A great, cut-through-the-crap piece by NYU journalism associate professor Jay Rosen at PressThink asks why reality has been declared off-limits in American political journalism. Rosen zeroes in on one key line in David Barstow's fair and balanced New York Times piece on the Tea Party movement, "Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right": "It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny."
If tyranny is impending, Rosen asks, why isn't that a story? Is it enough to report that somebody is making serious allegations? Or might it be the duty of the press to report whether any evidence can be found to substantiate those allegations?
It kept coming up, but David... did it make any sense? Was it grounded in observable fact, the very thing that investigative reporters specialize in? Did it square (at all) with what else Barstow knows, and what the New York Times has reported about the state of politics in 2009-10? Seriously: Why is this phrase, impending tyranny, just sitting there, as if Barstow had no way of knowing whether it was crazed and manipulated or verifiable and reasonable? If we credit the observation that a great many Americans drawn to the Tea Party live in fear that the United States is about to turn into a tyranny, with rigged elections, loss of civil liberties, no more free press, a police state... can we also credit the professional attitude that refuses to say whether this fear is reality-based? I don't see how we can. [...]
In a word, the Times editors and Barstow know this narrative is nuts, but something stops them from saying so-- despite the fact that they must have spent over $100,000 on this one story. And whatever that thing is, it's not the reluctance to voice an opinion in the news columns, but a reluctance to report a fact in the news columns, the fact that the "narrative of impending tyranny" is ungrounded in any observable reality, even though the sense of grievance within the Tea Party movement is truly felt and politically consequential.
My claim: We have come upon something interfering with political journalism's "sense of reality" as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin called it (see section 5.1) And I think I have a term for the confusing factor: a quest for innocence in reportage and dispute description. Innocence, meaning a determination not to be implicated, enlisted, or seen by the public as involved. That's what created the pattern I've called "regression to a phony mean." That's what motivated the rise of he said, she said reporting.
I urge you to read Rosen's entire piece. It goes to the essence of critical thinking in a world of tautologies, where opinions are assumed to justify themselves because, after all, they're free speech. But just because speech is free doesn't mean it can't be challenged with facts. Without reality-based reporting, nobody's accountable for what they do or say, and democracy itself doesn't work. See the tyranny in that?
UPDATE 2/22/10: "Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason":
Most of the men's gripes revolve around policies that began under President Bush but didn't scare them so much at the time. "Too many conservatives relied on Bush's character and didn't pay attention," founder Rhodes told me. "Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists. But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, 'I think you are a threat to the nation?'"
In Pray's estimate, it might not be long (months, perhaps a year) before President Obama finds some pretext--a pandemic, a natural disaster, a terror attack--to impose martial law, ban interstate travel, and begin detaining citizens en masse. One of his fellow Oath Keepers, a former infantryman, advised me to prepare a "bug out" bag with 39 items including gas masks, ammo, and water purification tablets, so that I'd be ready to go "when the shit hits the fan."
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Oh dear. That nearly brought a tear to my eye.
I love the way Rosen describes the problem with modern American journalism (particularly political journalism) as a "quest for innocence." I'd describe it similarly as a quest for misguided objectivity -- the insane idea that to be "objective" means to report all sides of a story as equal. This is the nonsense that's made cable news unbearable. "Hi, I'm Wolf Blitzer. Today, the president did this thing that these people say is controversial. To discuss, here's an ideologue from the left and an ideologue from the right. Ready...Go!"
Rosen cites a cliche in his piece, that "perception is often reality in politics." But that only ever happens because the news media let's it (or makes it) happen. It's a case of the spectacle supplanting the factual, to the point where the spectacle becomes the factual. "Tea Partiers think America is drifting into tyranny." "Oh, OK...but is it?" "Well, they think it is. What a story, right!"
As to how the hell this could happen, as Rosen finishes his piece by asking, I don't quite know. The crazy thing about all this is that Rosen hits the nail on the head so squarely, but it's such a bats*** insane nail that I still can't wrap my mind around why the bats*** insanity exists. I imagine part of it has to be profits-driven (who wants to alienate large swaths of potential readers with the truth?), but even then it's a silly reason, because I doubt too many Tea Partiers are reading the New York Times anyway.
Honestly, it's almost more like a warped form of complacency. Sure, they could start reporting the factual merits of the Tea Party's fears, of the mad capers of Sarah Palin, of why people ever believed health care reform would have killed their grandparents...but why rock the boat? Besides, those are all great stories to report about! A narrative is a narrative, and Lord knows 24 hours is a lot of time to fill...
Reporting of facts? Yeah, right. Why do mainstream media go out of their way to avoid reporting on serious stories in Muslim countries. Since 9/11, their reporting about Muslim affairs have been sanitised to the point of being irrelevant. What are they scared of exactly? Retribution from Muslim extremists? At the same time, when the mainstream media continually attacks Israel over anything and everything, NOT ONE REPORT about the OFFICIAL ceremony in Gaza in Nov 2009 and supported and attended by Hamas leaders of the "marriage" of 150 Muslim men in their 20s and 30s with under-10 year-old girls. In any other western country this would cause an outrage and paedophilia allegations and, yet, just because they are Muslim, it seems ok and justified! It makes me sick.
This particular story was not reported because it was an Internet hoax, quickly debunked at Debbie Schussel's site, once she picked it up, by a Gaza-based reporter for Sky News (owned, like Fox News, by Rupert Murdoch) who covered the event. Hamas has indeed held mass weddings (as has former Washington Times owner Rev. Sun Myung Moon in the U.S.). But children were not the brides:
"I was there. We filmed it. They are the nieces of the grooms and other relatives. They are dressed up and having fun. The women are in the audience. Hamas does enough terrible stuff without having to make up nonsense like this."
Tim Marshall. Sky News. Gaza http://j.mp/dhcLsh
Of course, there have been no cases of Muslim men marrying 10 yearold girls, has there? It is all a conspiracy and lies by the wets to shame Islam:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1115624/Its-injustice-NOT-marry-girls-aged-10-says-Saudi-cleric.html
http://www.themuslimwoman.org/entry/young-brides-a-miserable-life-for-little-girls-in-saudi-arabia/
Real-world evidence! Excellent. That's what the post was about.
"In fact, a Hamas official told WorldNetDaily that the youngest girl married at the ceremony was 16 years old while most were over 18 years of age."
Gee, what was I worried about when MOST of the girls were over 18? Isn't 16 years-old still considered paedophilia? I over-reacted to an internet hoax. I;m sorry! I feel better now knowing that MOST of the girls were over 18. I can sleep better now.
In keeping with the theme of this post, I'm just presenting facts: The brides were not, in fact, under 10 years of age. The term "pedophilia" applies to sexual contact with pre-pubescent children, and 16-17-year-olds can be found guilty of committing it, according to the World Health Organization, if the children are five or more years younger. The age of consent in most Muslim countries is between 16 and 18, and in Lebanon and Iran the parties must be married. In the US, it varies by state, between 14 and 18. Here's a worldwide (and state-by-state) guide to age of consent laws: http://j.mp/a6cXTj
And you have a great demonstration of this in George right here. Rational people would admit they received ban information. Instead, he refuses to admit his mistake and immediately shifts to something else.
Matt Taibbi kind of grates, but one excellent point he's made was that for Republicans (and teabagger types in particular), it's not about whether the facts in question or correct or not, but whether there's an argument going on with which they can be "tested". It feeds into their persecution complex. If the facts are wrong, it's almost better because that guarantees the argument continues and they can continue to be persecuted. There's nothing that can be said that will shake their preconceived beliefs.
Is the WorldNutDaily unknown in this part of the internet?
Also, I want to briefly touch on one other point Rosen makes in his piece: That the "quest for innocence in political journalism means the desire to be manifestly agenda-less."
Journalism is not manifestly agenda-less. There is one agenda, and it must be striven for always: Report the truth. This is where the fallacy of believing "objectivity" means "reporting all sides equally" fails the commonweal so badly. "Applicable person 1 said this on the current subject, and applicable person 2 now says this." Meanwhile, the truth is left adrift.
Here I'm reminded of a great passage from Roger Ebert's review of "Good Night, and Good Luck":
*Laugh* ... NY Times ... agenda-less?
I read the Rosen piece (very well-done I admit), but how isn't “a narrative of impending tyranny” in the least bit scathing? Remember, we are talking about NYT readers here.
Anyhow, the Barstow article begins as such:
"Pam Stout has not always lived in fear of her government. She remembers her years working in federal housing programs, watching government lift struggling families with job training and education. She beams at the memory of helping a Vietnamese woman get into junior college.
But all that was before the Great Recession and the bank bailouts, before Barack Obama took the White House by promising sweeping change on multiple fronts, before her son lost his job and his house. Mrs. Stout said she awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated — even manufactured — by both parties to grab power."
Now there isn't anything unreasonable about how Pam sees things as developing in Washington (supposing the bailout, "sweeping change(s)" are facts). If the contention is that good political journalism ought to paint people like Pam as delusional based on their perceptions of Washington and their subsequent connection with that of a "threat", then we are deeply misunderstanding the point of the piece.
The point of the piece was, if not misread, to portray a segment of American society vastly at odds, politically, with what one would expect to be NYT readers. It is very much a point-of-view piece, even to the extent of the rationalizing and pandering.
I don't need anyone to tell me that Pam is wrong. I know that she is wrong (or would this fit under one of your "tautologies"?).
I agree with Rosen that the article itself seems to raise more interesting, and demanding, story-lines, i.e. tyranny, what tyranny??
However, it seems to me to be more concerning why so many Americans have become so skeptical and fearful of the government? If this is the story of the Barstow article then good. But I am afraid we can't just assert that those fellow Americans who we disagree with are simply "bats**t insane", irrationally afraid, even if they have got the "facts" wrong. The question is still "why?".
I hope this doesn't degenerate into a question of psychology.
So I wonder what George will say to this? Much like the piece talks about journalistic integrity, with our newfangled interwebs, where the heck is the parallel problem with 'commenter integrity'? George, misled, has been corrected. So what is the outcome? Outrage? Embarrassment? Gratitude? Deflection? Redirected objections? ("Well, that may be suspect, but what about XYZ???!")
It may seem like I'm attacked George, but really I'm pointing the finger at anyone that's ever commented and been called on it, as I've seen such actions from both sides of the aisle.
Good article, and astute comments by Kris about "misguided objectivity."
I'm somewhat torn about Rosen's reaction in one respect: The folks who show up at Tea Party events aren't the only folks suggesting tyranny. Those themes are supported by at least one major (choosing words carefully) news outlet: Fox. In other words, taking on the absurdity of the tyranny argument is a bigger story than just assessing the Tea Partiers -- a story so great that within the confines of the original article Barstow couldn't possibly have given it enough attention.
However, the spirit of Rosen's reaction is right on. In recent years I have been stunned and depressed that so many major media outlets have been too cowardly (too safe, too fearful of upsetting their advertisers) to call a spade a spade and to challenge the very information fed to them as truths.
I thought about that, too. The Tea Party thing is largely a creation of Fox News, which organized and promoted it. Glenn Beck's whole paranoid, Timothy McVeigh-like schtick is based on this concept that America is in imminent danger from the government. Of course, there have always been survivalists, white-supremacists and other anti-government crazies, some of whom advocate the violent overthrow of the government. I see the Tea Partiers as an outgrowth of the nostalgic Reagan myth of an idealized past (that never, in fact, existed) to which we could somehow return. The TPs are pining for an America that they've idealized in their own memories: "I want my country back!" But what is it that they feel they've lost, or are in danger of losing? That's where the "impending tyranny" paranoia comes in -- fed by Fox News and other wingnut commentators who come right out and say that, for example, Obama has a socialist agenda, is setting up "death panels," and is building concentration camps for political prisoners -- all of which is nonsense, but may be accepted as plausible in the absence of any reality-check.
In that sense, the NY Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets are being just as irresponsible and misleading as Fox. Matt Yglesias was just remembering the hilarious, phony "too-many-czars controversy" of last summer:
It apparently depends on the beat or on the story itself because, looking back on the New York Times (and others) coverage of the Duke Lacrosse case as one particularly egregious example, the Times frequently produced one-sided articles (in the news pages) and ignored or distorted facts that got in the way of the story they seemed to want to tell. There was no attempt to report the story in an "innocent" or objective matter. It appeared that they had a narrative they wanted the story to fit, so they twisted the story to fit that narrative.
And many objectively incorrect stories were never corrected.
That reminds me, Ryan, of a passage from an old (and fantastic) profile The Atlantic did on David Simon (former reporter and creator of "The Wire"). For those who don't know, The Wire's fifth and final season deals at length with The Baltimore Sun newspaper, and what Simon believes went wrong with it (and American journalism in general). But the relevant part of the profile piece:
I think there's a lot of truth in that, and a lot of what's behind the lack of factual reality-checks in mainstream journalism these days.
I remember that excellent Simon piece. The TPer thing is fascinating (and difficult to reality-check) because it's based on pure speculation about motivations and undetermined events in the future. You can't prove or disprove what hasn't happened yet, especially if somebody claims there's a secret conspiracy behind it. If you tell paranoiacs that there's no evidence to support their beliefs (not unlike the End Times folks who say the world will cease to exist at some point in the very near, but unspecified, future), they can simply claim that it's all Top Secret and anybody who isn't talking about it is just part of the conspiracy to hush it up.
Very true. Which, in fairness, must make reporting on Tea Partiers a tough nut to crack -- you don't want to lend their paranoia any credence, but even acknowledging it and giving them attention without dismissing their fears out of hand at the same time (as in Barstow's piece) can have that affect. But you can't ignore them either, because they're a real phenomena with some actual influence (although just how much is debatable) in political discourse and elections.
So it goes back to Rosen's core point, I guess -- that journalists are burying the lead. The headline shouldn't be, "Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right," but rather, "Why Are So Many Americans Fearing the Unreal?"
(...Or something. I've never been very good at headline writing.)
Yes, I think: "What is the root of Tea Partiers' paranoia?" might be a better angle (if not a better headline)...
The horrifying reality of the current tyrannical administration?
Just kidding.
Most of you misunderstand Tea Partiers. They are small government conservatives who distrust anyone except small government conservatives in government. They believe that liberal democrats want nothing more than for government to seize their property and distribute it to the inherited wealthy and the lazy poor. They didn't like Bush (they probably voted for Pat Buchanan in the 2000 primaries and Huckabee/Paul in the 2008 ones), but voted for him in terror that the other guy would win.
The ACLU would the be the Democratic version of this. They don't like (or are starting not to like) Obama (based upon his anti-gay, anti-civil liberties stances), but they will vote for him in terror of the other guy winning.
ACLU members believe Tea Partiers to be racist and homophobic hillbillies. Tea Partiers believe ACLU to be athiestic NAMBLA supporters who hate the idea of traditional morals. Both are wrong, except for a few outliers. It's these outliers who are most publicized in order to inflame bases and provide interesting news.
The ironic thing is, both organziations are in lockstep agreement on many, many issues. Most importantly, in their distrust of the government. Also importantly, they're boogeymen to each side's bases and an easy punchline.
But neither is very important politically. They're a sideshow for people who don't know any better.
"Most of you misunderstand Tea Partiers. They are small government conservatives who distrust anyone except small government conservatives in government."
I would have said a bunch of tools and dupes of big government conservatives and corporations, who distrust everyone (except their masters, since they're oblivious to how they're being manipulated), including or even especially distrusting small government conservatives, upon whom they're likely to pronounce takfir (to analogize them to the Muslim extremists they resemble) out of their extreme paranoia and tendency to fragment ("splitters!").
Nothing about this surprises me. As a Canadian, I have observed that ever since Reagan, there has been an increasing tendency to interpret reality itself through the lens of the American two-party system.
In short, people don't look for objective facts and analyze them in the manner that we were taught to use in school. Instead of discussing facts, they prefer to discuss other peoples' opinions, and of course, in America other peoples' opinions tend to be organized along the lines of the two-party system.
The result is a warped view of reality where ideas outside the American political mainstream literally do not seem to exist at all. It's most startling in health-care, where the single-payer system common in much of the civilized world is not promoted by either party so it is treated as an impossibility by the American public. In debates with Americans, I run into people claiming that such a system could never work without massive cost increases, even though other countries ALREADY have such systems at LOWER per-capita cost than the US. Worse yet, they refuse to moderate their positions when confronted with this fact! Instead, they keep quoting "talking points" about how it could not work.
Discussion becomes very difficult when slogans are deemed more reliable than reality. Well, RATIONAL discussion becomes very difficult, anyway. The irrational discussion that dominates American politics becomes very easy; anyone can participate in it without having to bother doing research, being educated, or even being intelligent. All you need is the ability to spout slogans and mine the Internet for supporting quotes, since quotes indicate other peoples' opinions.
Obama said he was going to "fundamentally change America". Since most Americans do not think that America should be fundamentally changed, how can he do it? He's even having trouble getting other Dems to pass Health care. How can his goal be fulfilled? Other than by tyranny? Think on that, my lberal friends...
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