The current definitions of news:
What IS news:
"Kansas governor said, "we're great, Democrats are bad. Our policies are great."
California governor said, "we're great, Republicans are bad. Our policies are great.""
And that is considered informing the public of the news.
What is not news:
"Our reporters' investigation comparing the results of the policies in California and Kansas found a clear winner, which is..."
That reporting of the facts is considered bias, a political agenda, an opinion piece, partisan, and unworthy of the news business.
For that, you have to go to 'experts' who write books and columns and yell at each other on 'news' shows - one group interested in the truth and the other working for the right-wing industry to promote its agenda and sell it to the public.
Let's take a battle like Keynes versus Laffer. The evidence is pretty one-sided. But you won't see any news show say the facts about that. You will see them have one economist say Keynes is right, and another from a right-wing think tank paid to defend Laffer.
This makes news seem more respectable because it's not 'on a side', which actually is what makes it not very respectable.
You can spot the issue with this 'two sides' approach by applying it to other issues.
It's no problem to have two guests arguing 'FDR was excellent' and 'FDR was a disaster'. But even if the evidence is very clear he was excellent, the news in fine with that approach. But now try 'the Holocaust did happen' and 'the Holocaust didn't happen'.
(Disclaimer: I'm not using that as an example to suggest the question is legitimate. I'm using it because it's not.)
To that one, the reaction is very different. It's totally NOT ok to treat that as a question, to have 'one side' be the 'it didn't happen' side. Just not acceptable. And that's right. But we don't apply the same thing to whether economic policies are horrible are horrible.
Why not? Our theory is that the pro-Holocaust guy would tell the truth and his arguments would be so effective that the denier guy has no good argument and is clearly wrong and the pubic realizes that, no harm done.
Except the view is that that isn't how it works, that there is harm done. That even if he loses the argument, it was somehow giving him too much credibility to let him get to be a side of the 'issue' on the show.
So, holocaust, ok to have a clear position. What economic policies work, not ok, have to always have 'two sides.'
This is a little like how the early smoking issue was. You had the whole country smoking and a few people trying to say 'it's bad for you' facing a big industry and the Republican political party against that.
So at first, you had trouble for the anti-smoking view to get airtime on shows, who happened to be sponsored by cigarettes. Eventually you got to the two-sides coverage.
And for decades, really, the tobacco approach was the position that 'the science isn't conclusive'.
It took quite a long time for the coverage to finally start to shift and overcome those obstacles to be more one-sided that yes, smoking is bad. Commercials got banned. TV shows stopped having their characters smoke. Years and years.
But economic theory? Not even close. Lessons learned in the 1930's are 'controversies' today. The science isn't in.
Why? Because billions are made by the wrong economic policies, and that hires think tanks and advocates who will argue for the wrong things.
There's an old saying, it's hard to get a man to believe something when his paycheck requires him to not believe it.
And this is why we need comics to say it. Because they're not part of the pressure system for 'two sides'. You rarely see a comic argue two sides of an issue.
You can go back to the days of the court jesters, when they were the only ones who could say uncomfortable things about the king others would be punished for saying (not that they always could, either. Ask the Egyptian 'Jon Stewart' whose show was cancelled.)
We have a tradition of free speech. That allows for comics, even if the news industry has problems. Authoritarian states wouldn't have comics telling negative facts about the government.
We still have plenty of punishments. Ask the Dixie Chicks for criticizing Bush.
Comedy is sort of about trying to expose lies. That's why it works better for the left than the right, since they are more about telling the lies.
'Republicans said THIS, and look what a big lie it is' works for the liberal comedian. 'Democrats said THAT, and look what a big lie it is' when it isn't, is a lot harder for right-wing comics.
Not that there aren't legitimate things to criticize and make fun of Democrats for, but it's harder, and the right-wing agenda is so bad, it's hard for that to get defended by the comics. Although the huge success of Dennis Miller argues otherwise. Oh, wait.
Not that comics can't be harmful. A comic who makes fun of a scapegoated group can do well with a crowd who is fine with the bigotry. Bill Maher is sometimes quite wrong and sometimes bigoted.
We have a 'marketplace of ideas'. Unfortunately there are a lot of thumbs on the scales, funding lies and propaganda. But if we support good things - commondreams.org is one and needs funding badly now - it helps counter some of the corrupt funding.
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