The makings of a post-factual press: How the BBC’s obsession with “balance” abandoned evidence-based argument in the run-up to the Brexit vote.
“For me,” writes Professor John van Reenen, formerly of the LSE, now at MIT and one of the economists thus likened by Gove to an antisemitic, government-owned Nazi, “it simply capped off a frankly disgusting campaign, one where the Leave side simply impugned the motives of ‘the experts’ rather than seriously engaging with the substance of the economic debate.”
But the Leave side might not have got away with this ugliness, nor Remain with prattling about imminent apocalypse, had not the BBC, as well as enabling an often asinine level of argument, allowed its obsession with balance to dictate that any carefully argued observation on Brexit, deserving of analysis, be promptly followed by its formal opponent’s unsubstantiated bluster. [...]
As with climate change, implicit in extreme BBC impartiality is a distinctly un-BBC like, post-truth proposal that, since all opinions merit equal coverage, the public might as well give up on evidence-based argument. So much was plainly stated by Today’s Nick Robinson when he assured voters who were, in huge numbers, seeking information from the BBC that the debate was all “claims and counterclaims”, “guesswork”. “No journalist,” he declared, “no pundit, no expert can resolve these questions for you.”
At The Atlantic, James Fallows dissects the Washington Post headline “Clinton, Trump exchange racially charged accusations.”
Trump’s response was just to use the word “bigot” and make his “What the hell do you have to lose?” appeal to black voters. There was no detailed case about Hillary Clinton’s supposed bigotry—literally, none. There was just the one word.
Again, you don’t have to agree with Hillary Clinton. But to imagine that she and Donald Trump were doing the same thing is something reporters would never do in any other realm. (“Harvard, Stanford disagree on which is older.” “Ledecky, rivals trade barbs over race results.” “O.J., ex-wife, have difference of views.”) Yet the Washington Post headline and story above were representative of the tactics-only way in which this latest “scrap” was played, and the reluctance to assess for readers the merits and fidelity-to-fact of the cases the candidates made.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—War Porn Gets Standing Ovation From GOP:
Congratulations, GOP, for the tackiest, bloodiest bit of propaganda devised in recent memory. Using footage of everything from the Marine barracks bombing to 9/11 in service to a vile, crass, ham-handed, historically botched propaganda piece for your convention.
And their little "film" didn't even make a bit of logical or historical sense. It was just the worst Republican masturbatory fantasies about how the world works, said in a grave voice while they showed pictures of people dead and dying. On their watch.
What trash these people are.
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