Watching the impeachment, all I see are the damaged news media misreading important events in just the same awful ways they usually do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The press covers the impeachment like they cover elections, or the administration, or Republican bad faith. Not that they don’t report what happens, but it’s stilted, ‘Both-sider,’ empty-calorie reporting, focusing on polls and bluster over facts.
We’ve lamented both-siderism for a while. No, it isn’t complete news reporting if you just repeat what each side tells you without examining the truth of it. The fact that we separate reporting from ‘fact-checking’ is obscene. I’ve seen it getting worse over the decades. What I want to know now is when did our purported media giants were so viciously neutered. Did that hurt? And can we, somehow, reverse that?
Election Coverage
Election coverage nowadays is all ‘polls and donations,’ and that’s about it. Look, just because that stuff is cheap and easy doesn’t even make it valuable, much less critical. But it’s like every media source got together and decided that was all they were brave enough to give us. Sure, Republicans take every opportunity to attack the media for being too liberal. But it doesn’t matter what the press reports. Republicans will scream about any honest coverage. They even criticize Fox News, for god’s sake! If you can’t toady your way out of Republican criticism, maybe you should stop trying?
Even as the media groups drop useful election coverage, they flood us with pointless fluff and those oh-so-profitable political ads. I know they’re big corporations, owned by even bigger corporations, but jeez, I’d think that ‘exciting and informative’ would be profitable.
Real elections go through phases. In the beginning, we usually don’t know much about most of the candidates. We don’t know them personally, what they stand for, or what ideas they espouse. That’s why people run campaigns: to introduce themselves and their proposals to people who don’t know them yet.
After that, we’re in the marketplace of ideas, where candidates add new stuff, trim off unpopular plans, and reshape the job they’re proposing. If they’re any good, they’re listening to people. Each candidate moves through their constituencies, targeting different groups along the way.
Finally, after all the campaigning, you get to the end. Elections are imminent. That’s the horserace phase. The candidates are more-or-less fixed: we know what they’re like, and we know their positions. People are mostly decided. All that’s left is some fine-tuning, then the last-minute scramble of the election.
But remember: from the beginning, the goal – the purpose – of every campaign is to change people’s minds. Show them who you are and explain what you mean to do with the job. You’re trying to convince people to vote for you, and that’s a process. Starting out as an unknown is the default. Similarly, most politicians’ platforms start out as vague generalities, then evolve like crazy. You pick up the best ideas from the other candidates, and if you’re any good at it, you listen to people when they talk to you.
Even the populations you deal with change over the campaign. You can’t target every subgroup in your district continually. You have to work in shifts, targeting a few groups at a time, then shifting to the next target population as the election progresses.
But modern American press coverage doesn’t acknowledge that. The media start – and end – with the horserace: who’s polling where? How much cash? They polled Buttigieg’s name recognition the day after he announced! That’s wrongheaded, and they know it. I remember hearing a news show list the latest polls, then the announcer said, “Remember that Donald Trump was polling at 2 percent at this point in the last election.” Dude, if you knew polling was pointless, why are you still doing it? Some kind of force must have sheared our powerful institutions off their foundations. I can’t see why can’t they speak to us honestly anymore.
All-fluffy news coverage isn’t hard to find. At random, I grabbed the Post’s “Which Democrats Are Leading the 2020 Presidential Race?” Here’s their introduction:
Each week, The Times is bringing you the latest political data and analysis to track how the 18 Democratic presidential candidates are doing and who is breaking out of the pack in the historic race for the 2020 nomination.
The Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2019, “Which Democrats Are Leading the 2020 Presidential Race?”
So, what critical information followed that introduction? A table of the candidates listing their polling, campaign contributions, and a weekly news ranking. Yeah, because that’s the most essential stuff to know at this point. I was too depressed to look, but I bet that the Post has been running that feature for months.
We’re still in the marketplace of ideas phase (I like Nathan’s phrase). Elizabeth Warren is getting flack for her detailed “Medicare For All” plan, which they compare with similarly detailed plans from… uh, nobody? Well, not yet. Nobody else has built a similar breakdown for their own policies yet. But, if we’re lucky, Warren’s plan will force more candidates to cough up their own ideas.
Or, you know, the press could start pressing them for details. It wouldn’t be hard.
In the last debate, Tom Steyer brought up the critical role housing plays. He made a strong argument that a lot of our day-to-day lives are dictated by where we live. Want to bet most candidates pick up that theme?
There are lots of issues still in play. People talked about their tax changes early on, so those are only changing a little now. College tuition, surprisingly, remains a grab-bag. Their positions on school funding are vague at best. Gun control is swirling, driven by Beto O’Rourke’s “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” Child care hasn’t even come up yet, but it will. There are so many issues we care about.
And all that churning is fine. It’s what we should expect. We’re still early in the election, where we’re supposed to be arguing about basic ideas and implementations. There’s a long way to go before the elections. As a nation, we have time to think this stuff through.
But the press just keeps pretending that the horserace is the only story. “If the election was held tomorrow, who would you vote for?” It’s like they’re making things up just to fill the space. Why? Is it hard to report on what the real candidates are saying? Whatever, but I won’t argue that we’re learning anything useful by ignoring the meat of the election.
The media make the same mistake with Republican lies and dirty tricks. I know we’ve written about this before. Republicans lie. The press quotes their deception in the headline (“Trump calls Senator a traitor”) and as the top part of any reporting. They might issue a mild ‘fact-check,’ far down the article, or sometimes in a completely different place, or not look at the facts at all. It’s breathtakingly lousy coverage. Was reporting really that hard to do? Republicans made vicious smears their primary campaign tool, but our media toddle along as if they just can’t help themselves. And they can’t even talk about it in anything other than hints and innuendo. Who damaged our media sources?
Political Coverage
Again, examples of damaged news media coverage are everywhere, but here’s the one I grabbed at random. In Aug, President Donald Trump visited El Paso after the mass shooting there, where (big surprise) he mouthed off. Here’s the Post:
Trump Visits Dayton and El Paso
The president took sharp aim at opponents even as he visited two cities in mourning after horrific mass shootings in Ohio and Texas.
President Trump landed in El Paso on Wednesday afternoon to try to console a city reeling from tragedy, but was greeted by protesters after a contentious day in which he clashed with rivals and critics even as he visited with grieving residents in Dayton, Ohio.The White House had signaled that Mr. Trump would play the traditional role of healer in chief on Wednesday, eschewing photo-ops in favor of private sessions with emergency and hospital workers and victims of the shootings that shocked both cities and the nation.
But Mr. Trump’s proved unwilling to completely refrain from his usual combative style. On his way to El Paso from Dayton, he tweeted attacks on the Democratic mayor of Dayton and a Democratic senator who he said had not accurately described the closed-door sessions at a Dayton hospital earlier in the day.
Washington Post, Aug. 7, 2019, Trump Visits Dayton and El Paso
It went on, but that’s all I can stand right now. Anyway, let me unpack that a little.
“The president took sharp aim at opponents…” Odd characterization, given that what Trump did was blurt out a string of lies.
“…But he clashed with rivals and critics….” Sure, by shouting out insults, more lies, and half-truths.
“The White House had signaled…” a bunch of happy fluff that had no chance of being accurate. And yet the Post repeated that entire section of the White House schedule. They were repeating a lie. Why?
“…Mr. Trump’s [sic] proved unwilling to completely refrain from his usual combative style.” That is, randomly people, institutions, and the press by proclaiming stuff that simply wasn’t true. Objective facts weren’t worth reporting.
The Post couldn’t even be honest in their opinions. Here’s a quote from a different article that same day.
Trump Uses a Day of Healing to Deepen the Nation’s Divisions
EL PASO — President Trump visited Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso on Wednesday on a day intended as a show of compassion to cities scarred by a weekend of violence, but which quickly devolved into an occasion for anger-fueled broadsides against Democrats and the news media.
Washington Post, Aug. 7, 2019, Trump Uses a Day of Healing to Deepen the Nation’s Divisions
“Anger-fueled broadsides,” really doesn’t cover an essential part of Trump’s diatribe, when very little of what he said was factually correct. You know: true. Did the Post miss that part? And yet the papers repeat what Trump said, carefully softening his lies into combat metaphors: “clashed,” “took aim,” “took sharp aim,” “combative,” “anger-fueled broadsides,” “unloaded many of his usual grievances,” “displayed little hesitation.” Hell, Trump sounds like a stand-up guy, at least in their telling.
So, even with the Post’s schoolmarmish euphemisms and deliberate coverups, the Post article still described Trump as vicious and combative, clashing with people, attacking others, and issuing broadsides and grievances. And then they quoted Trump:
Mr. Trump himself finished the day claiming success. “We had an amazing day,” he told reporters in El Paso. Of his earlier stop in Dayton, he said, “The love, the respect for the office of the presidency — I wish you could have been in there to see it.”
Washington Post, Aug. 7, 2019, Trump Uses a Day of Healing to Deepen the Nation’s Divisions
In other words, Trump made another of his patented, copyrighted, laughable, ludicrous claims. Which the Post still repeated word-for-word.
No, that’s not ironic, it’s not sarcastic, and it isn’t reporting. Regardless of the surrounding context, it’s always deceptive to simply repeat a lie, whole and complete. Always. We’ve criticized papers and TV for it; sometimes, ombudsman responded, and things improved, a little, sometimes, but not substantially.
Impeachment Coverage
So, now we have the impeachment hearings. The press follow their instincts, quoting each party’s advocates equally and uncritically as if every political quote was equally valid. Are they treating political statements as sacrosanct, immune from rebuke, or even review by common sense? You can almost feel these influential figures shivering in dread. (Chuck Todd comes to mind here.)
Worse, now they’re treating impeachment like it was just another election horserace. “Let’s hear the latest polls!” We’re still at the fact-gathering phase. “If the impeachment vote were held today, which way would you vote?” “The majority of Americans favor the impeachment hearings.”
Lordy.
Impeachment is a political process that parallels an election campaign. We learn about the people involved: who they are, what they saw and heard, and what they’re willing to testify to under oath. It matters if we feel we can trust their word. And, even if we already know the outline, we’re still filling in the details.
After gathering the evidence, the House publicly presents the evidence. They build arguments and narratives. The idea is to change people’s minds. Once the stories fill in, we move into the middle section where different groups conflict about whose story is best. Then, near the end, we got to the horserace part: the voting.
Right now, we’re at the late beginning. We’re still gathering facts and testimony. Some results are documented well enough to move forward. We have a detailed timeline about the Ukraine dealings, for example. They hand that part off to Judiciary, even as the investigation continues.
I know we live in Republican tribalism. The party leaders assign partisan attack dogs, designated to scream the Republican counter-narrative. Think of Jim Jordan or Devin Nunes. And that’s fine. If they have exculpatory evidence or a plausible counternarrative, this is the right time.
Are the Republicans finished with their counternarrative? Do they have a plausible, stable explanation of what happened, who knew, and why it was acceptable? No, not even a bit. As late as last week, they were changing their stories several times a day. They didn’t have much choice. Each day’s testimony undercut their narrative. (And it demonstrated that Republicans were lying about almost every claim.)
The last I looked, the Republican story was something about Ukrainian chalupas, I think, and ‘no harm, no foul.’ Anyway, no, they’re not close to done.
And next week’s news will post the result of another poll about what people would do if the impeachment vote were today.
Here’s a final point. Advance polling only makes sense when the underlying situation isn’t changing a lot. If things are stable and reliable, people don’t change their minds quickly. When has anyone used those words and Trump in the same sentence? I guarantee Trump will become even less stable as time goes by. Trump is a damaged, volatile, amoral sociopath. The big orange guy deliberately throws off chaos when he’s happy.
Imagine what alternatives Trump will consider when he’s miserable and threatened.
We have our damaged news media sources. Fixing the underlying causes will be long and hard. But we don’t have that much time. Trump and his Republican party are already following an arc to transform America into another corrupt authoritarian regime. Are we ready to demand open honesty when the GOP breaks for authoritarian rule? Can our damaged news media become the independent source we need?
