Mission: Fail

Haw.  This one brought me up short, culled from near the beginning of a Politico column anticipating the Giffords shooting as the opportunity for President Obama to have his "Oklahoma City moment":

Obama idolizes Lincoln, and like his fellow Illinoisan he sees himself as a warrior by compulsion, forced by circumstance to take up arms against political adversaries instead of following his preferred path of reconciliation, civility and compromise.

(yellow highlights added for emphasis)

Our political discourse is duly elevated.

Politico cranks up myth machine for Michele Bachmann

One my monster pet peeves concerns the penchant of the news media to invent a fact and then reinforce it regularly until it turns into conventional wisdom.

One pernicious myth concerning Michele Bachmann had its genesis on "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Bachmann questioned Barack Obama's past associations and questioned whether he might hold anti-american views like those of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.

Matthews turned the interview into an argument, attempting at every turn to reduce the issue of Obama's views to an absurdity. I recommend watching the video or reading the entire transcript to get the full flavor, but the important part occurs at the end:

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, he's a United States senator from Illinois. He's one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti- American? You've already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others? How many do you suspect of your colleagues as being anti-American?

REP. BACHMANN: What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.

Matthews spent much of the interview equivocating, and at this stage of the interview has transformed Bachmann's statement that she thinks Obama may hold anti-American views into the notion that Obama is anti-American on the whole or at least on balance. Rather than answering a question containing a false premise, Bachmann returned to her point that Americans should be informed of the views of their representatives. And she called on the media to make that contribution to democracy.

Maybe it's just me, but I had the impression that Matthews throughout held the attitude that questioning whether others hold anti-American views is anti-American or something. And this is how Bachmann's appearance was played up:

New McCarthyism: Bachmann calls for investigation of ‘anti-American’ Congress

Bachmann Calls For McCarthyite Investigation Into Anti-American Activities Of Liberals

Michelle Bachmann gives voice to the right's darkest impulses

Realistically, it just does not make any sense to see something bad in wanting the media to inform the public about the views of elected representatives. Yet after more than a year, the lies about Bachmann come close enough to conventional wisdom to sneak past the desk of at least one editor at Politico.com:

They would like to capitalize on the fervor of the tea party foot soldiers, who have been quick to adopt Bachmann as an icon of their movement. But they’re wary of the movement’s fringe elements and, at times, of Bachmann, who made a name for herself last year when she called for an investigation into “anti-America” members of Congress and more recently when she referred to the Democrats’ health care plan as the “crown jewel of socialism.”

The words chosen by authors Jonathan Allen and Meredith Shiner feed directly into the notion that Bachmann did something significantly similar to what Joe McCarthy did.

That is simply false. But media outlets pull stunts like this every single day of the week.


*****

The video:


11/7/09: Edited to patch a few holes in my prose

JournoList and journalism

The decline of the the daily newspaper combined with the rise of the Internet has produced a de facto struggle for the integrity of public information.

The newspapers once served as the effective benchmark, regardless of any criticism that might be brought to bear regarding how well they upheld their responsibilities.

The recent story at Politico about the "JournoList" discussion group intrigued me from that angle. Though the membership of the list is predominantly leftward-leaning, members apparently like the list because it helps ensure better information.

Indeed, the advantage of JList, members say, is that it provides a unique forum for getting in touch with historians and policy people who provide journalists with a knowledge base for articles and blog posts

So this group of journalists ends up drawing on a knowledge base chosen by and/or made up of folks who tilt to the left. This seems like the sort of thing that would register a warning flag with the best journalists. We shouldn't want to restrict the pool of ideas along ideological lines or draw our expert opinions primarily from one side of an issue. JournoList lends itself to the type of "echo chamber" effect already prevalent in newsrooms around the country. JournoList represents a nationalized form of the same thing.

POLITICO’s Mike Allen, Ben Smith and Lisa Lerer are on the list. “The roster includes some of the savviest authorities on everything from behavioral economics to Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Allen said. “It’s a window into a world of passionate experts — an hourly graduate education.”

Said another JLister: “I don’t know any other place where working journalists, policy wonks and academics who write about current politics and political history routinely communicate with one another.”

I don't doubt that the system offers some distinct benefits. But it's hard to imagine that JournoList reinforces an objective approach to journalism if the list is ideologically tilted. On the contrary, even if it isn't the purpose of the list, it would be natural for the list to produce an ideologically tinged news product at the end of the day.

Good for Politico for publishing a story about it.

Politico on bias in the press

John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei of Politico wrote a take on the bias in the press against John McCain, titled "Why McCain is getting hosed in the press."

The writing team makes partial use of a traditional defense, stating that ideological bias counts for little because reporters set their own opinions aside so easily. I would say that may be true for the best journalists. But to a large extent one can tell the best ones from the pack by the way they report. I'm talking about the use of non-essential descriptive adverbs in news stories. If reporters allow things like that to creep into their writing, then the chances are good that political opinions can also find their way past the objective filter.

Harris and Vandehei check their own bias on that point.

If that causes skeptics to scoff, perhaps they would find it more satisfying to hear that the reason ideological bias matters so little is that other biases matter so much more.

They seem to be saying it isn't that reporters lean to the left in this case, but something else.

This is true in any election year. But the 2008 election has had some unique — and personal — phenomena.

One is McCain backlash. The Republican once was the best evidence of how little ideology matters. Even during his “maverick” days, McCain was a consistent social conservative, with views on abortion and other cultural issues that would have been odds with those of most reporters we know. Yet he won swooning coverage for a decade from reporters who liked his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics.

This explanation is plausible on its face, but it is just as easily regarded as reporters classifying McCain as an unusually "good" Republican, and then getting nasty when their past apparent errors come to light. In other words, the non-ideological explanation in turn may have its roots in ideology.

On a shallower level, I tend to agree with Harris and Vandehei that most reporters try to report fairly. What I read in the press (not via scientific sampling, unfortunately) leads me to believe that many reporters and editors simply aren't very good at objective reporting in the first place. And it's enough to make a pretty noticeable difference even if we were to allow that "most" reporters actually succeed at reporting with their bias minimized.

Harris and Vandehei make a few other points as well. Readers interested in the issue of journalistic bias may want to read the whole story.

Politico shows the before-and-after Scott McClellan

Politico has obtained an authenticated copy of Scott McClellan's book proposal. The proposal sheds more light on the evolution of the book as it progressed through the editing process. A few key graphs:

There have been a number of books written about him, including many more recent ones that portray him in a very negative light.

This book is going to take a much different look at our Nation’s 43rd President. While being supportive of the President, I want to give readers a candid look into who George W. Bush is, what he believes, why he believes it so strongly, and what drives him.

[...]

And, I will directly address myths that have been associated with him, some deliberately perpetuated by activist liberals and some created by the media, and look at the reality behind those myths.
(Politico.com)

But maybe I'll let the editors influence me into going in a different direction.

As others have noted, the ultimate issue is whether or not McClellan's account represents the truth. One thing that cannot reasonably be denied: The new focus the editors helped McClellan achieve will be good for sales.

Added "Politico" to Essential Links

Politico has established itself as the go-to source for political news on the 'Net, and thus warrants inclusion on the "Essential Links" in the sidebar.

Politico's reporting on Bill Clinton's complaints about Hillary Clinton's press coverage serves as an example of what should not be missed.