On the Contrary

Okay, I admit it.  I am a news junkie.  Usually while I work in the afternoon I alternate between MSNBC and CNN depending on which one has interesting guests, or is not engaging in banal banter, or is not giving me advice about my health or my money which I don’t have any of.  Fox News I avoid like the plague because it does really represent a very biased point of view and the amount of miss reporting far exceeds the other two.

But in a New York Times article on Monday I find I am fairly out of step. The gist of the article was that with MSNBC tilting left, and Fox right, CNN, who they claim holds the middle, is losing viewership.  What was shocking if we look at the April numbers is that CNN has been fourth. Fox has 668,000 viewers; MSNBC has 300,000; and CNN has 271,000. HLN has 277,000.  Fox has over double the numbers of MSNBC.  So let’s do some critical thinking here.

First, is CNN really in the middle?  They get this label by claiming that they give both sides a fair hearing.  But as pointed out in yesterday’s blog and by Fareed Zakaria and others, we have 1 ½ political parties and the ½ are the Republicans.  So if you give the Flat Earthers the same credence in a debate with Round Earthers, isn’t the debate slanted?  If you are giving the Republican No Machine the same footing with the policies put forward by the Democrats, are you not actually giving more weight than is due to their arguments?  By not being aggressive enough at challenging these Republicans and their ideas and having the two pundit debate, CNN is actually more conservative leaning than middle of the road because they are lending credence to the arguments having equal weight.  Besides, remember where Glenn Beck came from, that Lou Dobbs continues to bash immigrants, and the business interviews are decidedly conservative and the net result is a right leaning news organization.

My point here is that if you are conservative you will watch Fox News, and if you are independent or liberal, you are probably going to watch MSNBC where old thinking is challenge by new thinking from Rachel Maddow, David Schuster, and Keith Olbermann.  Instead of just accepting their guest’s statements, they are well informed and ask penetrating questions.  CNN is really competing with Fox News for viewers.  Now in all fairness, this does not apply to CNN’s international reporting, which I don’t think anyone does a better job.  Lets just hope they continue to hold on to these reporters and journalists because they do a great service for us.

The article implied that one has to pick a bias to gain readership.  Is MSNBC really that left leaning or has the middle shifted which leaves CNN looking conservative?  I will give you that Keith Olbermann does very definitely have a bias, but Rachel and David reflect more what I think the younger nation is thinking.

But there is something else to consider about these numbers.  News junkies are old like me but the majority of our nation is younger and does not watch these shows.  What the 2:1 ratio of Fox watchers to MSNBC watchers tells me is that we have an older generation that is mostly conservative watching these shows.  Old people find change much more difficult to deal with and Fox reassures them that nothing is changing and the old ideas still are viable.  It’s a lie of course, but in the world of making money, it is profitable.  In the world of let the market place decide, if lies, shrillness, conflict and misinformation sell better than truth and rational consideration of reality, then that is what we get.  But some of us still like to use our brains, and MSNBC usually is better at questioning the conventional wisdom so it is my choice, the exception being Chris Mathews.

We all know bias in the press when we see it don’t we?  I am not so sure.  Sometimes it is very subtle and unintended, yet powerful.  The biggest problem in spotting it is to be able to put aside your own biases, which in my case are powerful.  But in my professional life, I spend most of my time finding solutions to the needs of the government whose only criteria is that it will work (and sound better than anyone else’s solution).  So one would think I could push aside my biases and try to evaluate how the press is doing.  I think not well.

Now we could start with Fox Noise, but except for some bright spots on their staff, most are working off Republican/conservative talking points and there is little dissent about their biases.  Then there is Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and O’Rielly, but they don’t even pretend to not be totally biased and driving every interview to one point of view.  But what about the rest of them?  Okay I will give you that Keith Olbermann is obviously biased, as is Rachel Maddow, but is it the same as Fox Noise?  I don’t think so and here is why.  If you have two competing points of view do you give them equal time and consideration even though one point of view is more in question than the other?  If you do, you lend equal credence to both points of view and in fact you are biasing the argument in favor of the less accepted or credible point of view.  The classic example is a debate between evolution and intelligent design.  There is no scientific evidence ever found to deny evolution, and intelligent design has been debunked as religion numerous times.  Yet when we have a debate and both sides are given the same status, uneducated viewers would assume that there is good evidence on both sides.  See how this is biased toward intelligent design?

So what happens when this involves a political discussion?  The same thing.  When one political advocate states something that is known to be inaccurate and the moderator of this he said/she said shouting match does not push back on what are known incorrect statements, as in the above case, they level the playing field for the party who is spewing falsehoods.  That is pretty much what we have today on cable media news where the moderator is along for the ride.  The Republicans are very good at this game fanning out like storm troopers with their talking points, and so the bias has been in their favor in this medium.  The answer is not for the Democrats to adopt similar tactics, but for the moderator to act like a real journalist and push back against obvious falsehoods before the other side has to waste precious airtime debunking the claims (on the defensive) before making their own points.

There is a variation to that when the moderator pushes back on one side only and I saw Wolfe Biltzer do that in an interview between a Republican and Democratic strategist.  The Republican made a claim and Wolfe turned to the Democrat and said “what about that” and when the Democrat responded, he followed up with several tough questions.  Good follow up so what is the problem?  The problem is that he then throws out a whole another new question and never follows up the Democrat’s point with the Republican.  After watching about five minutes of this, whether Wolfe meant to be biased or not, by only attacking one side he was once again skewing the playing field in favor of the Republican.  As one commentator has observed we have defaulted to conservative  points of view over the last 20 years or so and this defaulting is biasing the discourse by making the progressive debunk conventional wisdom instead of treating it as an equal point of view.

So back to the question of whether Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are as biased as most of Fox Noise.  Well they have a progressive point of view, but I have yet to be able to question any facts they have put forward, in contrast to many things I hear on Fox Noise.  Could it just be that these progressives are just presenting the truth and the conservatives are unable to garble their message so it must be biased?  Many have accused The Daily Show or The Colbert Report as being progressively biased, but aren’t they just really showing the hypocrisy of our political world and there is whole bunch more of it on the conservative side?

This election is about two very different ways of seeing government and policy.  There is massive data to show that conservative policies in most cases have failed miserably and we are living through the aftermath, yet our media still defaults to the conservative story line and makes progressives somehow go the extra mile to explain their views.  It allows all the misdirection about terrorists, socialists, and un-Americans instead of pushing these spurious claims aside and focusing on the issues.  It puts progressives at a disadvantage in almost every argument, but reality is creeping in and most people just know what we have been doing hasn’t worked.   Maybe facts or biased coverage doesn’t count anymore.  Maybe finally reality will be the great equalizer.

The other evening I was over at a friends for an impromptu barbeque and I was telling the story of a elderly couple I had met at the hospital when my oldest son Travis was severely injured when he ran in front of a car as a tyke (he is healthy and fine today).  They were in their 70’s and had jumped a freight train from Southern California to come up to Sacramento to find their daughter.  The wife had severely fractured her arm jumping off the train.  They were living at the Salvation Army and I gave them a ride back to their temporary quarters and a few dollars to get home.  They never found their daughter.  I told this story to emphasize that there are many people out there that are living on life’s edge and it is going to become a big problem for us in the future as they age.

My hostess’s response was that there were a lot of irresponsible people out there that had not planned for their future.  I patiently countered that maybe there are a lot of people who don’t have the assets we do such as intelligence, education, decent parents, or an equal chance at a good life or a good job.  Maybe because of this they never had “disposable income” to invest for their future.  I got a swift kick under the table from my wife and I shut up.  But here is a prime example of the difference between a progressive and a conservative framing of reality.  Mine was one of empathy for their plight and there by the grace of good fortune go I with some feeling of responsibility for their welfare, and hers was one that put the blame on them for their situation because they lacked discipline, didn’t follow the rules, and we shouldn’t have to be responsible for them because they were imprudent and immoral.  So lets look in detail at where I think this framing comes from.

For this discussion I will be stealing and quoting a great deal from George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” and his other book, “The Political Mind” which I have found about the best way of conceptualizing how these differences in viewing reality come about.  I will try to layout the conceptual framework from which a conservative sees the world and use this in the next few days to discuss how the Republicans in their convention are framing the argument for their platform and their candidates.  Note that I already discussed how a Progressive thinks in my blog “How a Progressive Thinks was on Display Last Night”.

George Lakoff has come up with a model of how progressives and conservatives conceptualize a nation and its appropriate responses by using the analogy of the two models of a family, a strict father family, and a nurturant parent family.  I have already talked about the nurturant parent family (the progressive) who views the world with empathy and responsibility, and governments role as protection and empowerment, so I am going to focus on the strict father family model to explain how a conservative sees the world.  Here are the underlying assumptions:
➢    The world is a dangerous place because there is evil out there
➢    The world is also a difficult place because it is competitive
➢    There will be winners and losers
➢    There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong
➢    Children are born bad in that they will do what feels good and have to be made good through discipline in the form of punishment

➢    What is needed is a strong father who will:

o    Protect the family in a dangerous world
o    Support the family in a difficult world
o    Teach the children right from wrong through punishment

From this conceptualization come the following conclusions:
➢    There must be punishment if a child (citizen) does something wrong so they will learn not to do it again and develop internal discipline to do the right thing so in the future they will be obedient and moral
➢    Without punishment there would be no morality and the world would go to hell
➢    Internal discipline has a secondary benefit in that it is what is required to get ahead in a competitive world:  If people are disciplined and pursue their self-interest, they will be prosperous

Thus the strict father model links discipline to prosperity through pursuing your self-interest.  Given opportunity and discipline, pursuing your self-interest should make you prosperous.  And here is the big one:  If you are prosperous, you are moral and this wealth is a measure of your well-being.  If you are poor, you lack self-discipline and have nobody to blame but your self.  Unimpeded self interest, as Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) proposed, is the ultimate good because the invisible hand of the market place will maximize the self interest of all.  Seen another way it goes like this:

“For conservatives, the market is seen metaphorically as an institution personified as legitimate authority who makes ration decisions, as imposing market discipline , and rewarding discipline and punishing the lack of it.  Prosperity is seen as a mark of discipline, which is in turn seen as moral, since discipline is required to obey moral laws and whatever is required by those in authority.  By the logic of this system of thought, if you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve your poverty.  It follows that if people are given things they have not earned, they become dependent and lose their disciplin and with it their capacity to obey moral laws and legitimate authority.”

Progressive thought is about empathy and responsibility, and conservative thought is about authority and obedience.  Okay it is a lot to digest, but let me give you some examples:
➢    Ever wonder why radical religious conservatives are all Republicans?  We have a strict father (God) who sets out rules (whatever scripture/dogma they believe) and if you unquestionably follow it, you will be moral and be rewarded with an afterlife, some with multiple virgins to contend with.  It is the strict father model.  Get a hint why conservative philosophy is undemocratic?
➢    Social Programs are giveaways that reward immoral people who haven’t followed the rules or shown self-discipline and make them dependent.  They reward bad behavior and break down morality.  Note that they are not against subsidies for big business because this rewards good behavior (accumulation of wealth)
➢    If your world is defined by the strict father model, then gay marriage threatens that legitimacy.  As George points out, marriage isn’t the issue, identity is.
➢    Government regulations or interference in seeking your self interest is a basic violation of the good from the competition of seeking your self-interest and thwarts your moral behavior
➢    Healthcare provided by the government will always be inferior because there is no self interest to promote the best possible healthcare.  It rewards people who lack self-discipline who have not provided for themselves
➢    Competition for resources imposes discipline and hence morality.  The discipline to be moral is the same discipline to win competitions and prosper.  Wealthy people tend to be good people, a natural elite.  The poor remain poor because they lack the discipline to prosper, and therefore deserve to be poor.  The increasing gap between rich and poor is good and natural.  Rich people are morally superior to poor people
➢    Immigrants are people who come here for a free ride and therefore must be thrown out of the country as they take jobs away from those who follow the rules.  We cannot allow one illegal immigrant to stay in the country because they are rule breakers and upset the moral system.  Lou Dobbs is the ultimate strict father
➢    God (the ultimate strict father) has dominion over nature and therefore nature is a resource for prosperity.  It should be used for human profit.  The same can be said for the animals.  If you are following the rules then global warming is not an issue nor is the demise of species.  Everything is self-correcting if government doesn’t interfere
➢    Democracy must take a second seat to the strict father who in times of threat will set the rules to keep us safe.  Questioning these rules is questioning the strict father and cannot be tolerated.  Thus we have George Bush trampling the constitution with his Republican brethren going right along with the help of some Democrats
➢    Because we are the most moral of the moral, in foreign policy, other nations must listen as we define what is right.  We are a superpower because we deserve to be through our discipline and rule following.  The free market must reign.  America must establish its view of right and wrong on the rest of the world which is a dangerous place full of undisciplined and immoral nations
➢    Ever wonder why “outdoors men” and NRA members flock to the conservative agenda?  Hunting and gun ownership reinforce the hierarchy of the strict father who provides for the family.  It reminds them of their view of the natural order of things

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea of the strict father model and how many conservative ideals come from this model applied to a nation.  George Lakoff makes the point that we all think in both modes, strict father and nurturant parent depending on how an argument is framed to activate that mode of thinking.  In the next few days I will try to point out how the Republicans are masters at activating the strict father mode.

But back to my original example:  Now I think you see what was going on.  From my hostess’s original reaction to the indigent elderly couple, the strict father figure model was in play.  They lacked self discipline, did not work hard, and were poor now.  They deserved their fate and to help them would be to encourage more undisciplined behavior and sap our tax dollars.  Ah but if the world were so simple.  You know the funny thing is that this is almost a instinctive reaction in the abstract, yet if it impacts their personal lives, they can show great compassion.

One further note on this already too long blog:  One characteristic I find in common with my conservative friends along with the idea that the poor some how caused their poorness, is that government workers are lazy flacks.  Although they make exception for the military, police, and fireman, the rest are leeches that suck our tax dollars dry.  But when you see it from the strict father model it is quite simple.  If you work for the government that provides services to people, then you are not seeking your self interest to the maximum, you are helping those that don’t follow the rules and are upsetting the natural order, and therefore you are lazy and encouraging immoral behavior.  You don’t deserve the benefits you receive because you are not competing and by paying taxes to support you, I am hurting my ability to fully secure my own self interests.   It is an interesting way to see the world.  Too bad they don’t have my 31 years of government experience to know that the majority work very hard and think there is more to measure a life by than money and self interest.