3 posts tagged “press”

Needless to say, it did not work out that way.

For more than six years, John Harris, Mark Halperin, and their peers have known that George W. Bush was not competent to be president. For six years, John Harris, Mark Halperin, and their peers have dined out in private on stories about the incompetence, malevolence, disconnection from reality, and mendacity of George W. Bush and his administration. But in public--ah, in public things have been different.

Thus for more than six years John Harris, Mark Halperin, and their peers have been two-faced: the stories they have been telling each other are different from the bland "opinions on shape of earth differ" that they have been telling their readers and their viewers.

They simply have not done their jobs.

And they do not care that they have not done their jobs.

Here they are writing to each other in Slate:

Mark Halperin: What most amazes—-and discourages—-me right now is that the mood of both the politicians and the electorate seems so angry. Sure, there is a lot to be unhappy about in a country at war, and that has a lot of people feeling like the nation is on the wrong track, but this level of vitriol seems excessive and a bit scary.

I don't really mind negative ads or messages—in part because there is nothing that the press can do about them, in part because they often have useful information in them, and in part because if voters want to be swayed by them, they will get the government they deserve.

What I don't like is false negative messages. Those, I think, are just bad for the electoral process....

[P]eople who live in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Manhattan should understand that in much of red America, [Karl] Rove is beloved and respected....

John F. Harris: I agree that it is arbitrary to make public a week-long fragment of our regular correspondence, most of which will not be open to scholars before 2025. But as long as we are reasonably alert, we should be able to promote our book and stay out of trouble in these days before the election. (I'm way too busy already to read or answer hundreds of flaming e-mails, or to sit through a long interrogation by the ombudsman.)...

[Y]our instinct for inflaming people on both the left and right into paroxysms of (publicity-producing) anger is, I suppose, a bankable asset for us....

It is our job as journalists to play referee, and I agree that at times, our efforts to call out falsehoods are pretty feeble compared to the volume....

The big journalistic failure of recent years is one also shared by numerous other people and institutions. That was the media's failure--with some prominent exceptions, including several at the Post--to challenge and illuminate the administration's premises for the Iraq war before the invasion. That is not an ideological statement, or even a criticism of the war. It's just a statement of fact....

For what it's worth, I think our failures in campaign and government coverage usually have less to do with ideology and more to do with journalistic conventions. We follow noise, as witnessed by the coverage of the Kerry-Iraq uproar in recent days. (Though please note that this classic freak-show story ran inside the Post today, not on the front page.) And our professional habits and stylebook rules sometimes inhibit us from telling the truth--and from saying that someone is lying--in plain, conversational language. We let it become a matter of controversy whether it is sunny or rainy, when sometimes it's a matter of fact. This is one area of the liberal critique of Old Media that often is pretty compelling...

In my view, John Harris's and his peers' failures have next to nothing to do with journalistic conventions. They have something to do with ideology. They have something more to do with material interest. But what they mostly have to do with is cowardice.

It really is a small thing. Or is it? It's a column by jounamalistic opinionator George F. Will on October 18, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801502.html. One sentence begins:

Economic hypochondria, a derangement associated with affluence, is a byproduct of the welfare state: An entitlement mentality gives Americans a low pain threshold -- witness their recurring hysteria about nominal rather than real gasoline prices...

The very next sentence reads:

Economic hypochondria is also bred by news media that consider the phrase "good news" an oxymoron, even as the U.S. economy, which has performed better than any other major industrial economy since 2001, drives the Dow to record highs...

I repeat: one sentence condemns economic hypochrondriacs for not noting that it is nominal and not real gasoline prices that are at all-time highs, and the next sentence--the very next sentence--condemns economic hypochondriacs for not being enthusiastic about the fact that the nominal (but not the real) Dow-Jones Industrial Average stock market index is at an all-time high.

It is bad, and it is bad, to talk about the nominal rather than the real level of gasoline prices--to fail to adjust for inflation and so fail to note that the real cost of acquiring a gallon of gasoline in terms of tangible resources rather than paper banknotes is less than it was twenty-five years ago. It is surely also bad, and just as bad, to talk about the nominal, not inflation-adjusted "Dow... [driven] to record highs."

Adjusting for inflation is a good thing to do that leads to less inaccurate information and better analyses. It would be a good thing for George F. Will to do to do when noting the point makes his argument against what he calls "economic hypochondria" stronger. It would be a good thing for George F. Will to do when noting the point makes his argument against what he calls "economic hypochondria" weaker.

George F. Will, of course, does not see things this way. That real prices are much more important and relevant, and that nominal prices are misleading and uninformative, is not--in his view--a general analytical principle. It is, instead, a rhetorical point: a point worth making only when it strengthens his case. The possibility that there is something out there called "the truth" which is best explicated by correct economic analysis adjusting for inflation, using real rather than nominal prices--that idea is simply not in George F. Will's conceptual world. He does not view his readers as clients to be informed. He views them as cattle to be driven to whatever conclusion his own prejudices, ideologies, and personal commitments find convenient.

To put it bluntly: American journalism is badly broken. The fact that opinionators like George F. Will hold on to their journalistic market shares in America is quite horrifying to an economist who really does believe in markets, and expects market competition and consumer choice to drive prices of goods and services down and the quality of goods and services up. Competition has indeed driven prices down: you can read George F. Will for free on the world wide web. But competition has not driven the quality of the Washington Post's editorial page up: George F. Will still appears on it, and appears to feel no need to have anybody check his columns for economic illiteracy before he submits them, and the Washington Post editors appear to feel no need to fact-check his columns before they publish them.

And it is not as though this is an exceptional column, or even that the passages I quote are exceptional within the column. Economist Kash Mansouri, at his new weblog "The Street Light," says that he finds: "Every single one of the points that Will makes... misleading, disingenuous, beside the point, or all three..."

It's a big problem: Without informed citizens, we are unlikely to have informed policymakers. And without informed policymakers, we are unlikely to have good economic policies. So we economists urge all you readers to do your part in making the market for good journalism about economics and economic policy work. Find trustworthy sources of information who regard you as clients to be informed. View with suspicion all those who switch their arguments and analytical frameworks from week to week and even sentence to sentence--who regard you as cattle to be driven rather than clients to be informed.