I just want to express my appreciation for the devoted journalists and news editors who work hard every day to uncover and report the stories that matter, who strive to live up to the standards of journalistic ethics, who are devoted to checking their sources and correcting errors when they make them, and who face the risks linked to exposing the truths that people in positions of privilege and power would rather went unreported.
I'm talking about the reporters and journalists who investigate, who gather the news and tell the stories about what is happening in our world. I don't mean the pundits and op ed writers who give their spin on news that others have gathered. There's a place for them, too, of course. But right now I want to appreciate those who go where they might be unwelcome in order to hear what's being said and see what's being done, who ask the questions that some don't want answered, who keep pushing to get those questions answered even at personal cost, who demand transparency in government even when government doesn't want to give it, who immerse themselves in a community and interview diverse voices and travel to distant places to see what is happening with their own eyes. And who then put the pieces together and find the words to bring the story to life for the rest of us.
Like all of us, they are imperfect. Like all of us, they have points of view that inevitably impact what they focus on and what they overlook, which stories they tell and how they tell them. But like all of us, the vast majority are well-meaning and sincere and devoted to working hard and doing their jobs honestly and well. And like most professions, the news profession has standards of professionalism and responsibility and a collective commitment to living up to them.
Their job is not one I would want, especially at a time when they are being vilified with blanket put-downs and sweeping, undefended accusations, a time when pretenders uncommitted to the profession pump out vapid junk while too many consumers believe the junk and call the real thing fake news.
That they persevere is a testament to the human spirit. So today I want to say thank you.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2018
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Should Roy Moore Withdraw?
Should Roy Moore withdraw from the Senate race in favor of another Republican candidate?
There are different ways to approach this question. You could approach it as a moral question. Or you could approach it as purely a question of political expediency.
I think the question of political expediency is easily answered but far less important. If you're a Republican, then even if you care only about retaining the Republican majority in the Senate and nothing about the moral character of office-holders (hopefully that isn't true of my Republican friends), the answer would seem to be this: you should hope that Moore withdraws and try to convince him to do so. Democrats who care nothing about moral integrity (hopefully not the case for my Democratic friends) would likewise hope that he stays in the race.
The reason for this is pretty clear. In Alabama, the Republican nominee for a Senate seat would ordinarily be a lock to win. But now we have this growing body of allegations from both women and people in Moore's home town, all painting Moore as someone with a history (while he was an adult professional in his 30s) of sexual pursuit of teenager girls as young as 14. One allegation, if true, would be a clear case of sexual assault. This situation means that if Moore does not withdraw, a seat that is usually reliably Republican has become vulnerable. And so Republicans who care only about party victory should call for Moore to withdraw, and Democrats who care only about party victory should sit back and hope he stays in the race while the scandal grows.
But what should people who care about basic decency, regardless of politics, recommend? Here, there are two questions that seem relevant. First, how bad is it for a man in his 30s to chase after girls as young as 14, and what does it say about that person more broadly? I'm not going to explore this question because I find the answer obvious: it's very bad and says nothing good. This is why I've stopped watching Kevin Spacey, whatever his acting skills. 14 year olds are children.
The second question has to do with when we should believe a charge of this magnitude when it is leveled against someone. More precisely, when can I legitimately act on such a belief? Here, it matters what kind of action we're talking about. There's a big difference between locking someone away based on a belief, and withdrawing political support or urging someone to withdraw from a political race.
The question of whether to support a political candidate is a different question than that of whether to convict someone of a crime. We don't want to lock away innocent people, and so in a courtroom we should presume innocence until guilt is proved. But we don't want to risk having seriously morally compromised people wielding enormous political power, which is why "innocent until proven guilty" is surely too high a standard of evidence for decisions about who to support for political office.
Accusations are of course easy to make, and so uncorroborated accusations may be insufficient reason to withdraw support from a candidate. But when there are enough allegations whose verifiable details have been confirmed, all mutually reinforcing each other, to make a claim of this sort *credible*, that strikes me as enough to warrant withdrawing political support.
Of course, so much hinges on our trust in the journalistic integrity of those who report these allegations and the investigation into them. Here, it makes a difference to me that the story was broken by a venerable newspaper that, whatever its political biases, is known for having the highest standards in terms of gathering evidence and assessing the credibility of sources before going to print. The Washington Post (like every news outlet) may be influenced by political bias when it comes to choosing which stories to focus on, but when they report on a story their reputation for following journalistic standards is high.
Are there skeletons in other political closets that haven't been exposed and are just as bad? Probably. But we cannot ignore a skeleton that has fallen out of a closet because of hypothetical skeletons that might be hiding in other closets.
So: I think Moore is now a vulnerable candidate whose continued candidacy might actually give a Democrat an unprecedented chance of a win in Alabama. But I think Democrats should ignore this and join calls for Moore to step aside in favor of another Republican candidate even though this means closing a political "opportunity." And I think Republicans should call for him to step aside for a reason far more important than politics: because it's the right thing to do.
There are different ways to approach this question. You could approach it as a moral question. Or you could approach it as purely a question of political expediency.
I think the question of political expediency is easily answered but far less important. If you're a Republican, then even if you care only about retaining the Republican majority in the Senate and nothing about the moral character of office-holders (hopefully that isn't true of my Republican friends), the answer would seem to be this: you should hope that Moore withdraws and try to convince him to do so. Democrats who care nothing about moral integrity (hopefully not the case for my Democratic friends) would likewise hope that he stays in the race.
The reason for this is pretty clear. In Alabama, the Republican nominee for a Senate seat would ordinarily be a lock to win. But now we have this growing body of allegations from both women and people in Moore's home town, all painting Moore as someone with a history (while he was an adult professional in his 30s) of sexual pursuit of teenager girls as young as 14. One allegation, if true, would be a clear case of sexual assault. This situation means that if Moore does not withdraw, a seat that is usually reliably Republican has become vulnerable. And so Republicans who care only about party victory should call for Moore to withdraw, and Democrats who care only about party victory should sit back and hope he stays in the race while the scandal grows.
But what should people who care about basic decency, regardless of politics, recommend? Here, there are two questions that seem relevant. First, how bad is it for a man in his 30s to chase after girls as young as 14, and what does it say about that person more broadly? I'm not going to explore this question because I find the answer obvious: it's very bad and says nothing good. This is why I've stopped watching Kevin Spacey, whatever his acting skills. 14 year olds are children.
The second question has to do with when we should believe a charge of this magnitude when it is leveled against someone. More precisely, when can I legitimately act on such a belief? Here, it matters what kind of action we're talking about. There's a big difference between locking someone away based on a belief, and withdrawing political support or urging someone to withdraw from a political race.
The question of whether to support a political candidate is a different question than that of whether to convict someone of a crime. We don't want to lock away innocent people, and so in a courtroom we should presume innocence until guilt is proved. But we don't want to risk having seriously morally compromised people wielding enormous political power, which is why "innocent until proven guilty" is surely too high a standard of evidence for decisions about who to support for political office.
Accusations are of course easy to make, and so uncorroborated accusations may be insufficient reason to withdraw support from a candidate. But when there are enough allegations whose verifiable details have been confirmed, all mutually reinforcing each other, to make a claim of this sort *credible*, that strikes me as enough to warrant withdrawing political support.
Of course, so much hinges on our trust in the journalistic integrity of those who report these allegations and the investigation into them. Here, it makes a difference to me that the story was broken by a venerable newspaper that, whatever its political biases, is known for having the highest standards in terms of gathering evidence and assessing the credibility of sources before going to print. The Washington Post (like every news outlet) may be influenced by political bias when it comes to choosing which stories to focus on, but when they report on a story their reputation for following journalistic standards is high.
Are there skeletons in other political closets that haven't been exposed and are just as bad? Probably. But we cannot ignore a skeleton that has fallen out of a closet because of hypothetical skeletons that might be hiding in other closets.
So: I think Moore is now a vulnerable candidate whose continued candidacy might actually give a Democrat an unprecedented chance of a win in Alabama. But I think Democrats should ignore this and join calls for Moore to step aside in favor of another Republican candidate even though this means closing a political "opportunity." And I think Republicans should call for him to step aside for a reason far more important than politics: because it's the right thing to do.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
One More and I'm Done with This: Bipartisan Misogyny and Media Bias
In a recent pair of articles and in a Fox News segment, Kirsten Powers has used Rush Limbaugh’s verbal assault on Sandra Fluke as a platform from which to raise concerns about misogyny by media pundits on the other side of the partisan divide.
What she comes up with is a rather telling overview of misogynistic remarks, some more overt, others more subtle. While in my judgment no single case comes close to the outrageous indecency of the recent Limbaugh case (the obsessive, multi-day verbal sexual assault of a young woman who dared to step into the public spotlight to testify on matters important to her), there can be no question that there are voices on the so-called political left who have a habit of ridiculing conservative women by sexually objectifying them.
Bill Maher is the most obvious and serious case, especially with his targeting of Sarah Palin, whom he has called a “twat” and a “c**t.” This is a clear case of dismissing a person through sexually objectifying language: a woman who achieves political prominence is identified with her sexual parts, becoming something to screw rather than a person to be listened to. That Maher did this in a standup comedy routine is a shoddy defense for someone whose career straddles the line between comedy and political punditry.
I don’t agree with much of what Sarah Palin has to say. I find her rhetoric divisive and occasionally dangerous. But to dismiss her in this way is to reinforce the sexist infrastructure of our culture.
Less likely to attract attention than Maher’s use of the c-word is the frequent dismissal of women using gender-specific labels like “bimbo.” But such remarks are also misogynistic. They play into and reinforce sexist gender hierarchies. And Powers offers a nice range of remarks that fall into this category.
All told, Powers makes a compelling case, and the conclusion of her first essay deserves to be taken seriously. Here’s what she says:
Still, there are those who are arguing based on the media attention Limbaugh has received for his assault on Fluke--and the lack of parity directed to Maher and others on the left--that there is an overall liberal bias in the media. But I don't find this to be a very compelling case for liberal media bias. Although Maher is guilty of the same kind of thing that Limbaugh is guilty of, Limbaugh’s offense has an egregiousness that is hard to match. The distinctive furor over Limbaugh’s recent remarks can readily be explained in terms of their sustained and extreme character, as opposed to the partisan leanings of their source.
After all, this degree of media attention and public condemnation is a first for Limbaugh, even though he’s been engaging in misogynistic attacks on women for decades. What sparked the strong response this time was just how far over the line Limbaugh went.
But I think it is a problem that the broader issue of bipartisan media misogyny has not received more attention than it has—and that for many, Limbaugh represents some isolated horror. What Kirsten Powers’ litany of “liberal” misogynists does, I think, is offer a glimpse of the state of public discourse in general, on both sides of traditional party lines. While she’s accused of trying to make Limbaugh’s rants an occasion to bash liberals (although she professes to be one herself), it is more charitable to see her as using the extreme case as an opportunity to call attention to a broader problem.
The reality seems to be this: There is a lot of sexist discourse out there, on both sides of the political divide, and most of it passes largely under the media’s radar, ignored or trivialized unless, as in the recent Limbaugh case, it rises to the level of verbal sexual assault (or unless pointing it out serves some partisan agenda). In other words, the media tends to treat the rare and extreme cases as something to be horrified at, but doesn’t take much notice of the more pervasive, insidious, and bipartisan sexist behaviors that make such extreme cases possible.
Here, I am reminded of points Catharine MacKinnon makes about rape in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. As she puts it there, “In feminist analysis, a rape is not an isolated event or moral transgression or individual interchange gone wrong but an act of terrorism and torture within a systematic context of group subjection, like lynching.” On this perspective, rape is not some isolated horror, some anomalous crime. Rather, it is the most vivid and terrible expression of a pervasive system of subjugation.
For MacKinnon, rape is actually a piece of the broader patriarchal system, insofar as the fear of being raped operates in the background of many sexual encounters, helping men to secure the compliance of women who otherwise would not submit to sex. More provocatively, MacKinnon represents rape as an extreme instance of the same kind of thing that is done to women every day in patriarchal societies.
But it serves the status quo to deny this. It serves the interests of the beneficiaries of patriarchy to treat rape, not as an overt distillation of all the covert gender violence endemic in society, but as something that offends what the society is about. Cutting rape off from the broader context of which it is a part, treating it as special and unique, keeps us from noticing all the ways in which our society is doing the same sort of thing, in less vivid form, all the time.
Likewise, treating Limbaugh’s egregious verbal assault on Fluke as if it were an anomalous breach of social standards, an unbelievable and distinctive offense, helps to keep us from paying too much attention to all the ways in which the dismissal of women through sexual objectification is a routine feature of our cultural life, regardless of our politics.
Now in saying all of this, I don’t want to trivialize rape by equating it with offenses that don’t carry the same weight of violation. But I do want to recognize formal similarities, and see how broader social patterns feed into this more extreme kind of human degradation. Likewise, I don’t want to trivialize what Limbaugh did through false equivalences. But I think it’s very important to understand the broader culture, and the routine misogyny (such as when a professional woman is dismisses as a bimbo) which makes these more extreme acts of misogyny possible.
To the extent that the media ignores the more routine misogyny in our culture—to the extent that it fails to situate the extreme offenses within a broader cultural pattern that is deeply implicated in those offenses—the media is helping to protect the status quo from the kinds of progressive cultural critiques we find in feminist thought.
And on this basis, I am prepared to say that the media has a conservative bias--not in the sense that it tends to disproportionately favor the more relatively right-leaning political party, but in the sense that it tends to shield entrenched norms and patterns against seriously challenges that, were they to be taken seriously by society as they perhaps ought to be, would call for quite sweeping social change.
What she comes up with is a rather telling overview of misogynistic remarks, some more overt, others more subtle. While in my judgment no single case comes close to the outrageous indecency of the recent Limbaugh case (the obsessive, multi-day verbal sexual assault of a young woman who dared to step into the public spotlight to testify on matters important to her), there can be no question that there are voices on the so-called political left who have a habit of ridiculing conservative women by sexually objectifying them.
Bill Maher is the most obvious and serious case, especially with his targeting of Sarah Palin, whom he has called a “twat” and a “c**t.” This is a clear case of dismissing a person through sexually objectifying language: a woman who achieves political prominence is identified with her sexual parts, becoming something to screw rather than a person to be listened to. That Maher did this in a standup comedy routine is a shoddy defense for someone whose career straddles the line between comedy and political punditry.
I don’t agree with much of what Sarah Palin has to say. I find her rhetoric divisive and occasionally dangerous. But to dismiss her in this way is to reinforce the sexist infrastructure of our culture.
Less likely to attract attention than Maher’s use of the c-word is the frequent dismissal of women using gender-specific labels like “bimbo.” But such remarks are also misogynistic. They play into and reinforce sexist gender hierarchies. And Powers offers a nice range of remarks that fall into this category.
All told, Powers makes a compelling case, and the conclusion of her first essay deserves to be taken seriously. Here’s what she says:
It’s time for some equal-opportunity accountability. Without it, the fight against media misogyny will continue to be perceived as a proxy war for the Democratic Party, not a fight for fair treatment of women in the public square.Powers’ articles and comments were first brought to my attention by a conservative friend who has a long-standing concern about liberal bias in the media. Powers' own concern is not so much the idea that there is a liberal bias in the media in general. Rather, it is with the question of why more liberal political commentators tend to give their own a "pass" when it comes to misogyny. If misogyny is a problem, then it's as big a problem when it happens on your own side of the aisle as when it happens on the other side.
Still, there are those who are arguing based on the media attention Limbaugh has received for his assault on Fluke--and the lack of parity directed to Maher and others on the left--that there is an overall liberal bias in the media. But I don't find this to be a very compelling case for liberal media bias. Although Maher is guilty of the same kind of thing that Limbaugh is guilty of, Limbaugh’s offense has an egregiousness that is hard to match. The distinctive furor over Limbaugh’s recent remarks can readily be explained in terms of their sustained and extreme character, as opposed to the partisan leanings of their source.
After all, this degree of media attention and public condemnation is a first for Limbaugh, even though he’s been engaging in misogynistic attacks on women for decades. What sparked the strong response this time was just how far over the line Limbaugh went.
But I think it is a problem that the broader issue of bipartisan media misogyny has not received more attention than it has—and that for many, Limbaugh represents some isolated horror. What Kirsten Powers’ litany of “liberal” misogynists does, I think, is offer a glimpse of the state of public discourse in general, on both sides of traditional party lines. While she’s accused of trying to make Limbaugh’s rants an occasion to bash liberals (although she professes to be one herself), it is more charitable to see her as using the extreme case as an opportunity to call attention to a broader problem.
The reality seems to be this: There is a lot of sexist discourse out there, on both sides of the political divide, and most of it passes largely under the media’s radar, ignored or trivialized unless, as in the recent Limbaugh case, it rises to the level of verbal sexual assault (or unless pointing it out serves some partisan agenda). In other words, the media tends to treat the rare and extreme cases as something to be horrified at, but doesn’t take much notice of the more pervasive, insidious, and bipartisan sexist behaviors that make such extreme cases possible.
Here, I am reminded of points Catharine MacKinnon makes about rape in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. As she puts it there, “In feminist analysis, a rape is not an isolated event or moral transgression or individual interchange gone wrong but an act of terrorism and torture within a systematic context of group subjection, like lynching.” On this perspective, rape is not some isolated horror, some anomalous crime. Rather, it is the most vivid and terrible expression of a pervasive system of subjugation.
For MacKinnon, rape is actually a piece of the broader patriarchal system, insofar as the fear of being raped operates in the background of many sexual encounters, helping men to secure the compliance of women who otherwise would not submit to sex. More provocatively, MacKinnon represents rape as an extreme instance of the same kind of thing that is done to women every day in patriarchal societies.
But it serves the status quo to deny this. It serves the interests of the beneficiaries of patriarchy to treat rape, not as an overt distillation of all the covert gender violence endemic in society, but as something that offends what the society is about. Cutting rape off from the broader context of which it is a part, treating it as special and unique, keeps us from noticing all the ways in which our society is doing the same sort of thing, in less vivid form, all the time.
Likewise, treating Limbaugh’s egregious verbal assault on Fluke as if it were an anomalous breach of social standards, an unbelievable and distinctive offense, helps to keep us from paying too much attention to all the ways in which the dismissal of women through sexual objectification is a routine feature of our cultural life, regardless of our politics.
Now in saying all of this, I don’t want to trivialize rape by equating it with offenses that don’t carry the same weight of violation. But I do want to recognize formal similarities, and see how broader social patterns feed into this more extreme kind of human degradation. Likewise, I don’t want to trivialize what Limbaugh did through false equivalences. But I think it’s very important to understand the broader culture, and the routine misogyny (such as when a professional woman is dismisses as a bimbo) which makes these more extreme acts of misogyny possible.
To the extent that the media ignores the more routine misogyny in our culture—to the extent that it fails to situate the extreme offenses within a broader cultural pattern that is deeply implicated in those offenses—the media is helping to protect the status quo from the kinds of progressive cultural critiques we find in feminist thought.
And on this basis, I am prepared to say that the media has a conservative bias--not in the sense that it tends to disproportionately favor the more relatively right-leaning political party, but in the sense that it tends to shield entrenched norms and patterns against seriously challenges that, were they to be taken seriously by society as they perhaps ought to be, would call for quite sweeping social change.
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