A late morning meeting was cancelled and I took some time to scan today’s Boston Globe. Here’s what the supposedly liberal paper has to say:
In sharp contrast to the October 4 edition, there was no mention that President Obama cleaned Romney’s clock. The front-page headline is “Laying out 2 visions for US role.” If we’re only going by the debate last night, that’s not even true. I would have guessed Romney was getting a free sports car for his collection each time he said he agreed with Obama’s policy. Of course, when you look at what he said last week or last month, there are “2 different visions” but Romney doesn’t want folks to know about that.
On page A12 I learn that the race is “tightening in Ohio” because a Quinnipiac/CBS poll found Obama up 5. Last month’s poll had him up 10. That would be news if there hadn’t been a slew of polls in the interim showing Obama’s lead in Ohio far smaller. For those of us who’ve been paying attention all month, a 5-point lead is not “tightening.” It’s actually pretty good news for the President.
On the editorial page, the Globe endorsed Richard Tisei, noting that his “mix of libertarianism and fiscal conservatism makes an excellent blueprint for New England Republicans.”
Meanwhile, over at the Herald, the front page headline is “Snark Attack.” You know, a few weeks ago Romney was presidential because he was aggressive while Obama was passive. Now Romney’s presidential because Obama was aggressive while Romney was both flip-flopping and floundering.
Here in the Boston area, we have one daily paper that’s in the tank for the GOP and the right, no matter what happens. And then we have the tepid, toss-in-a-story-that-favors-each-side Globe. It would be nice if people stopped pretending there’s any semblance of equivalence. And it would be nice to have some newspaper around here, on a night when Obama wins the snap poll 53-23 and Romney changes all his foreign policy positions, that would be willing to call a clear win a clear win.
I cancelled my Globe subscription a couple months ago because its coverage of the senate race was so skewed, as many have noted, but not before many letters to the editor and one to Marty Baron. I even complained to the Ombuds at the NYTimes, the Globe’s corporate parent. I honestly believe that if the Globe’s coverage was straightforward and fact-based, for example covering Brown’s multitude of lies with 1/10 of the copy it spent of EW’s heritage, Elizabeth Warren would be ahead by a huge amount.
Where in the Globe is any coverage of this: “Community Catalyst Action Fund released a devastating new report, looking at the impact of implementing Scott Brown’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”
Thanks to everyone at BMG, where this info was posted, I can get some real news.
You wrote (correctly, I think):
Close races make money for the media, runaway races do not. In a close race, people are more likely to read the paper — impression counts, and therefore ad rates, go up. Campaigns and special-interest groups buy advertising in a close race, they don’t in a runaway.
One aspect of Citizens United that I think deserves more attention is the impact on the media of all those billions of dollars being spent on the campaigns. The media is, after all, where that money lands. Is it any surprise that the media that benefits so much from this tidal wave of spending is unenthusiastic about challenging either the principles are the parties doing the spending?
Scanning front pages of websites such as yahoo and others I see a propping-up of the Romney campaign to stimulate tension, anxiety and more disinformation that supports the corporate-media-“reality (not)” version of news. MSM journalism is not just in the in the tank it’s in the shitter.
Romney’s policies are proven losers and he is a horrible excuse for a statesman. We need a POTUS with Barack Obama’s mature temperament nestled in a very bright mind. And, we need a free and intelligent media. The dumbing down of America is toxic and the rise of ignorance is showing all too clearly.
Boston Globe’s editing (the journalism isn’t always bad) is due to a couple of things: 1) a lifetime subscription to the journalistic ideology of false equivalence 2) editors who see the paper as a monologue rather than a dialogue 3) journalists are generalists in a world where specialists abound.
The false equivalence ideology places journalist above the fray. You see this best when journalists become columnists or write op-ed’s, and they mock partisanship. Cokie Roberts is the quintessential example. I can’t put my hand on something specific at the moment, but they see the “center” as morally superior and partisanship as childish.
Felix Salmon has a good opinion piece on what new journalists need to be able to do, which happens to be what the Globe and the Times don’t do: read.
Still, the biggest thing that’s missing in the journalistic establishment is people who are good at finding all that great material, and collating it, curating it, adding value to it, linking to it, presenting it to their readers. It’s a function which has historically been pushed into a blog ghetto, and which newspapers and old media generally have been pretty bad at. And of course old media doesn’t understand blogs in the first place, let alone have the confidence or the ability to incorporate such thinking into everything they do.
Think about it this way: reading is to writing as listening is to talking — and someone who talks without listening is both a boor and a bore. If you can’t read, I don’t want you in my newsroom. Because you aren’t taking part in the conversation which is all around you.
Journalist can know a lot if they cover a beat, but without familiarity with the larger context, what they report can be simultaneously factually correct and deeply misleading. I notice the most when it comes to education reporting, though I just heard someone from the Pioneer Institute on WBUR. The Pioneer Institute was indentified as “non-partisan.” While true, this suggests that the PI lacks agenda. In fact, it’s agenda is clear from its website which states its values: “free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.” Why is this an editor’s problem? Because the WBUR Style Book should explain that “non-partisan” is a label that is at best meaningless.