Thanks to the Media, Voter are the Big Losers in Last Night's GOP Debate

In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It's better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)
-Jay Rosen, Why Political Coverage is Broken

It was just weeks ago -- August 26th -- that press critic Jay Rosen gave the speech that quote was taken from. Rosen's criticism of the news media, boiled down quite a bit, was that political journalists place more emphasis on political strategizing than they do on the real world ramifications of the policies. That reporters value "savviness" above truth. And that this wrongheaded approach to political coverage hurts us all by causing people to know more about political wrangling than outcomes or consequences.

There is no better example of this than the coverage of last night's GOP debate in Tampa last night. All the coverage is about who won, who got in the best shot, who had the best zinger, what this means to the candidates going forward, and who's gained the most supporters from it. What is barely being covered -- and, in many outlets, not covered at all -- is the fact that the candidates at the debate were lying. Shamelessly, continuously lying.

PolitiFact followed the debate with fact-checks of key statements made by the candidates. Of those statements, only one rated "true" and one "mostly true"-- both were when Mitt Romney pointed out that Rick Perry was lying about his past stance on Social Security. So even those few true statements were lie-related. The rest of the statements ranged from "half true" to "pants on fire."

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The "Unbiased" Media Strikes Again

When I woke up this morning, I cracked open my paper and came across this simpleminded and asinine opinion piece, courtesy of the Wisconsin State Journal editorial board. Yay for the debt limit deal, they argue, because it proves that Washington still works, despite the best efforts of some imaginary, bipartisan obstruction patrol.

The ideologically-driven progressives on the far left and the rigid tea party crowd on the far right seem equally entrenched against building consensus around workable solutions.

But at some point, the relentless finger-pointing and blaming of "the other side" needs to stop so America's very real and complicated problems can be addressed in meaningful ways.

The first thing that popped into my mind was a quote from Paul Krugman. "The 'both sides are at fault' people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it's out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray," he wrote recently. "It's a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price."

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No, It's Not a 'Prank'

It's been called a "prank call," but a phone call to Scott Walker by a guerrilla journalist posing as billionaire GOP donor David Koch would be better described as an "interview by subterfuge." Clearly, Buffalo Beast's Ian Murphy remembers the journalist's motto; to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And Scott Walker is most definitely feeling afflicted today.

For his part, the governor is trying desperately to put the call behind him, telling reporters at a press conference that he hadn't said anything in the call that he hadn't said in public, when clearly this was BS. When had Walker told the public that he needed to bust the unions to be like Ronald Reagan, who Walker laughably claims brought down the USSR by breaking the air traffic controllers' union? When has Walker told everyone he'd thought of planting agent provocateurs in with the protesters, but ruled it out because it would probably backfire? When did he tell the public he was planning to trick Democrats into coming back to Wisconsin, in order to end his standoff with them?

And there's a lot in this call that almost no one is talking about. For instance, it's an example of either Walker's dishonesty and/or denial. He told Murphy that most of the protesters are from out of state -- a claim that PolitiFact immediately called false. Is Walker so out of touch with what's happening out his window that this is what he really believes? Or is this evidence that Walker would lie even to David Koch, if he thought it would serve his purposes? And how can Walker decry out-of-state agitators on a phone call with a Texas billionaire running ads supporting him without pegging everyone's hypocrisy meter?

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