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"He said, She said" and the Doctrine of False Objectivity
There's been a good bit of media criticism going around on the Internet. Things like The Daily Howler and well... most every right wing site and blog. Republicans and right-wingers have been doing it for years, their constant chants of "liberal media" have gotten accepted as a common meme, despite being, y'know, false. Oh, there might have been a kernel of truth, forty or fifty years ago, but not so long as I've been alive. People like to quote "Oh, well blah percent of reporters register as Democrats." Whoop-de-doo. Hey, news flash, people can be Democrats and still report accurately. And honestly, I'm more worried about the people who control the media, who tend to be CEOs and moguls who tend to...vote Republican. Shock.
Much of the liberal criticism on the other hand, is more recent, and focused more on things like the pack nature of the news (there's all these papers talking about Clinton! There must be something there! Who cares if those papers are Republican fronts! SEX!) and the most annoying, to me, the "objective" journalism where they report what each side says and then DON'T LOOK INTO IT.
Reporting both sides doesn't make you objective. If the President says 2+2=6, and the Democrats say 2+2=4, then that's not "Opinions differ on math", the truth isn't somewhere in between both "extremes," 2+2 doesn't equal 5. The media's job, in theory, is to report the truth. But they've been cowed by threats and years of browbeating, and are afraid to be labeled "liberal media", so they bend over backwards. So instead of "PRESIDENT CLAIMS 2+2=6, IN DEFIANCE OF FACT", we get "OPINIONS DIFFER ON EQUATIONS" as the headlines, with a tiny little thing eight paragraphs in that says "and by the way, 2+2 still equals 4."
Laziness, cowardice, stupidity, whatever you want to call it. But that's what makes me annoyed about the "mainstream media" usually. If they'd quit sucking, I'd have no problem with them, and have no problem with the parts that don't suck.
Tags: Politics, Mindscribbles, Language
Much of the liberal criticism on the other hand, is more recent, and focused more on things like the pack nature of the news (there's all these papers talking about Clinton! There must be something there! Who cares if those papers are Republican fronts! SEX!) and the most annoying, to me, the "objective" journalism where they report what each side says and then DON'T LOOK INTO IT.
Reporting both sides doesn't make you objective. If the President says 2+2=6, and the Democrats say 2+2=4, then that's not "Opinions differ on math", the truth isn't somewhere in between both "extremes," 2+2 doesn't equal 5. The media's job, in theory, is to report the truth. But they've been cowed by threats and years of browbeating, and are afraid to be labeled "liberal media", so they bend over backwards. So instead of "PRESIDENT CLAIMS 2+2=6, IN DEFIANCE OF FACT", we get "OPINIONS DIFFER ON EQUATIONS" as the headlines, with a tiny little thing eight paragraphs in that says "and by the way, 2+2 still equals 4."
Laziness, cowardice, stupidity, whatever you want to call it. But that's what makes me annoyed about the "mainstream media" usually. If they'd quit sucking, I'd have no problem with them, and have no problem with the parts that don't suck.
Tags: Politics, Mindscribbles, Language