The trouble with your press

panzade wrote:

No need for the word lying nimh. JW's statement was of belief not a lie.

Actually, Panzade, I'm glad you bring this up. It leads me to something. And this is from the heart (talk about "ardor").

I think one of the major problems your political system is grappling with, in this age, is that the news media are working on a perverted interpretation of objectivity. In this interpretation, objectivity means juxtaposing whatever claims both parties put out in equal measure (and leaving it at that). He said - he said. Due to political or legal pressure or in something of a latter-day spin-off from how political correctness imposed the norms of cultural relativism, journalists in especially the mainstream media rarely dare to venture beyond that.

But that is not 'fair and balanced'. True objectivity is not recycling spin from both sides in equal measure - it is processing that spin and fact-checking it - and presenting the results of that fact-checking to the readers as well as the original claims.

Luckily, perhaps partly thanks to the outside pressure of ever more authoratative fact-check websites, a new wavelet of critical journalists (like that woman at the WaPo) have indeed returned to doing that. But for too long, this politically correct standard of objectivity meaning 'channeling both sides in equal measure' has made Washington reporting into a highly effective medium for both parties to spread anything from insinuations to bald-faced lies.

The spinmeisters know that they can't lose much. Even if they put out a story that's entirely made up, the worst that can happen is that a report will say, "an anonymous spokesman from party A has claimed that party B has [x, y or z]; official party B representative [x or y] calls these allegations baseless and slanderous." The story is out, anyway, and quickly passed on through hundreds of blogs and talk radio shows. There's little political risk, because noone all too highly-ranked will be eager to actually call the lie out and bring those who put it out to task - after all, calling someone a liar is not done, it's a losing political proposition; it will make you seem a sore loser and drive down your favourability rating.

To cure the system, we have to stop this corruption. Journalists and all of us have to become more assertive and more rapid in calling out lies and nipping them in the bud. Otherwise spin will eat politics, and soon nothing else will be left. This election cycle with its rounds of SBVFT and National Guard allegations has shown how far down the road you already are.

I would almost make that into a new thread of its own. <nods>

panzade wrote:

nimh wrote:

I think one of the major problems your political system is grappling with, in this age, is that the news media are working on a perverted interpretation of objectivity.

I don't know nimh, I lived for many years in Europe and know first hand that the British press and the political parties have their own spin-meisters. I Imagine Holland is the same.

Well, Panzade, I have the sometimes exasperating advantage of being able to compare American, British, Dutch, Belgian and German news reporting.

The Brits are hors concours. The tabloids are shameful, and the broadsheets shamelessly politicized - not to mention how they in turn pander to the tabloid market by focusing to an extraordinary degree on crime and scandal.

But the case I laid out here directly refers to the increasing surprise with which I've observed US reporting - in comparison to what I'm used to here (or in Germany or Belgium). Yes, you have political spinmeisters in every country. But the differences in reporting conventions are very real.

I'm not saying everything is better here. For example, bias here abounds too, tending to be more anecdotal, playful - don't be surprised to find the news reporter visibly frowning or jokingly smiling when turning from Bush footage to the next topic - doesn't even need to say anything, we all know what he means. But what I was posting about - well, for one I wrote before that I am sincerely surprised about the everpresence of paid political spinners in US news reporting.

What does a standard American news report look like? The debate, speech or poll is "explicated", first, by a Republican "analyst", then a Democrat one, or vice versa. Then an "ordinary voter" or two is interviewed. If outside analysists are brought in, they're from the NEI or some Democratic counterpart - institutes with clear partisan affiliation.

We have few if any of that here. Actual politicians (parliamentarians, office holders) get their say, but otherwise the punditry is done almost entirely by "experts", whether academic or business or whatever, which very seldomly have a political affiliation. You don't get the Democratic/Republican "analysts" and such.

Some would say that just makes the bias harder to catch - most academics are leftwing, they might say, so you get the progressive spin without ever any party affiliation being explicited. But at least the spin anyone chooses to apply will be one of personal preference and thus reflect a wild variety of personal perspectives - which at least spares you the unending recitation of party-imposed talking points.

That way there can also be (and is) much less in the way of concerted party efforts to get a certain charge, allegation or insinuation out, not the way you see them hammered out relentlessly by the partisan pundits that are hired by US news media to balance each other out. We have 9 parties in parliament here - even if a party would try to get a certain line through, it'd be countered with 8 different other ones, rather than always the same 1 other one.

Another clear difference is the use of anonymous sources. Happens everywhere, of course. But never in the Dutch press have I seen the equivalent of the numbers of "unnamed Democratic campaign advisors" or "anonymous Pentagon officials" that turn up in US news stories. Anonymous government sources are used almost by standard practice as the basis for stories publishing claims about the other side, even if they can not be fact-checked by the journalist himself.

Again, a clear difference there, but I outlined it already above. When an "unnamed government [or, say, Democratic party] official" does come up, the average US news story's idea of neutrality appears to be to publish his claims, then quote the denial or retort from the other side. That's it. Would hardly happen here. Journalists fact-check themselves, and tell the reader what they find. There is no shyness about "judging" a story, perhaps because of fewer fears about legal or political (being denied access to politicians etc) retaliation. And though norms are shifting the past few years (for sure), traditionally, if they can't verify it, they won't publish it. Goes especially for the press.

It has to do also with a for us unimaginable shyness about approaching the government and President, and a ditto unaccessibility of ministers and President for journalists (see "political retaliation", above). The rare press conferences. The control over who gets to ask a question and who doesn't. The (resulting?) softball-character of the questions. All just makes us shake our heads in incomprehension.

Here, when the Prime Minister leaves his office at a time of turbulence, the journalists throng around him at the exit and while he walks, fire questions at him. He can choose not to answer, but he can't control whether they even get to ask them. Here, he does have his own little-watched (weekly?) TV appearance, but on the regular news gets grilled by TV interviewers none the less aggressively.

No, one can't just "imagine Holland is the same". There are eye-catching differences. Not if you compare both countries to Red China, obviously, but yeah, for democracies these media cultures are pretty far apart. Not everything may necessarily be better here, but different they are. Hence my recurrent impatience and bafflement.