Friday, June 29, 2012

 

Cillizza claims to report on the House's vote to find Eric Holder in contempt. This time he doesn't even pretend to base his analysis on reality at all.

I will show the title and conclusion

On ‘Fast and Furious’ vote, Congress affirms all the bad things people already think of them.

[skip]

What’s remarkable is that less than a year removed from such a politically scarring experience that both parties would be willing to engage in similar behavior again. And you wonder why the fastest growing political “party” in the country is independents.

HeThe article denounces "Congress" and "both parties." To me this logically implies a denunciation of Democrats in Congress. Yet Cillizza gives no hint about any idea of anything they could do differently. He one description of possible criticism of Democrats is

"And, yes, partisan Republicans will see today’s vote as the only choice House leaders had given the Administration’s decision to invoke executive privilege on the documents requested by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Note "the administration" not Democrats in Congress. Yet in the title and conclusion he denounces "Congress" and "both parties."

We have entered the Baroque phase of "he said she said" journalism. Cillizza doesn't actually quote a partisan Republican who made the claim he imagined. He is inventing, from pure fantasy, fictional figures to quote in order to avoid any risk of describing relevant facts in his own name.

His article reports on an event in Congress and presents old polling data on Congress in general. He reports nothing, nothing at all, about the issue under debate. He reports nothing about public reaction to the recent action of Congress (he can't of course as there is no reaction to report).

I challenge anyone to read the article and find an interpretation of the conclusion that "both parties" are at fault other tnan that Cillizza starts with that conclusion as a methodological a priori and ignores all evidence completely and with utter contempt not only for jounalistic standards but for the concept of reporting.

update: This, in contrast, is important and depressing.

posted by Robert permalink and comments11:32 AM