Attack the Press
Mainstream media today reminds me of a barber from Greek myth. Once upon a time, the gods Apollo and Pan held a music contest. Apollo was the handsome, golden-haired, sweet-voiced virtuoso of the lyre, and Pan was the goatish player of rustic pipes. They appointed King Midas of Phrygia as judge. Midas listened to the two gods play and decided that Pan had won. In anger, Apollo turned Midas’s ears into ass’s ears.
Midas was embarrassed and hid his ears under elaborate head coverings. No one at court knew, but Midas couldn’t keep the secret from his barber. The barber would have lost his life if he had told anyone, but he couldn’t keep the secret to himself. One day he went out into a field, dug a hole, whispered into it, “King Midas has ass’s ears,” and refilled the hole. Later reeds grew up in that spot, and when the wind blows, the reeds whisper, “King Midas has ass’s ears.”
The press is the referee between our two political parties. These days the Democratic Party is full of successful policy makers with a solid grasp of reality while lies, fantasies, and corruption dominate the Republican Party. Yet the professional news media—I don’t mean right-wing media—can’t bring itself to render a clear judgment, in effect favoring the goatish Republicans.
The press is like the barber, whispering the truth in a way that no one can hear it. It reports what Democrats and Republicans say without revealing that one side is telling the truth, the other is lying. It covers small Democratic flaws obsessively while barely noting Republicans’ disqualifying faults. It publishes even-handed headlines that don’t reflect reality for stories where the key point is buried a dozen or more paragraphs down.
Democrats want to think of the press as their friend. So they issue gentle critiques of access journalism, false equivalence and so on. I doubt the kid-glove treatment will change the press’s behavior. What the press does has been ingrained by generations of J school teaching and professional practice. And thick-skinned reporters resist all criticism. Show how they betrayed the truth in a particular story, and they will dismiss you as partisan.
The press has an exalted view of its role at odds with its timidity. It preens itself on keeping the public informed and holding the powerful accountable. It boasts that its freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution. Journalists’ hypocrisy is where Democrats should attack and shame them into reporting the truth. Accordingly, Democrats should:
Demand truth, not just facts. Reporters think they’ve done their job if their stories contain facts, but the news media distorts reality by choosing which facts to report and which to ignore, which to emphasize and which to downplay, and by refusing to tell readers what those facts mean in practical terms.
Set public awareness of the truth as the standard. Insist that it’s the press’s job, not just to make the truth available, but to ensure the public knows it. It’s not a defense to say, “We ran a dozen stories on this,” if the point of the stories wasn’t clear and they were drowned out by horse-race political coverage.
Name names. Call out specific stories, journalists, and publications for suppressing the truth or for reporting it effectively. Every speech or blog post should mention an example of good or bad journalism, and Democrats should explain why it was good or bad.
Propose pro-truth reforms of the new media. For example, amplify studies showing which news outlets have the best-informed readers. Or restore equal-time regulations to what they were before Reagan’s FCC allowed more partisanship.
Over time these demands will shame the press into reporting the truth more faithfully. But in the short term, demanding more from the press alerts voters that the truth is different from what they’ve been led to believe—Republicans are worse than they imagine and Democrats are more competent.