I've had a habit for some years of listening to All Things Considered on National Public Radio while I eat dinner. I live alone; I've tended to turn on the radio when dining, as an alternative to reading a book and possibly getting food on the pages; also, it's sometimes nice to hear human voices. Sometimes.
This evening Ari Shapiro was interviewing Lateefah Simon, a new, Democratic member of Congress. With that particular twinkle in his voice that NPR hosts use when they are trying to steer clear of anything of substance - Ayesha Rascoe is the master of this - Ari was asking Simon those "how does it feel" questions journalists in general use as a substitute for engaging their brains. (Pay attention to how often. It's depressing. When they're not asking how something feels, they're asking somebody to predict the future.) Simon said something about her low expectations of getting legislation passed as a member of the minority party, and expressed her intention to use her office to fight the harms to which the incoming administration will subject her constituents. To which Ari replied that each party sees the other as the potential author of harms, and "its all a matter of perspective."
I wonder whether Ari would be similarly dismissive of a statement by a Republican. I wonder whether he thought that, in this exercise of "both-sides-ism" and false moral equivalency, he was simply applying "journalistic objectivity." I wonder whether he thought anything at all. More to the point, I have news for him. Whether Pussygrabber guts the civil service is not a matter of perspective. Whether the United States withdraws support from Ukraine, whose people are fighting and dying to preserve their freedom against an authoritarian aggressor, is not a matter of perspective. Whether competent people with relevant experience are appointed to lead major government agencies that provide essential services to the citizens of this country is not a matter of perspective. Whether a newly elected member of Congress who happens to be trans gets to use the bathroom appropriate to her gender is not a matter of perspective. Whether abortions are banned nationwide is not a matter of perspective. Whether food stamps, social security, medicare, and medicaid are cut or privatized out of existence is not a matter of perspective. Whether the president obeys the law is not a matter of perspective. Whether partisan gerrymandering is allowed to cement one party's control of power regardless of the popular vote is not a matter of perspective. Whether the army is used to suppress domestic dissent is not a matter of perspective. Whether gulags are erected for potential deportees, and mass roundups are conducted of suspected undocumented noncitizens, and families are torn apart, and children are stolen from their parents by government agencies, never to be returned, is not a matter of perspective. Whether our system of constitutionally ordered liberties is suspended in the name of Xtian nationalism is not a matter of perspective. Whether the necessities and comforts of the lower and middle classes are made unaffordable to them by tariffs on imports, while the wealthy are made wealthier by tax cuts and other favoritism directed at them, is not a matter of perspective. Whether the president and his cronies and justices of the supreme court and members of the legislative branch cash in on their status as office-holders is not a matter of perspective. Whether people go hungry, suffer illness, or die because of lack of access to public services that they could have had if budgets and staff had been maintained - that is not a matter of perspective. I could go on. You get the point; Ari doesn't.
Perhaps Americans have lost faith in the mainstream broadcast news media because it tells us lot of distracting nonsense and doesn't tell us what we really need to know. It tells us what somebody thinks the effect of something that happened or something that somebody said might be on something else that has neither happened nor been said yet, but it doesn't tell us much about what actually happened or what actually was said (e.g., Trump's word salad speeches at rallies vs. the way they are summarized for us as grammatical and substantive.) It tells us what somebody thinks we think so often that we start to think it (e.g., he's too old; Gore was too stiff; "we" are worried about inflation.) Perhaps so many Americans seem to have a view of the world that is strangely detached from reality (e.g., the economy was bad under Biden; Harris suffered a crushing defeat; Trump has a mandate) because even that branch of American broadcast journalism that prides itself on being fair, accurate, throughly factual, and focused on essential information, actually tends to describe a world that has no more substance than a video game.
I'm not listening to that crap any more.
