Newscasters Frequently Twist Truth in a Democracy-Damaging Way — an Example regarding Governor Mitt Romney’s Alleged “Gaffe” about Poor People

© 2012 Peter Free

 

03 February 2012

 

 

Here is what Governor Romney actually said

 

CNN reported that Governor Romney said (from Florida):

 

"I'm not concerned about the very poor," he said.

 

"We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich; they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90%, 95% of Americans right now who are struggling, and I'll continue to take that message across the nation."

 

When pressed by CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien about his remark about the very poor, Romney cited food stamps, Medicaid and housing vouchers.

 

"You can choose where to focus," he said. "You can focus on the rich; that's not my focus. You can focus on the very poor; that's not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans."

 

© 2012 Paul Steinhauser and Tom Cohen, Romney makes potential gaffe after big Florida win, CNN Politics (02 February 2012) (paragraph split) (embedded video documents the accuracy of CNN’s quotation)

 

Now, notice the title — “potential gaffe.”

 

 

For purposes of the following discussion — three initial premises

 

Successful democracy depends on the competence of an accurately informed and focused public.

 

News media have a professionally-derived ethical responsibility to meaningfully assist the public in being informed and focused.

 

Today’s American public is neither informed nor predominantly focused on issues that actually matter to the nation’s future.

 

 

The power of key words — and the media’s ability to generate their own (false) contexts

 

Within a few hours, “Romney gaffe” generated many pages of hits across the media spectrum.  Each was for exactly this one statement about poor people.

 

This demonstrates the power of key words.  It also illustrates the media’s ability to shape contexts — which it generates itself — by simplistically distilling events into a few, often judgmental, index words.

 

For example, CBS correspondent Chip Reid said, “[W]hen Romney uttered that gaffe about poor people, Gingrich pounced.”

 

Chip Reid, Gingrich pounces on Romney gaffe, CBS News (01 February 2012)

 

Even the usually professional Washington Post published this title:

 

Associated Press, Romney heads west with the most Republican money, organization but also a new verbal gaffe, Washington Post (01 February 2012)

 

And the slightly more circumspect New York Times joined the mud-slinging, but wearing a business suit of pretended objectivity:

 

 Ashley Parker, ‘Poor’ Quote by Romney Joins a List Critics Love, New York Times (01 February 2012)

 

 

“So, what’s wrong with the media using the word, “gaffe”?

 

There are three problems with the media’s use of the word gaffe in regard to Governor Romney’s statement:

 

(1) The “gaffe” statements constituted premature judgments made before any evidence to support them actually existed.

 

(2) The choice of the word “gaffe,” which connotes a nose-wrinkling social error, compounded these premature judgments by making Governor Romney appear to be even more socially maladroit than he actually is.

 

(3) Accusing Governor Romney of “gaffing” — by taking his words out of intellectual context — constituted an ethically unjustified sowing of society-harming political strife.

 

 

First — premature judgments that news reporters have no ethically defensible business making

 

Because “gaffe” is a judgment, reporters have no business using the word, until whatever happened has proven itself to have been a mistake.

 

Governor Romney’s statement about poor people could not (objectively) have been assessed as an error, before the public itself came to that conclusion.  The only way to prove what the public actually thought would have been to poll the Governor’s likely Republican voters, before and after his statement.

 

There was, of course, no way that CNN, CBS, or any of the other news outlets could possibly have polled likely voters in the tiny bit of time they had, before they went on the “air” and alleged Romney’s faux pas.

 

The fact that the intensely combative Speaker Gingrich seized on Romney’s “poor people” statement does not make it a gaffe.  Gingrich, whose contributions to the campaign are endlessly entertaining, has the proven ability to seize on virtually anything and turn it into an alleged liability.

 

The media’s “gaffe” statements were deliberately stirred up controversy.

 

And, now, having created a furor (where there should have been little or none), the media can point back to the accuracy of their unwarranted and premature judgments.

 

That’s how much of the American media works.  It slants news — sometimes even generating news from nothing — and then pretends to objectively report on what it “tempest-ed” up.

 

 

Second — subtle attributions noise-wrinkling social error where there (very arguably) was no error at all

 

Gaffe is a French word.  It has connotations that are subtly inelegant.  The Free Dictionary defines a gaffe as “a clumsy social error . . . faux pas . . . [or] a blatant mistake or misjudgment.”

 

In common use, the word combines both meanings.  Gaffes are worse than mistakes.  A gaffe is an awkward, discomfiting, and hapless error — one that leaves the highbrows wondering which turnip truck you fell from.

 

Making a gaffe is like announcing that one is an uncouth and ignorant peasant-barbarian, covered in pig slop or equally repellant slime.  Bad form, as the Brits would say.  Saying that somebody gaffed is a social value judgment on the factual merits of the happening.

 

For example, if I drop a vase in my own house, that’s simply a mistake.

 

On the other hand, if I trip over the Queen’s carpet, de-pants myself in the process, and simultaneously and clumsily pitch the same vase into Her Majesty’s lap — that’s a gaffe.

 

Our American media is perfectly aware of the elitist judgment that “gaffe” brings with it.  That’s why the term is so widely used these days.  It’s a way of motivating ordinary people to look at powerful people’s simple mistakes as being something more meaningfully humbling.

 

Saying that somebody “gaffed” is an easy way to focus sensationalized attention on what started out as an unremarkable event, until the media got hold of it and twisted it beyond recognition.

 

 

Third — the ethically and professionally unwarranted sowing of unnecessary strife

 

The unfairness of the media’s sly attack on Governor Romney is that his “focus on the middle class” statement, taken in context, was a perfectly rational chief executive officer’s prioritization regarding America’s needs.

 

The fact the Governor has the acuity to recognize that a narrowed presidential focus — given the nation’s limited resources — would be desirable is laudable.  Even when one can argue about the accuracy or justice of his chosen direction.

 

Instead, the news media decided to generate emotion-fueled controversy that hid the rationale behind candidate Romney’s “I’ll focus on” statement.

 

In doing so, news reporters completely derailed the possibility of a rational and constructive national debate about (a) limited resources and (b) choosing our economic priorities under those constraints.

 

The news media created its own news, reported on what it had brewed, and encouraged the public to overlook the ethically and pragmatically defensible thinking that had been behind the Governor’s statement.

 

How is the media’s deliberate distortion of what Romney actually said a constructive contribution to Truth or anything else worthwhile?

 

Is it really the media’s role to deflect American society from thinking about real issues?

 

 

Reflections on the media’s contributions to our frequently brainless culture

 

Sound bites and key words are fun.  They give us permission not to pay attention for more than a few seconds.  They shortcut complexity.

 

“Twit phrases” give us permission to slog around in the bottom 50 percent of our intelligence quotient (however we bother to assess it).

 

Unfortunately, dealing with Reality’s problems successfully challenges even our maximal abilities.

 

When the media encourage short attention-spans and tosses manufactured, emotion-based stupidity into the fog that our ambling witlessness creates, they are serving Mammon at the expense of Survival.

 

That is why thoughtful people think that news reporting has a professional obligation to seek truth and display objectively rational intellectual balance.

 

 

The moral? — professional ethics exist for a reason — much of journalism needs to re-find them

 

Even in the absence of tyrants, a free press can censor Truth with the manufactured stupidity its spouts.