The Nation - "Saving Face: Falsely Balanced Accountability Is the New False Equivalence"

[TomCADem]

The new MSM false equivalence as exemplified in this article, breezily acknowledges that Republicans are at fault for the shutdown and debt crisis, but then argues that the President now shares responsibility for ending it:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/why-obama-must-talk-to-the-gop-20131007

However, as noted by the Nation, this is still false equivalence, because it once again gives Republicans a free pass and encourages them to once again generate a crisis. The article above does nothing to explain why Republicans would not once again set a crisis and ignores the fact that Republicans are only offering a six week extension of the debt ceiling, thus guaranteeing another crisis.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176601/saving-face-falsely-balanced-accountability-new-false-equivalence#

Mark it down, the cartoonish antics of Republicans in Congress during the past few weeks have finally achieved what media critics have been trying to do for years—get a majority of the DC press corps to openly confront their falsely balanced coverage of a major policy dispute in Washington. It has been, by no means, easy. It’s taken outrageously divorced-from-reality demands about defunding Obamacare, irresponsible talk of default and the prospect of self-inflicted economic calamity, and poll after poll after poll after poll after poll showing public opposition to the GOP’s brinksmanship, but now the media has begrudgingly accepted the idea that one side might actually be more to blame. Indeed, we’re truly through the looking glass when Beltway Brahmin and devoted keeper of the “both sides do it” flame Ron Fournier writes something like this:

I believe it would be false equivalence to say Republicans and Democrats are equally to blame for the government shutdown and the possibility of a debt default. Republicans engineered the shutdown to protest a three-year-old health care law, knowing their defund-or-delay demands were unattainable.

But hold off on those Hosannas. For, whatever the public discourse has gained by this more honest and fair coverage of singular Republican intransigence, it’s not been matched in the press by concomitant demands for accountability from the GOP. This is perhaps not surprising. Decades of the media exercising just one set of journalistic muscles has left its others atrophied and increasingly incapable of rising to the task of speaking truth to power.

As a result, watching news coverage of the government shutdown reveals Capitol Hill reporters visibly struggling with how to “objectively” frame the obvious legislative misconduct of just one political party. Likewise, perusing a steady stream of op-eds about the debt-ceiling impasse demonstrates that most pundits literally have no concept of how to direct rhetorical outrage at or publicly apportion shame to just one ideology anymore. Thus, we’ve arrived at a surreal moment where the D.C. media’s conventional wisdom has moved past one version of false equivalence only to latch onto another—one that now doesn’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. Or, put another way: Yes, the Republicans are mostly to blame for getting us into this crisis, but all that matters now is holding both sides accountable for getting us out of it.

[CTyankee]

1. If I hear "the President has to LEAD" one more time I'll throw up...

That's when I mute the TV...saves my health...

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth