Unfair Comparison
Recently a quarterly newsletter from a group called Vote Smart arrived. They were once called Project Vote Smart and have their office in Des Moines. They claim to be a watchdog group, assembling and checking quotes and positions of politicians.
The newsletter cover had an interesting graphic. It was called “News Past and Present” and had two photos…one of Walter Cronkite, with a caption reading “Walter Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley, John Chancellor”…the other, of Sean Hannity, with a caption of “Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, Rush Limbaugh”. Then it says… “Remember being told the news and not how to think? Now we know how to think!”
The premise of this is false in a variety of respects, but let’s focus on the glaring one. Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley and Chancellor were all network nightly newscast anchors. Hannity, Maddow and Limbaugh are opinion and interview program hosts. The only common thread is that each conveyed a message through broadcasting.
That’s like comparing Joe Namath to LeBron James…each a top athlete in his field at his time, but one played football and the other basketball. Completely unfair comparison.
The blurring of news and opinion thanks to cable TV channels is a problem. But a bigger problem is a supposedly impartial fact checking group that uses false comparisons…makes one wonder about the validity of their other work.
