Cafferty Follow-up

I debated whether to blog on this, because I don't want it to seem like I'm obsessed with dissecting Cafferty and bringing him down to size. Frankly, I don't think he's important enough to warrant such a watchdog, and I know I'm not important enough to be said watchdog. But there was a fascinating exchange on CNN yesterday involving Cafferty that's worth comment.

Wolf Blitzer was talking to Cafferty and two other commentators about the NY Times decision not to publish a McCain opinion piece on Iraq. My interest here is not the bias of the NY Times in asking McCain to answer a loaded question on Iraq that was filled with liberal presuppositions as a condition for publication. What matters here is that the CNN conversation eventually morphed beyond the imbalance of the NY Times and into the realm of more generalized imbalance of the political media coverage overall. It is here that Cafferty did something very interesting.

Blitzer asked Cafferty whether Obama has gotten more and better media coverage than McCain. Now usually, when a press person fields a question of whether the press has been imbalanced in its coverage and has favored one candidate/party/viewpoint over another, the standard knee-jerk reflex is to deny that any such imbalance exists. This is part of why discussions on media bias tend not to get very far, because there is a basic debate about whether the bias in fact exists at all (by saying that this debate exists, I am not suggesting that the debate itself is legitimate - it's not). But Cafferty strayed from this basic talking point in responding to Blitzer.

Instead of denying that Obama has gotten more and better coverage, Cafferty DEFENDED the imbalance, thereby tacitly acknowledging that the imbalance is in fact real and measurable. For those of us who have listened to countless denials of media imbalance by media people who have a vested interest in foisting such delusions upon themselves and their audience, Cafferty's movement away from this was striking. For Cafferty, the issue of whether there has or has not been media imbalance in their coverage appears to be a settled question and no longer an issue for debate. No doubt, many (including me) would argue that Cafferty's admission of imbalance merely acknowledges the obvious. But the press isn't exactly known for such honesty in assessing its own performance. So even though Cafferty's tacit admission of imbalance is self-evident, it is nonetheless notable.

Cafferty went on to defend the media's imbalanced treatment of the candidates by arguing that in a variety of ways, Obama is fundamentally a 'better story' than McCain. In particular, Obama's 'charisma' was cited as one major characteristic that distinguishes him from McCain and makes him a 'better story'.

While Cafferty deserves to be commended in a limited way for breaking with the flat-earth mentality of his colleagues who continue to insist that the press is a balanced and objective lot, it needs to be pointed out that his efforts to defend the media's imbalance are very problematic. In tacitly acknowledging that Obama has gotten better coverage because he's the 'better story', Cafferty is justifying media imbalance with an imbalanced subjective (not objective) value judgment. Cafferty is justifying subjective coverage with subjective presuppositions without bothering to ask whether such subjective judgments are legitimate or universally shared. Put simply, it is not a stable and reliable standard upon which to erect or justify a cradle-to-grave approach to political news coverage. It's subjectivity heaped on subjectivity. When Cafferty cites Obama's 'charisma' as one reason to fawn over his every word and speech, Cafferty fails to ask the tough question of how much of Obama's 'charisma' is about Obama, versus how much of it has been created by a fawning press operating with the same kind of subjective predispositions that Cafferty himself is operating with.

In saying all this, I am not denying that Obama has significant appeal in the country. There is no question that many people are head-over-heels about him, and this can be seen in the record voter turnout during the primaries, as well as at his staged political rallies. The press's inability to contain itself in its own enthusiasm of Obama is, in a limited respect, a somewhat legitimate portrayal of the larger Obamamania phenomenon, though it's unfortunate that the press has so nakedly joined the bandwagon. But Cafferty's attempt to defend the media's imbalance and argue that such imbalance has journalistic legitimacy continues an unfortunate pattern of late. Readers of my blog will be reminded of my take on CNN's Barbara Starr arguing that bad news in Iraq is more newsworthy than good news in attempting to justify imbalanced coverage. The press, it seems, is beginning to change its spin from denial of imbalance, to defense of imbalance. By no longer disputing the reality of such imbalance, some members of the press have begun to take one small step towards honesty with themselves and the public. But by continuing to subjectively spin their performance in order to justify it, they continue to avoid asking themselves the tough questions that would challenge the status quo and begin to renew a measure of public confidence in the trustworthiness of the American press.