Media Standards

There's a long list of complaints that much of the right wing has with the mainstream media; editorials like this one from the Wall Street Journal complaining about (the rest of) the media are only a relatively minor part of those complaints. Still, examples like this one are excellent for illustrating why I don't usually like such complaints, whether or not I agree a mistake was actually made by the media source they're criticizing.

One of those problems I see is that many such complaints assume that only a dedicated partisan liberal could want to attack the points the other side is making. Yes, it is certainly possible that all of the news organizations that published editorials about the value of a free press are doing it just to attack President Trump. It's also possible, though, that they actually believe the values they're promoting, and don't care who might or might not disagree with those values. Or they could be entirely reasonable people responding to unjustified attacks, not hopeless partisans launching unjustified attacks of their own. 

I suppose the author would probably say that they're trying since, the author follows that up with a list of economic indicators which he believes the mainstream media is ignoring in their rush to paint President Trump as incompetent. That, though, leads me to my second problem: such complaints rarely set out any consistent standard that both sides can follow. I say that because I could just as easily say the same about this list or about many other efforts to praise the current economy; there are details that never seem to get mentioned in their lists even as they accuse the other side of cherry picking. While it's amusing to watch the right go from proclaiming that the official numbers don't tell the whole story to holding up those same numbers as evidence of greatness (and watching the left go from complaining about cherry picking and inconsistent standards to finding whatever details make the economy look bad), it doesn't give me a great deal of confidence that either side actually cares about following a consistent standard.

That, in turn, makes me question why my side should bother trying to live up to the other side's standards when that inconsistency makes me suspect they'll just change if we do manage to meet them. There is a benefit to having a standard to live up to, and it's important not to dismiss criticism out of hand, but there will also be moments when the right thing to do is to recognize that some criticism can be safely ignored.