Over at the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen has published Bruce Bartlett’s response to Atrios’s question about why the media continues to treat Republicans with so much deference. To summarize, Bartlett says that Murdoch media has tilted things far to the right and that the rest of the media used to be liberal (I don’t agree with this part) but is now centrist. Also, the monotony and inevitable silliness of 24 news channels has driven serious journalists from the scene. Bartlett’s response is worth reading and it’s not wrong, but I can’t help but feel that something is missing from his explanation.
I always come back to the wide chasm between local media and national media. I know a lot of local reporters and, in general, I respect their work a lot. They genuinely enjoy afflicting the comfortable and, to the extent that I’m able to judge, their work is fair and accurate. Mind you, it’s not so hard to get into afflicting the comfortable when the comfortable is some local politician or businessman who will never invite you over for quail or hook you up with wingnut welfare. And therein lies one of the key differences between national and local media: local bigwigs are seen (rightly) as losers and crooks whereas national bigwigs are seen partly as potential cash cows and career makers. The national media got used to sucking up to national Republican bigwigs when they were in power and it will take some time for them to realize that, unless you want a gig at his non-profit, there’s really no point in kissing Newt Gingrich’s ass.
But there’s another big difference, too, and I think in some ways this may be the key. On local issues, everyone is on more or less the same page. People want stuff to work and they don’t want to pay too much tax money for it. There are no Galtians on garbage trucks. Arguments tend more towards “this plan for a bus station sucks because it’s in the wrong part of downtown” and less towards “only Karl Marx would build a bus station at all”. In this environment, it’s not so difficult to do reporting that everyone regards as down-the-middle. People want their trash picked up on time, you report on if their trash is getting picked up on time. People want the crime rate to be low, you report on the crime rate. And so on. I’m making this sound simpler than it really is, but there is a general consensus that reality is important and that when your reporting accurately reflects discernible reality, you’re not exhibiting bias.
The dogmatism and ideologically-driven reasoning of national Republicans is disorienting. You can’t discuss the cost and effectiveness of a proposal, because maybe to a Republican the whole proposal is communist, or death-panel-promoting, or somehow constitutes negotiating with terrorists, so by discussing the proposal from a reality-based perspective, you are, in the eyes of Republicans, betraying your liberal bias.
I think that’s really what it comes down to. At the national level, any discourse that involves figures facts, figures, and other references to discernible reality is by definition liberal discourse. So to avoid being called liberal, it is necessary to give equal weight to right-wing fantasies about death panels and super terrorists.
DougJ +2