Perception and Reality and the Death of Journalism

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

15 April 14

f all the sins against the craft of journalism, the one I find the most mortal is the acceptance by journalists as axiomatic the notion that "Perception is reality." This is a fine thing for ad men, and for consultants, and for the other witches and warlocks that make up the tangle of fauna infesting our political system. It is death to actual journalism. Perception is perception and reality is reality and, if they don't match up, then it is the job of journalism not to accept the perception as the reality, but to hammer home the reality until the perception conforms to this. If you want to see someone who has tumbled all the way down the rabbit hole on this issue, check out the quotes collected here at Salon from The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

After it was pointed out to Cillizza that his piece got a number of things wrong (the CBO said Obamacare would reduce workforce participation by the equivalent of 2 million workers, not that it would cost 2 million jobs) he nonetheless stuck to his original analysis. "The CBO report means political trouble for Democrats this fall," Cillizza wrote the following day, arguing that the guts of the matter are secondary to how people perceive the law. "My job is to assess not the rightness of each argument but to deal in the real world of campaign politics in which perception often (if not always) trumps reality. I deal in the world as voters believe it is, not as I (or anyone else) thinks it should be. And, I'm far from the only one."

So it is the journalist's job to accept that which sells, no matter how dishonest it is, simply because it is sold well? Truth, as someone wrote in a book once, is defined as that which enough people believe? Dear Jesus, what a mess. Note to my old boss Marty Baron: congratulations on yet another gutsy Pulitzer on yet another risky story. (In his first year at The Boston Globe, Baron went after the Catholic Church, and won. This past year, his first at the Post, he went after the NSA, and won. Say what you will about him, the man does not aim small.) Now, please take young Mr. Cillizza in hand before he hurts himself badly.

As a matter of fact, the Affordable Care Act is a case study in the damage that adopting this axiom can do. There was yet another Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday that was yet again chock-full of yet more good news about the Act's implementation. The Affordable Care Act is making health-care more, well, affordable.

The most expensive provisions of Obamacare will cost taxpayers about $100 billion less than expected, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday CBO also said it doesn't expect big premium increases next year for insurance plans sold through the health care law's exchanges. In its latest analysis, CBO said the law's coverage provisions-a narrow part of the law that includes only certain policies-will cost the government $36 billion this year, which is $5 billion less than CBO's previous estimate. Over the next decade, the provisions will cost about $1.4 trillion-roughly $104 billion less than CBO last estimated. The analysis covers only a part of the Affordable Care Act. The costs outlined in Monday's report, including the Medicaid expansion and subsidies to private insurance, are offset by other provisions that raise taxes or cut spending. On balance, CBO says, the law will reduce the federal deficit.

(Eric Boehlert argues that the ACA may serve in this year's midterms the way impeachment did in the 1998 midterms -- as a campaign device that looked unstoppable a year out, but that bounced back and injured severely the people wielding it. I'm less sanguine than that, but I do think the Republicans should be getting a little nervous and looking to Plan B, especially as regards the Senate.)

This puts the perception-is-reality people in something of a bind. Nobody can deny that the Republicans have done a fine job spending millions of dollars on meretricious advertising to scare people into hating a law that those same people simultaneously love piecemeal. Nobody can deny that the Republicans have done a fine job spending millions of dollars on meretricious politics in order to define the entire ACA by its shoddy launch -- which was, I keep pointing out, almost nine months ago. Nobody can deny that they are staking their entire midterm election strategy on saddling the Democrats with a law that is working, relying on the perception that their meretricious advertising and meretricious politicking have created to convince people is not. Well done, consultants and ad people. Have another round on me.

However, it is not the primary job of journalism to point out how effective the sales job has been. The primary job of journalism is to point out, again and again, that the Act is largely working the way it is supposed to work, and to point this out over and over until the perception yields to the reality in the public mind. This is what makes the job particularly thankless. Nobody wants to be told that they're wrong, over and over again. That is not the way to be popular. That will crimp your social schedule. But nobody ever should get into this racket to be popular anyway. That is another modern heresy that needs desperately to be stamped out.