A dispute

Monday night's Daily Show had what I thought at the time was a very funny bit with Rob Corddry (transcript via Atrios):

STEWART: Here's what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry's record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the US military, and haven't been disputed for 35 years?

CORDDRY: That's right, Jon, and that's certainly the spin you'll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days.

STEWART: Th-that's not a spin thing, that's a fact. That's established.

CORDDRY: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontravertible fact is one side of the story.

STEWART: But that should be — isn't that the end of the story? I mean, you've seen the records, haven't you? What's your opinion?

CORDDRY: I'm sorry, my *opinion*? No, I don't have 'o-pin-i-ons'. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called 'objectivity' — might wanna look it up some day.

STEWART: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't?

CORDDRY: Whoa-ho! Well, well, well — sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! [high-pitched, effeminate] 'Ooh, this allegation is spurious! Upon investigation this claim lacks any basis in reality! Mmm, mmm, mmm.' Listen buddy: not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.

I ceased to find this funny on Tuesday night, when I heard almost exactly this — but without the sarcasm — in a newsroom discussion about this article.

It cites Bob Elder, a member of the Swift Boat Vets for yada yada, who accuses Kerry of "insurrection" and of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." I pointed out that all of the official Navy records, all of the actual eyewitnesses, and many previous statements by members of Elder's group refute their accusations and that maybe we have a responsibility to mention that if we're going to insist on giving this guy a platform just because he's local.

It's a balance issue, I was told. There is a dispute and we have to report both sides of the dispute. We don't work for the Kerry campaign.

Balance apparently requires repeating whatever anyone says, without question, without context, without verification. Demanding that assertions be supported, or checked against the historical record, is a kind of bias.

Jon Stewart insists he's the fake news, but some days I just don't know.

The Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk considers the press coverage of the Swift Boat "dispute" to be the nadir of journalism in this campaign:

Campaign Desk has written many times about the perils of "he said/she said" journalism, the practice of reporters parroting competing rhetoric instead of measuring it for veracity against known facts. In the wake of the first SBVFT spot early this month, cable news programs for the most part offered viewers two talking heads, one on each side of the issue, to debate the merits of the claims. Verifiable facts were rarely offered to viewers — despite the fact that military records supporting Kerry's version of events were readily available. Instead of acting as filters for the truth, reporters nodded and attentively transcribed both sides of the story, invariably failing to provide context, background, or any sense of which claims held up and which were misleading. …

In the end, as always, the information that voters receive depends entirely on the way in which the press frames the story. The problem is that once an easy storyline is entrenched — that Kerry and his detractors disagree — too many reporters fail to press on. In this case, they neglected to either test the veracity of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth or to compare their ads with those financed by other 527s like MoveOn.

There have been dozens of press failures during this presidential campaign. But this one, even given the Times' and the Post's belated efforts to get to the bottom of things, has to rank as a low point.

In the end, the whole ball of wax certainly did nothing to help the mainstream press' credibility with what is an increasingly dubious audience.