Our Broken Press, Part Mucho

No surprises, right, if the Times is being stupid. This 'time' (har) it's from the modern journalistic disease of Even-Handed-itis. Even though, in the world of objective facts, the Clinton campaign has been playing dumb and dirty, the Times cannot say that because factual objectivity is not a goal of modern journalism, the only 'objectivity' the mavens pursue is 'partisanship equality.' That is, the Times needs to blame both sides - basically by puffing up minor events on one side and quashing major events on the other side, to make both ends equal. This way, the Times cannot be accused of 'bias' or 'partisanship.' Observe:

Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.

Got that. Even though, to any neutral observer, "the negative and vapid nature of this campaign" has been caused totally by Hillary, when Obama needs to fight back ("Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe") he's considered to be contributing.

And if you're thinking, hey, this sounds exactly how the Times treats Israel's responses to terrorism, then you get a prize.

Just listen to him here and ask if he is out of line. (Answer: nope)


Our Broken Press, Part Three Billion

This type of thinking reminds me of 'regional diversity' at Princeton. When the powers-that-were wanted to reduce the overall numbers of dark people and Jews from the lily-white campus, they embarked on "regional diversity" - meaning they recruited students from all over the country. This sounds fine, no? Diversity is good, no? No. Because 'good' diversity means having people from different (or 'diverse') backgrounds, skills, life-experiences, etc. 'Regional diversity' was used to avoid the urban areas - which are large populations over a spatially small location - and go to the rural areas.

Conclusion? Even though 10 people chosen at random in NYC would be quite diverse, 10 people chosen at random from each state will yield a nice crop of white Anglo-Saxon stock students. But Princeton had cover, because some marketing genius called it 'regional diversity.' (For another painful irony, see 'political correctness' as it was used in the 90s to support bigotry).

This is a fancy way of saying that while 'partisan equality' can claim to be a way of giving voice to both sides, as I described above, it almost always involves exaggeration and distortion. And the goal, while its claimed to be for equality, is actually in the service of the nihilistic 'horse-race.'

The Horse Race

I'm not the first to talk about this problem, but I have been studying it for a while. It's a direct result of turning the news industry - which was always seen as loss-leaders by philanthropists or companies who wanted respectability and we willing to lose money on a paper to get it - into a news business. When jackasses decided to make a profit from the news - nihilists like Ted Turner (CNN), Rupert Murdoch (Fox), and Al Neuharth (USA Today)- then the whole first-amendment protected industry became entertainment instead of information. When we thought that newspapers were 'the first draft of history' that was only when, like academia, profit was taken out of the equation.

But since news is now to make money, the owners of mass-media need to script the news the best they can. Just as 'reality shows' have the semblance of in-vivo action but are in fact highly controlled and edited narratives, so too is news production by these profit insisting outlets. True, news can't be as scripted as a TV show, but unlike - ironically - sports, where rules govern action so as to ensure fair and real action on the field, the news agencies act like the Black Sox more than referees.

Another version of the sports metaphor is to compare TV News to 'professional' wrestling (which, come to think of it, is another oxymoron, like 'regional diversity'). Pro wrestling, unlike Olympic Greco-Roman, is scripted and fake. The scripts require a good guy to fight a bad guy. Conflict sells (and is the essence of theater, ask Bugs Bunny).

The Times needs to write stupid columns like the above example because they need to keep the semblance of even-odds in the campaign, for the two reasons above: (1) they need to act according to one definition of objectivity, and they chose the most lucrative, least ethical one, and (2) they need to make a profit, sell newspapers/ad space; and that comes from faking equality.

First pic from here, second pic is recycled. Backpost finished 2009-12-07.