Scott Horton asks a simple question.
My simple answer – when one party goes completely fucking insane, pundits who define “balance” as reflexively arguing that both parties are just as bad on every imaginable issue have to either give it up or stake out absolutely moronic positions. To some people sounding like a raving idiot is less of a threat than admitting that in some cases one of the parties is slightly worse.
Nikki
It’s missing an “s”?
Tim F.
Tough crowd.
jcricket
It’s cause (as Atrios puts it) Drudge rules their world.
No, seriously, I think the media is so afraid of being labeled as liberal they go overboard in attempting to seem “fair”.
Now remember, the Frost incident points out that conservatives won’t be satisfied with the press (or anyone) unless all they do is print Republican press releases and give hagiographic interviews to Coulter, Malkin & Rush.
Being fair and objective means weighing the evidence (not uncritically accepting what any one side says) and presenting it in a way that makes it clear which view of the situation is most plausible, and which was not.
It does not mean presenting both sides and letting the reader/viewer sort it out.
If I were to report on a situation where guy 1 shoots guy 2 unprovoked (according to police reports, testimony, etc), I would not report it as “some people say that guy 1 shot guy 2” or “guy #2, who does have some bias in the situation, says he was shot by guy #1” – but that’s what our traditional media has been reduced to after years of being “worn down” by attacks from the right.
El Cid
Seems pretty clear to me.
The Beltway / Versailles / Serious People / Hawk Caucus prefers any amount of damage or risk presented by an insanely right wing party serving the ultra-hawks and the ultra-upper classes over any possibility whatsoever of genuine liberal reforms that would favor sane and peaceful foreign policies or economic prioritizing of the majority of the U.S.
In other words, the nation being destroyed by right wing maniacs is for them better than the dirty fringe hippie base majority getting one single thing.
Billy K
Y’all need to get thee to thine Broder and STFU!
Punchy
jcricket just nails it.
ThymeZone
WaPo didn’t invent this dysfunctional “balance” model. It’s been around for a long time.
They employ it for the same reason a lot of other outlets employ it: It’s easier than real journalism, it’s risk free and avoids accountability, and it tends to attract an audience that isn’t too picky about factiness and stuff like that. In other words, an audience that is either passive, or that is easily fooled into thinking that this nonsense is actually balance.
It’s where most MM has been headed for 30 years or so now. If you want to see a classic example of it in action, watch (in horror) at the crap that has become CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Bob Shieffer may have to come back and save them from themselves. At least, I wish he would.
tBone
You’re all being unfair to Broder. It’s not easy being a centrist. The center is always moving, and you have to be light on your feet to stay with it. Why would you want to be weighed down by unnecessary baggage like principles, integrity, and common sense?
LITBMueller
What’s wrong with the Post? It’s a business, first and foremost – just ask Donald Graham:
Is it wrong that our major sources of news in this country are owned by larger corporations that have many non-news related holdings and interests? Well, its not illegal, but it certainly can lead to HUGE conflicts of interest.
In the end, though, we shouldn’t be surprised when our favorite newspapers shift in the political winds, or favor certain stories of non-importance over real issues.
Remember: Britney Spears + controversy = profit
Davis X. Machina
Bob Shieffer may have to come back and save them from themselves.
That’s Bob-Bush-appointed-my-brother-ambassador-to-Australia Schieffer, right?
Zifnab
Broder, Krugman, and Ignanius didn’t get hired by accident. And they don’t continue to write for the paper because they’re such venerated journalists. They are there to push a very specific agenda of the newspaper.
And, now that the three are held in such low regard, its beginning to look like they aren’t being held on to because of their epic readability. The blogsphere may have grown wings when it started influencing actual races, but it was born when someone with an internet connection and some web skills started asking the question, “What on earth is the WaPo editorial section talking about?!” Modern blogging is a direct reaction to getting feed this dumb bull for years on end. When it seems like the only sane voice in media is a comedian from New York on a fake news show, is it any surprise that the blogosphere lives and breaths raking these guys over the coals?
Dreggas
You know, the more this shit goes on, the more I am convinced Queensryche was prescient in their albums “Operation Mindcrime” and “Empire”. Ok hell most of their stuff.
Jake
I thought it was Paris Hilton – Underpants = Profit.
Completely OT:
Soe Win an’ Reapin’
Fledermaus
My theory is that the Wash Post op-ed page, like the Wall Street Journal, is not jounalism. The news pages of both are still top notch – but the op ed page of the Post is populated by consevative hacks and brain dead courtiers. They really don’t care about the issues facing the country becuase it doesn’t affect them – they bring home 6 figure salaries and hob-knob with the powerful while munching on cocktail weines.
The thing that does affect them is angry Americans. They just don’t understand that people have differing opinions on how to solve all the problems Bush created, problems that they played no small part in abetting. “Let them eat cake” sez David Broder.
They have, through their permanent and tenured postions in the
Court of the Sun Kingcapitol, become indifferent to the probems of the country. This goes beyond the wash post to Meet the Press and other gasbag shows. I made the mistake of watching MTP last sunday (lousy bye week for the MN Vikings) and not once did they ever discuss whether the policy position of a particular canidate was good or bad, nor did they discuss whether the claims are accurate.capelza
Huge bonus points for merely mentioning OMC!
One thing I have noticed this week was Matthews saying he was pressured to lightne up and then Kurtz’s book tour. I saw him ona couple of shows and he was talking about how the bigwigs would “suggest’ more light hearted stories and in act didn’t get in any attack mode at all till they saw the polls.
No suprise from me…the “liberal media” my ass.
KCinDC
Zifnab, are you confusing Krugman with someone else? Maybe Krauthammer?
KCinDC
Or Richard Cohen?
gypsy howell
Broder, Krugman, and Ignanius didn’t get hired by accident.
Surely you mean Krauthammer, not Krugman?
I luvs me some krugman today:
… “I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.”
ThymeZone
Right. Bob “I can ask a follow up question, stay on point, and ignore your packaged talking points” Schieffer. A guy who actually practices journalism and isn’t fooled by phony “balance.”
Sure, I’d rather have Edward R. Murrow, but he’s dead, and so are just about all the other real journalists.
The Other Steve
I really don’t understand Howard Kurtz. I have to see that Stewart interview with him.
I’ve never figured out if he is an evil genius, or just bone-fucking stupid. But he must fall into the stupid category, if he doesn’t get stewart.
Billy K
OMC to a shielded, lower-middle class high school student = mind-blowing. That was probably where I started paying attention to politics. Fishbone gets some credit, too.
sglover
The WaPo’s role, methods, and outlook are not substantially different from those of the Pravda of thirty years ago. It is the court organ of the apparatchiks and corporate scutboys who infest the Beltway. As such, it is performing its function splendidly.
Unfortunately, unlike Pravda, it is supposed to at least break even. Since the WaPo long ago decided to shuck any pretense of integrity or originality — and worse, since nobody with a pulse buys into the Beltway consensus any more — its long-term prospects are pretty bleak. There’s simply no reason to believe it, hence no reason to buy it.
If you live in the DC area, WaPo desperation is almost palpable. Ride the Metro, and you see very few people reading it. True, they do read another WaPo organ, the Express, but that’s an embarrassment. Imagine your newspapers “Kid’s Section” expanded to about 20 pages, with a heavy dollop of celebrity and “lifestyle” crap — that’s the Express. Even more embarrassing is that the WaPo has to hire legions of barkers to stand outside of every Metro station and hand the thing to commuters.
Every quarter the WaPo’s financial statements look a little worse. Every month the classified sections are a little more sparse — fewer and fewer people want to advertise in a paper that fewer and fewer people read. I’m looking forward to the day when the intellectual whorehouse that hired lifelong professional liar what’s-his-name Gerson finally goes belly-up. It’ll be a service to the republic when it happens.
ThymeZone
Yes, I saw that stuff too … but I also heard the same ‘story’ from too many different tellers. These media shitheads have their own talking point machine. The standard mantra now is, (weeping) “the execs made me do it.”
Sorry, I ain’t buyin’ their phony excuses.
Billy K
Speaking of “I can ask a follow up question, stay on point, and ignore your packaged talking points” – WTF happened to PBS – Jim Leher News Hour specifically? Gwen Ifill even more specifically?
Billy K
You mean like Couric crying about how NBC made her support the war…then she moved to CBS and became an even bigger talking-points regurgitator?
disgusting…
The Other Steve
I don’t think that is Couric’s problem.
Her problem is she’s just embarassing to watch.
ThymeZone
My guess? All of public broadcasting has turned chickenshit and afraid of the religious right. The liberal audience hasn’t done that great a job of supporting public broadcasting, and the execs haven’t done that good a job of programming to fire up that audience, IMO.
sglover
You don’t think those “donors” like Archer-Daniels-Midland and Pacific Life and BP and Exxon write checks to PBS cuz they’re nice, do you?
Fecapult
No love for Franti, eh? Spearhead played here last night and I missed it. I’m kicking myself.
HyperIon
but Rick Moron says it’s the most important story EVAH! even bigger, he says, than the recent extremely small adjustment of the “hottest years in the US” data.
and he is a very serious blogger…because he writes really long posts AND has some role in moderating Malkin’s comments IIRC. he has a close-to-1000-word snarky “congrats, Al Gore” post up today. what a wanker.
Chuck Butcher
I am completely uncomfortable with having the journalists take a Political Party’s ideology as a news point, but what these idjits don’t seem to get is that this idea of “balance” as they practice it is just that. They give credence to things that have none, benefitting the players on that side. When the facts do not support “news” then it is not news. If they are going to report spokeman X’s views then they are bound to having to look into it and report those findings. Otherwise they become no more than a microphone.
HyperIon
The best thing about reading WaPo online is the comments section. All idiot columns get pilloried there. If only all newspapers took such an approach…i’m looking at you, NYT.
The worst thing about reading WaPo these days is remembering that it was once a great investigative force in journalism.
Zifnab
Probably. I haven’t read the Post or the Times since I graduated college and lost all that free time to kill between classes.
Zifnab
It still is. About half the various White House scandals since ’02 can be directly attributed to journalists like Dana Priest. The other half go to the NYT.
I always wonder what the office is like down there. I just imagine its divided in half, with writers diligently digging up Bush scandal after Bush scandal on the left side of the room, and writers hobnobbing with Bob Novak on the right.
jcricket
Don’t forget Murray Waas – He did a ton of the legwork on Rove/Libby. And Sy Hersh’s work on both Iraq and Iran.
More generally, the editorial staff and the news staff are usually separate at most newspapers. In fact, the editorial page and the news team rarely consult each other on anything.
My local paper (Seattle Times) has a pretty good investigative staff, and I generally like their news coverage. However, their hack-tacular editorial page is basically just a mouthpiece for the anti-estate-tax family that owns the paper. They fairly regularly run a piece explaining that the editorial page and news coverage are basically separated by a “Chinese Wall”.
Even the WSJ, with about the most hack-ish right-wing Norquistians for an editorial staff puts out really good/fair business news.
NYT
WaPo is an education services company these days. Kaplan accounts for the bulk of its profits and all of its growth. And Kaplan is very dependent on decisions made by the administration.
I think WaPo decided long ago to reflexively support the Republicans in exchange for favorable treatment for Kaplan, just as in the UK Rupert Murdoch supported the Conservatives (and later Labour) in exchange for favorable treatment of Sky.
So they employ a bunch of hacks like Baker to cover political reporting, a bunch of Republican attack dogs like Krauthammer and Gerson, and a bunch of “house liberals” whose main purpose is to attack any Democrat fightbacks as against the spirit of comity, bipartisanship etc.
HyperIon
Ricks is good, too. but 3-4 good reporters cannot make a paper great. they just keep it from being f’ing pathetic.