Dysfunctional government or dysfunctional press? A story about democracy

Bad Takes

During the month of September, one of the stories that dominated our news media system was the countdown to pass a continuing government spending resolution. Just last week, at the 11th hour, a government shutdown was averted. But what did we the people learn from the news coverage? We learned what we have learned from coverage of similar events for the last decade: that a dysfunctional press leads to a dysfunctional democracy.

I got the opportunity to hear Timothy Snyder talk to the Penn State Community last month as part of an ongoing conversation about the dilemmas of democracy. One of the many takeaways that I have been thinking about since is that there are pro-democracy and anti-democracy ways to frame our experience of events and the world. Pro-democracy frames help cultivate faith in democracy and our ability to govern ourselves and anti-democracy frames work to erode it.

Think about it in relation to this Reuters story, headlined “Shutdown looms as US Senate, House take dueling tacks on funding,” and you start to see the a problem. “The split between the two chambers suggests the federal government is increasingly likely to enter its fourth shutdown in a decade on Sunday, a pattern of partisan gridlock that has begun to darken Wall Street's view of U.S. government credit.” If was indeed the case, it would stand to reason that Wall Street or main street’s view of democratic governance would darken. But it was less than accurate. There had been several good-faith bipartisan plans that showed plenty of democratic functionality, but this story omits the substance and fact of that deliberation to focus on dysfunction and the shrinking odds of a deal.

Reuters was hardly alone. Looking at the coverage during September, we see dozens of stories with “shutdown looming” in the headline or lede that avoid diagnosing the cause of the problem. Citizens who want better government and want to know the root of democratic dysfunction so we can try to fix things finish stories like this frustrated.

When passive voice dominates the coverage of governance stories like this, implying it’s impossible to tell who or what is causing the “looming shutdown” or “partisan gridlock,” you see symptoms of a dysfunctional press using anti-democracy framing.

The facts about who was threatening the shutdown were clear. A small subsection of the House GOP was using brinksmanship tactics to hold the government hostage. It was the same group that that had refused to vote for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House 14 times until he gave them the power to end his speakership. Now, they threatened to use that power if McCarthy allowed the multiple bi-partisan funding bills that had been negotiated in good faith between the three branches of government to come to a vote.

The Associated Press called them out for it midmonth, as did others. When this faction finally got around to unveiling their “doomed proposal,” containing draconian cuts that were terrible for people and impossible to vote for, Politico said it was a sign of “just how unmanageable the House GOP truly is.”

Even right-wing media knew who was to blame. Fox News shock jock Mark Levin leveled with his conservative audience, saying “we have stupid people doing stupid things in the name of conservatism.” On a Fox News Sunday TV segment where pundits reacted to a genre-driven headline from the Hill, “Lawmakers prepare for Shutdown Blame Game,” pundit Karl Rove said there was a reason why Republican lawmakers who confuse extortion for negotiation usually get blamed for shutdowns, “Generally because Republicans are responsible for the shutdown. They seem to want it.”

Instead of telling readers of who or what was causing the shutdown threat, news organizations reported on it as a seemingly unstoppable event without cause. It will come as no surprise that stories adopting the passive “government dysfunction” frame often highlight how the public has lost confidence in democratic governance because of news events like this. Citizens subjected to the products of a dysfunctional press often do.

Since 2016, when the explosion of online misinformation was finally diagnosed as an existential problem for deliberative democracy, there have been growing calls for news organizations to commit to pro-democracy reporting. Many have done so, though there is a healthy range of perspectives on what pro-democracy reporting might look like.

One thing is certain: Stories like the following from the New York Times, whose owners and editors avoid defining pro-democracy reporting because it’s complicated, isn’t it.

“For the average American outside the Beltway, these hiatuses of governing are looked at as nothing new, unfortunately.” Why is the absence of deliberative governance looked at as nothing new by “average Americans” (a cliché idea sourced in this piece to consummate beltway insiders)? Because it is commonplace for savvy journalists to deftly avoid explaining the context honestly and accurately, so readers see events like this as something that just happens - who knows why? – again and again. News coverage that describes a dysfunctional Congress without bothering to explain who or what is causing the bad governance and what the stakes are for people is not pro-democracy framing.

Why? First, it amplifies a sticky narrative that anti-democracy forces in America have repeated endlessly for decades, at least since Reagan made railing against abstract government foundational to his party’s messaging strategies. Government is dysfunctional, this narrative implies, so we should turn over sovereignty to private interests and let them solve our problems. This is anti-democracy framing.

Keep in mind that we-the-people are the government. They represent our will and should be accountable to us. So, when you read news stories that denigrate the ability of government to do anything yet avoid telling readers the truth about what is going on, you are hearing messaging that erodes faith in democracy.

Second, news reported this way is dishonest because it avoids the truth. Indeed, many of the news organizations who wrote bad takes on the shutdown knew the truth, but they couched it as “opinion” instead of allowing these truths to drive their reporting.

For example, the Washington Post, which had run several stories that hid behind the passive voice anti-democratic frame also published a piece from its editorial board that stated the truth without equivocation.

Yet those same editors signed off on a piece the day before that hid behind the “government dysfunction” frame. It described the threat of shutdown as an “unwelcomed but familiar ritual” but avoided saying whose actions were causing the impact. It’s hard to reconcile this dissonance, especially in a paper whose masthead reads “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

The best explanation is that the standard practice of news organizations avoiding criticism by hiding behind this genre of storytelling trumps their commitment to democracy.

And the genre conventions are strong. Take this story from NBC, headlined “Congress races against time to avert a shutdown.” The online story includes a video from the NBC Nightly News featuring Lester Holt. Standing next to a doomsday ticker, a graphic that builds race-against-time suspense, Holt opened the segment with passive dysfunction framing: “Congress so far unable to make a deal to avert it.” Instead of a more honest description of the shutdown threat – something like (to echo Ian Fleming) “SPEcial Caucus for Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion sows chaos because dysfunctional news orgs amplify it” – the dysfunction is passively ascribed to “Congress” with no explanation why.

We can’t function as a democracy if citizens don’t have adequate information. And when our press doesn’t let us know why government is dysfunctional or who is causing it to be so, we can’t deliberate about how to fix it. From anti-democracy reporting, we learn only that “Congress” is dysfunctional – who knows why – once again.

Reporting that hides behind the “government dysfunction” frame must necessarily omit accurate information, like the cause and the stakes of dysfunctional governance. It leaves we-the-people in the dark as passive spectators to a spectacle that just happens, again and again.

Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch, which did a helpful run down of the bad shutdown reporting, put it this way when he wrote about the problem back in 2013: “How can democracy self-correct if the public does not understand where the problem lies.”

Our Take

Pro-democracy reporting would say who was threatening to shut down Congress and what their demands were – including the policy detail and governance implications of budget cuts – so that the public would know who to hold accountable. Anti-democracy reporting, fearful of being accused of taking sides in the blame game, twists itself into dysfunctional knots to avoid being called biased, leaving the public with the impression that democracy doesn’t work.

Is it surprising that in a Monmouth Poll from September 27, more respondents blamed Democrats (48% = 21% Democrats in Congress + 27% Joe Biden) than blamed the extremists in the GOP (43%)? With story after story hiding the truth behind the “government dysfunction” narrative, what else are they to believe?

To be fair, there were also plenty of news stories last month that used pro-democracy framing and told the truth about who was causing the dysfunction. Their assertions have been confirmed, as in the days after Congressional leaders reached a deal that kept government running for another 45 more days, the Republicans who had been making Congress dysfunctional filed a motion to oust Kevin McCarthy. They just made good on their threat of a coup. Once again, the chaos of a Speaker-less House, will provide an opening for lots of anti-democracy “government dysfunction” reporting from a dysfunctional faction of the American press.

In October, given the incentives driving our news system, we’ll likely see another race-against-time government shutdown news cycle. Readers will get a chance to judge how news organizations choose to write and frame the stories. Will the reporting follow pro-democracy frames, explaining how a faction of representatives has given up on deliberation in favor of extortion to get what it wants, and provide the public the information we need to hold those who cause dysfunction accountable? Or will reporters amplify anti-democracy framing with headlines announcing – once again – that “Congress unable to reach deal” or “Congress headed toward shutdown”? Will functional news organizations help foster a faith that we-the-people can vanquish the political extremism that threatens democracy? Or will they embrace dysfunctionality by publishing anti-democracy noise that erodes our faith in our ability to govern ourselves?

Keep an eye out for the signs. You’ll know the score soon enough.

— MATT JORDAN