Talking about themselves to themselves

In Atlanta there is an NPR program, Political Rewind which is intended to be a balanced review of local news and politics across the spectrum. It has a moderator but a rotating/evolving cast of perhaps as many as half a dozen guests in any given program. Usually members of the press, academia, the legislature, occasionally from campaigns, occasionally guest appearances. It attempts balance and probably goes further than most in achieving it but it is still, on average pretty solidly center left.

I like the idea and motivation of it and I like the local focus over a national, though too frequently, when it suits guest agendas, local does integrate with national.

And as an aside, having just mailed my ballot yesterday, we need way more local reporting than is provided. There were easily a dozen or more elected judge positions on the ballot, regrettably mostly uncontested. And for the contested, no matter what the position - Judge, Sheriff, Legislator - there is virtually no searchable news on them. You are comparing candidates with no history, no reporting, no empirical means of distinguishing them.

Back to Political Rewind.

This tended to be a harder left cast than normal. Or at least the fifteen minutes I caught. Much of the discussion about Covid-19 and reopening. Pretty firm lamentation of ignorant governors and careless political leaders reopening before the medical experts had blessed those decisions.

Listening to the nattering and whining brought home two realizations. Even though Political Rewind at least attempts some balance, it is still deeply flawed because it is all and only political and institutional insiders talking. It is entirely the political establishment insiders talking about themselves to themselves. It is a meta-bubble. There are no independent thinkers or panelists outside of politics. It is actually a leading example of the very problem that we are experiencing - the steady drifting apart of the citizenry from their political establishments.

The insight is that the rectification of the highly flawed news model is not just a mattering of viewpoint balance along the spectrum, though that would be nice. The bigger issue is to bring balance between average informed citizen viewpoints versus establishment insider viewpoints. That's where the real divide lies.

The second insight was marginally related.

At some point one of the public healthcare professionals was asked something about the CDC's performance during the crisis. He gave a very rosy description completely unmoored to what is seen from the outside. The moderator had the courage to repose the question based on some of the publicly visible embarrassments such as ventilators.

The participant double downed, assuring us of the fine job being done and rejecting the criticism. What was the basis for rejecting the criticism? He got carried away launching a diatribe about the goodness of the CDC workers, how smart they are, how hard they are working and the importance of listening to experts. The moderator accepted that and moved on.

As an outsider, I am looking at the serial failures of the CDC as an institution and cannot comprehend how the insider does not see those failures as well. The mixed messaging on masks, the confusion about ventilators, the incapacity to establish common and useful measures of epidemic exposure, the failure to step-in on disasters such as assisted living policies, the simple unpreparedness, unavailability of critical supplies, the poor action planning, the flawed testing kits, the regulatory inertia, etc. They have a single mission and they failed pretty comprehensively.

We need the CDC as an institution but we need them to be effective. And it has nothing to do with funding. They are well funded, there are thousands of other equally worthwhile programs which need funding and there are limits to those funds.

The fact that they are good people and smart people has nothing to do with the fact that their performance has been worse than we should have anticipated.

And that is the second insight. Political Rewind suffers from a particular blind spot, and I think it is pretty common in the media. Academics have historically had to work hard to get fired. Journalists are accustomed to being fired but because of retrenchments and industry shrinkage rather than performance per se. Even politicians, nominally always at risk from elections, aren't really fired that often. The incumbent reelection rate tends to be in the upper nineties. Some have the decency of stepping down or declining to run again when they are caught in the bed of their mistress, with their hand in the financial cookie jar, or some other notable personal failure. But if they run, they win.

None of them are accustomed to being held accountable for outcomes over which you have little control - an experience widely shared outside those fields. In business, revenues go down, people get fired (or sidelined or reassigned to obscure positions). Projects are delayed, people are switched out. A project comes in 50% over-budget, bye you're gone.

Not all the time, not every company and most critically not necessarily obviously. But everyone knows. Deliver or suffer career damage. People are accustomed to being held accountable and held accountable for events beyond their control.

It is unpleasant and brutal, but it keeps the organization fiscally healthy and ensures a good circulation of talent and experience. It is a means of self-cleansing.

If I am an academic commentator shield from consequences, of course it is unpleasant to be the target of criticism and consequences, especially if you are not used to it. But to claim that good, smart and moral are a justification for withholding criticism? Purely a function of a solid bubble separating you from everyone else.

So not just that Political Rewind guests are Mandarin Class but also that they are unaccustomed to being held accountable for performance arising from factors beyond you influence. Everyone else lives that life.

Very intriguing.