[Note: From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings. Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject. It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts. The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments. This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]
Of course, as this blog has just reported, this stands in
counter distinction to the right-wing ecosystem that instead of utilizing long-standing
protocols to bolster truth-telling, has utilized rhetorical techniques –
including memes – that result in dubious news accounts. This is further enhanced by the relatively
unified set of interests its party, the Republican Party, represents. When everyone tends to see the world through a
single lens, those observations are more easily deceived and less demanding of objectivity.
The
Republican Party counts on a limited set of groups – businesspeople,
fundamentalist religious groups, and disaffected labor groups smarting over the
loss of jobs to automation and cheap labor nations – to make up its base. That naturally leads to allow for a singular,
mostly ideological messaging to take hold and bolster existing biases among
these people.
The
left and its party – the Democratic Party – has instead a wide variety of
groups making up its ranks. This includes
from conservative minority-religious groups, e.g., most Jews and fundamentalist
blacks, to urban, professional groups such as academics and well-trained
technologists. Of course, these are
tendencies, and this account is not meant to describe how all members of these
groups vote.
But
to the degree this alignment exists among Democrats, given the proclivity for
disagreement among such a high level of diversity, this alliance demands to a greater
degree objective news sources. Therefore,
they rely on news outlets having well-established structures and protocols
guaranteeing both talent and objectivity in gathering and reporting the news.
Such
an arrangement, though, does not protect those well-established newspapers –
e.g., The New York Times and The Washington Post – and national
TV news organizations – e.g., CBS and NBC – from being described as FAKE NEWS
by the right-wing ecosystem.
But
this reliance on these news outlets allows Democrats and the left to formulate fact-based
positions on the vibrant issues of the day.
That arrangement, in a more varied landscape, helps the party to avoid
messaging – and accompanying proposals – that appeals to or is demanded by its
more extreme members – a faction currently called progressives.
As
for the news organizations themselves, they seek to not be identified as the
leftist press and seek to be considered simply the FREE PRESS. This is backed by their protocols for
gathering and reporting the news. They
rely on their audiences to be on the more centrist elements of the electorate
both among left and right of center voters and these voter, in turn, make up
the vast percentage of the electorate.
And
associated with this avoidance of extremism, it also demands that their
information sources to avoid exclusively relying on extremists. They interview all relevant sources, but they
keep those sources’ biases revealed to the readers and viewers.
Central
to those endeavors, those source must be treated objectively, and in turn, the
news organizations must maintain unbiased methodologies in gathering and
reporting their stories and in formulating their editorial positions. They only revert to withholding information
about their sources when those sources will tell their stories only upon being
granted anonymity. In that case, journalists
have gone to jail instead of revealing who those sources are.
So,
in summary, establishment journalists do not take up ideological positioning in
their reporting and try to maintain a balanced perspective about how they
present their stories. On this last
point, Ezra Klein describes these journalistic entities as “sources that root
their identity in … being antagonistic toward political movements.”[2]
In
other words, the established press strives – not always successfully – to avoid
taking sides. The resulting, achieved balance
serves the needs of the left in that that side, as described above and in
previous postings, can maintain itself only with a good dose of compromise
within its ranks. Compromise is served by
information sources being neutral and believable.
Some
might note exceptions to this general description. Many, mostly on the right, accuse CNN, MSNBC,
The New York Times, and other outlets of being too pro-left in their
reporting. Also, there is some research
by academic sources that definitely claims that there is a leftist bias among
establishment sources. One such study is
by Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago who published
a study back in 2005 using data from the 1990-2003.[3]
They
found Fox News Special Report and The Washington Times as conservative. They also found Newsweek, The New
York Times, Time magazine, CBS Evening News, USA Today, and
NBC Nightly News as having a definite leftist bias. Balanced news outlets included ABC Good
Morning America and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Moderately left were CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, The Washington
Post, NPR’s Morning Edition, and ABC WorldNews Tonight. Not ranked were The Wall Street Journal
and talk radio.
While
this study is a bit dated and counters the thrust of what this account is
claiming, the Groseclose-Milyo study is not judged as debunking the general
observations this review has of the current media. If considered in relative terms – comparing current
day right-wing journalism and left-wing journalism – the general judgement expressed
here is still considered justified and worthy of mention.
And
this leads one to further consider how the more balanced journalists advance in
their profession. Higher reputations
belong to a relatively small number of news organizations and they provide rewards
to those considered skilled at being excellent news people. How?
By hiring them for more lucrative jobs.
One is considered to be at the top of this profession if one has secured
a position at The New York Times or The Washington Post, or on
one of the national news networks.
So,
the basic point here is that the right – in terms of its voters – due to their
distinguishing unity, is more open to disreputable sources that one finds on
social media and rest of the right-wing ecosystem. On the other hand, the left is “protected”
from such journalism given the nature of the politics that diverse groups
demand.
With
diversity, it is more difficult to cull a varied followship with a united rhetorical
messaging that social media tends to produce.
The only exception to that difficulty is messaging based on objectified
reporting that results in verifiable truth.[4] The established press come much closer to
that standard when compared to the right-wing social media, outlets such as
Newsmax, and talk show hosts as Rush Limbaugh.
[1] Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce
Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler, “Partisanship,
Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential
Election,” Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Library (n.d.),
accessed August 19, 2020, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/76a9/3eb0bed8ff032c44186678c5279f20cc5ff8.pdf?_ga=2.230250332.1151241653.1597869609-1463880478.1597869609 .
[2] Ezra Klein, Why
We’re Polarized (New York, NY: Avid
Reader Press, 2020), 236.
[3] Robert J. Barro, “The Liberal Media: It’s No Myth,” Business Week/Online,
June 14, 2004, accessed December 29, 2020, https://scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/04_0614_liberalmedia_bw.pdf
. Of note, Barro is a founding member of
the movement, new classical macroeconomics, that began as a response to the
condition of stagflation in the 1970s and is currently an editor-in-chief at Quarterly
Journal of Economics, the scholarly journal that published the Groseclose-Milyo
study.
[4] This reference to objectified methods should not be
confused with the reductionism a scientist practices in a scientific study. In this form, journalism more resembles
responsible historical study by reputable historians. Journalism is often described informally as
the first stab at history.
No comments:
Post a Comment