Since I read it this morning this paragraph has been bothering me. It’s from a front page New York Times article: Paul Diverges From His Party Over Voter ID.
Few issues ignite such passion among the base of both parties. Democrats argue that the laws are intended to keep poor voters away from the polls because they often have difficulty obtaining identification. Republicans contend cheating is rife in today’s elections.
Which is a classic “he said, she said” observation. I thought we were past this point already, but I guess not. Evidently, Jeremy Peters and his editors at the Times think the practice is still acceptable. I don’t, and I think a lot of Times readers don’t.
Thus:
"There's a factual dispute and we have no idea who's right" journalism will eventually be seen as low quality news. http://t.co/my6fZJKmgw
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) May 10, 2014
I’m going to write about this “Democrats argue/Republicans contend” paragraph at my flagship site, PressThink. This notebook post is just a stub. (“In Wikipedia, a stub is a short article in need of expansion.”) The glaring lameness of “he said, she said” is not a new subject for me. I’ve been writing about it for five years. So I’m looking for new ways to get the point across. If you have comments and links that should be included in my fuller post, you may share them here.
UPDATE: My post is up at PressThink. ‘Democrats argue. Republicans contend. We have no idea.’ Thanks to all for your contributions, which helped me.
Jay Rosen: Public Notebook 
May 10, 2014 @ 19:18:27
Perhaps this will help: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-froomkin/reporters-know-what-the-v_b_1719778.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-froomkin/minnesota-voter-id_b_2104107.html
May 10, 2014 @ 20:59:46
This factual dispute (as you well know) is only “factual” in the sense that Democrats say one thing and Republicans say something else. The dispute is between the parties, because if it were the actual facts about voting, the “dispute” would evaporate in the face of one party’s distortions. It very much has the flavor of that old broadcast media escape hatch, “We’ll have to leave it here.” One tends to observe, “Leave it where? It’s nowhere!” And that Nowhere Land is where journalists, apparently, want to leave these disputes. their hands are clean of any dirty “opinions,” they’ve left it to the reader to “decide.” presumably that decision aligned neatly with the reader’s confirmation bias unperturbed. Such a tidy exit for the journalist who writes in that vein. The reader doesn’t even notice that the “journalist” left the stage.
May 11, 2014 @ 12:49:23
You’ll never, alas, get the point across. Journalists have to write fast and often, and the A/B swap-out is a recipe for the production of text.
May 11, 2014 @ 13:18:37
Dan Froomkin has, as you see above, already covered this more or less definitively, and you aren’t going to do a better job than he did, Jay. however, a post that specifically targets why The New York Times chooses to be so (let’s get tendentious!) 1) loose with the truth, 2) bad at reporting facts, 3) taking sides in a dispute and 4) being partisan hacks on their front page would be interesting, given that we know that they believe that their VFN stance is protecting them from all 4 of these claims.
May 11, 2014 @ 13:30:50
Reporters understandably want to hedge. What if they’re wrong? But the “Dems argue/GOP contends” practice distorts reality. Here’s a different hedge, which brings into play motives, based on observation and common sense: A phrase like “it shouldn’t be surprising that” or “it’s understandable when”…
An example: “It’s understandable when a leveraged buyout firm uses leverage to gain tax subsidies from local governments.” (You can go on to show why it may not be the optimal use of tax money.)
In this case, “It’s not surprising that Republicans would push voter fraud as an issue even when there’s little evidence of fraud. Voter ID restricts access to the polls for key Democratic voters.” This is context, and factual. And as Froomkin points out, it’s been admitted by the PA House GOP leader. You’re not taking sides, any more than when an NFL draft analyst says, “It’s not surprising that Johnny Manziel slipped so far in the first round; teams questioned his durability and ability to throw before a receiver makes his cut.”
Treat pols like rational actors, analyze those actions, and you’re not “taking sides.” You’re reporting.
May 11, 2014 @ 13:59:27
The voter fraud issue is lying supine, the media standing by it with stake and mallet in hand. They could drive the stake in with one blow. Why don’t they? They don’t want to.
May 11, 2014 @ 14:53:13
You should be reading up on the recent voter ID decision in Wisconsin. http://www.bluecheddar.net/?p=39501 From Adelman’s decision: “Because virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future, this particular state interest has very little weight…The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past.”
May 11, 2014 @ 15:12:32
” I’m looking for new ways to get the point across.”
What’s the point? We know this “both sides do it/a pox on both their houses” journalism is endemic. The real question is why. Why are major media organizations so timid when it comes to separating facts from spin? Is it access? Are they afraid their sources will shun them? Is there pressure to conform to some corporate edict about who it’s okay to skewer and who is off limits?
May 11, 2014 @ 15:29:33
One of those dogs that hasn’t barked in the night
The concern over voter ID fraud is one of those cases where absence of evidence actually is very good evidence of absence.
An organized effort to change the outcome of an election (as opposed to random individuals going to the polls to vote as their just-deceased uncle) by way of ID fraud, would have to identify and use a group of voters who were safe to impersonate at the polls. If you send your operatives out to impersonate people who are on the rolls, but have already voted, your whole conspiracy could be compromised as your operative is arrested right there. Even if your impersonated voter hasn’t voted yet, if they come to vote later, the plot will be revealed at that point, and all polling places for that election will be put on alert.
You need to identify people who are still on the rolls, but have no chance of actually showing up to vote, if you are going to use ID fraud to win an election. Recently deceased voters are about the only really exploitable group in this respect, though the reasoning used here apples to any group you could imagine fits the bill — still on the roles, but very safe to not show up to vote.
The dog that hasn’t barked in the night, but really should have if anybody had stolen any US election in a generation through ID fraud, is post-election comparison of who voted in any and all of these elections, vs who was dead on e-day. Such a comparison becomes child’s play after the election. The list of who voted is a matter of public record in every jurisdiction I’m familiar with, though the list may not be released for several months, until the election result is completely finalized. Who was dead on e-day becomes much clearer the further we get from that day, and eventually, you can get a reasonably complete accounting of that from public records. Now that we have computers, comparing such lists is literally child’s play, as in your 10-year old could probably figure out how to do it inside of 10 minutes, and with way fewer keystrokes than you or I.
While a list of who voted in any given election may not be the sort of thing you and I have laying about, and while jurisdictions place varying degrees of hurdles against casual observers getting such lists, the parties most definitely have bothered to jump all those hurdles. The list of who voted defines the polling and canvassing universe for political campaigns, so both parties get these lists as soon as they can.
The Rs know who voted in every election back to the Harding administration. They also have access to mortality data. Comparing these two data sets and finding a pattern of dead people voting in elections would be child’s play. Finding even one such occurrence would be more evidence that voter ID fraud is a problem than all the mountains of verbiage they have so far amassed on the subject. But that dog has yet to bark.
They ain’t got nothin’. And if there was anything there, they most assuredly would have found it, and told us all about it, so there’s no there, there.
May 11, 2014 @ 17:51:17
I’d ask what motivates/incentives reporters to write he said/she said stories. I’d guess it is: 1) dislike of the hassle involved in having to justify themselves to complaining right-wing readers; 2) investment in “fond self-image” as someone who is “fair” to both parties; 3) fear of losing their job if their bosses see them as a liability.
I don’t think it’s possible to ignore the fact that reporters work for publishers, and publishers have values. If you want to change what reporters produce, you have to convince them that they won’t get punished for writing it.
May 11, 2014 @ 20:13:15
I just find it interesting that “vote, you lazy voters” is seen as “objective” within the View From Nowhere, but even the slightest defense of the right to vote or keeping it from being hard to vote is not.
But what IS it, then? I don’t think a David Gregory type would call it partisan hackery. Probably activism, but again, in support of what? Democracy?
May 11, 2014 @ 23:05:48
History and facts don’t matter when you’ve already made up your mind.
For some it’s global warming and voter fraud, for a lot of liberals its Palestine.
When the winds begin to change, and they’re still not ready to do the work to learn, liberals escape into the same passivity as the press: “I don’t know anything about…. Iran, Syria” Could any of you say anything worthwhile about Hamas?
The “Overton window” applies to people at large. Change happens as the window moves. It’s not only “other people” who politicize the facts.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503
It’s a good thing Rupert Murdoch came to the US. He gave reporters permission to have opinions, even if they were only his. The worst thing about Greenwald is his self-righteous pretense at purity. And he’s in bed with a billionaire. Izzy Stone as “entrepreneur.”
Times have changed haven’t they?
We need journalists willing to say what they see and what they think, one way or the other. You can’t take the politics out of it. And you’ll never have good journalism without yellow journalism. The Guardian exists because the Sun exists.
May 12, 2014 @ 01:02:48
My post is up at PressThink. ‘Democrats argue. Republicans contend. We have no idea.’ Thanks to all for your contributions, which helped me.
Dan: I included one of your posts in a link. Thanks for your two links.
May 12, 2014 @ 01:29:03
FWIW, I sent an email to the Public Editor. The key piece (to my mind) was, after citing the Wisconsin decision and the News21 study I asked the questions:
* Do the Editor and the Publisher of the New York Times consider it appropriate to have published an article setting forth false positions from one political party without informing the readers of the facts?
* Will the paper run a correction or will the paper chose to leave its readers ignorant of these important facts?
* What steps (if any) will the paper take to ensure that false or misleading statements and positions taken by political parties are expressly called out as such for the paper’s readers?
Not likely to help, but work the try.
Best
Jim Bales