Media Bias

The Fox News slogan “Fair & Balanced” has long been mocked, and rightfully so in my mind.  Fox’s rise as a conservative outlet among a lefty main stream media did provide a type of counterweight to the whole system.  What’s worthy of mocking is the implication that news from any one outlet is ever “Balanced.”  And the whole “Fair” thing is too slippery to make any sense of.

    

I’ve confessed to full-blown cynicism about national politics, but I’m not completely cynical about the national news – yet.  I guess that’s mainly because a news story, however biased, includes claims, arguments, and facts that can be checked, whereas our national politicians, or at least the ones who get quoted, seem to be posturing constantly on philosophical points and slinging mud at their opponents.  A do-nothing Congress, in my view, is often not a bad thing, but I wish they'd at least have the decency to stop blabbering while they avoid legislating. 

I am cynical about a press that views itself as the vanguard of truth – the “Fourth Estate” thing seems a bit too eagerly appropriated.  News is not simply the regurgitation of data, but story telling.  In a sense, news reporting is ultra-short term history.  And historians, whether dealing with yesterday’s events or the Iron Age, always have a direction they want to steer you. Sales people are fine, but you always know their goal is to get you to buy, or buy into, their wares. 

The value of our much cherished free press doesn’t rest in journalists’ stories as dispensed through their outlets, but in the freedom to publicly disseminate ideas.  Press consumers still bear the responsibility to make sense of the stories that spin out of historical data.  Make no mistake about it, though: there is no pure, unbiased story in the news. There can’t be – there’s data, and there’s somebody's interpretation of that data.

 

Now, there exists a spectrum of biased news purveyors, to be sure.  And I do think that as Americans’ average ability to wisely digest news recedes, that trend feeds a negative trend in journalism bias.  But even in the real high-brow outlets – the ones where big words and clear ideas coexist – there remain strong biases.  I noticed this in two opinion pieces in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal recently, both of which deal with the Halbig v. Burwell appeal.  One of these articles is philosophically biased, and the other politically biased, but biased they both are.  Reading them side by side may give you a good refresher on the importance of balancing your own news diet yourself.  

“Editorial pages!” you say, “Of course, they’re biased!  That’s nothing new.”  Sure, the unsigned editorials are always the shrillest pages in a newspaper.  But to my understanding, and very much unlike the investment banking and brokerage divisions of a large bank, there exist no “Chinese walls” in journalism.  What’s shouted on the editorial page is said softly in the regional bureaus. 

And, frankly, I don’t even want to see Chinese walls installed in the media.  I doubt it would have an impact on the product's bias.  But even if it did, I still wouldn't want the wall.  That's because I understand that distilling truth is my responsibility, not the media’s, and that when you boil it all down, every story is really a sales pitch.  Sometimes, the passion behind a sales pitch is more enlightening than the message itself.  

Democracy Ain’t All That

The meanings of words change.  I find this aspect of culture frustrating.  If you want a new word, why not just invent it?  Why change the meaning of a perfectly good word?  Or, better yet, some person has probably already invented a word for the idea you’re trying to express, so why not just do a little digging in the dictionary or thesaurus and find out what it is?  Dictionaries ought to be the arbiter in this.  But, given enough time, dictionaries eventually bow to slang and pop culture, adding to or changing their definitions.  Eventually Urban Dictionary bullies Noah Webster into giving up his lunch money.

Take the word “democracy” for instance.  I used to think that democracy was plainly a form of self-governance in which political power was distributed evenly among the eligible voting citizens of a country.  It still is that.  But it’s becoming something more.  Dictionary.com offers a fourth definition: “political or societal equality; democratic spirit.”  Adding the phrase “or societal” redirects the meaning, away from strictly self-governance, and toward another horizon. 

Social democracy is a common term in Europe, but less so here.  Social Democrats are just Socialists who’ve grown uncomfortable with the failure of each of the world’s prior socialist governments and so bristle at the association.  It’s a fair question to ask whether they should have instead, reasonably, grown uncomfortable with the idea of socialism itself, but that’s another thread.  “Progressives” are what we call American Socialists – er, Social Democrats; sorry.  They also like to distinguish their designs for your life from those found in Marxism, preferring gradual change to the latter's sudden and violent class warfare.

Used in this way, democracy becomes synonymous with equality.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with the word equality, mind you.  It’s perfectly precise on its own.  But it’s not punchy enough. Well, maybe it's not just that it lacks “punch.” Maybe it’s that equality is a little too susceptible to retort.  If Progressives speak openly about equality when referring to any status other than those pertaining to civil rights, they might be confused for Socialists – which they are, really, but don’t want to own.  One way around this is to make everything a civil right but here, too, is another idea for a different day.  

That’s where democracy comes in.  Democracy is right up there with mom, apple pie, and baseball.  Our Founding Fathers gave us democracy; democracy is in our blood, man!  Who could possibly talk down about democracy?  Actually, our founders gave us a republican democracy, with a constitution, and three branches of government meant to keep each other in check.  Once again, though: different issue, another time.

As the meaning of democracy morphs, it’s worth noting that it’s not an unguided slang or pop cultural force changing it.  It’s being changed deliberately, like a rook being moved in a giant political chess match.  If the Progressives' goal is a gradual societal pivot toward socialism, revamping a term like democracy to mean equality is a pretty effective device.  Democracy is super punchy, and totally revered. 

Unbelievably, we’re about to enter another election season.  Yuck.  I predict you’ll hear the word democracy bandied about with far greater frequency this Fall.  When you do, ask yourself whether the word is being re-defined for the purpose of political rhetoric – whether the speaker really means “equality,” instead.  Then ask yourself whether that particular application of equality is an ideal you also value.

Meanwhile, I expect to be enjoying football season by then.  And by “football,” I mean football.