David Safier

by David Safier

There's what happens and what the media says happens. Sometimes they're pretty close to the same, other times, not so much. The most important thing to watch in the reporting of the shutdown isn't the purely factual reporting. That's reasonably straightforward. It's whether coverage follows the false equivalency viewpoint — a pox on all their houses for the shutdown, no matter who bears the brunt of the blame — or points out that the Republican party, led by its far right wing, has created the messwe're in.

My verdict based on coverage I'm seeing in the Star and a few other papers: false equivalency is still rearing its ugly head, but lots of the commentary, especially editorials, is getting it right.

The AP story the Star put on its front page is pure false equivalency. It actually lets the Republicans draw first blood, saying in the second paragraph, "Republicans said it was [Obama's] fault, not theirs, and embarked on a strategy — opposed by Democrats — of voting on bills to reopen individual agencies or programs."

But then you turn to the editorial, which tells the story correctly.

[T]here are times, as we have reached now, when a small number of elected officials — this time a fundamentalist subset of the Republican Party — can monkey-wrench the legislative process and hold the country hostage to their unreasonable demands.

The bottom line, to our mind, is one of practicality: One cannot reason with bullies. Any attempt to do so presupposes a position of good faith that we have yet to see in the tea-party Republicans who are putting their beliefs and political aspirations above the law of the land.