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Unequal Charges: When Balanced is Not Fair

Tuesday morning, National Public Radio and the New York Times had stories about how the presidential campaign is starting to get “rough.” The information adduced to justify the assertion is essentially the same in both reports.

On the one hand, we learn that Republican John McCain has accused Democrat Barack Obama of cavorting with terrorists based on his serving on a community board with a former member of the Weather Underground. On the other hand, we learn that Obama has pointed out that McCain was a member of the Keating Five. In both cases, the reporters treated these charges as essentially equal and thus selfcanceling, stuff to be filed away under “political tactics,” “he said/she said” or the province of mere “strategic gambits.”

It is this type of reporting, devoid of context and the ability to discern the relative historical import of a public figure’s actions, that has rendered the American people stupid in a civic sense. There is no way that serving on a community board with someone whose background involved radical politics is in any way equivalent with a US senator knowingly participating in one of the biggest and most costly influence-peddling scandals in the history of the Congress.