From today’s New York Times, we learn that “Obama Is An Avid Reader, and Critic, of the News,” as the headline on Amy ChozikChozick’s piece has it.
Chozick gives readers the following rundown of the president’s news media diet:
He typically begins his day upstairs in the White House reading the major newspapers, including his hometown Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, mostly on his iPad through apps rather than their Web sites. He also skims articles that aides e-mail to him, with the subject line stating the publication and the headline (like “WSJ: Moody’s Downgrades Banks”).
During the day, Mr. Obama reads newspapers on his iPad and print copies of magazines like The Economist and The New Yorker. On most Air Force One flights, he catches up on the news on his iPad.
He might also be found “dipping into blogs and Twitter,” writes Chozick, but “almost never watches television news.”
Thus has the president “developed a detailed critique of modern news coverage,” key to which are “what [Obama] sees as two overarching problems: coverage that focuses on political winners and losers rather than substance; and a ‘false balance,’ in which two opposing sides are given equal weight regardless of the facts.”
Tell us more about “false balance,” New York Times:
The term “false balance,” which has been embraced by many Democrats, emerged in academic papers in the 1990s to describe global-warming coverage.
Now that you’ve told us, can you also show us?
“I believe this type of ‘accuracy’ and ‘balance’ are a huge thing afflicting contemporary media,” said Josh Marshall, editor and publisher of the left-leaning Web site Talking Points Memo.
Conservative pundits see things differently. “Obama is used to the press cheerleading for him so any time a story gets reported straight he’s likely to think it represents a false equivalency,” said John H. Hinderaker, a Minneapolis lawyer behind Power Line, a conservative political Web site.
On the one hand, Marshall said “false balance” is a major problem in today’s media. On the other hand, Hinderaker said “false balance” is just something Obama sees in news stories that aren’t sufficiently boosterish.
Now what? (There’s not quite a factual dispute at issue here. Still, the reflex to present the two poles is just so…reflexive.) Can we get some kind of professionally objective voice to settle this for us?
Many journalism experts, for their part, agree that the news media sometimes struggle to distinguish fact from claim, even if Mr. Obama’s version of the critique always paints his administration in a good light.
“I think sometimes we in the media—particularly under the crunch of deadlines—don’t have time to work through all the issues of discerning what is fact,” said Paul E. Steiger, chief executive of ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative news organization, and a former Wall Street Journal managing editor, “and so we say ‘he said, she said.’ ”
Media criticism “coming from a sitting president…is hardly objective,” as Chozick smartly noted (that “experts say”) earlier in her piece. Still, there may be something to Obama’s “false balance” beef.
Correction: The original version of this story misspelled Amy Chozick’s name. CJR regrets the error.
I loved the reason for granting anonymity to one of the source--"not authorized to discuss the president’s media preferences for attribution." Does Obama have someone on his staff that is authorized to speak on this topic? Is this person actually authorized to speak about anything? I suspect this malarkey is just designed to create the facade of having a reason for granting it by making it specific, without any real reason behind it.
#1 Posted by Jack, CJR on Wed 8 Aug 2012 at 06:34 PM
Thanks for this piece, Liz. I noticed this too this morning, that the Times promptly resorted to false balance in reporting on Obama's criticism of false balance. It was a delicious example of conventional media methodology, and it served as an unwitting satire of these mindless practices. Unfortunately we see it too in some CJR articles.
I like this commentary on the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/the-british-gift-to-american-letters.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1344110402-tYYr4GWhIq6EY9PfuZpBfQ
WHATEVER happened to American polemic? The land of the free is also the land of H.L. Mencken and Dwight Macdonald, who lacked for nothing in jaunty, bitter wit. Here is Mencken on the South: “There are single acres in Europe that house more first-rate men than all the states south of the Potomac.” Or Macdonald on Secretary of State Cordell Hull: “a narrow-minded, petty, pompous, provincial reactionary who has never made a speech that says anything.”
That would barely be published today, at least in those parts of the American media that make a solemn cult of accuracy and balance, fearful of even honest opinion, to the point that statements of the obvious must be sterilized by such quaint circumlocutions as “analysts say that ...” I’ve no doubt at all that there have been budding homegrown heirs to Mencken and Macdonald, but they’ve been educated out of their wits. And so when America wants guilty journalistic pleasure, it has to bootleg in bad boys from the old country. It might be our final revenge for Yorktown.
#2 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Wed 8 Aug 2012 at 10:16 PM
Well, thread drift alert. Re the cited essay, on the supremacy of expat British commentators: more preposterous bullshit has not been written since the honorable John Yoo opined on the definition of torture.
What happened is this: Dumbass USA editors thought limey accents="smart," and "erudite," and so they read their stuff through that lens.
But that was the '80s and '90s. I'd argue that quaint, olde country accents have long since been overthrown by Fast Copy--most of it fanciful, counter-factual, recycled and eminently recyclable. Until last month at least, all the fawning was on guys like Stephen Dubner, Malcolm Gladwell (Canadian?) and that fallen wunderkind, Jonah Lehrer.
As for American journalism as a "solemn cult of accuracy and balance?"
Indeed, what would Mencken have made of that?
#3 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Thu 9 Aug 2012 at 12:32 PM
It would have been useful to really discuss why "false balance" is a problem in the media. You've got the Josh Marshall (he said) vs Hindrocket (she said) apsect here but what is false balance and why does the media turn to it.
In the case of global warming you had a consensus of expertise that was developing based on the data and a coven of mercenary scientists gathering under the hire of pr firms.
The news would then talk about the issue of global warming, but they would pick an expert from say the University of Victoria (Anthony Weaver) and a crank who lives in Victoria (Timothy Ball) and the coverage of their perspectives would be divided 50/50 when, if you examined the consensus based on data on one side and the coven and misrepresentations on the other, the balance of supporting experts and supporting data were 90% and above on Weaver's side.
So why is the coverage 'balanced' when the realities are not? Why are the cranks given unmerited credibility?
1) reporting an issue from its 90% consensus makes the reporting sound as if it has absorbed that perspective and isn't just reporting it. Better find a crank to remove the appearance of bias.
2) cockfights are fun to watch. Media loves to host a cockfight.
3) major sponsors of some cranks are also major sponsors of media. Can't hurt to include a message from Exxon-by-proxy. Not to mention, as we've seen in the past, journalists love it when they can get some help in finding a source. Having an infrastructure promoting a crank perspective takes a lot of the work out of having to develop an actual critical perspective. When there are demands in time, the Tv dinner will triumph over the home cooked meal.
And, as has been covered in the past, the conservatives have built a real tv dinner industry.
So it's one thing to talk about the flaws of the nytimes coverage of false balance, but it's another thing to do it right. Asking the questions "What is false balance?" and "Why is it a problem in the American media?" is a good way to start that discussion.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 9 Aug 2012 at 03:36 PM
And I say discussion because I remember the balance in 2003 before the Iraq war, when every critic was pushed off the TV and in the basement of every news section in the paper.
When you have coverage that enforces a consensus, you can fall victim to groupthink and when you have coverage that projects a false controversy, your audience receives and reflects a false balance.
There's a lot of need for nuance when exploring these subjects.
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 9 Aug 2012 at 03:46 PM
Is an editor on vacation?
#6 Posted by Pseudonym here, CJR on Thu 9 Aug 2012 at 04:37 PM