Roger L. Simon points out how CNBC moderator John Harwood lied during the debate last night:
But more than that, the debate revealed something I had thought about before, but never seen so clearly ”” how bias can affect the brain, almost make it dysfunctional. I assume John [Harwood] is an intelligent man…Nevertheless, Harwood did something extraordinary. He lied about Rubio’s tax plan in the exact same way not once but twice ”” once at the debate and once about two weeks before the debate. What made it extraordinary was that Harwood had apologized for that same lie the first time on Twitter on October 14 and then lied again Wednesday night as if he didn’t remember his own apology and correction…
Cognitive disorder? Quite possibly. I submit that media bias (and the moral narcissism from which it stems) can be so strong that it is akin to a brain disease. It literally renders you stupid or makes you disbelieve what you know to be true. Bias has hallucinogenic properties. Who knew?
Simon is coming down on the “fool” side of the old “fool vs. knave?” debate that we’ve had so many times on this blog, about so many people, both in politics and in the media. In effect, what he’s saying is that bias has made Harwood into a fool for the purposes of Rubio and the debate. Perhaps; perhaps. But I’ll offer some other possibilities.
The first is that perhaps Harwood has always been a fool. Perhaps he’s not an intelligent man, merely one who is good at parroting the politically approved line and stringing some words together. Perhaps he’s risen in the ranks for that and other reasons that have more to do with personality and sucking up to the right people, and perhaps he’s never really been tested because he lives in a liberal bubble. So maybe he’s just not that sharp, and doesn’t remember or didn’t understand the tax issue very well to begin with.
Now that I’ve stated that possibility, I must say that it’s not my leading theory. My leading theory is the “fool and knave” theory, and it works like this: the first time Harwood made the error on Twitter, it was as Roger Simon describes. Harwood’s pre-existing bias towards Rubio and Republicans made him jump on a “fact” that made Rubio look bad, without really stopping to think. In other words, his bias made him stupid. But once told of his error he had to issue an apology, which is the sort of thing a person tends to remember. So it’s very possible that, although he actually did remember his error, bringing it up again was the calculation of a knave who doesn’t expect it to backfire on him.
That was for two reaons. The first is that the MSM is used to getting away with it. If a lie is asserted often enough and loudly enough by the media, it becomes truth for most of their readers. The challenges and corrections go unheard for the most part, or they aren’t believed even if heard and even if true. Harwood probably thought that, between him and Rubio (as between Candy Crowley and Romney), he’d automatically be the more believable.
In addition, the liberal MSM (much like their hero, President Obama) fully believe themselves to be the smartest people in the room, and in many instances have, not just feigned contempt for Republicans, but true and heartfelt contempt for Repubicans. So they believe they will win any exchange with a Republican, even if they themselves are lying and the Republican is telling the truth. Maybe even especially if they are lying and the Republican is telling the truth. They believe in their own role as omniscient narrators, and believe that the public sees them that way as well. Can the omniscient make mistakes? Of course not.
But even beyond that, Harwood may have doubted that Rubio would challenge him at all. Harwood and his fellows have such contempt for the GOP candidates that there’s a good chance he thought that Rubio was unfamiliar with Harwood’s previous error, and/or that even if Rubio tried he would not be able to explain the math of his own tax proposals, or that Rubio wouldn’t have the guts or quickness to challenge him and to keep challenging him.
Does any of this matter? Not if the American people don’t care. Polls consistently show that voters think the media is biased (70%, according to this poll), But biased in what way? Towards right or left? The most recent poll I could find that asked those all-important questions is this Gallup poll from last month, and it tells an interesting tale.
In that poll, 40% of Americans trust the media. This is a great deal higher than it should be, and it is concentrated in Democrats, the majority of whom (55%) still think the media trustworthy. This compares to 32% of Republicans (who are these people??) and 33% of Independents who agree. The interesting question of “biased in what direction?” doesn’t seem to be reported in that poll, but it was asked in this similar one from a year earlier, with the following results:
Nearly one in five Americans (19%) say the media are too conservative, which is still relatively low, but the highest such percentage since 2006. This is up six points from 2013 — the sharpest increase in the percentage of Americans who feel the news skews too far right since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.
That number who think the media is biased to the right as been going up, not down, and my guess is that it’s still going up as America moves more to the left—or at least, as the Democratic Party moves more to the left. That is probably the audience Harwood is used to playing to, and part of the reason he may feel immune. And despite what should be his ignominy after last night, he’s probably correct that most Democrats won’t notice or care. Case in point: Ezra Klein on last night’s debate and the media’s role in it:
Cruz’s attack on the moderators was smart politics ”” but it was almost precisely backwards. The questions in the CNBC debate, though relentlessly tough, were easily the most substantive of the debates so far. And the problem for Republicans is that substantive questions about their policy proposals end up sounding like hostile attacks ”” but that’s because the policy proposals are ridiculous, not because the questions are actually unfair.
Klein quotes several exchanges between the moderators and the candidates in his attempt to back up his claims, but somehow—somehow—he misses Harwood’s incredible faux pas regarding Rubio. I’m sure it’s just an oversight—after all, Ezra Klein is also one of the smartest people in the room. And if you were a Democrat reading that sort of thing as your daily diet, you’d never hear about Harwood’s demonstration of both his bias and his stupidity, and you would continue on your merry way.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s a very full explanation of the substantive issue (Rubio’s tax proposal) involved in the Harwood-Rubio exchange.]
