Bias: It's Not in the Head

John Harris is doing a Slate exchange with Mark Halperin and says "I'm protective of you (and of myself), especially since most of the people who attack you and The Note do so with radically misguided assumptions about your actual opinions and professional values." To me, this is revealing. The presumption here is that the correct way to assess The Note is with regard to Halperin's "actual opinions." But, of course, there's no real way for readers of The Note to assess Halperin's "actual opinions." The only thing they have to go on is the writing that appears in The Note. As Derrida says, there's nothing outside the text.

This is relevant because one of the key things that makes The Note -- irregardless of Halperin's "actual opinions" about politics -- a rightwing publications is its insistence that the media is a liberal institution. And, again, The Note's basis for endless reiteration of this rightwing talking point is that the "actual opinions" of the bulk of the people producing political journalism are liberal. As best I can tell living and working in this town, this is, in fact, fairly accurate. It's also completely irrelevant. Journalists' "actual opinions" about things don't matter at all. What matters is what they write, what they say, what they broadcast. One of the great strengths of the blog-based media criticism, I think, is precisely that the people writing the blogs tend to know virtually nothing about the world of professional political journalism -- the only thing they have to go on is the work, not the "actual opinions" or even "professional values" of the people doing the work.

What matters is what you do and what the impact of what you do is. The impact of what The Note does is to help the Republican Party win elections. I don't really know why The Note is so deeply invested in doing that, but that's what they're doing and, at the end of the day, that's what matters.

Comments

As Derrida says, there's nothing outside the text.

I think it's something more like "there is no outside of the text."

Posted by dj moonbat | October 30, 2006 5:23 PM

"The presumption here is that the correct way to assess The Note is with regard to Halperin's "actual opinions."

Interestingly, that turns out to be the correct assumption here.

Posted by Petey | October 30, 2006 5:24 PM

"Irregardless" may be on its way to respectability, but it's not there yet.

Posted by rainsborough | October 30, 2006 5:26 PM

irregardless

My eyes...

Posted by Matt F | October 30, 2006 5:27 PM

"One of the great strengths of the blog-based media criticism, I think, is precisely that the people writing the blogs tend to know virtually nothing about the world of professional political journalism -- the only thing they have to go on is the work, not the "actual opinions" or even "professional values" of the people doing the work."

Absolutely. And neither are most bloggers Hill staffers or political pros, and that's a good thing, too, as it doesn't matter what a politician's "actual beliefs" are but only matters how they behave.

Oh, and Matt - 'irregardless'? Totally not a word.

Posted by jkd | October 30, 2006 5:29 PM

er...sorry to pile on there. Those comments totally weren't there when I wrote mine.

And not to be blindingly obvious, but man what a bunch of nerds we is.

Posted by jkd | October 30, 2006 5:30 PM

Not that I think the media is particularly liberal (I think there are other factors that counteract journalists' liberalism) but the argument makes some sense.

It's really hard to examine all the actual news that's actually out there at once, and come up with a figure: "Our analysis shows that the media is 3 standard deviations more liberal than could be expected if they were reporting objectively." I think even right-wingers recognize that if you're operating in an ideological frame, it's hard to get an accurate picture of what the objective truth is, against which to judge the media. Especially since you don't have any insight into the stories that aren't published. Maybe they're sitting on a big expose of George Bush (Nancy Pelosi) until after the election. Maybe not. You can't know unless you are an insider.

If you can't evaluate all the news as written, what can you do? One simple heuristic is to look at the people who write it. All things equal (important), if the people who write the news are liberal, the news is going to have a liberal slant. I'm not sure how you test that, or if anyone ever has, but it seems reasonable.

Of course, there are other factors at play, including the corporateness of American media and the desire to be thought objective that maybe conservatives should be thinking more about (though if they're not, are you surprised) but I think the liberalness of journalists is probably a useful thing to know about if you want to know how seriously to take news reports.

Posted by apk01004 | October 30, 2006 5:32 PM

If it crows like a cock, and struts like a cock, then it's a cock.

Halperin is a cock. He's Ana Marie without the relief of assfucking jokes.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 30, 2006 5:35 PM

Totally not a word

To be fair, I'll sometimes use it to mean "with regard to" (if I'm feeling a little sassy), which is almost like a real word.

Posted by Matt F | October 30, 2006 5:38 PM

The nerdiest comment about this post hasn't yet been made, and it can only be made by one who understands Hilary Putnam's semantic externalism.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 30, 2006 5:48 PM

"irregardless of Halperin's "actual opinions" about politics -- a rightwing publications is its insistence that the media is a liberal institution."

Halperin also claims that the media elite take their cue from Matt Drudge, a right wing operator.

If they were liberal you would expect them to take their cue from the Nation. He doesn't seem to be aware of the logical inconsistency.

And then there is his hero worship of Karl Rove. Everything that happens he spins as a good thing for the GOP and a disaster for Democrats.

My guess is Mark Halperin is just another power whore. He worships power for its own sake. If Milosevic ran for office in USA and won Halperin and his friends would be worshipping at his feet.

BTW, this is a pattern with the media. After the 88 election the press was fawning over Lee Atwater. Willie Horton ads didn't matter. Atwater had won, they didn't care how. I noticed the same thing after the 2000 judicial coup. Overnight they became Karl Rove sychopants. It didn't matter that Bush had lost the popular vote and in most likelihood the electoral vote and had his daddy's friends on the Supreme Court fix the election for him. What mattered was "he won".

Posted by Nan | October 30, 2006 5:55 PM

"Journalists' "actual opinions" about things don't matter at all."

Right. The Mickey Kaus argument. "But I'm a Democrat, I really am, believe me............"

Who cares. I judge him by his arguments. I have no way of knowing who he really votes for.

"The impact of what The Note does is to help the Republican Party win elections. I don't really know why The Note is so deeply invested in doing that,"

My wild guess; their corporate paymasters.

The idea that the media has a liberal bias is laughable. Cable TV, talk radio, op-ed pages are all wall to wall right wingers. On Sunday morning talk shows the hosts usually pair 2-3 foaming at the mouth right wing GOP partisans with a non partisan journalist and call it balance.

If you want to know the bias of a news organization just follow the money. Its bias always reflects the bias of its corporate owners. It wasn't surprising that NBC/MSNBC/CNBC were all cheerleaders for the Iraq war given the govt contracts they received.

The GOP knows there is no liberal bias. They use it anyway because they know they can make journalists shake in their boots and tilt the bias in their favor. It is all an act.

Posted by Nan | October 30, 2006 6:07 PM

When it comes to media bias, I'm twice the textualist that Scalia is, in that I promise not to impose the restriction on my analysis only when it fits my political agenda.

Posted by MSB | October 30, 2006 6:09 PM

The only opinion Halperin has that matters is that he is a stupid little bitch who only survives by serving the ruthless.

Oddly, that's my opinion too.

Posted by calling all toasters | October 30, 2006 6:15 PM

NtEW said, "The nerdiest comment about this post hasn't yet been made, and it can only be made by one who understands Hilary Putnam's semantic externalism."

I thought Matt had already made that joke.

Posted by mke | October 30, 2006 6:28 PM

The nerdiest comment about this post hasn't yet been made, and it can only be made by one who understands Hilary Putnam's semantic externalism.

I don't think this is really about semantic externalism, though admittedly my analytic jargon database is pretty weak. It's not a question of whether Halperin can be understood to "actually mean" something liberal or conservative.

Rather, I think it's more the traditional literary critique of authorial intent. It connects to the pragmatist critique of Kantian ethics and its focus on intent instead of action and effect.

We don't care whether we can find out Halperin's "real" beliefs or "real" intent from outside-the-text. We care what his texts do, what effects they have, and we from there gauge their political orientation and merit.

Derrida's "there is no outside-the-text" is a little more complicated than the claim that we don't know anything other than the physical text. Rather, he's arguing that everything we know about Halperin and what he's written and how he constructs himslef as a writer and the broad scope of American political commentary and everything is part of the text, because the text only carries meaning based on all of that historical context (or based on new historical contexts into which it is put.)

I think most Derrideans would agree that Halperin's stated views are not nearly as important, analytically or ethically, in determining the worth and meaning of The Note, but Derrida isn't saying they should be ignored.

Posted by DivGuy | October 30, 2006 6:45 PM

Yeah, the post is more about interpretation than the semantic internalism / externalism issue. (As I've argued elsewhere, these two issues aren't especially related.) I was just picking up on Matt's "X ain't in the head" title, which is sort of a slogan of externalism.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 30, 2006 7:31 PM

Actually, I think it is entirely possible to browbeat erstwhile liberal reporters into a conservative bias, even discounting pressure on them by their paymasters. It works like this:

convince them that the Most Important Thing in reporting is "balance"

insist that your framing of an issue be used; it helps if you have a well-connected partisan network to maintain consistency of message

get there first

fractionate your opponent wherever possible so that "his side" sounds confused

rinse, repeat

It's simple jujitsu.

Posted by idlemind | October 30, 2006 7:49 PM

Irrespective is okay; irregardless is not.

Posted by k | October 30, 2006 8:05 PM

ah, the foolishness of deconstructo thought. why can't the fact that (e.g.) someone is a member of the klan inform our reading of a potentially ambiguous statement? or the fact that demann spoke for the nazis inform our reading of his theories? or the fact that halperin believes X (sorry, purports to believe X) inform our reading of statement Y?

Posted by dj superflat | October 30, 2006 8:15 PM

why can't the fact that (e.g.) someone is a member of the klan inform our reading of a potentially ambiguous statement?

As I wrote above - Derrida never said that we should ignore that someone joined the Klan or whatever. That's a very poor misreading of Derrida.

Rather, the point is that the fact that someone joined the clan is not some pure truth which resides "outside-the-text", but it is part of the text, part of the huge pile of things that allow the text to carry meaning.

Posted by DivGuy | October 30, 2006 8:34 PM

Do you really think most journalists are actually liberal? On gay marriage and abortion, probably. But on economics and foreign wars, which to me are the most important things? I doubt it. Try asking ten journalists whether there is a social security "crisis", or whether anti-war demonstrators are "serious" about foreign policy.

Posted by MQ | October 31, 2006 12:16 AM

But on economics and foreign wars, which to me are the most important things? I doubt it. Try asking ten journalists whether there is a social security "crisis", or whether anti-war demonstrators are "serious" about foreign policy.

Journalists tend to have liberal views on social issues, moderate views on economic ones, and whichever view of national security issues happens to be popular on the moment. Overwhelmingly, they vote for Democratic candidates. This has, however, very little noticeable impact on their writing.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | October 31, 2006 1:57 AM

"Overwhelmingly, they vote for Democratic candidates. This has, however, very little noticeable impact on their writing."

This strikes me as a rather ludicrous position, much like thinking the average journalist's economic position or secularism has little impact on their writing.

At the end of the day, The Note leans Republican because Halperin is a Republican.

Folks bring their beliefs to the table, whether they're trying to practice objective journalism or not.

Posted by Petey | October 31, 2006 2:41 AM

It was ABC who gave us the Foley scandal in time to give us the House and possibly the Senate. It may be there is no monolithic ABC worldview.

Posted by bob h | October 31, 2006 7:27 AM

"It may be there is no monolithic ABC worldview."

Stephanopolous gently skews Democratic in the same sense that Halperin gently skews Republican.

Posted by Petey | October 31, 2006 8:12 AM

This strikes me as a rather ludicrous position.

There are (at least) two claims that Matt might be making in the text you quote. One is that the voting behavior of journalists is no part of a causal chain leading to what their final article says. Another is that if one knows the voting behavior of a given journalist, and tries to predict from this the "objective" political valence of things that journalist writes, one will, with a high level of frequency (presumably over 50%) be wrong. It looks to me like you're reading him as making the first claim, while the second is certainly a more charitable reading.

Posted by washerdreyer | October 31, 2006 9:35 AM

By "objective" politcal valence I mean something like accepting one party or another's frame of an issue for reasons that don't seem adequately determined by the reported facts, or not reporting relevant facts, or engaging in he said/he said journalism when it seems like there is good reason not to (in one direction or the other).

Posted by washerdreyer | October 31, 2006 10:28 AM

The Note's basis for endless reiteration of this rightwing talking point is that the "actual opinions" of the bulk of the people producing political journalism are liberal. As best I can tell living and working in this town, this is, in fact, fairly accurate. It's also completely irrelevant. Journalists' "actual opinions" about things don't matter at all. What matters is what they write, what they say, what they broadcast.

Uh, except that study after study confirms that one's opinions do in fact, have an effect on the results of one's work. You even noted in the title of the post that "Bias: It's not all in the head". That this phenomenon exists explains why good science is done in double-blind studies. Even when it's just about reading results from a repeatable experiment it's been demonstrated that one's opinions impact results.

Do you really think that opinion journalism is magically unaffected by the opinions of the author?

It seems plausible that "The Note" is more revaling of Halperin's actual views than his exchange in Slate. He may or may not be aware of that, depending on his capacity for self-reflection.

Posted by TW Andrews | October 31, 2006 12:39 PM

Disirregard the hatas, Matt.

Posted by tps12 | October 31, 2006 1:10 PM

Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.

Wait 'til Wallace gets here. He'll kick your pointy head all over the street with your Derrida.

- The Last RINO

Posted by Knemon | October 31, 2006 1:28 PM

I use irregardless all the time. Irregardless is a word, newbs.
Irregardless
Main Entry: ir·re·gard·less
Pronunciation: "ir-i-'gärd-l&s
Function: adverb
Etymology: probably blend of irrespective and regardless
nonstandard : REGARDLESS
usage Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

So it's nonstandard. So it says to use regardless instead. Wtf does a dictionary know anyway?

Posted by Mitch Schindler | October 31, 2006 1:51 PM

"If you can't evaluate all the news as written, what can you do? One simple heuristic is to look at the people who write it. "All things equal (important), if the people who write the news are liberal, the news is going to have a liberal slant. I'm not sure how you test that, or if anyone ever has, but it seems reasonable."

A great statement of the Stupid Person Rule. If you can't read and can't think, you just look at the guy who wrote it and decide if you like him. If you like him, agree with him. Look in his eyes and see his soul. Decide if you want to have a beer with him.

The Stupid Person Rule is influential in Republican media criticism and many other areas of Republicn "thought".

Posted by John Emerson | October 31, 2006 4:33 PM