Power Line: "Slavering right wing hacks," nous?

December 31, 2004

"Slavering right wing hacks," nous?

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber thinks that Nick Coleman's attack on Power Line, though "rather weak," makes a point that's "hard to refute:"

It’s a bit rich for slavering right wing hacks [I'm sure he didn't mean us] to accuse the mainstream media of ideological bias and expect to get taken seriously.

Is this point really so hard to refute? It seems to me that anyone who can demonstrate serious bias on the part of a mainstream media that denies bias will be taken seriously. That was part of our "wager" when we started Power Line, and it no longer constitutes conjecture. Blogs like ours are taken seriously when we point out significant instances of MSM bias. And not just by Time Magazine. The other day, I heard Don Hewitt (creator of 60 minutes) and Ben Bradlee (who helped create the modern MSM) agree on C-SPAN that they take bloggers seriously. (Bradlee, though, questioned whether the rise of blogs is a good thing, as well he might).

Farrell next claims to have detected "double-think" in the blogosphere:

On the one hand, bloggers like Glenn Reynolds respond to their critics by saying that they can’t cover everything, and that they’re not providing a news service, only opinions. On the other hand, they seem to believe that blogs should radically change or replace the mainstream media. Either of these statements is reasonable enough on its own, but taken in conjunction, they’re pretty jarring.

Here, I think Farrell is missing the distinction between particular blogs and the blogsphere as a whole. No one blog can cover everything and many blogs, such as ours, deal primarily in opinion. But one can envisage a blogosphere that readers rely on to obtain essentially everything they now get from a newspaper or a newscast. The basic facts of a story would come from links to news services. The analysis would come from specialized blogs or non-specialized blogs that happen to have expertise in the subject area. The op-ed type opinions would come from the opinion blogs. I actually think we're pretty close to having such a blogosphere, although that's clearly a matter for debate.

Thus, the blogosphere is likely to replace the MSM for a growing number of consumers. Many others will continue to check out the MSM, but regard it much more skeptically (that is, take it much less seriously) than they have done in the past. It will be up to the MSM to decide whether it wishes to respond to these developments by undertaking radical change.

UPDATE: Instapundit has resonded to Farrell. So has Hugh Hewitt. Hugh also addresses criticism directed at him by Matt Welch. Welch argues that bloggers like Hugh who accuse the MSM of bias will soon by judged by the standard to which they hold the media and, being biased themselves, will fall short. As Hugh patiently explains, however, the standard by which he is judging the MSM is not "bias," but rather the willingness or unwillingness to dress up bias as "objectivity." In other words, honesty.

HINDROCKET adds: First of all, I don't know of anyone who thinks blogs can or should replace the mainstream media. I certainly don't, although, as Deacon says, the blogosphere can supplant the mainstream media in the limited sense that it can be an entry point whereby readers are directed to mainstream news sources as well as to blog commentary. But the idea that the blogosphere can't be valuable or important unless it is a complete replacement for conventional media is ridiculous.

Second, I think that distinctions can usefully be drawn among several concepts that are often assumed to be interchangeable: bias, objectivity and neutrality. "Bias" is usually used pejoratively; I would use it to mean reporting news in a way that is in fact slanted, while purporting to report it neutrally. I would say that the New York Times is biased, but Power Line isn't. "Objectivity" I understand to mean, essentially, fairness. Being objective means to weigh evidence and arguments fairly, as, for example, by reporting that President Bush turned in a mediocre performance in a debate, even though the person making that judgment supports the President. I would say that Power Line is objective, or at least tries to be, while 60 Minutes is not objective. "Neutrality" means indifference as among competing parties, candidates or ideologies. Power Line is not neutral; neither is the Washington Post. There are probably a few truly neutral news sites or commentators, but not many.

Not everyone will agree with my definitions; maybe no one will. But I think it is helpful to distinguish among these various concepts. In general, "bias" is not a term that it is helpful to apply to commentators, as opposed to reporters. Paul Krugman is a liberal and Ann Coulter is a conservative. One could say that they are both "biased" because they argue for a particular point of view, but that would be meaningless and unhelpful, in my opinion. With respect to commentatary, which is what we at Power Line generally do, the relevant questions are: Are the facts accurately and fairly represented? Are there other, obviously relevant facts that are omitted from the analysis? And, are the arguments made on the basis of the facts logical and persuasive?

People often refer to blogs as expressing "opinions," just as some columnists are referred to as "opinion columnists." Indeed, some newspapers take the position that the usual concepts of truth and falsity are inapplicable to opinion columnists because everything they write is, by definition, only an "opinion." (The New York Times, for example, has only recently abandoned this view.) This seems to me to be silly. No columnist or blogger who only expresses his or her opinions will last long. The question is: how persuasively does the commentator support his or her conclusions (call them opinions, if you want to) with facts and logic?

For the most part, sites like Power Line are not in direct competition with with news gatherers and reporters, although we do original reporting on occasion. We are, however, in direct competition with op-ed columnists. Anything they can do, we can do. And, like op-ed columnists, one of the things that we do is to critique the accuracy and fairness--call it "bias"--of news reports in the mainstream press. When we critique mainstream news sources, we try to be objective, but we are not neutral.

That's how I see it, anyway.

Posted by Paul at 10:48 AM |

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