The meta-savviness of Brendan Nyhan

Political scientist Brendan Nyhan is back--not that he ever went away--with another of his patented faux-objective assessments of the U.S. media's relationship with its audience.

Nyhan's fundamental trouble remains his difficulty in assessing the aquarium habitat while always swimming in the tank with the rest of the fish.

His pet issue in his story is the tendency of news reports to continue to use "he said/she said" accounts of political disputes:

The first obligation of journalists is to the truth. As such, it is important that reporters set the record straight when ads like these are misleading their audience. The problem, however, is that many national reporters—and the state reporters who increasingly emulate them—have been sucked in by the cult of the savvy. For these journalists, producing meta-level analysis of the effectiveness of deception as a campaign tactic is more important than correcting the factual record for readers.

I, for one, do not see why Jay Rosen's description of the journalistic "cult of savvy" would be incompatible with the solution Nyhan recommends:

A better approach would be for reporters to characterize the accuracy of ads in their own voice and to invoke non-partisan experts like PolitiFact. In some cases, it may even be possible to find credible sources on the side of the candidate airing the misleading ad who are willing to state the truth.

So journalists will let readers in on their supposedly specialized knowledge regarding the truth of political claims.  And then what?  The cult of savvy will proceed to meditate on the effects its findings should have on the reader, no doubt abundantly citing Nyhan's flawed research in the process.  Both steps leave ample room for the cult of savvy to direct the journalistic approach.  Glenn Greenwald, for example, pointed out the tendency at PolitiFact to use expert sources from both sides of an issue. The main difference with the traditional he said/she said approach is that PolitiFact not infrequently ends up making an arbitrary decision as to which expert opinion carries the day.

If the journalists taking that step are both expert and not ideologically biased, then fine.  But who buys either proposition?

Apparently the meta-savvy Brendan Nyhan buys it, as he refers to PolitiFact as "non-partisan experts."

Give me a break.