-rate editorial supervision**. These pieces are vetted, revised, chewed over, discussed with other first-rate minds, then revised and edited some more. Not expertise but basic professionalism is what makes the difference here.
Compare that with the amateurs and their process, such as it is. The blogosphere doesn't vet, doesn't edit, doesn't check its own "facts", and above all, doesn't bother to publicly course-correct. Case in point is Krugman's 3 OpEd pieces in 2000 about how Social Security desperately needed fixing, followed by mutliple smirk 'n' sneer pieces after 2004 about how SS was fine, didn't need fixing. The blogworld has a natural, inevitable, probably irresistible tendency toward this kind of easy revisionism and meme-mongering because the goal is not to arrive at truth but, in best Limbaugh fashion, feed some entertaining smacktalk to a tribal audience.
The solution here is better editing, more professionalism, less groupthink, more application of the considerable brainpower that already exists among our journalistic class.
- teplukhin2you
February 11, 2008 at 3:53pm