False fact checking and biased balance

Obviously, I started this blog because I felt like the major news media was letting down the American people. I couldn't begin to chronicle the exhaustive list of abuses but one central theme I notice that seems to strike me as particularly disturbing is the notion that the truth must always lie between two opposing points of view. What may be seen as true in Buddhism ("the middle road is the path to enlightenment") doesn't necessarily always hold water in our political dialogue.

Take your average political TV show. You always have the "liberal" and the "conservative" to discuss the issues of the day. But first, is that what you really have? You see, often the so-called liberal is usually some slightly left-of-center person who is often called a strategist or is perhaps a newspaper columnist who's professional credo demands he at least attempt to be fair to both sides (not that this always applies- see Kristol, Bill or Will, George). The conservative is often a member of the far right wing who is backed by some institution with some patriotic name featuring the word "enterprise" or "heritage" where they have been taught the proper talking points. Often the moderator will discuss some hot button "issue" that the cable news people are obsessing about for a day that will be nearly forgotten tomorrow. The questioner throws the topic out to both sides and tries to get the sparks to fly and often the guests, who usually are there to sell their newest book, are all too willing to take their time on TV to raise their "brand awareness" and gain points with their side with a few quips or barbs directed at the other side. In the end, the viewer learns nothing about any policy proposals or issues, but is only aware that both sides tend to obscure their policies with rose petals and horse manure. In the end, the host usually declares they will continue the discussion some other day, declaring that both people have made their points, etc. What has been accomplished other than to convince people that if these people represent politics, then they should want no part of it?

Then, you have the journalist who pretends to want to help you figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth in a political debate. After a politician has given a speech or released a statement, the reporter calls on an "expert" to help enlighten the audience as to the veracity of the politician's words. Sadly, the experts are often not really much more than just another reporter who certainly doesn't wish to call out someone in power as having lied and then face the wrath of their supporters. While journalists love to sell their profession as being a legion of Woodward and Bernsteins, the truth is they more like a pack of sheep cowering in fear that an editor would receive an angry call or email about a piece they submitted, or worse yet an advertiser who is threatening to pull their account because they've been upset. What you often end up with is a sort of nimble soft shoe routine where the "fact checker" tap dances around the question of whether the politician was lying or not and may suggest that something was "untruthful" but in the end declaring that both sides fudge the truth (offered without evidence). Once again, the news consumer is left thinking both sides are of a kind of the truth must lay in the middle.

When one side is clearly lying and the other side is not, who will speak up and say so? In recent days, we've seen many news stories seeming to debunk a politician's claims yet in the end they always like to muddy the waters and pretend as if both sides do it exactly equally. This false equivalence is meant to dampen criticism that the media is being overly harsh on one side or the other and to reduce angry calls and letters that could cost a journalist their job. Often though, this criticism is simply a charade designed to play into a deliberate campaign where lies go unpunished, where truth no longer means anything and average people are left with nothing to do but vote based not on policies and issues but on wedges and code words.

This false debate debases our politics, but more importantly it's ruining our country.

Media lays an egg inreporting on reform effort

It's said that space abhors a vacuum and so, it seems, does the media.

When word finally got out that a grassroots group had a petition drive in motion that would reform Michigan government the media was caught by surprise. The group was quietly gathering the 370,000+ signatures it would need to get the effort to amend the state constitution on the November ballot, but no one told the power brokers in Lansing. Alarm bells went off and soon political reporters and bloggers were hunting for every shred of information they could get about Reform Michigan Government Now. Sadly, they got a lot of it wrong.

In their effort to fill space in their newspapers the reporters often turned to uninformed idiots who were willing to pretend they knew what they were talking about. In that reporting was also an elitist element that sounded angry that the grassroots effort hadn't consulted the power brokers and influence peddlers in Lansing. Surely, this group was a secret front for some known lobbying group, the Lansing insider class decided. And all the rest of their reporting has been spent trying to prove their initial belief. Instead of trying to find the truth, the media decided it knew the truth and would fit the story around that supposition.

In the days and weeks that followed the initial news leak, many established Michigan pundits and politicos weighed in. Early on, State Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer commented positively on many of the reforms in the package and thus the media decided he must be behind the effort. When it came out that many of the members of the unsuccessful Unicameral Michigan campaign to "Fire the Senate" were behind Reform Michigan Government Now and that paid petition circulators were being used (sadly, you almost can't get a petition drive on the ballot if you don't have money to pay professionals to do the collecting- only one such effort was ever successful in Michigan), the media demanded to know who was funding the drive. In the absence of correct information, it was floated that John Stryker was bankrolling the effort. When Stryker issued a firm denial we get yet more speculation and no real information. The media's obsession with the money seems to have blinded it from doing it's job and asking the only important question- is it any good for Michigan? Should it pass?

It's the media obsession with Brewer and Stryker which is so "striking" to me and gets to the heart of why these reforms are so necessary. In their attempts to find a way to attack the reform movement, they wish to 'kill the messenger' and they can't really do that with a group of ordinary citizens other than to incorrectly label group treasurer Harland Nye as a chicken farmer (he's a retired band director). The group of political outsiders has played their cards close to the vest which seems to be an affront to the sort of insider-class culture in Lansing. Despite employing the public relations firm of former state House speaker Dianne Byrum, the group is attacked for not being more establishment such as when Jack Lessenberry writes that:

They just might have been able to pull this off if they had gotten together with a few reasonable Republicans, like Joe Schwarz and Kalamazoo County Administrator Don Gilmer, and come up with something truly bipartisan. Instead, to give themselves cover, they put up as their official treasurer an 80-year-old retired high school band director who says he is a Republican. Give me a break.

So, is Lessenberry saying Mr. Nye is NOT a Republican or that he's not reasonable? Is he saying it's bad that the group lies but only because they didn't tell a different lie, one that him and his reporter buddies are used to hearing? Give US a break, Jack. If you don't think the effort is bipartisan, please tell me what's in the plan that makes it partisan. Instead we get more garbage like this:

But the proposal reveals its naked partisanship in its intention to eliminate two state supreme court justices.

So, it's nakedly partisan to preserve a majority of Governor Engler-appointed judges on the bench? It's partisan to take a non-partisan method for eliminating the two most inexperienced members of the bench? Lessenberry's arguments show exactly how much the media is contorting itself to find reasons to oppose these common sense proposals which make up a rather cohesive set of reforms that could never be enacted in our poisoned partisan atmosphere in Lansing. Yet some of the people who make a living speaking out against are now mad that the proposals aren't more blatantly partisan. In fact, Lessenberry decries that the proposal doesn't target the most independent member of the state Supreme Court (the court which was recently ranked worst in the nation in judicial partisanship by the way). Huh?

In a town where partisan politics is everything, Lansing can't help but turn an anti-partisan/non-partisan effort into something which can only be seen through the filter of which party it helps or hurts. What's funny is that in none of these efforts do we hear any good reasons why one side might be advantaged. We do suddenly hear how partisan our non-partisan justices are though which should come as a surprise to anyone who thought they were voting for judges and not political parties.

Which brings me back to the effort by some to paint this as a secret scheme by Mark Brewer to control state government. First, the state Democratic Party is poised to have its best November in a long time. With a toxic Republican brand and a charismatic figure on the top of the ticket who threatens to boost turnout in the state, Democrats in Michigan have to be swooning at their prospects this fall. Yet we are to believe that instead of trying to turn out the vote in November, Brewer has been busy crafting and organizing an effort that would take redistricting away from his own party? We are also supposed to believe that Brewer is secretly behind a plan that includes proposals floated or supported by people such as Terry Lynn Land (no-reason absentee voting), Glenn Steil Jr. (reducing number of state legislators), and Chief Justice Clifford Taylor (reducing number of judges), among others?

In their rush to judgment and then to be jury and executioner, the media has conveniently forgotten many of the proposals were originally proposed by members of the Republican Party and seem to exclusively focus on the ones that do not benefit the Republican Party machine while skimming over the rest (some of which, like losing the power of redistricting which has helped deliver State Senate control to the GOP despite getting less votes state-wide, actually hurt Democrats but the reporting never seems to mention that aspect). State Republican Party chair Saul Anuzis has attacked Reform Michigan Government Now's ballot drive with his standard line of attributing anything he doesn't like as coming from trial lawyers and liberals but Mr. Anuzis and the media have been pretty scant on what in the proposal would advantage Democrats. Other than the coincidental fact that the two most inexperienced Supreme Court justices are "Republicans" despite their constant past efforts to pretend they were non-partisan. Apparently it's bad that the effort is so partisan except when it should have been even more partisan. Yes, they think you're that stupid that you can't see through their shifting reasons for attacking the grassroots effort.

What's sad is that most average citizens in Michigan realize state government is badly broken and want it to get fixed but feel powerless to do anything about it. After too many years of divisive wrangling over budget issues and taxes, Lansing has proven it can't take on the toughest of issues. What is needed is for someone, anyone to step up the plate and deliver a set of much-needed reforms that would help reduce the partisan atmosphere and help voice the disgust of the people at what is happening in Lansing. Instead, we get the media trying to kill the messengers. We get the partisan spin of Saul Anuzis reported as truth. We get lies about the honest people in Barry County who've given years of their lives in trying to make Michigan state government actually work for the people. We get a defense of the status quo. We get more of the same.

Today, the group is expected to drop well more than the required number of signatures, with plenty of cushion to ensure that the effort gets on the ballot in November, into the hands of the Secretary of State. The special interests have already lined up against this, the influence peddlers have been honing their attacks. All I ask is that the people quit listening to the media trying to tell them they're too stupid to understand the proposal and look into it themselves. The media shouldn't waste it's time telling you WHAT to think about it but instead telling you what it actually would do. If they can't do that simple task then they are part of the problem too.

In fact, not only are they trying to tell you what to think about the proposals instead of giving you the information to think for yourself, the media has gotten many of their facts wrong. If you can't trust them to give you the basic facts about Reform Michigan Government Now, then how can you trust them when they try to tell you it's a bad idea? That's something even a chicken farmer could understand.