Fantasy Land

Here's what Dan Froomkin writes in today's White House Briefing on the Washington Post web site, washingtonpost.com:

Editor and Publisher reports: "Despite several years of official and press reports to the contrary, a new Harris poll finds that half of adult Americans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when the United States invaded the country in 2003.

"This is actually up from 36% last year, a Harris poll finds. . . .

"In another finding wildly diverging from most expert opinion and media reports, Harris found that 64% said Saddam Hussein had 'strong links' with al-Qaeda, up from 62% in October 2004."

Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum writes: "As the prewar facts become clearer and Iraq spirals further into civil war, the American public becomes ever more withdrawn from reality. Even if complaints from us shrill liberal bloggers are dismissed, surely poll results like this should get the media pondering the question of whether they're doing a very good job of reporting what's really going on."

I'm aghast that so meany people are so gullible. It tends to support the argument that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. It explains why someone like George W. Bush could occupy the White House. These numbers have come out at a time when other polls are indicating that the majority of people in the US believe that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Perhaps people are appalled, as I am, by the number of American deaths in Iraq and to justify those deaths, they have to somehow justify the war in which they occurred. It's not at all a pretty picture, though.

Is the problem with the media? Maybe. The conservative media has never had any qualms about presenting commentary in the guise of fact. The Washington Times and Fox News have been doing it for years. The problem, though, is that most journalists, I think, are like a friend of mine who works for National Public Radio. I won't embarrass him by mentioning his name, but we've known each other since we were in third grade. We don't see each other often, so I'm not current on his political leanings, but when last I knew, he was an advocate of the midwestern Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. He's worked in print and broadcasting, and he's been thrown out of the offices of elected officials from both parties. He does not claim to be unbiased, but he claims to be balanced in his presentation. To the extent that his sources on both sides cooperate, he makes good on that claim. I've listened to some of his work and wondered why the hell he didn't just stick it to the corrupt son of a bitch he was reporting on. But that's not his style. If he unloads on, say, the so-called governor of Maryland, a Republican, other Republicans will refuse to cooperate with him. If he unloads on a corrupt Democrat, Democrats will stop taking his calls. He doesn't want to get his facts off the wire service feeds; he wants to be able to get them for himself, so he works hard to steer a middle ground. He encourages his audience to raise questions and draw conclusion, but no one can ever claim that he didn't make every effort to give both sides equal time.

Some folks would say that his work, as a result, is boring.

Compare this with Ann Coulter. She just screeches. She makes brassy assertions and, because she does so, some people say she's courageous. She has learned that it's the assertion, not the evidence, that people are after. They don't want the long strings of facts; they just want the bottom line--the assertion. And they don't want it to seem wimpy. They also like the fact that she's supposedly attractive. (No offense to my friend, but he looks like your basic middle aged guy, which is okay for a middle aged guy, but aside from his wife, few people would dream of considering him "hot." He's got a great look for radio. I'm afraid, though, that people want to listen to shrieking idiots like Ann Coulter and O'Reilly, and Hannity, and John McLaughlin and folks like that who tell them what to think rather than real journalists who lay out the facts and make clear that theirs is not the only available interpretation.

Are the media at fault? To the extent that they give these one-sided screamers who are neither unbiased nor balanced, they are. Before anybody gets the idea that I would deprive the screamers of their outlets, I wouldn't. I'd allow them to buy time on any TV station that's willing to sell it to them provided that they run a trailer saying that the broadcast was paid for by the person presenting and the station assumes no responsibility for any offensive or inaccurate content. But media executives need to leave reporting to reporters and make sure that commentary is clearly identified. And we don't need bombastic screamers. Unfortunately, people are too stupid to recognize that they're not giving the news or even responsible commentary; they're "entertainers," even when they aren't entertaining.