An Election 2004 Cornfield
Fox News showed some video Tuesday night of a cornfield that had a maze plowed across who knows how many acres. (Perhaps I should say "maize maze" and pretend that I'm the first person in the history of time ever to do that.) The maze was plowed through the field in the image of an elephant and a donkey, and words reading "Election 2004". The anchorwoman, in an overzealous effort to repeat the Fox News mantra, described the cornfield as "fair and balanced", as if a fair and balanced cornfield was a good thing.
Initially, I was impressed with the quality of the farmer's work. But once I heard the complimentary "fair and balanced", something bothered me. How could somebody be so neutral about a presidential election? Either you're in favor of one candidate or the other, or you hate them both. Whatever alternative, don't you want to say so? This farmer devoted hours of his life to produce a monument to his own spinelessness. How about a cornfield plowed to look like crack and babies? No, wait, I got it: how about a cornfield that looks like a swastika and a star of David? Don't want to take sides, do we?
Someone with the intelligence and skill to create a multi-acre picture across a cornfield thought that the two competitors for the most important job on the planet are no more important than a removable, children's yin and yang tattoo. It's like someone asked this guy who's more likely to protect his life in the next four years and his response was that he likes animals.
I would have been much more impressed if this guy, instead of creating an amazing image in his cornfield, had just told someone in private who he was voting for and why. If he did do that, then congratulations to him. If he didn't, but his neighbor did, then congratulations to that guy instead. I'm just not rewarding that farmer by saying anything good about his cornfield, goddamn it. Even if it was a cool maize maze.
"Fair and Balanced"
I'm not a big fan of the "Fair and Balanced" slogan. But I also think that Fox News critics criticize it for the wrong reasons. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate. It is inaccurate. Two of the three shows I've watched most often, Fox and Friends (the morning show), O'Reilly, and Hannity and Colmes, are clearly not "balanced". That doesn't stop me from watching them, but they sure as hell are conspicuously absent of leftwing views. Thank God.
The problem with the "Fair and Balanced" slogan is that it's not the alternative to nonobjectivity. Watch Hannity and Colmes and tell me that "balanced" equals objective. (Or if you're one of those leftist lunatics who thinks that Colmes is just a straw man who Fox News keeps in a cage so that Hannity can knock him down, watch Crossfire.) The amount of objective reporting on this show is miniscule. I don't know if it's gotten worse, or if I've just noticed it more lately. The point is, you have a couple guests in the middle, and the two hosts vomit the party lines all over them. Depending on the political persuasion of the guests, they either agree completely or tell the host he's full of shit and repeat the opposite party line. If you attempt to get your news from Hannity and Colmes, you will rarely get the sufficient evidence to make an actual decision. (Unless the issue is obvious and the hosts are just battling so the audience can do some cheerleading for their preferred team.)
I generally like Hannity (apart from his religious views), and I do enjoy watching him nail some leftwing asshole. When he's got Ann Coulter on as a guest, even better. But listening to three minutes of mini-speeches followed by a contrived question mark for the purpose of presenting the illusion of an "interview show" can get pretty tedious.
Having a liberal and a conservative each spouting opinions based on evidence they never present on the air (or which is presented haphazardly), does not miraculously combine to form "objective journalism". "Left" plus "right" does not equal "truth". It's like trying to make peanut butter by combining peanuts and butter. (Incidentally, I swear I saw Mr. Rogers doing that on his TV show once, but no one believes me.)
Objectivity in journalism means presenting facts relevant to events using the event's significance to human life as a standard. (And prior to the selection of facts comes the selection of events, which should also be chosen based on this standard.) Critics of objectivity, honesty, and human life will, of course, call such a standard "biased". If you come to the conclusion that a man who kills babies with explosives is a "terrorist", the objectivity haters will accuse you of being nonobjective. According to them, you should call him a "peace activist" because to them, objectivity means repressing conclusions drawn from facts.
Their premise is that what you see is "fact", but what your mind processes is detached from reality and therefore invalid. But to force your mind not to draw conclusions based on fact is to lead yourself further from reality. The conceptual evaluation of facts is how human beings understand reality. If you want to perceive reality like an animal, get a bunch of monkeys together and let them do the news. I'm positive you won't hear a single opinion, and if you're lucky, they might even throw you a banana.
The only way to be objective, in the view of the objectivity haters, is to strap a camera onto the head of a pigeon and broadcast it live on the 11:00 news. Just make sure you don't feed the pigeon, though, otherwise you'll be introducing a bias. Come to think of it, broadcasting a pigeon-cam feed at 11:00 instead of 7:00 also eliminates your chances of getting another Edward R. Murrow award. Let the pigeon decide when to broadcast tonight's news.
What objectivity haters want to do is to convince you that objectivity is impossible. This statement might seem contradictory since I've claimed that they accuse others of being biased. You might wonder: if they use terms like "biased", how can they be against the concept of objectivity? The reason is that what they call "bias" is simply the act of viewing an event from the perspective of a human being. (E.g., calling a terrorist a terrorist.) Viewing events from a human perspective, which means: seeing events with human eyes, understanding events on a conceptual level, and applying philosophical premises, does not preclude objectivity. On the contrary, these are the things that make objectivity possible.
Objectivity haters attempt to invalidate objectivity as having inherent "biases" because human beings have an "agenda". Fuck yeah, we have an agenda: we want to live. That's why wars, medical breakthroughs, and the weather often show up on the news, rather than which country's national monuments taste better, how to kill yourself on a desert island if your only weapon is sand, or the average temperature of a polar bear's asshole after you shoot it with a laser cannon. What a bunch of biased bastards we are.
Some people have a problem accepting that "objectivity" and "point of view" can coexist. Of course they have a problem. Because to them, "objective" means not having a point of view. They ought to try rethinking what they mean by "objectivity", and whether it makes sense to have and use concepts that don't apply to reality. To be objective just means to recognize that objects exists independently of the observer. Our human perspective (eyes, consciousness, etc.) allows us to perceive and conceive of these objects.
"Human perspective" doesn't somehow get in your way. The last time I was hungry and I looked at a slice of pizza, my hunger didn't prevent me from figuring out how to hold the slice so the cheese didn't fall off. My "bias" of wishing the pizza had more cheese didn't prevent me from recognizing how much cheese was there. My existence as a human being, and my failure to become one with the pizza, didn't prevent me from identifying the pizza as having pepperoni, meatballs, mushrooms, onions, and extra cheese. Yes, I had a perspective (or "bias"), but yes, I was able to identify objectively facts of reality.
Events are more complicated than pizza, but complexity just means there are more facts to identify. (Or more facts among which to identify the few significant facts.) Is it possible to misidentify the facts? Yes. Is it possible to misinterpret the facts? Yes. Which is why it's so important to be clear about that facts we have identified.
The guy who blew up the babies is a goddamn terrorist.
Postscript
On the subject of news shows, I do like Dennis Miller on CNBC. His shows tend to be "current events light", due to his own mediocre knowledge of the issues. But he's an honest guy, can be pretty funny, and lets his guests say more than two sentences at a time. If only he would drop the Hollywood types from his "panel" and maybe squeeze the show into a half-hour. I.e., if the show was a bit "meatier" in terms of content, I think he'd do fine.
Lately, I've been trying to catch a few minutes of Scarborough Country on MSNBC. The host, Joe Scarborough, seems honest, ballsy, and knows his stuff. (He was a congressman for eight years, which helps him cut through the B.S.) He also lets his guests formulate an idea and back it up with facts. I'd like to catch this show more. Too bad you have to have no life outside your day job in order to actually watch these shows.
