Only Propaganda Is 'Good Journalism'?
Why are liberals in so much denial about liberal bias in the news? Why
do they think they’re bending over backward to be “objective” doing that
which Republicans see as partisan activism?
Daniel Froomkin of the Huffington Post – formerly of The Washington
Post – suggests an answer. He is exactly the kind of liberal agitator in
the newsroom who wants every news story to be a blazing editorial.
Every reporter must divide the world clearly between Liberal Sense and
Conservative Nonsense. His latest article is titled “Writing a Neutral
Story About Something So Heartless As the Food Stamp Vote Is Not Good
Journalism.”
On September 19, The New York Times reported “The Republican-led House
yesterday voted to make deep cuts to the food stamps program that has
kept millions of American families from going hungry since the recession
hit, saying its response to growing need was instead a sign of bloat
and abuse.”
In short, Democrats keep families from starving. Republicans reject “growing need” as “bloat.”
Froomkin argued that attempting objectivity, like quoting awful
Republicans, creates horrendous “triangulating mush” that fails to
educate voters. The Republican food-stamp vote was for him “a blatantly
absurd and cruel move [that] struck me as a good test of whether the
Washington press corps could ever bring itself to call things as they so
obviously are -- or whether they would check their very good brains at
the door and just write triangulating mush that leaves readers to fend
for themselves.”
Republicans should complain that while the Times story contained
spending numbers and quoted both Democrats and Republicans, it contained
the usual liberal media bias – indeed, editorial slant – in favor of
social programs growing by leaps and bounds, forever and ever. But
Froomkin was livid at the Times. “Like those at essentially every other
mainstream news organization, they wrote it straight. They focused on
procedure. They quoted both sides. And they called it a day.”
Froomkin characterized Republicans quoted in the Times as either
“fabulously disingenuous” or “shockingly dishonest.” Froomkin would
prefer these fools be banned entirely from the news pages, unless they
were tarred and feathered in print as unhinged extremists. Only that
socialist view is the “truth.”
Rep. Marlin Stutzman
was “fabulously disingenuous” to insist that anti-poverty programs be
measured by lifting people out of poverty, not just increasing spending
in an era of trillion-dollar deficits. Somehow, he’s the irrational one.
But when Republicans talk of dramatic spending increases in a news
story, Froomkin faults reporters. He claimed it contrasts “a nonsensical
non-argument with a fact, and makes it sound like two equal sides.” The
Democratic “fact” was that the dramatic increase showed “the program
was doing its job.”
Froomkin is such a censorious Pravda-style writer that he even faulted
his own colleagues at The Huffington Post for allowing “a long and
utterly disingenuous quote from [Eric] Cantor, left unrebutted.”
These are the facts Froomkin thinks are “disingenuous.” Since taking
office, the Obama Administration has more than doubled spending on food
stamps. Spending rose from $39 billion in 2008 to a projected $85
billion in 2012. House Republicans just voted to cut $40 billion from
food stamps over a ten-year span, which in federal-budget terms is a
tiny blip, not a “deep cut.” The Times story admitted that even with
these “cuts,” the food stamp program “would cost more than $700 billion
over the next 10 years.” The Times also noted that Senate Democrats
insisted there would be no “cuts.”
President Obama is responsible for a record number of food stamp
recipients (47.7 million in June 2013). That’s six million more
Americans than when Obama’s “recovery summer” began in June 2010.
Froomkin thought the newspaper accounts should agree with his view that
the House vote was “not only an undeniable act of heartlessness, it was
also perhaps the ultimate example of how today's increasingly radical
and unhinged GOP leadership picks on the poor, coddles the rich, makes
thinly veiled appeals to racism, and plays time-wasting political games
instead of governing.”
Froomkin saw some merit in the Washington Post vote on this story, since
it suggested conservative racism in pointing out the Census Bureau
reports that almost half the food-stamp recipients are black or
Hispanic. “People at the Post are smart enough to realize that the
primary political benefit to the GOP of attacking food stamps -- and
blaming Obama for the increase in their use -- is that it serves as a
dog-whistle, affirming to the base that Republican leaders are against
letting shiftless minorities keep taking money out of your (white)
pockets. People at the Post are not brave enough to say so, however.”
After listening to their Froomkin-esque friends, liberal reporters
think they’ve been painfully objective and dreadfully tolerant of
Republican viewpoints. That’s one reason the waterfall of liberal bias
never stops flowing.
