Wherein I discuss the prior and future implications of the Washington Post Obama incident.
Since practically the time I first came to Daily Kos and discovered it was essentially "ok" to post about gay issues, it has been a recurring theme of mine that the tactics used against the gay community and gay people in general would eventually come to be used against liberals.
So it is with what I like to call "he said/she said" slash and slander journalism.
It is also my opinion that whatever is prevalent and discussed as widely used tactics against liberals in general, liberal political candidates, liberal political stances and Democrats is so prevalently in use against gay people it is hardly even remarked upon anymore.
The right has long used us as their testing ground.
Consider this diary both a cry for help and a warning: If you all, and we, do not stop this type of journalism in its tracks and rip up the floorboards, it will come to be regarded as professional journalistic behavior in all respects. Maybe it already has become "acceptable".
Essentially, the game is to ignore the actual established facts of a matter and turn whatever is being discussed into a matter of opinion. Sometimes, even bad science or a twisting of the scientific method is used to buttress the opinions of those intenting to create a "false controversy". The slash and slander aspect is simply the tail of the aforementioned dog.
This tactic is so effective it has become a prevalent tool of the right. Consider the following.
Global Warming (one of the latest)
It appears the right has learned that the opinion and denial-and-controversy style actually works. It is funded by among other organizations, the American Enterprise Institute. Denialist media confusion comes of age.
The HIV-causes-AIDS deniers
That Anti-Gay "Conversion Therapy" actually works.
Many false and scientifically execrable attacks against gay people
The Swift Boat Veterans against truth.
Sadly, this type of false journalism works because blatent dishonesty from the media is ignored. They can claim to have been duped, or "in error" because people just aren't paying attention to the history of a matter.
Consider the following as an example: Paul Cameron
Paul Cameron has been a homophobe and has been deliberately using false science as his weapon since 1980.
He was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983.
Yet the San Francisco Chronicle, of all papers, posted an article about gay and lesbian families as if Cameron was a credible observer in May 2007. Readers will note the correction at the top, but this correction did not exist until gay people and their allies massively objected.
From the original article, I quote the following:
Focus on the Family's objection to same-sex parents is grounded in interpretation of biblical scripture and research by Paul Cameron, director of the Family Research Institute in Colorado. Cameron says gays and lesbians are unfit parents, are more likely to molest children of their same sex, switch partners frequently, have shorter life expectancies and cause their children embarrassment and social difficulties.
"Any child that can be adopted into a married-mother-and-father family, that's the gold standard," Cameron said. "An orphanage would be the second choice, and then a single woman."
My point is, the original article mentions nothing about Cameron's shoddy professional history, his lack of objectivity, his lack of credibility among people of his own profession, or his nearly 30 year history of slandering gay people.
Almost 30 years. This is how long the man has been out to slander and thus destroy us with the billy club of misinformed public opinion. Yet, we are to believe the San Francisco Chronicle, of all papers, did not know this prior to publishing this article?
And today, today, we get a recommended diary in Daily Kos that says the following:
Imagine an article that saw fit to reprint deeply offensive or racist material, for example, asserting the inferiority of a group of people.
First, you can question whether reprinting this kind of material is ever justified. Why bother to detail and document in full for the general public a series of racist statements? What possible purpose could that serve? Why not just state that false and baseless accusations have been made? Especially when there is a sizable minority of Americans who might believe the accusations.
The mainstream news has been doing exactly what the diarist talks about as if it were "imaginary". They've been doing it for 30 years and more about gay people. And, they have seldom been called on it in a big way until recently. Until the objections got louder and louder until no one could ignore what was going on anymore.
Why does the traditional media engage in yellow slander journalism with "he said/she said" tactics? No, not because they don't know they're doing it. They do it because it works.
My belief is that it was ok to many people to do this, as long as only gay people were the victims. That validates the tactic, and lets it get more "mainstream" usage as if it were legitimate.
What is my recommendation to put a damper on this kind of fact free journalism? Pretty simple. Follow the people, the actual reporters and editors, who write and publish this kind of slash journalism, not just the news organizations for whom they work. Make them pay in currency of professional credibility.