The Washington Post has a peculiar sense of balance
Some recent Washington Post follies bring home just how silly the modern journalistic notion of “balance” is. Apparently, the Post takes the view that there is no such thing as truth, only a middle ground between partisan political viewpoints. And the paper seeems quite eager to avoid ruffling the feathers of the activists on the right, even at the expense of the truth.

This is silly for two reasons: first, because there are times when one side’s position rests on a foundation of straw, and should not be given equal weight. Second, because the Post will never be able to please the people on the far right. Short of adopting the tactics of Fox News and spinning every story in favor of the Republican Party, the Post will always be thought of as the “liberal media” among those whom the newspaper seeks to appease.

The first folly was the “Froomkin Flap.” The Washington Post started hassling opinion writer Dan Froomkin because they’d gotten some complaints from Republican activists about the title of his column.

The activists thought that Froomkin’s column, “White House Briefing,” had a title that sounded too much like a straight news column. Apparently, they thought that readers would believe Froomkin was reporting established fact when he wrote passages like “Bush tried to explain. But in the end, what he provided was yet another example of what others see — and he doesn’t.” They also seemed to think that the reader wouldn’t be tipped off by the fact that one has to navigate through the opinion section to reach Froomkin’s column.

It took a major blogstorm from the left to get the Post editors to back off.

But the Post editors still thought that Froomkin needed to be balanced. Not with a professional journalist like Froomkin, but with a Republican activist. The “balance” will be provided by Ben Domenich, former Bush appointee and full time partisan hack. Apparently, he’s had some problems in the past with making stuff up instead of reporting the facts.

So that’s the balance. A journalist must be balanced with a partisan hack. Opinions based on truth must be balanced by opinions based on lies. A person to the left of Ronald Reagan must be balanced by someone to the right of Atilla the Hun.

Now the Post’s odd sense of balance has entered the news pages. Oliver Willis pointed out that the Bush administration is using its Office of Faith Based Initiatives (OFBI) to fund political supporters, which led me to this article.

And right there in the first paragraph, we find a Republican spin point:

For years, conservatives have complained about what they saw as the liberal tilt of federal grant money. Taxpayer funds went to abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood to promote birth control, and groups closely aligned with the AFL-CIO got Labor Department grants to run worker-training programs.

In the Bush administration, conservatives are discovering that turnabout is fair play: Millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed to groups that support President Bush’s agenda on abortion and other social issues.

Now, I have no doubt that Republicans have been saying this for years. But shouldn’t the Post give their readers some idea as to whether or not it’s true?

First of all, what was the scale of the worker-training grants given to unions? Was it anywhere near the $500 million funnelled through the Office of Faith-Based initiatives? No. Nor was it anywhere near the scale of the $10 billion showered on agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland from 1980-1997.

Second, Planned Parenthood and unions had to submit to the same process as everyone else before they were awarded grants. They weren’t allowed to discriminate, and they had to submit to accounting procedures that ensured that the money was used for the specific purpose of the grants, rather than membership and fundraising drives or advocacy. They competed with other organizations, including faith-based organizations, for federal money.

The Office of Faith Based Initiatives was created explicitly to relieve grantees of these burdens. In fact, there have been questions raised as to how much of the money has gone to advocacy, rather than service, and as to why none of the OFBI money has ever been awarded to a non-Christian group.

So the Republican spin about “fair play” is not supportable. And an otherwise routine investigation into whether or not a new government agency has been turned into a patronage program has been turned into a survey of political partisans. Because at the Washington Post, facts aren’t allowed to run unless they’re “balanced” by opinions.

And if you think that these tactics will in any way appease the media watchers on the right, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’d be willing to sell you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.