Jay Rosen’s latest piece has my broad sympathy. I have made the same observations many times. In particular, I think Rosen has set up a useful dichotomy (as opposed to the dichotomies routinely employed by David Brooks). We can divide political reporters into one group which “fights for what is true,” and another which wants to “demonstrate that they are savvy.” We can also identify reporters who are prone to utilizing a “both sides do it” false equivalency that they think gives them an extra sheen of objectivity, and reporters who look for the granular differences between candidates and parties and are willing to talk about matters of degree.
However, I don’t know that I would have singled out Aaron Blake’s article as the offending type par excellence. Don’t get me wrong; it’s an egregious bit of nihilism. But he does give the reader the essential facts. What’s missing is any moral condemnation of the facts that Blake reports. It’s one thing to be savvy, but it’s another to abandon any moral element in your reporting.
I can imagine someone who is reporting on the Nazis’ use of Zyklon B in gas chambers, and wondering whether it will be effective in exterminating Jews. One might also wonder whether the Allies’ use of urban carpet bombing will be useful in breaking the Axis’ will to fight. But to lazily compare one to the other, and to fail to condemn a situation in which civilians are dying in such large numbers, is indefensible. This is one example where invoking the Nazis helps clarify things, because there really are situations in which both sides are doing bad things, but in which only one side can merit support. There are situations where both sides are shading the truth, but in which one side is taking things much further.
Mr. Blake not only fails to take a moral stand, he actually attributes the facially positive attribute of “political acumen” to the Romney team’s distorting tactics.
There’s a lot of controversy these days about campaign tactics and what crosses the line. Obama’s team has been crying foul for two weeks now that “You didn’t build that” has been taken badly out of context by Republicans.
The problem is, the gray area is just too gray. Fact-checkers are great (especially our Glenn Kessler), but as long as either side has an argument to justify its attacks, the history of politics dictates that it’s all fair game.
Romney’s team is exploiting that fact — to the credit of its political acumen, if not its strict adherence to accuracy.
But they’re not the only ones. The fact is that the Obama team’s hands aren’t quite clean when it comes to context, either, including its use of Romney’s “I’m not concerned about the very poor” and “I like being able to fire people” quotes.
In all of these cases, we’re dealing with a somewhat ambiguous quote.
This is truly embarrassing stuff, but it does insist that Romney is taking things out of context. Of course, Blake isn’t even sure it matters.
…the preceding sentences from Obama’s speech make it pretty clear that he was talking not about his own success in rallying the economy, but specifically about tax policy — not under himself, but under Bill Clinton:..
…But if you’re a Republican, you can make a credible case that the ad is completely justified.
It goes like this: Obama was contrasting two different tax policies — one being the Republican policy, and the other being the Democrats’ policy. Obama was talking about how the Democrats’ policy is better. But Democrats have been in the White House for four years now, and things are still bad. So obviously Democrats’ policies — on taxes or otherwise — aren’t that great.
This is where Blake comes closest to hitting the Gold Standard for wankery. If you break down what he is saying logically, it goes something like this.
Obama is saying the tax policies of the late nineties were good and he wants to return to those policies because they worked and the economy grew.
Romney says that current tax policies, which were created by Bush, are actually Obama’s tax policies, and they haven’t done enough for the economy.
Asserting that Obama said current (Bush) tax policies “worked,” Romney attacks Obama for being out of touch.
For Blake to say that the Republicans can make a “credible case” that their ad is fair is ludicrous. What he appears to mean is that Romney has made a case convincing to the credulous. But that is not what “credible” is supposed to mean. And Blake, as a reporter of facts, is supposed to help the reader decide what is credible, not assure them that arguments that can convince the unsophisticated are justified and demonstrate political acumen.
Mr. Blake deserves all the criticism he is receiving. But there are worse examples. There are examples where the reporter simply fails to acknowledge any personal skepticism about competing claims and leaves it entirely to the reader to decide. At least with this article, Blake was willing to take some kind of stand as an arbiter of fact. The problem was, he also told us that facts no longer matter and that there is nothing wrong with that.
