The MSM and False Equivalence

[LFC]

Any article using Chuck Todd as its first example is either describing something awful or is itself awful. This is a case of the former which describes, using Chuckles as Exhibit A, how the MSM covers the conflict rather than the news. And if no conflict really exists they have to gin it up. (How many times have we heard about both the Democratic and Republican parties "fracturing" when in fact both are currently quite cohesive?)

It's important to understand that NBC News' Chuck Todd and other members of the Washington press corps are not biased in the sense that they prefer one party over the other, one ideology over the other, or one set of interests over another. They are biased, however, in one truly significant way. Reporters prefer covering partisan conflict, especially conflict that has no foreseeable way of being resolved. Conflict begets attention begets profits—or just a feeling of being pivotal to the country's destiny. The press corps will be at the heart of the action even if its members have to invent the action.

For this reason, the Washington press corps tends to behave one way when there's a Democratic administration, another way when there's a Republican one. The press corps' differing behavior is very often mistaken for bias, but that's not what it is. This is important to note, because the solution is not greater neutrality. The real solution is greater morality. Because of the unquestioned value of competition between reporters, however, a moral press is unlikely to happen. Indeed, the press can be anti-moral.

Think about it. Liberals, as the current president is, tend to privilege procedure and due process. They tend to see Republicans (or, increasingly these days, Republican voters) as potential bargaining partners. They believe policies should not be enacted for their own sakes but in accordance with higher principles, such as truth and morality. Liberals, moreover, tend to seek compromise if only to dampen passions. They also tend to see partisanship as having boundaries that must be enforced. While the press corps does share some of these values, very little is as important as conflict. The press corps can find itself at odds with liberal officials but not for reasons that are obvious.

The Republicans, meanwhile, are nearly totally fascist. For them, the means are only as important as the ends. While liberals seek bargaining partners, the Republicans "treat liberals as unworthy of recognition." While liberals aim to dampen passions, the Republicans are "bent on inflaming them." While liberals hope to strike fair deals, the Republicans treat anyone who's not a Republican as the enemy. For liberals, politics ends where morality begins. For the Republicans, politics never ends. For liberals, there are rights "that no government can take away." For the Republicans, "in cases of emergency—and they always find cases of emergency—the reach and capacity of the state cannot be challenged." The press corps loves conflict. The Republicans love emergency. People don't have to be on the same side to arrive at the same place.

Which brings me back to Chuck Todd. I don't think the host of "Meet the Press" cares one way or another about what's happening at the southern border. I don't think he cares about a surge in the number of children and adults who are seeking safety and asylum in the United States. What he does care about, however, is covering partisan conflict, especially partisan conflict with no foreseeable way of being resolved. This is why Chuck Todd characterized the surge Sunday as a "political crisis" facing the new president. To be sure, that's propaganda. It's been roiling right-wing media lately. But Todd doesn't have to be biased in favor of the GOP, its interests or ideology to see that laundering their propaganda creates the appearance of conflict. As I said, the press corps will be at the center of the action even if its members have to invent the action.

[LFC]

Maybe not quite false equivalence but this piece makes the case that the MSM is still trying to find its feet with Biden in office, the Democrats acting in a functional manner, and the Republicans reduced to a never-ending cycle of screeching about something or another that offends their delicate senses.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm detecting a whiff of panic from the Washington press corps. For one thing, the Biden administration is, so far, running pretty smoothly. Sure, there are serious border problems to manage. One of the vaccines is proving a bit problematic. But otherwise, public servants dedicated to government of, by and for the people under the law and with reverence for the United States Constitution seem to be delivering. After four years of trumpery, White House reporters must be jonesing.

For another, the press corps is having difficulty seeing, understanding and, therefore, reporting the fundamental shifts that have taken place in the last six months alone. The Republicans, it goes without saying, have declared massive resistance to all things Biden even when all things Biden are Godsends to constituents back home who are impatient for the day when the government finally starts delivering for the people. The president and the Democrats, meanwhile, seem unfazed. They knew they weren't going to get help from the Republicans. They have majority numbers to do without.

You have to understand that for most, perhaps even all, reporters in Washington, they have never seen the parties so demarcated. More importantly, as it pertains to the whiff of panic I'm talking about, reporters have never seen a day when they did not get under the skin of a Democratic president by laundering right-wing propaganda. That has historically gotten a reaction from Democratic presidents going back to Bill Clinton, because Democratic presidents bent over backwards to demonstrate being in touch with the majority of the American people, because a majority of the American people really were more in line with the views and preferences of the Republican Party.

That's just not the case anymore, and because that's not the case anymore, laundering right-wing propaganda through neutral political reporting isn't having the effect it once did. In fact, the president and the Democrats, in letting laundered propaganda roll off their backs, are acting like they know something the Washington press corps do not know—and that, my dear friend, is the most terrifying thing of all when you're reporting from the heart of power in the United States. The whiff of panic I'm talking about is the fear and awesome dread of discovering you're on the outside looking in.

What do the Democrats know? First, the Republicans don't have concrete policies to offer. They lost faith in the democratic republic that's creating a country that most of them don't want to live in. Second, and related to the first, the GOP no longer has a feel for what the whole of the country wants. (They still insist the Trump tax cuts were a winner when they were a loser.) The Democrats never lost faith. They never lost that feel. Moreover, policies like green energy, which were unpopular the last time they had unified control of the government, are now popular. If the president is acting like he doesn't need the Republicans, it's because he doesn't need the Republicans. And because he doesn't, the president really is redefining what "bipartisanship" means.

Let me put this another way. The Republican Party is the anti-government party. It has been for decades. During the Trump era, however, the party crossed a moral threshold many GOP voters would not. The Republicans became the party of treason. It literally acquitted the former president's attempt to overthrow the United States government. At the same time, a vast majority of Americans, all living under the smog of the covid pandemic, realize government action was the only way out of the emergency. They couldn't turn to the Republicans a) because the former president was most responsible for allowing the emergency to become the worst among rich counties and b) because they were the party of anti-government before they became the party of treason.

The Republicans turned their backs on the whole of the country when the whole of the country most needed the government to take action. The primary consequence of this, I contend, has been to make government action popular all by itself, regardless of any particular policy. Virtually everything Joe Biden is calling for is putting government in action and virtually everything he's been calling for has proven popular. Even things that used to be political liabilities, like spending trillions and raising taxes on large corporations, is popular—even, or especially, among those same large corporations.

The Republicans, I suspect, understand this better even than the press corps does. They see a future that's seemingly inhospitable to the old-school politics of "limited government." Some Republicans are trying. They're competing with the Democrats in the realm of government action. United States Senator Josh Hawley is chief among GOP fascists calling for the government to punish Fortune 500 companies that openly oppose anti-democratic election laws. Most Republicans, however, seem unwilling to rethink the old-school politics. They'd rather punch down on "culture war" issues like trans rights. They're retrenching locally even as they retreat nationally. And that's fine for a Democratic president who thinks being popular is better than being bipartisan.

I hope the press corps understands that in time.

[Bact PhD]

One of the commenters on RS crystallized my thinking:

[The DC press corps have] been feasting on ginned-up controversy¹ for so long they don't know how to do anything else, and the prospect of basic competent governance is evidently hard to process.

¹Gong back to Monica in the 1990s, and continuing through "Tan Suit-Gate" and the innumberable installments of "Donnie Says the Darndest Things." (no apologies to Art Linkletter for that last).

[RichTBikkies]

Mar 23, 2021 14:29:22 GMT LFC said:

Any article using Chuck Todd as its first example is either describing something awful or is itself awful. This is a case of the former which describes, using Chuckles as Exhibit A, how the MSM covers the conflict rather than the news. And if no conflict really exists they have to gin it up. (How many times have we heard about both the Democratic and Republican parties "fracturing" when in fact both are currently quite cohesive?)

One thousand Likes.

[LFC]

Josh Marshall lays the AP to waste for their brain dead coverage of the infrastructure bill. In particular he outright toasts "journalist" Lisa Mascaro by name.

Here’s one of those things that drive me to distraction but I at least enjoy flagging to everyone’s attention when it’s so egregious. Mitch McConnell is now claiming Republicans have somehow been hoodwinked, double-crossed, done dirty by Democrats springing ‘linkage’ on them: Basically, that the White House and the Democratic caucus will support the bipartisan mini-infrastructure bill as long as they can put the rest of their plan in a reconciliation bill.

Then I noticed an AP reporter, apparently new to the White House beat, flagged a new AP story with this: “This is the catch for the WH on the infrastructure deal right now: Senators who were part of the bipartisan group were never told of such an explicit linking of the two packages, the two people familiar with the discussions said.”

The article itself, by Lisa Mascaro, manages to be even more credulous.

Livid and “blindsided” over President Joe Biden’s refusal to sign a bipartisan infrastructure deal without passage of his broader priorities, Republican senators Friday were frantically considering options as the future of the sweeping compromise appeared in doubt.

The pressing question here is why the Associated Press has insisted on keeping its reporters locked in sensory deprivation chambers for all of June. Linkage, as discussed above, has been an explicit condition for Democrats for a couple weeks and stated constantly and publicly. What’s more, linkage has nothing to do with Republicans. Lindsey Graham squealed, “no deal by extortion.” But Democrats aren’t asking for any Republican votes. So how is Lindsey being extorted? Linkage is all about Democrats participation in a reconciliation package. So who’s being extorted?

Indeed, as DC reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere reminded everyone, none other than Mitch McConnell, Roy Blunt, Portman, Cassidy and probably every other Republican has been explicitly discussing their assumption that this is a linked two track process for weeks. On June 15th, McConnell said, “we are anticipating at some point getting a reconciliation bill. I guess what we will find out soon is whether there’s an additional bipartisan effort to address the subject that a lot of us would like to address.”

Then there’s this tweet from three days ago …

[AnBr]

.

Attachments:

[LFC]

They really just can't or won't help themselves.

Last week in a risible fit of pearl-clutching Senate Republicans expressed that they were aghast that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took a swipe at them just as they were extending the hand of bipartisan fellowship to bring the nation together. Washington’s worthies seemed to agree. It was that worst of offenses. It was uncalled for. Welcome to the DC black hole, where titanic gravity bends people’s minds, even the good people.

As Matt Cooper points out here, the real outrage – echoed by all the press worthies – is that Schumer told the truth: Senate Republicans again took the nation’s “full faith and credit” hostage in a reckless and dishonest effort to sow chaos at the expense of the safety of the Republic. For once they were outmaneuvered and had to beat a retreat. They blinked. Indeed, their caucus is so addicted to anti-constitutional hi-jinx and legislative junkie behavior that it required a herculean effort to execute the cave – Republicans struggling to break their own filibuster to head off reform of the filibuster. Good times, as they say. Schumer said McConnell blinked, that Republicans should be ashamed of themselves and that it’s a good thing Democrats held tough to force them to cave. This is all accurate.

Yet Republicans were busy at work telling the story that the agreement was a rare moment of the warring sides of American politics coming together to do the right thing for the country. And this was Chuck Schumer’s response to Republican goodwill, the story went. McConnell insisted that Schumer’s insults made him much less likely to help out again in the future. Don’t say what we did or we will be more mean next time! This of course is congenial to the DC insider press’s desire for “both sides” narratives. There are scarcely better examples than this one from CNN’s Dana Bash …

Eric Kleefeld
@erickleefeld
That moment when a CNN panel just admits that Republicans are always “claiming this outrage at something,” and we can also debate their motives for actually doing the right thing on the debt ceiling — but it was still Chuck Schumer’s job to take the high road with them.

As so many have explained over recent years, the issue is not in most cases that the prestige DC journalists are Republicans, let alone Trumpers. It is that the default assumption is that Republicans will light fires and Democrats will put them out. That is a great boon to Republican arson and legislative terrorism because as the default assumptions they cease to be news. (Journalists have the cliche: dog bites man isn’t news; man bites dog is.) Democrats not putting out the fires is big news and something akin to the violation of a hallowed social contract. It also puts stress on the ‘both sides’ framework which is the heart of the business and editorial models of most news publications.

More details follow. Dems have to toughen up and always call out the lies. The MSM is nearly useless in doing so and perpetually grade them on a curve.

[LFC]

To be blunt a little equivalence would be a welcome change right about now.

[LFC]

There's already a whiny piece in Bloomberg with somebody peeing their underoos that it might make the MAGAts mad. It's disgusting that somebody whose job it is to follow politics can't see what's happened and understand stand it's past time to scream "ENOUGH!" 

Oh, Stop With The Handwringing Already

Bloomberg comes through with a classic that combines multiple lame political reporting tropes into one awful quick take. It has handwringing over how the Mar-A-Lago raid will play in MAGA world. It has horserace political analysis. It has bothsidesism.

Oh noes! It will radicalize Trump’s base!

But the federal probe into whether he removed classified documents from the White House will just as easily further radicalize his base.

This hurts … Biden?

The raid comes at an awkward time for Trump’s successor, Joe Biden …

Waves hand at bothsidesism:

… the search of Trump’s home by federal agents will be red meat to those followers and ensure that America’s toxic political divide will only get nastier

[AnBr]

By any measure, the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was an extraordinary move — warrants aren’t normally executed at the homes of former US presidents.

Most former US presidents are not serial criminals.

[pnwguy]

Aug 9, 2022 14:57:37 GMT AnBr said:

By any measure, the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was an extraordinary move — warrants aren’t normally executed at the homes of former US presidents.

Most former US presidents are not serial criminals.

No you have it backwards.  ALL former presidents were criminals before Trump (praise be his name).  He was sent by God to clean up the mess in Washington and will be divinely restored to his rightful place soon to continue to bring down the Deep State.  Only He Can Fix It.   He is being persecuted because he is exposing the criminals throughout government.

It was all proclaimed in the prophecies in Two Corinthians.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 9, 2022 14:57:37 GMT AnBr said:

By any measure, the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was an extraordinary move — warrants aren’t normally executed at the homes of former US presidents.

Most former US presidents are not serial criminals.

Or even single time criminals... 

[LFC]

Josh Marshall points out an opinion piece on the power and political cunning of ... Kevin McCarthy? I haven't read the whole WaPo piece but I've followed stories about him for years now and he's a f***ing weenie!

Big Kev: A Stone Cold Killa

This Washington Post article paints a picture of Kevin McCarthy completely at odds with the real life Kevin McCarthy many of us has observed for years. As the piece tells it, McCarthy is backroom enforcer you don’t want to cross. Not content to relive the fates of predecessors John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy has worked behind the scenes to prune the House GOP of the kinds of bomb throwers and fame-seekers who made Boehner’s and Ryan’s jobs so thankless. Says one McCarthy insider: “He is not a guy to be trifled with. It’s like they say in the Marine Corps, ‘No better friend, no worse enemy.’ And they mean it, and they act on it.”

So there you have it. Minority Leader-cum-badass, operating behind the scenes to shape the caucus he wants to lead in 2023. And yet back on planet Earth, the the real McCarthy is best known for toadying to whomever has power and momentum at the moment. He famously said said Putin pays Trump cash money before becoming Trump’s most ardent defender against the ‘Russia hoax’. He said Trump was responsible for January 6th before spending months defending him on that front too after it became clear Trump would still call the shots in the GOP. Since bleeding out his dignity for Trump, McCarthy has moved on to Qanon flavors of the week Reps. Boebert and Greene. The article goes into great depth about the various McCarthy-backed dark money groups spending to defend Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler – who voted to impeach Trump. But remember: she lost, to Trump-backed nutcase Joe Kent.

The first part of the article is about McCarthy’s purported takedown of primaried lame-duck Rep. Madison Cawthorn. It’s true that Republican operatives clearly were working to undermine Cawthorn and likely did contribute to his defeat. But it’s worth remembering that Cawthorn went on a podcast and claimed to have been offered coke by his septuagenarian Republicans colleagues while attending one of their orgies. Around this time he also was getting stopped by the cops something like once a week. If we’re fair we have to conclude that the guy who took out Cawthorn was none other than young Madison himself. If these operatives were working at the behest of Kevin McCarthy, and it’s not an unreasonable assumption that they were, it’s more like they re-doused Cawthorn with gasoline as he sailed the flaming hulk of his decked out Winnebago over the cliff at Niagara Falls.

McCarthy is a characterologically weak man with a reputation for cringey dignity losses. Does anyone believe, as this article suggests, that the House GOP has been purged of the kind of obstreperous wingnut glory-hounds who would befuddle a McCarthy speakership? That claim is so out of sync with observable reality that it is astonishing.

Perhaps this was McCarthy’s plan; but to look at the caucus as of late September, that plan must have failed miserably.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 28, 2022 14:37:01 GMT LFC said:

Josh Marshall points out an opinion piece on the power and political cunning of ... Kevin McCarthy? I haven't read the whole WaPo piece but I've followed stories about him for years now and he's a f***ing weenie!

Big Kev: A Stone Cold Killa

This Washington Post article paints a picture of Kevin McCarthy completely at odds with the real life Kevin McCarthy many of us has observed for years. As the piece tells it, McCarthy is backroom enforcer you don’t want to cross. Not content to relive the fates of predecessors John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy has worked behind the scenes to prune the House GOP of the kinds of bomb throwers and fame-seekers who made Boehner’s and Ryan’s jobs so thankless. Says one McCarthy insider: “He is not a guy to be trifled with. It’s like they say in the Marine Corps, ‘No better friend, no worse enemy.’ And they mean it, and they act on it.”

So there you have it. Minority Leader-cum-badass, operating behind the scenes to shape the caucus he wants to lead in 2023. And yet back on planet Earth, the the real McCarthy is best known for toadying to whomever has power and momentum at the moment. He famously said said Putin pays Trump cash money before becoming Trump’s most ardent defender against the ‘Russia hoax’. He said Trump was responsible for January 6th before spending months defending him on that front too after it became clear Trump would still call the shots in the GOP. Since bleeding out his dignity for Trump, McCarthy has moved on to Qanon flavors of the week Reps. Boebert and Greene. The article goes into great depth about the various McCarthy-backed dark money groups spending to defend Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler – who voted to impeach Trump. But remember: she lost, to Trump-backed nutcase Joe Kent.

The first part of the article is about McCarthy’s purported takedown of primaried lame-duck Rep. Madison Cawthorn. It’s true that Republican operatives clearly were working to undermine Cawthorn and likely did contribute to his defeat. But it’s worth remembering that Cawthorn went on a podcast and claimed to have been offered coke by his septuagenarian Republicans colleagues while attending one of their orgies. Around this time he also was getting stopped by the cops something like once a week. If we’re fair we have to conclude that the guy who took out Cawthorn was none other than young Madison himself. If these operatives were working at the behest of Kevin McCarthy, and it’s not an unreasonable assumption that they were, it’s more like they re-doused Cawthorn with gasoline as he sailed the flaming hulk of his decked out Winnebago over the cliff at Niagara Falls.

McCarthy is a characterologically weak man with a reputation for cringey dignity losses. Does anyone believe, as this article suggests, that the House GOP has been purged of the kind of obstreperous wingnut glory-hounds who would befuddle a McCarthy speakership? That claim is so out of sync with observable reality that it is astonishing.

Perhaps this was McCarthy’s plan; but to look at the caucus as of late September, that plan must have failed miserably.

McCarthy came to Congress the old fashioned way.  He was an aide to Rep Bill Thomas, long time Republican Congressman who was chair of Ways and Means Committee. After two terms in the CA Assembly when he was a loyal Republican, he ran as a hand picked successor to Thomas when Thomas retired. He was a glad hander which meant he was good at telling donors what they wanted to hear so they'd give money.  Eventually he became part of the "young guns" along with Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor.  The latter was defeated in a re-election campaign in 2014.Tea Party magic had worn off. Ryan left Congress after getting bruised up while serving as Majority Leader.   That left glad hander McCarthy who continued to glad hand and raise money. He was never known as a negotiator, just a reliable vote for whatever leadership said to vote for and a good fundraiser.

[LFC]

WTF? Is she stoned? Senile? Refusing to watch the news she's commenting on? Her level of stupidity, ignorance, obliviousness, and false equivalence just reached full blown Chuck Todd. The very report she cited said it's 2/3 vs. 1/5 (that's 66.7% vs. 20.0% if she's math challenged) right vs. left.

Mark Jacob
@markjacob16

Here's video of Andrea Mitchell's "both sides" comment saying Republicans have been targeted by violent threats and then citing Cheney and Kinzinger, who have in fact been pilloried by *other Republicans*.

[LFC]

Clearly this could have gone under "Chuck Todd Is Still An Idiot" but since it's clear false equivalence from Chris Sununu, one of the supposedly "sane" Republicans, I'll drop it here. Maybe Chuckles followed up forcefully with facts after the clip ends. I wouldn't bet on it.

[LFC]

Right between the f***ing eyes.

[LFC]

Yeah, it's both sides!

[LFC]

"Conditioned" is a nice word for "whipped into submission."

[LFC]

[LFC]

Will they get this one right? I hold out zero hope.

[goldenvalley]

Over 100 years ago the news media preferred the conflict rather than the news:

The first women in the California State Legislature were elected in 1918, before most American women had gained the ability to vote. Here in the Golden State, women got the right to vote in 1911, making California one of the earliest states to adopt that change.

Of the historic November 1918 election, The Associated Press wrote at the time: “California is perfectly willing that her daughters should vote, but she is somewhat dubious about the advisability of putting them in office, as was shown by Tuesday’s election, in which only four out of 12 women candidates were elected. These four all were Republicans, and all were elected to the Assembly.”

And, seemingly added as an afterthought: “Also, they were the first women ever sent to the California Legislature.”

[LFC]

I have seen multiple things about how the MSM is going on and on about how this is huge for DeSatanist but are barely mentioning Gretchen Witmer who pulled off a larger victory in a tougher state. They do love to pump up nutty Republicans.

[pnwguy]

Nov 10, 2022 16:39:42 GMT LFC said:

I have seen multiple things about how the MSM is going on and on about how this is huge for DeSatanist but are barely mentioning Gretchen Witmer who pulled off a larger victory in a tougher state. They do love to pump up nutty Republicans.

The "news" business model today is dependent on promoting a constant horse race drama narrative.  They need to whip that up for the next 2 years.  No one wants a 24x7x365 election cycle more than TV stations, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the ad dollars of political campaigns.  

[goldenvalley]

Nov 10, 2022 16:57:28 GMT pnwguy said:

Nov 10, 2022 16:39:42 GMT LFC said:

I have seen multiple things about how the MSM is going on and on about how this is huge for DeSatanist but are barely mentioning Gretchen Witmer who pulled off a larger victory in a tougher state. They do love to pump up nutty Republicans.

The "news" business model today is dependent on promoting a constant horse race drama narrative.  They need to whip that up for the next 2 years.  No one wants a 24x7x365 election cycle more than TV stations, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the ad dollars of political campaigns.  

What else are the talking heads going to talk about if they can't talk "fantasy presidential race"?  And why isn't Klobucher in the running in their fantasy race?  She's actually shown an interest in running for the office.