September 2008 Archives

Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect a U.S. presidential debate to deal substantively - and honestly - with wrongful actions by the American government, even at the end of George W. Bush's eight-year reign as one of the planet's preeminent rogue operatives.

      Considering the extreme state of the U.S. today - failing economy, credit crisis, housing bust, high unemployment rates, "the war on terror," and a very unpopular Iraq war - I, for one, expected fireworks from the first debate between McCain and Obama. Instead, we got some solid debating, some shaky debating, some good presidential-like moments, and some petty ones; all in all, there were no terribly memorable moments or much very straight forward explanation of how they would change current policy. The news media seemed to agree, publishing quite a few articles that echoed the following :
       "At that debate, against the backdrop of the economic crisis, neither candidate scored significantly or caused much damage to the other. But the differences between the two were evident on issues ranging from federal spending to diplomacy with rogue nations."

I have not been a big consumer of blogs. I generally stuck to "legacy media" because there is simply so much information on the web. I have never felt like I had the time to properly vet writers or bloggers that hadn't already been put forward as reputable through well-known news sources.
     Its not to say that citizen journalists/bloggers/etc. don't have anything good to say. On the contrary, I think that the dialogue that has been provided with the ease of publishing on the web is fantastic. People should be able to participate in news. I'm just not the one that will always follow the threads or care to see what specific bloggers think of this or that event. When I'm looking for news, I want news - not opinion.

     Of course, opinion is far from absent in legacy media news sources as well. Some writers are given permission to use loaded words or pick unfair images. One of my favorite instances of obvious bias was in the New York paper, I believe it was The Post, in 2000. The paper ran side by side articles that profiled Bush and Gore. The photographs of Gore were all very sophisticated, with dramatic and flattering light. The photographs of Bush, specifically one of him sat spread eagle on the grass next to his father who was sitting in a chair, made him look like a foolish man-child. It was not the most presidential-looking picture. And it was a not so subtle way to editorialize Bush's bio. It seemed quite obvious to me that the paper preferred Gore; however, maybe some considered it fair and equal. Maybe they should not have been allowed to print those pictures while claiming to be fair and balanced journalists. Maybe that bias should have been transparently identified. 
     I've been taught to always question everything. Even those sources you like. An important part of consuming information is to be critical of it. So it comes as no surprise that sites would be created to aide one's critical eye. Spinspotter.com and Newstrust.net set out to do exactly that: help the reader cut through the ... bad stuff.    

It's as if criticism of the media is a rule in the campaign play book. It is a very clever maneuver from those who stand to gain from discrediting the media (and what does that say about a campaign). If ALL news outlets are inherently wrong, then a critical voice or a question as to truth is just a part of a smear campaign. This is how it seems the Republicans would like their supporters to feel. In the eyes of McCain/Palin supporters, the media can do no right. 

Can a reporter (or citizen journalist) use transparency to forgo neutrality? Does the appearance of neutrality negate the need for transparency? In the example of Mayhill Fowler, the questions her story provokes are not only of neutrality and transparency in reporting, but the implications of those in access to stories and the rules by which citizen journalists may or may not abide. Even more confusing in this specific story, as Michael Tomasky noted, according to the rules of transparency and neutrality, a traditional reporter would never have had access to the private function such as the one Fowler wrote about. In this case, the lack of access would have had more to do with neutrality: reporters are not supposed to make donations to campaigns which, in turn, means that they are not invited to private donor dinners.