I don’t have a good solution to this problem but felt like I ought to highlight it. I saw these two stories in close proximity, and they struck me as related:
- Who Lies More: Clinton or Trump? The answer is Trump. In fact, it’s so clearly Trump that the headline is a problem. But the reader is not provided the answer until the 17th paragraph. The headline should have said “Trump lies more than Clinton.” (I went to the comments section on WLFI’s Facebook page, and it was clear that no one commenting there had read anything but the headline.) The story should have then led with the news that the Trump assertions vetted were false 85% of the time while Clinton’s was in line with “a typical politician” (and that number should have been provided). Trump’s statements received the lowest truthfulness rating 63% of the time compared to 14% for Clinton. But, this was buried below roughly equivalent amounts of ink (or pixels, I guess) on various challenges to truthfulness about the candidates in the news. And then the article went on to state that, despite the huge disparity in dishonesty by the candidates, the public perception was that the two were approximately equal in their dishonesty.
- The Summer of the Shill by Matt Taibbi. He argues that media loses credibility when they appear to be in the tank for one candidate or the other. He laments that practically all non-conservative cable last week was consumed by stories that aren’t favorable to Trump. He argues that the media’s job “is to grope around promiscuously for stories on all sides, like dogs sniffing fire hydrants.” When you lose independence, you lose credibility
It seems very difficult for the media to convey independence while, at the same time, being able to avoid projecting a false equivalence. And I think the problem has to do with traditional media not being able to convey emphasis very well. You see the first story about the public perceiving Clinton & Trump as being roughly equivalent in terms of honesty but, if you run the numbers, Trump is lying constantly, egregiously, and without compunction. Meanwhile, Clinton’s lies are more sporadic, less dramatic, and more often defensible. You’re not going to get that sense if your news outlet is determined to be independent or objective by devoting similar amounts of time or column inches to stories critical of both sides. Under that model, you’ll hear about Clinton’s e-mails again along with as many of Trump’s outrages of the day as they can squeeze in. Perversely, you might think that Clinton’s lies are *more* serious because (having nothing else very interesting to report), the media outlet reports on the e-mail problems again and again and again. Meanwhile, Trump is giving the media a fire hose of material, meaning that no one thing gets as much attention.
So, what to do? It’s no secret that I think Trump would be catastrophic for the country while I think that Clinton has more ordinary political flaws. That’s my bias, and it helps me be comfortable with the media’s recent approach to hammer Trump and not be too concerned about devoting equal time to Clinton criticism. But, I do recognize the problem.
I tend to think the answer has something to do with media outlets being explicit about their biases while, at the same time, being as honest as they can about the facts they report. The pretense of pure objectivity is too easily exploited by our political system.
Great post, Dog. The press must be objective, but not, as you state, manufacture false equivalency. I heard a media commentator state that in the normal press environment that false equivalencies are taken to an extreme. He gave the example that if Candidate A said the world was round and candidate B said it was flat, the headline would read “candidates spar about the shape of the earth.”
A few years back, I complained about this sort of thing a post with the title “The Moon is not made of green cheese, some say”.
I was inspired by an article with the headline “Legislators use patriotic language to help bills become laws, some say.”