In light of Mark Halperin's denunciation of the so-called Obama bias in the media's coverage of the presidential campaign, I have decided to repost this diary. I honestly believe that the cognitive dissonance between a substantial portion of Americans and the rest of the world (as evidenced by the "world surveys") is notably caused by the lack of information and disinformation spread by the knee-jerkedly objective American MSM. And I do believe that there is more to this "objectivity" than strict big business interests.
For the past two years, I had been following the American presidential election with an intensity and scrutiny that I usually reserve for fantasy football.
My sources of information for the great eight-quarter (sic?) long Red vs Blue war of attrition ran the gamut from internet blogs like Daily Kos to cable news channels like CNN, via the website where police sirens cameo (for recon purposes) and news magazines with an exagerated fondness for repping the sociological lexical field (schadenfreude in the hizzouse).
Once I identified the ideological leanings and tenets of my reading materials, I could better navigate, appreciate and evaluate (Jesse!) the purported facts and analyses therein (the lazy and legal-friendly way out of syntax-related quandaries).
Beyond the general politics of these various media outlets, I also noticed the methodological underpinnings which govern their presidential race coverage. And with regard to the mainstream media, I found methodology to be more consequential to the substance of its coverage than any positioning on the political spectrum. The avowed (and not avered) objectivity of the mainstream media, which purports to truthfully and carefully analyze political events, rather mirrors and even buoys the hyper-partisan spin of those events.
If politicians need massive voter support, the mainstream media (MSM) needs massive customer support. And in order for the MSM to obtain such support, it must seek not to alienate the highest number possible of readers/viewers.
On television, probably more than in the print media, the result is striking: rigorously refereed equal time for partisans and candidates, pavlovian parallelism of political attacks made during the same news cycle and in general, careful nurturing of the horserace, gleeful reporting of superficial gaffes and diplomatic/PC evaluations of a candidate's performance during a campaign event.
This knee-jerk objectivity insidiously leads to manichean analyses that suggest a moral, intellectual and even "performance" equivalency in policy positions (and their scientific underpinnings) and campaign-related events such as speeches, interviews and debates.
How else could one explain that not a single TV pundit stated in clear terms the obvious with regard to Sarah Palin's debate performance: the McCain team anticipated the debate questions, Sarah Palin dutifully learned all-purpose answers beforehand and she then repeated those answers during the debate, even if they didn't apply to the question being posed. She was reciting a lesson learned by heart like an elementary school student.
Another example: the attacks on Obama for being a so-called socialist, a friend of terrorists etc. The MSM would denounce the underlying vitriol more than the substance of these outlandish attacks and then put them on an even keel with the Obama campaign's characterization of McCain as erratic (a truism in a badly managed tactical/news cycle driven campaign). There are so many other major examples to cite and I invite you to mention them in your comments.
Beyond the immediacy of financial interests, there are certainly a host of cultural, social, historical and perhaps anthropological explanations to the MSM's penchant for bland and intellectually averse political coverage (some pundits are exceptions to this rule such as Jeffrey Toobin from CNN). It would be interesting to initiate a debate on this matter. Yet another American paradox. In no other country does information flow as freely as in the United States, yet the American MSM chooses to process that information through a falsly objective prism.
There is no such thing as being objective. Objectivity is above all a subjective choice. It leads to intellectually dishonest analyses; and also insidiously misinforms the casual reader/viewer and potential voter by nature: the truth is not objective and our understanding of the truth is a subjective construct.
Beyond the solution to the MSM's ills, there is an alternative, the alternative internet media where the ideology is clear, the partisanship is obvious and the methodology factually-based despite partisan distorsions. Further, the medium itself facilitates factual checking. When the internet consumer knows the political, economic and moral philosophy of the media, he can better evaluate the relative worth of the information provided vis-a-vis his own interests.
Finally, and in all subjectivity, it is awesome that Obama, as an incredibly disciplined and effective candidate, transcended the MSM's nonsense narratives to win the vote of a majority of Americans AND MAKE HISTORY.
Update no.1 I cannot believe Mark Halperin had the audacity to denounce a pro-Obama bias in the media's coverage of the presidential campaign. This horserace cheerleader reflects all that is wrong with the MSM. Should the candidates really be given a free pass for being on one of the two official parties' ticket ? If one of the tickets runs an egregiously mediocre and negative campaign, shouldn't the media denounce it? If one of the tickets is comprised of a barely literate, tremendously uneducated and obviously incompetent candidate, shouldn't the media expose it? Obama's coverage in the media was absurd, they focused on Wright (not Barack Obama), Ayers (not Barack Obama), Michelle (not Barack Obama), Retzko (not Barack Obama) & ACORN (not Barack Obama, except in the anthropomorphic world of the Republicans). If these ridiculous stories were covered by the medida, how did the Keating 5 (one of the most substantive elements in McCain's background) story avoid coverage?
There was a thread recently on the future of the Daily Kos and in the light of the MSM's disdain for reality and substance, I recommend that the blog creates an effective Truth Squad section with scientificity, reality and (reality-based) morality as its only guidelines.