January, 2020
Washington – On any given day, I try to read editions of these newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Omaha World-Herald, the Lincoln JournalStar, and the Berlin-based Der Tagesspiegel. Collectively, they provide a fairly broad perspective of what is going on in three capitals and in the rest of the world.
None of these papers can accurately be called purveyors of fake news. To say such is reminiscent of the Nazi term used for Germany's mainstream media before it was shut down: Lügenpresse.
But if not fake, today's print media is often misleading, at least from my perspective.
Ideological over-classification. Many newspaper articles and editorials use a left-center-right ideological continuum as a framework to discuss policies and people. The world is not so neatly compartmentalized, however, and such classifications often do not bear up over different decades, different parts of the world, within political parties, or in people's minds. Moreover, many studies show that voters don't have a good grasp of the framework newspapers use. Which leads to bafflement among pundits, but before they blame voters for contradictory beliefs and behaviors, they need to check their own assumptions. Most newspapers would greatly benefit by editing out misleading, inapt, and overused ideological classifications.
Meaningless economic numbers. Economics is hardly an exact science. Book after scholarly book recount how economists got it exactly wrong in their theories and prescriptions for the national economy. If theory is wrong, or at least suspect, why all the precision in, for example, how much the Dow is up or down, let alone pseudo-authoritative explanations of why? Economic reporting for decades missed the widening gap between the rich and poor in America. That is the economic story of our age. It was first broken by European scholars and journalists.
Identity politics. Like ideologies, racial and gender identities are frameworks for misleading reporting. Such identities are important at some level, but hardly the all-defining characteristics that command so much newspaper coverage. Democratic primary polling, so far in 2020, is disproving the idea that identity politics is strongly correlated with voter preferences.
Regional chauvinism. Distain drips from much newspaper coverage of political, economic, and cultural issues beyond a newspaper's home base. Fly-over deplorables; effete elites; superior Kultur. Such biases are often thinly disguised. I find much deplorable myself about Nebraska politics – state government is a one-party mess – but analysis of rural heartland issues from the NYT that can't distinguish hay from straw, or know a bull from a cow, will not be taken seriously. It goes the other way, too: can the OWH be considered a serious newspaper if the Farm Bureau's endorsement of Ben Sasse is front-page, above-the-fold news? That item belongs back with the truss ads.
Word misuse. Newspaper writers routinely misuse terms such as federalism, exceptionalism, evangelical, socialism, and populist. It goes beyond sloppiness; the writers too often demonstrate that they don't know the history and meaning of the words they are using.
Distraction. When not pre-occupied with the above, today's newspapers are wont to be distracted by contrived news, designed to distract. The President is a master of manipulating the media by distraction at the expense of coverage of profound developments that are all but ignored. Climate change is the best example. It gets covered inadequately only after yet more stories about who is more center-left compared to whom, whose identity is what, and shaggy dogs being released at the White House.
Why does this matter? Newspapers are in competition with social media for the attention of voters. An informed populace is essential to a functioning democracy. Newspapers must have credibility to compete successfully. There is much they could do to enhance their product so they don't become repeat victims of the likes of Josef Goebbels and his lies about the Lügenpresse.
Der Vergleich ist eine Warnung. Es droht eine neue NS-Zeit. Believe it.
