Judgment journalism
Monday, October 20th, 2008 By Mike Maurer
John McCain, who has finally gotten around to calling socialists socialists, criticizes his opponent’s health care plan. Ho-hum, but nonetheless that’s what constitutes election news. What else can you write about, except what the candidates are saying? (And this socialism thing is a bit of a deathbed conversion there, John; a real maverick could have been making that argument for the past eight, 16, or 20 years, although he would have received a lot less coverage from the New York Times.)
The problem is, the reporters put their thumbs on the scale. McCain criticizes Obama, then all of a sudden there’s a neutral objective voice in response: “McCain, though, has a health care plan girded with a similar philosophy.” Really? There’s a sweeping statement for you, and not even attributed.
That might be true. (And it might not.) Regardless, it isn’t the reporter’s job to say so. How does the same story handle things going the other way? “Obama has said his tax policies would cut payments for 95 percent of working Americans, while increasing them only for families making more than $250,000 a year. McCain has argued that 40 percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes, either because they are seniors or don’t meet minimum earnings thresholds, so the only way to cut their taxes is to give them various credits.”
No objective neutral voice there. Just Obama has said, McCain has argued. Even that sort of pseudo-balance is questionable (and let’s forget that it gets McCain’s argument wrong and assume, counterfactually, that it gets it right); if you’re writing about McCain, write about McCain, and if you’re writing about Obama, write about Obama. There’s an argument for that sort of back and forth, and perhaps it’s a decent method, but really, we pretty much know that the opposing camps are going to oppose each other. Why not keep your eye on the ball and see if you can do a halfway decent job reporting on the thing in front of you, instead of doing a poor job, then trying to paper it over with mindless competing quotes?
Better go back to rooting through Joe the Plumber’s trash, guys, and expressing umbrage if anyone roots through Obama’s trash. It’s your highest skill set.
