Back in the day, the old
Iron Blog was a great place to have a political debate. Larime Taylor ran the site and each week--barring any complications--two bloggers typically of differing ideologies would battle it out over a topic chosen by The Chairman. They were weeklong battles involving an opening and closing statement, as well as two posts in the middle primarily intended to shore up their arguments and poke holes in the arguments of their opponent. The format was fun and I spent time there both as an observer and commenter, as well as a judge for some of the battles. I made some good online friends at the forum, from both ends of the political spectrum. The site worked surprisingly well at bringing together people of differing political ideologies and creating friends and a solid dialogue.
Unfortunately, the site did not last. However, it has now been reborn as a part of
Blue and Red, an online political magazine also run by Larime Taylor. The format has changed, though, and now the focus is not on arguing with each other but on an Iron Blogger and a Challenger creating their own series of posts--dishes--that create a coherent menu. The goal is to decide on the best blogger, not necessarily who makes the best argument. The way the battles are now set up, there is not really any responding to the other person's posts.
Anyway, the first battle has begun at it is Battle Objective Journalism. As Iron Blogger Culture, I was the first person to be challenged and I'm taking on Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise. Our first dishes have already been posted on Iron Blog. Here is my first dish in its entirety:
Suppose, for a moment, that you support Social Security privatization. You believe you should be able to invest your money in a private account and reap the rewards of your shrewd financial decisions. Now, after a long wait, Senator Chuck Hagel has finally introduced a plan into the Senate and you eagerly read the details in a Los Angeles Times story. As Campaign Desk--a media watchdog blog run by the Columbia Journalism Review--notes, the Times article reads as such:
Hagel's bill, the Saving Social Security Act, would allow workers under 45 -- instead of those under 55, as the president has proposed -- to move as much as 4 percent of their payroll tax into investment accounts. It also would raise the retirement age from 67 to 68 and reduce benefits for individuals who retire at a younger age. [Italics ours.]
You read that and disappointment washes over you. You can't possibly justify spending two trillion dollars to overhaul Social Security when the potential benefits are so limited by how much of your taxes you can invest. Thus, you decide not to support the bill and, in fact, actively work against it, calling your Senators to voice your disapproval.
Unfortunately, Senator Hagel doesn't understand his own bill and neither does the Los Angeles Times. If they did, and if the Times had written what the bill actually does do, you would support it.
There are often two ways that people receive information--from the source of the information and from the press. This is particularly true in politics, where politicians talk about their plans and the press reports on them. However, politicians on both sides of the aisle cannot be trusted to be entirely honest and forthright with their information. There certainly are times that they are, but too often they couch their activities--or the activities of their opponents--in broad strokes of rhetoric that aim for emotional responses and, often times, obscure the facts of what they are proposing. Therefore, it is crucial that the public can turn to the second source of information--the press--to obtain a full and honest account of the situation.
Objective journalism is crucial to a functioning society and democracy. Unfortunately, the public simply cannot make personal contact with those who make the news and who shape our society and government. The vast majority of the public does not have time to do their own in-depth research on various issues so that they are properly informed. Instead, they depend on the press to do it for them. We, the public, sit down in the morning or evening with the local paper, we turn on the local evening news, we watch the network news shows or CNN, Fox or MSNBC, or we read Time and Newsweek. Perhaps we check out alternative weeklies or read our news online. Either way, the majority of the public partakes in journalism in some form and depends on it to provide them with an honest, objective look at the world. We depend on the press to educate us so that we can make informed decisions.
Objective journalism is not just about oft-mentioned media bias, it's about giving the public an honest evaluation of events in the world. It is about presenting actual reality, not just what people are saying about reality. It's about cutting through the rhetoric to deliver facts so that the public can make informed decisions about what is going on around them. This is important not just to be informed, but also to moderate the effect of the echo chamber we often place overselves in, surrounded by friends that agree with us politically and--almost certainly if you're an Iron Blog reader--immersing ourselves in political blogs that constantly affirm our ideology, sometimes at the expense of honesty.
Going back to the opening example, the Los Angeles Times failed in its pursuit of objective journalism. It took Senator Hagel's words in a speech at face value, apparently without attempting to verify them. When Campaign Desk contacted the Senator's office and requested a fact sheet on the plan, the sheet provided the correct information, which is that Senator Hagel's plan would allow the investment of four percentage points of a person's 12.4 percent payroll tax, rather than four percent of that tax as the article stated. The mistake should have been immediately apparent to anyone who has been following the Social Security debate, which you would expect a reporter writing an article on it for a major newspaper would be doing. Due to this blunder, there are now potentially thousands of people who have an inaccurate understanding of Senator Hagel's plan and might have a completely different opinion of the plan because of it.
Democracy cannot properly function with an ignorant electorate. A basic understanding of the facts at hand is crucial for people to govern themselves. However, strong and objective journalism has suffered greatly and is increasingly hard to find. Less than a month ago, a Harris poll showed that fully 47 percent of the population thinks that "Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001." There is no evidence to support that statement, yet nearly half of the population believes it. That is a failure of the press to properly educate the public and it speaks directly to the lack of objective journalism we see today.
A basic understanding of reality is needed for the public to make sound decisions about its future and its leaders, about the course and direction of policy, both domestic and foreign. Without that, we are, at best, going to find policies enacted that we do not like and did not expect. At worst, we will find our country barreling down a dark path we did not want. Either way, education is the key and a strong and objective press is the basis of that education.
- Joel Caris
The Between
I already have up my
second dish, as well. A preview from that:
Investigation, confrontation and the challenging of authority are all crucial aspects of journalism that goes beyond and yet compliments objectivity. The public needs journalists that have a certain level of hostility and skepticism in them to help keep politicians and other policy-makers honest and to keep the public educated and aware. A scientist's work is considered useless if it is not published in a peer-review journal because it is crucial that scientific discovery and research be able to hold up under intense scrutiny and examination. The same principles should be applied to any sort of social and political policy and its the press that must act in the manner of peer-reviewers. They are the one that the public needs to scrutinize the actions of politicians and tell us where the strengths and flaws lie.
If you're interested in following the debate, you can read more dishes--including those of The Challenger--over at Iron Blog. For my third post, I'll be detailing the ways in which the media has failed and later will be looking at how the press can better serve the public, as well as how bias, in a sense, can actually play a role in journalism.