Birthers of a Notion 2
This week, Bob Garfield of On the Media inteviews James Fallows regarding President Obama’s release of his birth certificate, focusing on the role of the media in birtherism. In the process, they look back on the history of the American press, from the time of Andrew Jackson forward.
Then Bob Garfield adds a comment:
Well, first of all, no, it wouldn’t. In the Internet world, and the FOX News Channel world, the mainstream media aren’t the arbiters of what stories live or die.
But beyond that, notwithstanding the President’s digs at the press corps, the media have nothing here to be ashamed of. They didn’t seize on the birther story because they regarded it as unsettled. They did so mainly to foster evaluation of supposed presidential hopeful Donald Trump, and of elected officials who keep doubt alive by framing the President’s birth as a matter of belief, not of fact.
When Speaker of the House John Boehner says, “I take the President at his word,” that slyly leaves open the possibility that the President is lying.
So Obama shouldn’t be ridiculing the messenger here. If anything, the President owes the press a debt of gratitude. If he wants the public to distinguish a responsible leader from a carnival barker, someone has to document the barking.
I often hear and see some of my fellow lefties complain that the media should just not cover the birthers and their fantastickal and fantastically stupid, bigoted claims, since there is no news, only falsehood, there.
As much as I wish the whole birther nonsense would go away, I find these complaints disquieting, not just on abstract First Amendment grounds (and, as my two or three regular readers know, I am a First Amendment purist), but also from the knowledge that censoring them can’t stop them. If this hokum came only from a few cranks at the barbershop, it would be unreported hokum.
Instead, persons who are, by virtue (that may be the wrong word, but oh, well) of their positions are newsworthy promote the lies, both implicitly and explicitly.
Attempting to censor the lie would not make it disappear.
Rather, it would goad the rightwing lie machine into higher gear.
Follow the link to read the rest of the transcript and listen to the entire segment or listen here:
May 3, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I’m one of those liberals castigating the media for treating this birtherism as *news*. It is one thing for the VRWC to use its own resources to pedal its lies. It is quite another for CNN or NPR or the local paper to pedal this stuff as if it was news.
For all of the coverage of NASA and its expeditions, I never see a media report *balance* that out with a report or reaction from the people who think that the signature bits of the space program are filmed somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona. The media is serving as the public editor of vast amounts of information generated daily throughout the world. It is disheartening to find them curating stuff that might come directly from the Weekly World News.
(I’ve been thinking of my own blog post for this, but thanks for addressing this….)
May 3, 2011 at 2:42 pm
I agree with you about what the media considers to be “balance.” They contrast stuff that is mainstream Republicanism with stuff that is from the leftie loony-bin (and sometimes just from the loony-bin) as if they were equivalent.
I am noodling on a post about an example I saw of that the other day, but the post is still simmering in the old brain pan.