We Are Guilty of ABC's Crime
Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 10:45:09 AM PDT
There's no question that what ABC did last night at its "debate" was inexcusable.
ABC focused on ridiculous "gotcha" questions instead of delving into real policy.
ABC ignored the bevy of important issues that lie before us today: energy and food shortages, FISA, the war, the sub-prime debacle, healthcare. The list goes on and on.
But the question I would pose: are the major sites in the blogosphere really doing much better?
Like many people, I've gone from being a fairly active participant at Dailykos to being an occasional commentor. A great many people-- and no, not just Clinton supporters-- have left altogether.
Why?
Because this site is treating the primary just like ABC news does. Candidate diaries are, almost without exception, "gotcha" pieces that take one small comment and blow it out of proportion, or that use one mis-step by a candidate (here, it's usually Clinton. On MyDD, it's usually Obama), and turn it into the prism through which we view the entire Democratic primary.
What ABC did last night is shameful. But so is a lot of what's going on here.
Is it the same? Of course not. But I hope-- I really hope-- this comparison wakes a few people up to why a lot of us have become disenchanted with Dailykos.
I will close by linking an excellent piece by Nicholas Kristoff in today's New York Times that deals with a possible root cause of this phenomenon. Read it. Consider his words. Reflect, and ask yourself if you've begun to fall prey to this same mentality.
Kristoff's Column
I'd be doing the column injustice to try to sum it up in a couple of blockquotes, but here are a couple that will at least give you a taste of his argument:
Another challenge is the biased way in which we gather information. We seek out information that reinforces our prejudices. One study presented listeners with static-filled recordings of speeches that they believed they were judging on persuasive power. Listeners could push a button to tweak the signal, reducing the static to make it easier to understand. When smokers heard a speech connecting tobacco with cancer, they didn’t try to improve the clarity to hear it more easily. But they pushed the button to get a clearer version of a speech saying that there was no link between smoking and cancer. Nonsmokers were the exact opposite.
It's difficult, when you're a true believer in one of the candidates, to gather information in an objective manner. Further:
Psychologists showed a film clip of the football game to groups of students at each college and asked them to act as unbiased referees and note every instance of cheating. The results were striking. Each group, watching the same clip, was convinced that the other side had cheated worse — and this was not deliberate bias or just for show.
"Their eyes were taking in the same game, but their brains seemed to be processing the events in two distinct ways," Farhad Manjoo writes in his terrific new book, "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society." It’s the best political book so far this year.
Your biases likely even affect how you process the (probably already biased) information that you do gather.
I know that the primaries are important. I understand that people are passionate about their candidates. But let's prove that we're better than the mainstream media. Let's move away from the ridiculous "gotcha" moments that they employ. Let's check ourselves and do what we can to avoid letting our biases twist and distort the facts.
And, damn it, let's talk about the issues. I so often come here these days and see not one single issues related diary on the rec list. And it makes me so incredibly sad.
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