BPSDB
Recently Joe Romm was very impressed with Dave Roberts’ “Policy in an age of post-truth politics” where “the referees have left the building” and for the most part I have to agree (hint, read it).
However, I think there is one significant disagreement, less so with Roberts than Romm I think, who summarized Roberts’ article as:
“It speaks to what happens when the referees — the media — don’t call balls and strikes anymore but mainly report the play-by-play.”
The referee metaphor is indeed Roberts’, and he does say “But the referees [media] have left the building.” He is talking about a broken system, ie civic society generally, and the dysfunctional dynamic between the Republicans and the Democrats in the US specifically. The media reference is about the medias’ failure to play a watchdog role.
To which I say, what? Since when has the media been an impartial referee? Below is a sampling (and it is merely a small sampling) of quotes about the press over the past two and a half centuries. Use a search engine to find ‘Quotes “the press”‘ for many hours of more like them.
“The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. ” – Henry B Adams
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