When "Moral Clarity" Means "Shoddy, Agenda Driven 'Journalism'"
Matt Welch writes at Reason about calls for "morality"-driven journalism and where that leads -- as the subhead puts it: "a scoldier and less accurate journalism."
Wesley Lowery wants journalists to be unshackled so that they can positively identify individuals and organizations as "racist," adding that: "Racism, as we know, is not about what lies in the depths of a human's heart. It is about word and deed." But there's a wide swath of hotly contested territory within just that four-letter word deed.Do policies, rules, and practices that correlate with comparatively poor outcomes among people of historically discriminated-against racial (or gender, or sexual, or national) classifications count automatically as racist, regardless of intent?
...But if that's the standard then intellectual consistency requires it also be tested out on the War on Poverty, minimum wage laws, gun control, and--yes--the removal of public school admissions criteria. The point here is neither to play racism gotcha nor argue ad absurdum that it's fruitless to worry over unequal outcomes; it's to observe that these assessments are very much under dispute, and rightly so. Difficult questions do not suddenly get "smoothed out" by the bold assertion that they belong to a binary category marked either "moral" or "immoral."
A classic pitfall of such simplistic thinking, widely unremembered now on the journalistic left, is the presumption that a proposal born in moral virtue will retain its luster after coming in contact with the real world. Policy--particularly the thorny, emotional, life-and-death stuff like immigration, criminal justice, and war--is hard, with the wreckage of unintended consequences all around us.
Margaret Sullivan in her piece asserts that "It's more than acceptable that [journalists] should stand up for civil rights--for press rights, for racial justice, for gender equity and against economic inequality." I agree! But these issues are not on-off switches, nor should their depiction be in the press.
Do "civil rights" include the individual right to keep and bear arms, or to grow your own medical marijuana for personal consumption? Do "press rights" include an extra "journalist privilege"? Does "gender equity" require government intervention to mandate wage levels? Does "economic equality" mean that an "ultra-millionaire tax" is a good idea? These are all heavily contested questions, not dividing lines between the virtuous and the deplorable.
...Times staffers will explode in public vitriol when presented with an utterly inoffensive Twitter recommendation from controversial opinion staffer Bari Weiss, yet mostly sit on their hands when Nikole Hannah-Jones encourages people to read conspiratorial claptrap about possibly racist fireworks campaigns. More productive energy will continue to be spent policing the paper's not-quite-anti-Trump-enough headlines and tweets than will for the same treatment of every elected Democrat combined. You don't need a map to see the direction all this is heading.
How much less accurate can it be? This is simply giving themselves the green light to be open about what they've already been doing less directly.
From Matt Welch's article:
Worse. It's their version of morality. "Morality" in quotation marks. Where race-based discrimination is laudable when it's directed at whites, even to the point where blatant racism isn't called racism.
Ditto, sexism directed at males.
Patrick at July 7, 2020 6:21 AM
How about the War on Poverty breaking up black families? Perhaps the biggest underlying cause of decay in the black community because children without a father do not do well (contra feminist claims about fish and bicycles). It is already to the point that CNN is doxing individuals who are not public figures for wrongthink, where merely defending the right of privacy of women in locker-rooms can get you canceled, where one cannot point out how min wage laws hurt the poor, where a prof is under investigation (or fired) for reading King's letter from birmingham jail. Cancel culture becomes arbitrary mob rule. Of course only conservatives get canceled.
cc at July 7, 2020 9:37 AM
Is this the same journalists that cry and freak out when they feel the Religious Right means to impose their morality on the rest of us?
That class group?
I R A Darth Aggie at July 7, 2020 10:28 AM
Of course only conservatives get canceled.
Remember, when they run out of conservatives, they'll simply make more. I saw on twatter that the woke crowd seemed to be trying to purge anyone to the right of Stalin. I replied that they were starting to think Stalin is a bit of squish.
I R A Darth Aggie at July 7, 2020 10:31 AM
Eliminating things like poverty is just not possible. Lines just move. Let us say the poverty line is income under $20k/yr. Magically all those having an income under $20k/yr have their income increased such that it is above that...well now the poverty line increases...maybe now it is income under $28k/yr.
It is like trying to have nothing in the bottom 10% which just is not possible.
The Former Banker at July 7, 2020 10:47 PM
Former Banker you are right, it has to be access to stuff, not money because as you point out the value of money changes.
You could have clear goals and standards such as (though it would be worded better than me jotting something out quickly on an internet forum):
* Access to solid housing that isn't falling apart, doesn't leak, with no more than 2 adults or 4 children per bedroom
* Access to health and dental care
* The ability to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, legumes, and dairy and store it
* The ability to purchase seasonally appropriate clothing
You can have a society with less people sleeping on the sleep, less slums, etc.
I mean surely we can all see the difference between India and the US for starters...
NicoleK at July 7, 2020 11:11 PM
Nicole: India is probably different, but in the US:
* If you rent a nice place to poor people, the chances are pretty good that by the time you've evicted them for non-payment of rent, they'll have done $10,000 worth of damage to it.
* Anyone who is really poor is qualified for Medicaid. Which is just about as lousy as the health care veterans who earned it get from the government. Whether they know it or not, that's what the leftist leaders intend to get for everyone except the elite (which they think they'll be part of).
* In my experience, most poor neighborhoods have little grocery stores catering to immigrants. They sell fresh foods and low-priced staples, that will make inexpensive and nutritious meals with some work. Poor Americans don't shop there, and tend to spend their food stamps on things that a I've always considered expensive and unhealthy.
* When I see three kids wearing Nike shoes following a welfare momma with her food stamp card, I conclude that lack of money is not the main reason her kids might not have winter coats.
markm at July 14, 2020 3:36 PM
"Access to..."
There might not be a bigger pile of crap like that in the English language.
If you are capable, you can go GET anything of the sort, or you can make it yourself.
If you are NOT, then it has to be provided FOR you, and it always comes with a price hidden by those who conceal your existence as a commodity.
Radwaste at September 6, 2020 1:26 AM
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