Journalists not doing their job

Dan Froomkin, a particularly good political writer for Huffington Post, has a scathing article about the failure of journalists to do their job during the recent election cycle.  He cites the increasing practice of 'balanced reporting,' where outright lies are simply treated as one side of the story.   Reporters failed to confront untruths, and they failed to distinguish between the usual amount of political truth-stretching and the "far more over-the-top" lying of the Republicans.

Candy Crowley's correction of Mitt Romney's misstatement in the second debate was a notable exception -- and the fact that it created such a big stir indicates how rare it has become.

Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and Thomas Mann, scholar at the more liberal Brookings Institute, co-authored an explosive article on this subject in the Washington Post last April, which was taken from their recently published book.  Froomkin quotes Ornstein: 

"I can't recall a campaign where I've seen more lying going on  -- and it wasn't symmetric. . . . the Republican campaign was just far more over the top."

Ornstein further stated that, when journalists use this false equivalence meme, it allows politicians to just adopt a strategy of lying -- because they get away with it.

A big part of the problem, Froomkin points out, is that the tv producers, and newspaper publishers and editors are beholden to their corporate interests.   They don't want to risk accusations of bias -- so they put pressure on reporters and news analysts to keep things balanced.

Even the fact-checking  was not immune.  They often will present an equal number of "mostly true" and "false" ratings for both candidates.   Even though one candidate's "false" statements are trivial and the other's are major lies -- they balance out the scorecard.  This false "balance" tries to appear unbiased, when in fact they are distorting the truth by making fake equivalence.

Since Mann and Ornstein made these charges against fellow newsmen, this bipartisan pair of "the most quotable men in Washington," are now virtual pariahs inside the beltway, according to Froomkin.   Neither has been on the Sunday talk shows since their book came out.  Yet, in private, journalists agree with them.

Mann says that they are not anti-Republican but rather they're saying "We want a strong, conservative Republican Party -- but one with some connection with reality."

Ornstein says his message to the media going forward would be this: 

"I understand your concerns about advertisers. I understand your concerns about being labeled as biased. But what are you there for? What's the whole notion of a free press for if you're not going to report . . . the truth?. . . 

"[S]ometimes there are two sides to a story. Sometimes there are ten sides to a story.  Sometimes there's only one.

"Somebody has got to make an assessment of whether the two sides are being equally careless with their facts, or equally deliberate with their lies."

Amen to that.   In fact, I did my own ranting about the failure of the journalists to do just this back during the campaign.

Ralph