Journalism vs. Advocacy

David Kurtz makes a distinction on Talking Points Memo that I have been observing for a long time.

I'm often asked why the right doesn't have a muscular online news presence that mirrors the reporting-intensive, fact-heavy websites that have emerged on the left. The explanation is complicated, but one part of the answer is very simple: Most of the right-wing "news" sites have no interest in being journalists. That's not what they're about and that's not what they see as their primary function, which is advocacy.

Kurtz cites the recently revealed e-mail traffic from Fox News, the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and other right-wing media outlets offering "help" to Mark Sanford's staff while the South Carolina Governor was AWOL and none of the facts were known last month as a case in point. These outlets, led by Eric Ericson of the RedState blog, published a number of "reports" on the story that were subsequently proven false.

The State asked Erickson to comment on his email exchange, and his response captures his own view of his role and function: "I wasn't trying to be a reporter. I wanted to curtail the story. Well that didn't work." For someone like Erickson, the facts are important only insofar as they are in service to the advocacy. The advocacy can exist, as it did here, independent of the facts -- or before the facts are even known.

As noted by Kurtz and by George Packer of The New Yorker, there are many reasons for this difference in approach between the two sides.

The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.

Packer thinks these are also among the reasons that extremists on the right have more influence on mainstream GOP thinking and policy than those on the left do on mainstream Democrats.

My sense of it is that for most Democrats it is more about gathering data in support of a nuanced view while beliefs on the right spring from a shared sense of certain ideas being so self-evident that they require no detailed rationale.

--Ballard Burgher