By no metric do I claim myself to be a journalist. Having the opportunity to write a column seems worthwhile — until the dear reader finds out it’s an opinion column.
But I at least hold myself to some journalistic standards when I write. I refuse to write any lies, and I stand to hold anyone and everything I write about to the same standards of morality and judgement.
But when my own sources of news fail the standards a lowly opinion columnist like myself holds, I can’t help but feel discouraged.
The morning after President-elect Donald Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden, I had expected my newsletters to be teeming with factoids on reactions to Trump’s speaker calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”
Instead, the Financial Times delivered its daily newsletter with the email subject, “PwC counts the cost of Asian scandals.” The very next morning, after President Joe Biden made a comment about Trump voters being garbage in response to the rally, the FT delivered me another subject line saying “‘Garbage’ comments blunt Harris speech.”
But maybe we can cut the FT some slack. It is British, after all. What about the core of Americana journalism —- The New York Times?
In the months prior to President Biden dropping out of the race, talks about the age of a president were incessant. After all, our choices at that point were between an 81-year-old career politician and a 78-year-old felon.
With only a three year difference, a reader might expect to see as many articles about Biden’s age and mental acuity as Trump’s. Yet, of all the articles published by the NYT on either candidate’s age, 78% of them were focused solely on Biden.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal had 73% and the Los Angeles Times had 80%.
It is entirely reasonable and expected for there to be articles about these candidates’ acuity as a President. It is indefensible to only be talking about one of them, when they are equally as wrinkly.
Within a broader view, this points to a more complex problem. This isolated case begs the question: why was Biden treated so much worse than Trump by journalists?
Because to the media, painting Biden as “78% more senile” than Trump is how you equalize the candidates.
Americans all know Trump’s issues —- we have for over eight years at this point. Because of this, how can journalists remain centrist? A core tenet of journalism is unbiased presentation of the facts, so with such a bad candidate on the right, how can journalists remain unbiased when discussing the candidate on the left in comparison?
“Fencesitting” is the idea of staying in the middle, the center, the “both the left and the right have their problems” saying.
Fencesitting isn’t necessarily centrist either —- it could be a fidelity against the biggest players, the “neither party represents me” notion.
The punch line of this story? Naturally, it’s to ask what any of this may have to do with us.
Make America Great Again’s existence has shifted the Overton Window: society’s acceptable range of political thought. In a stable society, we expect this to be centered in the, well, center. But as MAGA drags conservative politicians into its arms of extremity, so must the journalists shift as FT and the NYT did. And where the journalists shift, so does public sentiment.
Today, the Overton window is at the extreme points. I previously wrote about the horseshoe theory —- those outside extremities are where our modern politics lie. Center-left politicians like Kamala Harris and Biden are, literally, cast away. Center-right politicians like John McCain and Mitt Romney are labeled as Republican In Name Only, or “RINOs.”
Obviously, I can’t sit here and say this public sentiment shifting of the Overton Window is inherently bad. Public sentiment is public sentiment. But, as contrary as it sounds, the public doesn’t shape its own opinions — political players are the ones responsible.
How much longer should we continue to give politicians this much power? How much longer should we allow journalists to sane-wash the insane? How much longer can we say this isn’t the public’s fault?
Thus, I absolutely reject any fence-sitters. Any sentiment at all that both parties are equally bad, or that neither represents any of American constituents’ interests is a blatant disregard for the country’s problems. It’s entirely founded upon a position of privilege, expecting some miraculous force to solve all sufferings.
The grass is always greener on… well, off the fence.
