The Absurdity of Media "Balance"

This morning, both NPR and the New York Times have stories about how the campaign is starting to get "rough". The information adduced to justify the assertion is the same in both places. On one hand, we learn that McCain is accusing Obama of cavorting with terrorists based on the fact that he served together on a community board with a former member of the Weathermen. On the other hand, we learn that Obama is accusing McCain of having been a member of the Keating Five.

In both cases, the reporter treats these allegations is essentially equal and thus self-canceling, stuff to be filed away under "tactics", "he said-she said", or the province of mere " strategic gambits".

It is precisely this type of reporting, devoid of context and the ability to discern the relative historical import of of a public figure's actions, that has rendered the American people civically stupid.

There is no way that serving on a community board with someone whose background involved radical politics is in any way equivalent with a Senator knowingly participating in one of the biggest influence-peddling scandals in history of the U.S. Congress. First of all, we are not able to choose the other people with whom we serve on community boards. Moreover, if this friend, Ayers, had done anything wrong, he had long since paid for it by the time Obama came along to share the occasional monthly meeting with him.

In contrast, McCain's participation in the Keating affair was completely volitional. He was very happy to help deregulate the banking industry in ways thatwere destructive for the common person, providing that he received financial help for his campaign in return. It was only after his perfidy was discovered, that he "renounced" his participation in the scheme. And only then when censure by his colleagues (or worse) was looming over his future. When we talk about the Keating Five we are talking about one of the most brazen examples of corruption in one of the biggest financial scandals ( the Savings and Loan crisis) that this country has ever known.

Reading and listening to what passes for the "liberal press" in the popular imagination, you'd never know anything about these key differences.

The Right has understood for years that the goal of "seeking balance" in news delivery (something, by the way, most intelligent adults in most other developed countries see as neither possible nor desirable), can be manipulated time and time again in their favor. They correctly see it as an effective means of making the trivialities they want to circulate significant and/or the egregious things they do, insignificant. They know that the Mara Liasson's of the world have no stomach for true "discernment". Rather, they understand that their desire to remain "in the loop" and out of trouble with the right-wing attack machine is really their paramount concern. And so it goes...

Democracy is not possible under these conditions.