Even in the Trump era, corporate media, forever insistent on an “objective” approach that always hears out “both sides,” continue to exhibit a dangerous blindness to their own biases.
In “In Primetime, Two Versions of Impeachment for a Divided Nation” (11/16/19), the New York Times‘ Michael Grynbaum offered “a glimpse at the country’s divided political reality” by describing the contrasting ways Fox News and MSNBC are reporting on the Trump impeachment hearings:
The New York Times (11/16/19) characterized Fox News and MSNBC as “opinionated outlets with irreconcilable differences”—offering no clue as to which if either might be closer to reality.
From her set inside MSNBC headquarters, Rachel Maddow opened her prime-time coverage of the Trump impeachment hearings by calling the first day’s testimony “a double-barreled problem for the president—triple-barreled, maybe.” President Trump, she said, had been “caught doing something illegal” at the “direct expense of the country’s national interest.”
One block south, from a Fox News studio, Sean Hannity welcomed viewers by declaring “a great day for the United States, for the country, for the president — and a lousy day for the corrupt, do-nothing-for-three-years, radical, extreme, socialist Democrats and their top allies known as the media mob.”
These distinct visions—delivered simultaneously from skyscrapers roughly 1,000 feet apart — were beamed at the 9 p.m. hour into millions of American living rooms. It was a striking reflection of today’s choose-your-own-news media environment, and a far cry from the era when Americans experienced major events through the same television hearth.
It’s true that both cable outlets are essentially partisan outlets pushing their own party’s line—though ideologically, MSNBC and Fox each represent the right wing of their respective parties (FAIR.org, 6/30/17), which means the television “choose-your-own-news” world is hardly the free-for-all Grynbaum suggests. But at a time when one party adheres to an anything-goes strategy that has taken brazen lying to a new level, denies science, and regularly attacks journalists as “the enemy of the people,” painting a “both sides do it” picture of the partisan media environment glosses over very real and important differences.
For Grynbaum, media outlets simply have “irreconcilable differences”—so Fox’s puerile (but strategically us vs. them) media commentary that veteran foreign service officers testifying against Trump “looked like people who sat by themselves at recess” is equated with MSNBC’s commentary that those same officers gave “a fuller picture of the corrupt abuse of power by the president of the United States.”
Grynbaum’s other main example, in which “tribal allegiances to news outlets mean that any hint of heresy can provoke an outcry,” is egregious. Here, he equated as “similar backlash” the “liberal” criticism of an NBC.com analysis (11/13/19) that found the impeachment hearings lacking in “pizazz,” and “conservative” ire that Fox‘s Bret Baier noted that Trump’s real-time attacks on an impeachment witness allowed Rep. Adam Schiff to characterize Trump as engaged in “witness tampering or intimidation.” The analogy is incomprehensible: In one case, a political reporter judges impeachment by its entertainment value—which one would hope a serious media analyst would recognize as problematic, regardless of one’s political ideology—while in the other, a political reporter makes a factual observation that his partisan viewers apparently felt shouldn’t be mentioned, because it makes Trump look bad.
It’s also not clear who in the world might have a “tribal allegiance” to NBC—but by presenting the centrist outlet as an analog to Fox News, the Times lends credence to the right-wing strategy of painting all corporate outlets besides Fox as “liberal” (and therefore untrustworthy).
In another example, “Regional Weather Patterns Are Viewed through Partisan Lenses, Poll Finds” (11/18/19), the Washington Post demonstrates how this insistence on equivalence extends throughout coverage. In the article, Scott Clement, Emily Guskin and Dan Balz report that common experiences across the United States of extreme weather events
have not produced a political consensus on the causes. Democrats are likely to cite global warming and climate change as the force behind some of the new weather patterns. Republicans are likely to discount climate change as the culprit.
“The results highlight the degree to which regional weather patterns are now viewed through partisan lenses,” the Post explains, “just as the national debate about climate has been dominated by sharp differences between Republicans and Democrats over whether scientific evidence of climate change is valid.”
As the paper acknowledges in one easily missed line, scientists agree that climate disruption has exacerbated extreme weather events. So what the poll actually shows is that Democrats view regional weather patterns through a science-based lens, while Republicans reject the science-based view, presumably because of partisanship—and the “reality” their media of choice creates for them. That’s not a “both sides do it” story, as the paper would have readers believe; it’s a “one side does it” story. But, like Grynbaum, the Post won’t tell it that way, because it must take pains not to offend either “side” more than the other.
This is the fiction that so many corporate journalists cling to: that objectivity is possible and preferable, and that taking flak from the left and from the right means they’re doing a good job. Grynbaum’s nostalgia for an era of a single broadcast reality (the “same television hearth”), which he and the rest of the “objectivity” crowd no doubt see themselves as a part of, erases the ideology of the outlets that refuse to acknowledge any biases.
The New York Times‘ Dean Baquet (Guardian, 11/18/19) says he’s “reluctant to allow his reporters to ascribe value judgments to the president” whose attacks he views as putting those journalists’ lives in danger.
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet recently commented that he is “constantly fighting against pressure to ‘take a full-bodied side’ against the president,” and resists demands to call Trump racist or sexist because he is “not in a position to know whether he [makes comments] because he is a racist.” According to an interview with the Guardian (11/19/19), Baquet
warned junior staff and readers against pushing to embrace left-wing Democratic candidates such as Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, saying the outlet would lose its status if it openly sided with particular politicians.
“They probably want a more political New York Times than I’m willing to give them. I hope they will learn over time that a New York Times that plays it straight has much more power and much more longevity.”
Instead, he insisted the organization’s lengthy investigation into the president’s taxes had more impact, because of the division between reporting and comment. “The way I look at it, that story would not have been believed had it been written by a news organization that had spent two years advocating against Donald Trump.”
It’s telling that Baquet only warns staff and readers against left-wing candidates, not centrist ones. Corporate journalists rarely see centrism as an ideology; it’s not conservative or liberal, so it must not be political and therefore must not be problematic. In the face of a no-holds-barred attack against media (and government institutions), corporate media’s response is to continue to pretend they can exist outside of the fray, looking down equally at “both sides” from their unassailable perch in the center, and imagining that lengthy investigations about the president’s taxes are going to change things. As the election nears, genuine truth-telling—as opposed to disingenuous false equivalence—is more urgent than ever, but it’s just as unlikely as ever that corporate media will be up to the challenge.
The Hatter asked of Alice, “Where does balance become a tilt?”
Alice smiled slyly. “I read the Times, as well.”
I suspect a big part of the treatment of the ‘middle-roaders’ as more de facto ‘objective’ is just simple demographic pandering. It’s the good old bell-curve model. Since ‘objective’ is usually considered a complimentary term, and the bulk of the population is in the center (because they don’t have the time or inclination to investigate politics beyond the superficial levels), a commercially, profit-oriented enterprise is going to cater (subtlety or otherwise) to that group, and one way is to extoll them as being ‘objective’ (but virtually always through a tacit, underlying pro-capitalism POV, hence the anti-left bias).
I agree but at the same time I admit to becoming tribal indeed, especially after having listened to and read Rachel Maddow: the depth of her knowledge and comprehension makes me want to belong to THAT tribe.
And I’m not surprised that journalists try to cling to the appearance of ‘balance’ even though it’s likely futile as the wrong Right wing will never change their minds (unless their leader does).
“This is the fiction that so many corporate journalists cling to: that objectivity is possible and preferable,..”
WOW..i was rolling along with this one, and then, the above quoted turd….Let me explain something a youngster like Julie Hollar may be unaware of : “Objectivity” has a , well , objective meaning even if that meaning been fucked apart by post modernism and the legions of kids its crackpot theories mis-educated. To be objective once meant the it was possible to know the truth..The way the word is mis-used now, it means, that it is IMPOSSIBLE to know the truth.. In fact, truth has an objectively leftist slant. Ms. Hollar should be arguing for MORE objectivity. For example : “Reporting” on ” both sides ” of the “evolution controversy” (or the “climate change controversy” ) Is not = “Objectivity”…it is = partisan political deception. There is no objective “controversy” around either concept. They are consensus science.
Did you ever have a class in form writing? There is a specific style of writing for the news that encourages objectivity and avoids inserting your own opinion. Most of what we see portrayed as news are actually opinion columns in discuse as fact. What we are seeing in news is the death of fact based reporting in the chase for rating and a fear of lawsuits (SLAP). Kelli Ann Conway heralded the death of truth with her so called “alternative facts” (aka propaganda lies) you can’t have a legitimate debate when one side simply denies reality and creates their own to justify their terrible treatment of anyone not slaved to their cause.
Star Wars- only the with deal in absolutes.
“This is the fiction that so many corporate journalists cling to: that objectivity is possible and preferable,..”
WOW..i was rolling along with this one, and then, the above quoted turd….Let me explain something a youngster like Julie Hollar may be unaware of : “Objectivity” has a , well , objective meaning even if that meaning been fucked apart by post modernism and the legions of kids its crackpot theories mis-educated. To be objective once meant the it was possible to know the truth..The way the word is mis-used now, it means, that it is IMPOSSIBLE to know the truth.. In fact, truth has an objectively leftist slant. Ms. Hollar should be arguing for MORE objectivity. For example : “Reporting” on ” both sides ” of the “evolution controversy” (or the “climate change controversy” ) Is not = “Objectivity”…it is = partisan political deception. There is no objective “controversy” around either concept. They are consensus science.
Yes, it is telling that the NY Times refuses to abandon its self-described objectivity perch. What it is telling us is that it wallows in cowardly churning of newsroom activity. There was a time that a news organization counted on selling papers by reporting the truth – not a truth, the truth. It counted on the public contemplating an issue by using facts reported in its pages. Those times are clearly long gone and not only are we, as curious individuals, the poorer for it, worse, the entire country is.
Nope, the NYT (and often the WAPO) is left of the center by an inch or so, but surely not trying to be even-handed. It is rather clear that Bernie Sanders does not exist because NYT seldom even lists his name when discussing polls – even when he is #2 on the list or more likely to beat Trump than Biden. FoxNews, MSNBC, NYT and WAPO have political biases. None are ideologically distant from Wall Street. All are ideologically distant from Main Street.
By various mechanisms, the NYT and the rest of the “liberal media” have been steadily nudged to the right over 40 years, changing the meaning of consensus. As other FAIR reports show, there is little daylight between them and US foreign policies that time and time again have been disastrous to all concerned. When it comes to defending imperial projects there are few partisan differences. And so, when Trump acts to to defuse confrontations with Russia and North Korea, the “both conservative and iberal media jump on him for undermining national security.
You have to dig below our political duopoly if you hope to learn who is controlling interpretations of consequential matters by distracting us with meaningless glosses on electoral politics.
It appears that reality “is in the eyes of the beholder”. This is however because the tellers of the news do not convey all the facts. They tend to convey only those facts that support their predetermined narrative. As an example when Trump and his acolytes state “do nothing Democrats” they conveniently ignore the 400 bills passed in the House that are sitting on McConnell’s desk. McConnell is not doing nothing he is actively blocking those bills and has said as much in an effort to discredit the Democrats. When the Republicans argue that Medicare for all is unaffordable they ignore the massive amounts of wastage in the Defense budget. The US defense budget is 2.5 times bigger than the next largest in the World. Medicare for all is affordable but it will require serious examination of the present budget and all its pork barrel spending. It is clear however that the age of the internet has done away with serious research in favor of the 30 second soundbite.
This article makes some good points. See also Slavoj Zizek, “The Sublime Object of Ideology” (1989), and Rex Butler’s excellent summary: “in the analysis of ideology, it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already — whether we know it or not — made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.” Rex Butler, “What Is a Master-Signifier” (2004). I guess you can also throw in here Berger and Luckmann’s “The Social Construction of Reality” (1966) and most of Pierre Bourdieu’s work.