Journalism 101: False Equivalence

Some of you may have been wondering if Coliseum Street has close, because I have not posted any things since last week.  Well, I am back today after a bit of a sabbatical.  I was hoping overall that the news trends would begin to reflect the reality I see all around me.  Not so, as I learned sadly.  The so-called Liberal Media, aka the Main Stream Media (MSM), continue to operate under 19th century guidelines.  What began as a marketing gimmick for Henry Raymond and his then moribund New York Times has now become one of the biggest obstacles to a reasoned public discussion of politics and governance. 

“Objective Journalism” (as in “the paper of record”) was a tactic employed to differentiate the Times from its more successful competitors, including later Hearst and Pulitizer, who combined journalism, sensationalism, and partisan politics.  Raymond (and the successor Ochs/Sulzburger clan) decided to compete by offering the paper as the alternative that gives all sides to a story in a reasonable and reasonable manner so that it really can be called “instant history.”  The standard set by the Times became the standard for journalism in general, particularly when journalism schools began to proliferate in higher education in the land grant universities in the South and Midwest.  “Tell both sides of the story” became the mantra as some mythical “objectivity” became the goal. 

The most utilized technique involves the notion of “equivalence,” that all witnesses have equal credibility. In this way, all the reporter has to do is report on “all sides” and stay out of the way.  When reporting on everyday events, equivalence allows the reader to come the his/her own conclusions.  The problem comes when reporting on issues such as politics or cultural issues, where there are nuances of truth and falsity that belie any attempts at “objectivity.” These problems multiply when one or more of the parties involved in the story benefits from public confusion about the issue at hand. 

What is the role of the reporters and editors when there are issues of truth that need to be resolved before any “objective” reporting can be considered accurate? One would hope that reporters and editors would take the next step and compare the facts used by each side.  You can’t have equivalence when one party has an unequivocal penchant for lying and deception. If the reporters and editors check the facts and report honestly about the relative truthfulness of the competing arguments or interpretations, then they are following journalism’s best practices.  When reporters and editors are lazy, incompetent, or ideologically driven, they engage in “false equivalence,” in which they “do their job” by reporting all sides equally, even when there is ample evidence that one party or the other has the bulk of the truth on their side.

So the reader is left with stories that treat all statements as true, since the statements were made (accuracy).  Many reporters and editors, in order to avoid the charge that they have a “liberal agenda’”  feel they have done their job by reporting all sides equally, even if one side consists of lies and deception.  One small example:  Republicans claim that our economic problems stem, in part, from the regulations imposed by the Obama administration.  A bit of research is all it takes to debunk this claim.  As Bloomberg News reported:

“Obama’s White House has approved fewer regulations than his predecessor George W. Bush at this same point in their tenures, and the estimated costs of those rules haven’t reached the annual peak set in fiscal 1992 under Bush’s father, according to government data reviewed by Bloomberg News.”

 How many times will  the Republican charge of excess government regulation on the part of the Obama administration be reported as a fact (Republicans did make the claim) and how many times reported as lie (Republicans made a false claim)?  Not too hard to figure out that one.

Since the TeaPublicans have been shameless in lying about virtually all aspects of the Obama administration, why should reporters present GOP falsehoods as simply “one side of the story?”  Just look at how the MSM covered the Tea Party astroturf campaign (real anger of regular folks) and how they are reporting on Occupy Wall Street (bunch of aimless dirty hippies). Given what you know about these two expressions of public outrage and the public polling evidence that more Americans sympathize with the aims of OWS than the Tea Party Express, can you believe anything you read and hear in the MSM?  Just ask yourself, who benefits from how the story is being reported?  As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein:  Follow the money!