What the opinion page is for
June 20th, 2008, 11:57 am · Post a Comment · posted by Scott Shackford
I had a very interesting conversation with a reader Tuesday. He had been an irregular reader of the Desert Dispatch but had recently started a full subscription. He had called because he was concerned that our opinion page “leaned” conservative. He had read one of Richard Reeb’s commentaries, but hadn’t yet seen one of Carol Jensen’s Monday pieces.
I explained to the caller that actually, my intent with the opinion page is to promote libertarian political views, while at the same time, accommodating other views as well.
There was one particularly illuminating moment in the conversation. Because he was more progressive, he was concerned that too much conservative opinion on the page, unchecked by an equal amount of progressive commentary, might influence people to believe in conservative politics.
In other words, he was concerned that we were encouraging people to believe in things that he didn’t want people to believe.
It was a real learning moment for me, because in my mind, of course the commentaries are trying to influence people to believe in the writer’s views — that’s what they’re for. The entire point of an opinion page is to influence and challenge what people believe.
But that’s not how the caller felt, and I should have probably known better. The rise of our pundit-based opinion culture has created a country where people believe the purpose of commentary is to validate what they believe. To tell them that they’re right and those other people are wrong. The purpose of running commentary from the “other side” is not for “balance,” like they want to believe. It’s so that they have somebody to be indignant about and prove wrong. The idea that there might actually be a third side (let alone a fourth or fifth) seems alien to people these days. Because Freedom Communication editorial writers have a libertarian perspective, we’ve been accused of being part of the “liberal media” when we write about individual rights and then accused of being “right wing pawns” when we write about property rights and support capitalism. There are people who really cannot perceive that there’s anything else out there.
The larger result has been bland, toothless opinion pages in other newspapers across the country, where editorials read like they’re written by a focus group and are designed to appeal to the pre-existing beliefs of the majority of the readership, not to actually influence anybody at all.
But I’m hopeful for change over the next 10 years. The fragmentation of the political parties might help. The increasing number of voices encouraging the Republican to turn back to a small-government mentality adds a new side to the discussion. Blogs have changed the dynamic in many ways — some just add to the pundit echo chamber, but a lot of them add nuance to the discussion, dissecting and pushing at the foundations of what we believe.
I will continue to try to challenge what people believe on our editorial page, and I don’t apologize for my — or any of my writers’ — efforts to actually influence people’s beliefs.
