December 2004 Archive

Does the similarity of the NYT and WSJ OJ scores contradict Michael Tomasky's finding that The Wall Street Journal's editorials were more partisan than those written by The New York Times? No, for two important reasons. First, Mr. Tomasky was careful to compare editorials written during both Democratic and Republican presidencies, but the 2004 editorials I've evaluated tell only part of the story. Second, the WSJ OpinionJournal is not the same as the WSJ -- I really don't know whether the editorials selected each day by the WSJ OJ for their On the Editorial Page feature are representative, or more partisan or less partisan than the average WSJ editorial.

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I've found few issues of significance in my lifetime that didn't have shades of gray and aspects that raised difficult questions. The fair and balanced columnists do write about these shades ... and, in my opinion, it ultimately serves to bolster their opinions, because the reader has the feeling that they are fair and they do question everything.

I think that columnists such as David Broder and Robert Samuelson hold mostly centrist views, so they naturally end up with very low partisanship scores. I admire a columnist like Richard Cohen, who can be a strident liberal critic of Republicans, yet still have the independence to hammer Michael Moore and graciously praise Ronald Reagan. Also on the left, both Clarence Page and William Raspberry are willing to grapple with difficult issues, taking seriously all sides of an argument.

On the right, Jeff Jacoby is a principled conservative, who doesn't hesitate to criticize "the most bloated budget ever", or to single out Russell Feingold for praise. In his first full year at The New York Times, David Brooks has been independent and consistently thought-provoking.

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My tentative plan is to add Robert Novak, even though I worry that he's the kind of columnist who writes mostly about "horse race politics" -- John Fund nearly drove me crazy when he was on the active roster in 2002. Nicholas Kristof seems to be writing on domestic issues more frequently these days, so I'll activate him. Then I'd like to add a couple of columnists who are immensely popular in syndication: Ellen Goodman and Kathleen Parker. One final addition will be Michelle Malkin, whose profile seems to have risen in the past year. Mark Steyn is a common suggestion; I'm still considering him. Leonard Pitts Jr. and Froma Harrop are very popular, but they seem to write more about cultural than political topics.

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First, he argued that "Paul Krugman's facts are usually independently verifiable whereas Ann Coulter doesn't even try to determine or even much care if the things she says are true in an objective sense". I agree to a point -- Ms. Coulter's distortions far exceed those of Paul Krugman, and they have been well-documented at Spinsanity. But as Mr. Krugman's partisanship has deepened in recent years, he has become increasingly careless with facts and insinuations. Applying the same Spinsanity standard, he has also fallen short on more than one occasion, and he has been building an impressive record of poor predictions.

Second, Mr. McPhail generously offers Mr. Krugman a partisanship exemption by saying that "a columnist with a high regard for truth in public discourse might find it more important to focus on the deceptions of the frequently-lying side." Certainly one party may be more wrong or dishonest than the other, and a pundit with or without a high regard for the truth may decide to make it their special mission to criticize the bad party. This year, Mr. Krugman's ratio of Republican to Democratic criticism stands at a staggering 45 to 1 (809 to 18). But the act of choosing to emphasize the sins of the other side and ignoring those of one's own side is clearly a partisan act -- a judgment that it's more important to defeat the bad guys than to offer independent analysis and let the chips fall where they may. That wouldn't be spinning or lying if the intent were fully disclosed, just as advertising copy is not expected to be balanced. But Paul Krugman has explicitly denied partisan intent, and I'm not aware that Ann Coulter or any other Lying in Ponds pundit has ever admitted being anything other than a proudly independent voice. So until Mr. Krugman and Ms. Coulter acknowledge the partisan selectivity that Mr. McPhail grants as an acceptable justification for one-sided punditry, they are spinning; they are lying, and it's wrong.

UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE: Nebraska's armadillos.

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Many theories have been offered about the causes of the increasingly bitter partisanship that has infected Washington. Things have reached such a sorry state that Bob Novak, the most garrulous of TV quarrelers, has advocated simply muzzling Senate Democrats by stripping them of the right to filibuster judicial nominees.

When a born contrarian such as Novak says the dissonance in the Capitol building has become so screechy that even he can't stand it, you know things have hit bottom.

What has been missed by most of the historians and political scientists is the fact that political conditions in Washington began to decline in 1971, the year the baseball Senators decamped for Texas and became the Rangers.

Nope, sorry. You are falling into a serious logical error.

If you wish to define partisanship as most always taking one side's perspective, fine. But lying is held to a standard of comparison with objective truth. And we've already established in previous correspondence that your partisanship ratings do not look carefully at the factual basis or lack thereof of the positions taken...merely that those you classify as partisan consistently take one side over the other.

For example, I'd say that Paul Krugman's facts are usually independently verifiable whereas Ann Coulter doesn't even try to determine or even much care if the things she says are true in an objective sense. I am partial to the Democratic point of view but I think that this is a fair summary of the situation for those two particular columnists.

It could be argued (and I think that you do, at least implicitly) that in the normal course of events a "nonpartisan" commentator would naturally take positions on either side of various questions. This is only a reasonable assumption if the frequency of lying is approximately equal on both sides. If at a particular time in history one side is characterized by persistent disregard for the truth then a columnist with a high regard for truth in public discourse might find it more important to focus on the deceptions of the frequently-lying side.

In any case, you cannot make the assumption that high partisanship and lying are one and the same. Your grounds will not support that conclusion.

• Drop Bill O'Reilly on the grounds that he's not a real columnist -- you can't even access his old columns online unless you pay to become a "Premium Member". Not a chance.
• Stop evaluating the lead editorials for The New York Times and The Washington Post and the On the Editorial Page feature of the WSJ OpinionJournal. Evaluating those three columns each day adds significantly to my workload, and I'm not sure the results have been interesting enough to be worth the effort.
• Find one or two new columnists to add.

Comments, suggestions? Let me hear from you.

UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE: Engelbert Humperdinck

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C.S. Lewis, the British essayist, author and cleric, died 41 years ago, so he wasn't writing about same-sex marriage in America. No, his subject in his book "Mere Christianity" was divorce. Still, his observations may shed some light on our "values" controversy today.

C.S. Lewis was an essayist and author, but he was certainly not a cleric. He was a lifelong academic whose Christian writings came from his perspective as a church layman.

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• 1984-early 1990s: "Spin is part of the game." Journalists acknowledge Spin Alley as a necessary evil; and they say the readers can trust journalists to filter the spin out, leaving the public with real news.

• 1996-2002: "Spinning is lying." A counter-opinion forms. Spin Alley is not a necessary evil, it's just an evil. And an absurdity. But it goes on. Critique bounces off the Alley like hail.

• 2003-2004: "Spin Alley: absurd, corrupt and degrading." Stewart calls it a drag. Journalists and watchdogs alike debunk Spin Alley, while an obvious and better alternative emerges: Fact-checking!

As part of the "Spinning is lying" phase, she quotes a Michael Kinsley Slate column:

What's the difference? It's often said that there is none. (Come to think of it, I've said this myself.) But there is: Lying means flouting the truth. Spinning means indifference to the truth. The culture of spin is one in which the relation between what you're saying and what happens to be true is a question that doesn't even arise. This doesn't make spin less objectionable. In fact, it's more objectionable precisely because it's culturally ingrained. We all know that it's wrong to lie. The signals we send and receive about spin are very different. É In the political world, though, spin is not merely tolerated: It is required. It is regarded as a basic test of competence.

I submit that the behavior of the most partisan columnists at the top of the Lying in Ponds Top Ten is very similar to that of professional spinners. Lee Atwater and Lanny Davis did not attempt to hide the fact that they were partisan operatives, but opinion columnists for reputable publications claim to be independent (but not necessarily neutral) voices. That kind of "Consumer Reports" role is a very valuable one. So when Ann Coulter is unable to accept legitimate criticism of her side without attacking the other, and when Paul Krugman manages to write 400 columns without a single one which substantively criticizes his side, they are not practicing independent analysis, and it's not "part of the game". They are spinning; they are lying, and it's wrong. And Lying in Ponds exists and persists as a feeble attempt to encourage the punditocracy to do better than that.

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In bringing aboard a movement conservative, the august Times could hardly have imagined that they'd eventually have a ready conduit for the racialist thinking of the fringe right on their pages. But this promotion of Sailer's analysis by Brooks is opinion journalism at its absolute shoddiest. The New York Times owes its readers an apology and Brooks ought to be reprimanded for promoting this kind of clap-trap.

MAGUIRE ON KRUGMAN: Tom Maguire of JustOneMinute notes that Paul Krugman might not be telling the whole story when arguing that advocates of privatization have invented a Social Security crisis:

UPDATE. Surprise, surprise - it wasn't just Clinton and Gore sounding the alarm. Try and guess what well-known (and once well-regarded) economics writer used the phrases "Ponzi game" and "crisis ahead" when writing about Social Security back in the 90's?

UPDATE: Donald Luskin elaborates on the subject on National Review Online.

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I count two conservatives and eight liberals there. Clearly, it's those conservatives who are the mean, nasty ones....

But of course Democratic columnists are overrepresented at the top of that list and underrepresented at the top of the positive list, because they write in a target-rich environment of Republicans in power. I'm sure the rankings would have been mostly reversed during the Clinton administration. Having said that, I do think that the negative list exposes a style of punditry I've never admired from either party -- endless criticism uncontaminated by constructive suggestions.

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BLOGIVERSARY FOR HH: Congrats to Henry Hanks, who has been blogging for three years on his Croooow Blog.

MCGRORY AND DELAY: Who knew that the late Mary McGrory was a fan of Tom DeLay? That's what Mona Charen says in today's column. I checked Ms. McGrory's columns in 2002, and found one which mentioned Mr. DeLay's defense of poor children, and a few that were critical of him on other matters.

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Indeed, this administration came into office preoccupied by the war on drugs and indifferent to the war on terror. Before 9/11, even though Afghanistan was harboring the world's No. 1 terror suspect and his organization, the White House was so happy with the Taliban regime's drug-trade crackdown that Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in May 2001 May that the U.S. was extending $43 million in humanitarian aid to Kabul, under U.N. auspices, as a reward.

. . . the $43 million was not aid to the Taliban government. Instead, the money was a gift of wheat, food commodities, and food security programs distributed to the Afghan people by agencies of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Secretary of State Colin Powell specifically stated, in fact, that the aid "bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate it."