Circling the drain

The mainstream media - Fox News excepted - are terrified at being seen as politically biased. But instead of relying on accurate, truth-based reporting to demonstrate objectivity, the media salves its manic anxiety through exaggerated "balance." Hence, as Paul Krugman observed, the media's "insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts." Krugman joked that if, say, the Republicans, declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” So why doesn't the media follow the advice of Hamlet's Queen to produce "more matter, with less art?" In a phrase: Fear of losing access. It's a fate worst than bubonic plague in the news biz. No access means no story. No story means the competition wins. Since each news bureau is afflicted with the same mania, that is how the vicious little circle is maintained. Never mind that the entire enterprise is swirling around a drain to oblivion. Krugman calls it the "cult of media balance." Mike Lofgren calls it the "practice of false evenhandedness." I call it by its proper designation: Madness.