Drowning in a Bathtub of Chaos
How our journalistic and human instinct for fairness is used against us
The standard line from the right these days after a mass shooting is to intone in a scolding manner that this is not a time for politics. People have died, they infer. What kind of person plays games when people have died?
Which tells me a lot about how Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell see their worlds. It’s just a game. It’s just about winning. I’m forced to come to one of two conclusions: either they honestly think that bringing up policy solutions is a “democratic conspiracy” to score political points, or they want to score political points by belittling and shaming people who suggest there might be a policy solution.
Our system of government was formed to solve problems that affect society. There has long been a disconnect between how we come to choose who should legislate and oversee policy, and the job of governing, itself. My fervent hope 20, 25 years ago was that our new expanded news cycle might allow journalists to go deeper, to talk about policy during campaigns, and not just make running for office about the “game” of politics.
Alas, it has gone the other way. Governance and the way we journalists cover it has become all about the game. Every policy decision made is analyzed for how it will affect the next election, not how much it will help people.
That’s because we’ve accepted the idea that we can’t fundamentally talk about which policies would help people, because one “side” of the discussion insists that government shouldn’t help people at all.
A few years ago, I was hosting a public radio show, when we did a segment on the ALICE report from the United Way chapter in the state. The report showed that 38 percent of people in the state couldn’t make ends meet. It also defined “ends meet” as about $60,000 for a family of four. The federal poverty rate for a family of four - which informs much of our official policy around government services, from free and reduced lunch to health exchange reimbursements - is around $26,000.
My two guests and I talked a lot about the difference in those numbers, the specific hardships in rural and urban areas, how different our lives are from the 1970s, when our “necessities” were fewer and cost less.
We also talked about non-profit services in the state that people could go to for help. Callers - many of whom had expressed support for Trump on previous shows - noted they made ends meet by going to food pantries, and some noted the difference between living in more urban counties, which provide more help to struggling families and have public transportation, and rural counties, which mostly do not have either.
The two United Way spokespeople said they hoped the report could change perceptions, to create more understanding, to “check our biases at the door” and come to solutions. None of us talked about where those solutions would come from.
When we were done, one of the women I was interviewing said, “We need to talk about policy solutions.” Her colleague agreed. They were both clearly lamenting that we hadn’t.
It was in that moment that I realized how much of journalism has capitulated to the people it covers. And how powerless I was, at that particular public radio network, to change it.
I write a lot about both-sideism journalism. We tend to think of that as simply point/counterpoint, two different “sides” of an issue. As we’ve seen, though, when one side is lying - even when they believe so fervently in the lies that they don’t know they’re lying - reporting “both sides” of the “issue” will always harm truth.
And truth is what journalism is all about.
After this segment on poverty, I realized how much harm was being done to truth in the interest of “fairness.” That in the choices we made about how to frame the story, we were, in fact, affecting policy.
I had mentioned to the producer before the segment that there were no questions about raising the minimum wage or updating the tables that determined the federal poverty level - which were last overhauled in 1978 and updated incrementally every year since. To $26,000 for a family of four. She told me we couldn’t add those questions. That would be biased, since Republicans were against those things.
We have come to a point in which journalists decide that reporting on possible policy solutions is “biased.”
It’s almost like an MLB team showing up to a game and deciding not to play, because they are not happy that particular people are allowed to play. The pitcher just stands on the mound and holds the ball. At first, all the stories are about how the team is not playing. Eventually, the stories morph into, “Will they play tonight?” Then other teams stop playing, and we start reporting the “standoff.” Eventually we get to, “Let’s exclude the players the teams want us to exclude so we can get on with the game.” After that, we just start calling it “chaos” and refer to the game not working. At this point, we have completely forgotten how it all started.
Sometimes, as in Congress in the early 1990s, we don’t point out that one side is just holding the ball and refusing to play until they get their way. We go directly to chaos.
This is how we, at this radio network where I was hosting, ended up doing an entire segment on how people were struggling without identifying anything resembling WHY they were struggling. Because one entire side has decided that letting people struggle is, in fact, their policy. And the policy of the journalism organization I was working for was that it would be biased to point that out.
This is the brilliance of conservative activist Grover Norquist’s dictum to “shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” He knew that journalists would not report on one “side” trying to use government for good, while the other “side” was trying to kill it. He knew that journalists would simply put themselves in between - which inevitably means that the conversation shifts to the more obstructionist “side” - which is causing all the chaos and drama.
We are, after all, storytellers. And stories need a dramatic arc. People like Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist knew this. So they created drama so journalists wouldn’t have to work to find the arc.
Then they developed a machine to heap criticism on journalists who didn’t take the bait.
And we are human. We are often overwhelmed. We are sometimes lazy. We don’t want to be criticized, and we tend to blame ourselves when we are. And so we capitulate. In the interest of fairness. And to the detriment of truth.
Good commentary. I hope you are no longer at that radio station. The producers should be drummed out and consigned to producing copy for a shopping channel. Your essay recalled for me a line I think I first read from George Orwell/Eric Blair (though I can’t find a citation) that: “Sometimes, there are not two sides to a story …” Much bullshittery has been foisted into the mediascape in seeking a supposed balance when, in fact, one side is engaged in “flooding the zone” with shite (to quote the Irish) so as to muddy and stop in its tracks any reasoned discussion. That’s why we need great reporters, fearless commentators, and independent media — to call balls and strikes. Write on!