Dear Stumped:
It seems that, from time-to-time, politicians make assertions that aredemonstrably incorrect, yet their statements are treated as legitimate arguments in debate. Why the reticence in the press to employ a descriptor such as "falsehood" or "lie" when one is clearly offered up? I guess I am getting old, but in my youth, assertion did not sit at the same table as logic and deduction in debate.
Grey at the Temples
Dear Grey:
This is a problem journalists grapple with all the time, not only at election time. America's "objective" media engages in adversarial reporting of the "he said, she said" variety, and reporters are often reluctant to openly take sides in the conflicts they chronicle. Even when they can't resist, they still have to recruit a source to voice their concerns or perspective.
Objectivity's demand that both sides of an argument be given equal weight is a tired conceit. If John McCain picks a running mate who doesn't believe in evolution, and this then becomes a central issue in this fall's vice-presidential debate, will The Washington Post treat the question of evolution as an open-ended matter, one worthy of "on the one side, on the other hand" parsing? I don't think so. What if a candidate were to say the Holocaust never happened or to declare that the earth is flat? Would you have to turn to the opinion pages to find the newspaper call the candidate a loony?
Of course, most campaign-time whoppers aren't quite so out there, making it harder for reporters to telegraph to readers that they are being duped. So media outlets have embraced all kinds of features to gauge the veracity of campaign ads and attacks. The Washington Post's Fact Checker does this particularly well, awarding Pinocchio noses. But many publications and TV news shows treat such features like consumer product reviews that don't necessarily inform the rest of the coverage.
A good example is the McCain's camp recent charge that Barack Obama skipped a visit to wounded American troops in Germany because he didn't want to go without a large media entourage. The facts don't back up the charge -- on this there is near unanimity among those who have looked closely at the facts -- but it hardly matters, sadly. If McCain and his surrogates make the charge enough times, people will buy it, and much of the media doesn't do a good enough job of calling the candidate on it.
Unrealistic campaign promises are even harder to handle in a constructively judgmental way. McCain wants to tame federal deficits by cutting waste, and Obama wants to soon end our reliance on imported oil from dodgy countries. Sounds good, but c'mon. Yet it's hard for a front page story, as opposed to an editorial, to matter-of-factly state: "In a rally yesterday, the candidate reiterated his absurd pledge to...." No, typically you'd have to cite "skeptics of the plan" in one paragraph, followed by its proponents, and have them duke it out.
Unscrupulous candidates, or their surrogates, have long known that the serious media's studied objectivity creates an opening for mischief. (Et tu, swiftboaters?) Newspapers have gotten a little less neutral in sorting out these campaign claims and counter-claims, but they appear more skittish than ever to call a whopper a whopper because they are competing against an ever-expanding number of opinion-driven, biased publications that offer plenty of judgment, even when uninformed.
And this underscores the real tension. Objective media outlets give candidates the benefit of the doubt, conveying their claims and assertions with a straight face while then allowing the other side, and other experts, to weigh in. This is how serious journalism is supposed to work, and it serves an important civic function of creating a common understanding and conveying shared facts. But in this increasingly cynical age, when spin is the end-all of politics, the conventions of serious journalism don't always seem well suited for political campaigns.
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