The Truth Matters by Bruce Bartlett

Author:Bruce Bartlett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2017-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

9

BEWARE OF DECEPTIVE LABELING

KEY POINTS

The terms “right” and “left” have changed over time.

Be aware of the “Overton window.”

The media is often guilty of treating issues as if there were only two sides.

The mainstream media is loath to quote people without telling readers something about where that person is coming from, so that they have some idea of the source’s credibility or biases. But too often, the labels commonly used to describe people and organizations obfuscate more than they illuminate.

A favorite media term is “nonpartisan.” The Congressional Budget Office is nearly always described this way. While the CBO is a fine organization that generally strives for objectivity, it is not altogether nonpartisan. It is, after all, a part of the legislative branch subject to political pressure. Its director is appointed by the majority party, and both sides try to appoint directors who are sympathetic to their philosophy within the bounds of economic science and generally accepted analytical methods.

While “nonpartisan” simply means not formally aligned with a particular political party, it is sometimes misused to imply objectivity. When a reporter cites a nonpartisan study, she implies that it can be taken as truthful, which may or may not be the case. Some self-proclaimed nonpartisan organizations are highly ideological and may be closely allied with a political party, claiming nonpartisanship simply to protect their tax-exempt status or as PR to gain more media traction for their point of view.

Perhaps the biggest problem with media labeling is its convention of treating every issue as if there are two and only two sides to it—the right/conservative/Republican side and the left/liberal/Democratic side. Nuanced views that don’t fit neatly into one box or the other tend to be ignored. The only exception is that those in the media are permitted to say “a pox on both your houses” and say that both sides are equally wrong about some piece of conventional wisdom.

In most cases, both-siderism is just an excuse to avoid taking sides, rather than a writer using her judgment and analysis to say one side is for the most part right and the other mostly wrong. The worst aspect of both-siderism to me is when one side’s very mild offense is equated with the other side’s capital offense; for example, when a little white lie about nothing important and the other side’s big whopper about something important are condemned equally as lies.

Another problem is that media shorthand has great difficulty conveying the changing nature of philosophical or political points of view. The Republican Party has long been the right-of-center or conservative party and the Democrats have been the left-of-center liberal or progressive party. But most political scientists recognize that both parties have moved further toward their respective poles over the last couple of decades. That is to say, the parties have become more polarized over time.

The reasons for this polarization are many and complex. But one cause must certainly be the propensity of people to get their news from politically and philosophically compatible sources. Even if

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