Politicians have always lied, says Rick Perlstein. So why does it seem like there’s so much more lying than there used to be? The difference, he says, isn’t with the politicians, it’s with the right’s successful attack on the liberal media in the post-Nixon era:
There evolved a new media definition of civility that privileged “balance” over truth-telling — even when one side was lying. It’s a real and profound change — one stunningly obvious when you review a 1973 PBS news panel hosted by Bill Moyers and featuring National Review editor George Will, both excoriating the administration’s “Watergate morality.” Such a panel today on, say, global warming would not be complete without a complement of conservatives, one of them probably George Will, lambasting the “liberal” contention that scientific facts are facts — and anyone daring to call them out for lying would be instantly censured. It’s happened to me more than once — on public radio, no less.
….The protective bubble of the “civility” mandate also seems to extend to the propagandists whose absurdly doctored stories and videos continue to fool the mainstream media. From blogger Pamela Geller, originator of the “Ground Zero mosque” falsehood, to Andrew Breitbart’s video attack on Shirley Sherrod — who lost her job after her anti-discrimination speech was deceptively edited to make her sound like a racist — to James O’Keefe’s fraudulent sting against National Public Radio, right-wing ideologues “lie without consequence,” as a desperate Vincent Foster put it in his suicide note nearly two decades ago. But they only succeed because they are amplified by “balanced” outlets that frame each smear as just another he-said-she-said “controversy.”
I guess I’ll need to think about this. Rick might be right. But then again, many thoughtful conservatives would place the blame elsewhere. I recommend that the New York Times public editor assemble a panel of media analysts from across the political spectrum and hold a round table discussion on this topic. That should clear things up.