Opinion The map of democratic choice

POST-TRUTH: The phrase has been around a while,and James Fallows at The Atlantic has had to amend his blog posts while determining who exactly coined it,but in the past month it has found remarkably widespread utterance. Post-truth politics essentially denotes the practice of politicians on the campaign trail making claims without backing them up with evidence and having them relayed onto wider broadcast by reporters presumably bred to simply report without contesting what may be a falsehood,deliberate or otherwise.

For instance,Fallows,who has been closely tracking the post-truth phenomenon,called out as blatant misrepresentation the speech by Paul Ryan,Mitt Romney’s running mate,at the Republican Convention when,among other things,he lambasted Barack Obama for being responsible for the shutting-down of a car plant (though it had been shut before he became president,and though the Republicans had anyway been opposed to the post-2008-crisis auto industry bailout) and for proposed cuts in a public health scheme (though Ryan too had recommended those cuts,“and much more”).

The larger question is,who contests a candidate’s statements? Or more pointedly,is it the reporter’s job to simply write up or broadcast campaign speeches as she heard them? Does she go to the other campaign for a counter-quote? Or should she,of necessity,fact-check while filing? The debate on how this plays out amidst expectations of fair,unbiased reportage is still on. Fallows,for his part,tracked the coverage of that Ryan speech and found plenty of reporting that caught his dodgy points and finds hope in the trend that reporters are “not simply quoting ‘critics’ about things Ryan made up. They are outright saying that he is telling lies.”

FALSE EQUIVALENCY: Related to these questions of how to report a story is a debate on how to reflect fairness. That is,in a political story amidst a heated and polarised campaign,does fairness imply equal space,equal play for both sides? Margaret Sullivan,the public editor of The New York Times,visited the issue recently,saying that it was something readers were increasingly disturbed about. The pivot of her column was once again Ryan’s speech at the Republican Convention in Tampa,Florida. She explained the issue: “Simply put,false balance is the journalistic practice of giving equal weight to both sides of a story,regardless of an established truth on one side. And many people are fed up with it. They don’t want to hear lies or half-truths given credence on one side,and shot down on the other. They want some real answers.”

However,her investigation among the news staff indicated that determining where fair play demands balance,giving equal weight to both sides of a disagreement,and where it demands truth-calling by the reporter can be a difficult judgement call.

And while the spinmeisters are not saying it yet,for the media this just may be the beginning of the post-spin — or more realistically,the neo-spin — era.

FORTY-SEVEN PER CENT: The two campaigns are certainly spinning the aftermath of a secret video put out by the magazine Mother Jones that caught Romney at a fund-raiser disparaging “47 per cent of the people” who,he said,reflexively vote for Barack Obama and who presume that they are “entitled to healthcare,to food,to housing,to you-name-it”. And: “These are people who pay no income tax.”

In advertisements put out by both campaigns last week,the essence of that “47 per cent” divide is being sought to be played to give the respective candidates that compassionate edge. Romney’s plea is that compassion not be measured by how many people are on welfare,but by how many are pulled off it,and he claims his plan would add 12 million new jobs. Obama’s ad,with a voiceover,represents Romney’s 47 per cent remark as an elitist attack on hardworking folks who may not take home enough to pay income tax but nonetheless pay social security,property,sales and other taxes.

On balance,it’s fair to say that of late,things have just not been going Romney’s way.

Kapoor is a contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’