Using the Pulpit
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)
Digby had a fantastic post yesterday about how the media doesn’t even try to analyze whether claims made by various hacks are right or wrong, but simply does its stenographic duty and then reports on the public’s perception of the misinformation they blithely helped provide:
Yes, he’s accurately reporting what people inaccurately believe. He just forgets to present the real facts and correct their misapprehensions. And then goes on to praise presidential candidates for being savvy enough to flog the same misinformation.
We have a very serious problem with epistemology in this culture and a huge part of it is due to the press. I don’t know how to fix it. But until we do, our politics are going to be distorted and dysfunctional.
That’s true. Nor can we expect the media to change its stripes. What is going today is a partisanization of the media, rapid on the Right but also slowly gaining steam on the Left. That trend, while better than the misinformation masquerading as objectivity on display in the traditional media, isn’t going to solve our epistemology problem. I know there is a cadre of strict deconstructionists who believe that true epistemic objectivity is impossible, and that only the exposure of isms and political agendas in all texts can hope to provide clarity. Thankfully, no one outside of an ivory tower actually believes that. (That sort of thinking is why I left academia.)
There is an actual reality out there. That reality happens to have a liberal bias most of the time. It would be nice if journalists attempted to stand by it and call out peddlers of misinformation, regardless of whether it meant that the journalist appeared to have a liberal slant. Objectivity is defined by adherence to the facts, not the artificial rejection of ideological appearance.
But the media is not likely to provide that. A few corporations dominate the media world; those who aren’t bought off are afraid to upset colleagues or readers; there’s a general culture of pseudo-objectivity; and an increasingly partisan media isn’t really helping solve the problem.
But that’s where the much-maligned “bully pulpit” comes in. When the facts are made increasingly irrelevant by a conservative opposition that simply doesn’t care if it peddles outrageous lies to a pliant media, the only option left is to tell an alternative story. The truth lies not in attempting to refute the conservative’s story through a dispassionate resort to facts, but rather in weaving the facts into a narrative that fits an ideology that makes sense in the context of the universe that actually exists.
That is why the President must be a partisan. A Democratic President’s job is first and foremost to explain issues in the context of a progressive narrative. The job is to show why the conservative narrative fails to account for reality.
Telling that story in turn influences the media, who are forced to scribble down notes and dutifully act as stenographers for that story.
In a world where epistemology is dead, all that is left is competing narrative. The narrative that most closely fits the facts should win the day, so long as it is communicated emotionally and effectively. And that’s what the bully pulpit is there for. No sane believes that the bully pulpit will help convince Senator X or Y to pass a specific piece of legislation. But it should be able to tilt the media playing field in a specific direction that makes the job of convincing Senator X or Y behind the scenes, easier to accomplish.
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