Taibbi writes: "News media outlets are increasingly coming under fire for
the sin of 'false balance' or 'false equivalency.' The New York Times, one
of the outlets most often accused of this offense, recently defined the
term."
Hillary Clinton speaks with reporters as she departs a luncheon gathering
with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, July 14th, 2016.
(photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Stop Whining About 'False Balance'
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
17 September 16
Everyone wants to blame reporters for the rise of Donald Trump. How about
the media consumer?
News media outlets are increasingly coming under fire for the sin of "false
balance" or "false equivalency." The New York Times, one of the outlets most
often accused of this offense, recently defined the term:
"The practice of journalists who, in their zeal to be fair, present each
side of a debate as equally credible, even when the factual evidence is
stacked heavily on one side."
The crime of The Times, according to some of its readers, has been its
coverage of the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation stories. As one Times
reader put it, "There's too much at stake in this election for the media to
stoke the belief that Hillary's mistakes (which she has definitely made) are
even close to par with Trump's."
When Times public editor Liz Spayd essentially told readers that her paper
was just doing its job and that readers should just suck it up and deal, she
was hit with a torrent of criticism.
A pack of pundits - one might call them the false-equivalency priesthood -
lashed out through pieces like "Why the Media Is Botching the Election,"
"Media Should Stop Treating Trump and Clinton as Equals," "Does the New York
Times Have a False Balance Problem?" and countless others.
It's getting ridiculous. Two quick thoughts:
1) The people complaining about "false balance" usually seem confident in
having discovered the truth of things for themselves, despite the media's
supposed incompetence. They're quite sure of whom to vote for and why. Their
complaints are really about the impact that "false balance" coverage might
have on other, lesser humans, with weaker minds than theirs. Which is not
just snobbish, but laughably snobbish. So, shut up.
2) One of the main reasons the news media has been dumbed down over the
years is because audiences have consistently rejected smart, responsible
journalism in favor of clickbait stupidities like "Five Things You Didn't
Know About John McCain's Penis" and "Woman Strips Naked in Front of Police
Officers. You Won't Believe What Happened Next." The Bachelor and Toddlers
and Tiaras crush Frontline. And people wonder why Donald Trump gets a lot of
coverage?
No doubt about it, the country is in a brutal spot right now. We are less
than two months from the possibility of one of the dumbest people on the
planet winning the White House. And it seems that all anyone's talked about
this week, whether around the water cooler or on TV news, Twitter or
Facebook, is the lung capacity of Hillary Clinton.
That sucks. But it's not all the media's fault. This is classic horse-race
stuff, and if you're getting it, it's at least in part because you spent
decades asking for it.
The campaign has devolved over time into an entertainment program, a
degrading and vicious show where the contestants win the nuclear launch
codes instead of a date with a millionaire.
Under the rules of this reality series which media consumers turn into a
gigantic hit every four years, collapsing in front of a cell-phone camera at
a 9/11 memorial service is more important than a dozen position papers.
It just is. You proved it when you clicked on that video of the episode last
weekend and didn't read a compare-and-contrast piece on, for instance, the
candidates' banking policies.
Trump himself is feeling the business end of that dynamic right now, having
just reversed himself on the birther question in spectacular fashion. His
"Yes, Obama was born in America, but Hillary started the birther controversy
and I ended it" routine is dumb enough and full of enough lies to keep
reporters busy for a good news cycle or so, until the next fiasco.
An important news story or 10 will likely die on the vine while the country
obsesses over Trump's latest foot-in-mouth episode. That's the paradox with
this candidate. Even the people who wish he didn't exist can't take their
eyes off him. No amount of "contextualizing" or pointing out his flaws and
deceptions can walk back his gravitational pull on audiences.
This is true of a lot of dumb things that take up space in the news pages,
from Joe Arpaio to the Kardashians. One could argue that the users of the
public's airwaves have a higher responsibility to properly inform the public
that outweighs the need to chase ratings and give airtime to clown acts, but
that ship sailed a long time ago.
Ask any reporter who's tried to make the news less stupid at any time over
the past 40 years. Most of those people end up begging ProPublica for lunch
money, while the horse-racers and celebrity-humpers get panel shows.
Ask reporters like Juan Carlos Frey, who struggled to get anyone to pay
attention when he reported on mass graves of undocumented immigrants
discovered along the border of Texas.
Such stories about the mass deaths of foreigners or minorities usually get
less ink than a cat stuck in a tree or a model who falls off a runway.
But lack of "balance" doesn't seem to bother too many people in that
instance. It only seems to come up when the victim is a major political
party with basically unlimited ability to buy its own publicity.
Media consumers voting with their eyeballs for ever-dumber political
coverage creates the biggest imbalance in reality, but the "false
equivalency" debate is mostly over a separate, more parochial issue of
journalistic ethics.
The essence of that debate is whether or not it's appropriate to write
negative things about Hillary Clinton when there's a possibility that Donald
Trump might become president. Or, rather, we may say negative things about
Clinton, but only if we always drape reporting in plenty of context about
the worse-ness of Trump, or something.
There's not much to say about this debate apart from the fact that it's
phony and absurd and that the people shrieking for "balance" are almost
always at heart censors who are really concerned with keeping a view of the
world with which they disagree out of the news.
There are two basic ideas of how the press is supposed to operate. One is
that the system works best when reporters are free, independent and
annoying, giving the public as much information as possible, so that people
may sort things out for themselves.
The other is that information is inherently dangerous, and the public is too
stupid to be trusted with too much of it. Throughout history there has
always been a plurality of people who will believe this.
Whether it's keeping "Fuck the Police" off the airwaves or news of the
collectivist famine out of Pravda, the idea is the same: People can't handle
stuff.
The giveaway in this latest "false balance" debate is the language. There
are people wailing about a "weaponized" media that just this once needs to
be leashed a bit, given the circumstances. This is classic "information is
dangerous" rhetoric.
There are even people in our business using this high-pressure situation to
argue for less access and transparency, in the name of keeping future
generations of politicians safe from the prying eyes of the public! Most
reporters view their jobs as being basically the opposite of that.
In truth, the media landscape is massive and there's room to cover
everything. It's worth noting that the exploration of Trump's iniquities and
unfitness for office in the last year has been truly awesome, both in terms
of raw volume and vehemence of tone.
Anyone who tries to argue that there's insufficiently vast documentation of
Trump's insanity is either being willfully obtuse or not paying real
attention to the news. Just follow this latest birther faceplant. The
outrage is all out there, in huge quantities. It's just not having the
predicted effect.
So media consumers are reduced to blaming the closeness of the race on a
species they've practically made extinct with their choices over the years:
investigative reporters.
The irony is, the Clinton Foundation thing is a rare example of an important
story that is getting anything like the requisite attention. The nexus of
elite connections that sits behind tales like Bill Clinton taking $1.5
million in speaking fees from a Swiss bank (and foundation donor) while that
same bank is seeking relief from Hillary Clinton's State Department is
exactly the kind of thing that requires the scrutiny of reporters.
This is particularly true since the charity is a new kind of structure, with
seemingly new opportunities for conflicts, and an innovation that is likely
to be replicated in the future by other politicians - perhaps even a future
President Trump himself.
Such investigative reports on the mechanics of political influence are also
exactly the sort of thing that media audiences routinely ignore, unless by
some lucky accident they happen to be caught up in the horse-race drama of a
Campaign Reality Show.
So if your complaint about these reports is, "Why now, at this crucial
moment?" there's a very good answer. If these stories came out at any other
time, you'd be blowing them off! And probably in favor of The Biggest Loser,
or a show about people eating bugs for money. Which brings us back to the
key point in all of this.
I'm as worried as anyone else about the possibility of Trump getting
elected. But if it happens, it's not going to be because The New York Times
allowed a few reporters to investigate the Clinton Foundation. It'll be
because we're a nation of idiots, who vote the same way we choose channels:
without thinking.
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Hillary Clinton speaks with reporters as she departs a luncheon gathering
with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, July 14th, 2016.
(photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/stop-whining-about-false-balan
ce-w440228http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/stop-whining-about-f
alse-balance-w440228
Stop Whining About 'False Balance'
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
17 September 16
Everyone wants to blame reporters for the rise of Donald Trump. How about
the media consumer?
ews media outlets are increasingly coming under fire for the sin of "false
balance" or "false equivalency." The New York Times, one of the outlets most
often accused of this offense, recently defined the term:
"The practice of journalists who, in their zeal to be fair, present each
side of a debate as equally credible, even when the factual evidence is
stacked heavily on one side."
The crime of The Times, according to some of its readers, has been its
coverage of the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation stories. As one Times
reader put it, "There's too much at stake in this election for the media to
stoke the belief that Hillary's mistakes (which she has definitely made) are
even close to par with Trump's."
When Times public editor Liz Spayd essentially told readers that her paper
was just doing its job and that readers should just suck it up and deal, she
was hit with a torrent of criticism.
A pack of pundits - one might call them the false-equivalency priesthood -
lashed out through pieces like "Why the Media Is Botching the Election,"
"Media Should Stop Treating Trump and Clinton as Equals," "Does the New York
Times Have a False Balance Problem?" and countless others.
It's getting ridiculous. Two quick thoughts:
1) The people complaining about "false balance" usually seem confident in
having discovered the truth of things for themselves, despite the media's
supposed incompetence. They're quite sure of whom to vote for and why. Their
complaints are really about the impact that "false balance" coverage might
have on other, lesser humans, with weaker minds than theirs. Which is not
just snobbish, but laughably snobbish. So, shut up.
2) One of the main reasons the news media has been dumbed down over the
years is because audiences have consistently rejected smart, responsible
journalism in favor of clickbait stupidities like "Five Things You Didn't
Know About John McCain's Penis" and "Woman Strips Naked in Front of Police
Officers. You Won't Believe What Happened Next." The Bachelor and Toddlers
and Tiaras crush Frontline. And people wonder why Donald Trump gets a lot of
coverage?
No doubt about it, the country is in a brutal spot right now. We are less
than two months from the possibility of one of the dumbest people on the
planet winning the White House. And it seems that all anyone's talked about
this week, whether around the water cooler or on TV news, Twitter or
Facebook, is the lung capacity of Hillary Clinton.
That sucks. But it's not all the media's fault. This is classic horse-race
stuff, and if you're getting it, it's at least in part because you spent
decades asking for it.
The campaign has devolved over time into an entertainment program, a
degrading and vicious show where the contestants win the nuclear launch
codes instead of a date with a millionaire.
Under the rules of this reality series which media consumers turn into a
gigantic hit every four years, collapsing in front of a cell-phone camera at
a 9/11 memorial service is more important than a dozen position papers.
It just is. You proved it when you clicked on that video of the episode last
weekend and didn't read a compare-and-contrast piece on, for instance, the
candidates' banking policies.
Trump himself is feeling the business end of that dynamic right now, having
just reversed himself on the birther question in spectacular fashion. His
"Yes, Obama was born in America, but Hillary started the birther controversy
and I ended it" routine is dumb enough and full of enough lies to keep
reporters busy for a good news cycle or so, until the next fiasco.
An important news story or 10 will likely die on the vine while the country
obsesses over Trump's latest foot-in-mouth episode. That's the paradox with
this candidate. Even the people who wish he didn't exist can't take their
eyes off him. No amount of "contextualizing" or pointing out his flaws and
deceptions can walk back his gravitational pull on audiences.
This is true of a lot of dumb things that take up space in the news pages,
from Joe Arpaio to the Kardashians. One could argue that the users of the
public's airwaves have a higher responsibility to properly inform the public
that outweighs the need to chase ratings and give airtime to clown acts, but
that ship sailed a long time ago.
Ask any reporter who's tried to make the news less stupid at any time over
the past 40 years. Most of those people end up begging ProPublica for lunch
money, while the horse-racers and celebrity-humpers get panel shows.
Ask reporters like Juan Carlos Frey, who struggled to get anyone to pay
attention when he reported on mass graves of undocumented immigrants
discovered along the border of Texas.
Such stories about the mass deaths of foreigners or minorities usually get
less ink than a cat stuck in a tree or a model who falls off a runway.
But lack of "balance" doesn't seem to bother too many people in that
instance. It only seems to come up when the victim is a major political
party with basically unlimited ability to buy its own publicity.
Media consumers voting with their eyeballs for ever-dumber political
coverage creates the biggest imbalance in reality, but the "false
equivalency" debate is mostly over a separate, more parochial issue of
journalistic ethics.
The essence of that debate is whether or not it's appropriate to write
negative things about Hillary Clinton when there's a possibility that Donald
Trump might become president. Or, rather, we may say negative things about
Clinton, but only if we always drape reporting in plenty of context about
the worse-ness of Trump, or something.
There's not much to say about this debate apart from the fact that it's
phony and absurd and that the people shrieking for "balance" are almost
always at heart censors who are really concerned with keeping a view of the
world with which they disagree out of the news.
There are two basic ideas of how the press is supposed to operate. One is
that the system works best when reporters are free, independent and
annoying, giving the public as much information as possible, so that people
may sort things out for themselves.
The other is that information is inherently dangerous, and the public is too
stupid to be trusted with too much of it. Throughout history there has
always been a plurality of people who will believe this.
Whether it's keeping "Fuck the Police" off the airwaves or news of the
collectivist famine out of Pravda, the idea is the same: People can't handle
stuff.
The giveaway in this latest "false balance" debate is the language. There
are people wailing about a "weaponized" media that just this once needs to
be leashed a bit, given the circumstances. This is classic "information is
dangerous" rhetoric.
There are even people in our business using this high-pressure situation to
argue for less access and transparency, in the name of keeping future
generations of politicians safe from the prying eyes of the public! Most
reporters view their jobs as being basically the opposite of that.
In truth, the media landscape is massive and there's room to cover
everything. It's worth noting that the exploration of Trump's iniquities and
unfitness for office in the last year has been truly awesome, both in terms
of raw volume and vehemence of tone.
Anyone who tries to argue that there's insufficiently vast documentation of
Trump's insanity is either being willfully obtuse or not paying real
attention to the news. Just follow this latest birther faceplant. The
outrage is all out there, in huge quantities. It's just not having the
predicted effect.
So media consumers are reduced to blaming the closeness of the race on a
species they've practically made extinct with their choices over the years:
investigative reporters.
The irony is, the Clinton Foundation thing is a rare example of an important
story that is getting anything like the requisite attention. The nexus of
elite connections that sits behind tales like Bill Clinton taking $1.5
million in speaking fees from a Swiss bank (and foundation donor) while that
same bank is seeking relief from Hillary Clinton's State Department is
exactly the kind of thing that requires the scrutiny of reporters.
This is particularly true since the charity is a new kind of structure, with
seemingly new opportunities for conflicts, and an innovation that is likely
to be replicated in the future by other politicians - perhaps even a future
President Trump himself.
Such investigative reports on the mechanics of political influence are also
exactly the sort of thing that media audiences routinely ignore, unless by
some lucky accident they happen to be caught up in the horse-race drama of a
Campaign Reality Show.
So if your complaint about these reports is, "Why now, at this crucial
moment?" there's a very good answer. If these stories came out at any other
time, you'd be blowing them off! And probably in favor of The Biggest Loser,
or a show about people eating bugs for money. Which brings us back to the
key point in all of this.
I'm as worried as anyone else about the possibility of Trump getting
elected. But if it happens, it's not going to be because The New York Times
allowed a few reporters to investigate the Clinton Foundation. It'll be
because we're a nation of idiots, who vote the same way we choose channels:
without thinking.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
