Propaganda With Better Manners Is Still Propaganda

I doubt many readers of this newsletter hold high hopes for the coming season of 60 Minutes, with its new roster of contributors. Few of you, presumably, have been taken in by special pleading from Bari Weiss and David Ellison, who’d like the public to believe their hostile takeover of CBS News is motivated by something (anything) high minded.

I’m also not sure how much stock newsletter readers place in the professional customs of prestige opinion journalism.

But because we know who Weiss has recruited, it’s straightforward enough to peer into the future and see the contours of what she has in mind. What does 60 Minutes look like when you replace priceless investigative-journalism talent and experience with Ross Douthat? And what does Douthat’s view of his own purpose as a commentator tell us about what’s gone wrong among gatekeepers of elite discourse?

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Fortunately there’s a paper trail. Here, in his own words, is how Douthat understands his role.

To argue effectively, you need to understand why people you disagree with hold the views that they do, and you need to start from a version of their argument that is high-minded rather than low-minded, and that is the best version of the perspective that they hold.

And that doesn’t mean that you can’t think that secretly or subconsciously they hold their opinion for bad or wicked reasons, or because they want to just destroy their enemies and salt the earth. You can believe that exists somewhere in their mind. But to argue with them, you have to actually engage with the version of the argument that they themselves would put forward as their own best defense.

So the obvious examples: I’ll pick one from the right and one from the left. So if you are pro-choice and you want to argue with pro-lifers, like actually argue with them, you cannot start from a description of the pro-life position that says: The point of pro-life politics is to subjugate women and punish them for sexual immorality.

You’re allowed to think that’s out there and is part of the socially conservative psyche. You’re allowed to think whatever you want. But you’re not going to get anywhere arguing unless you start with the fact that pro-life people think unborn human lives are human and worthy of legal protection in terms of being human. That’s just where you have to start.

And then to take an issue from the other direction: If you are a conservative opponent of liberal views on immigration, you’re allowed to think that liberals are politically Machiavellian cynics who are bringing in lots of illegal immigrants to vote Democratic. But you’re never going to get anywhere arguing unless you start with what liberals themselves would say, which is that immigration is a humanitarian and economic benefit to immigrants and to the country that receives them.

The influencer’s objective, as he describes it, is this: Try to persuade people with opposing views that they are wrong, or that they have blindspots, by first flattering their collective sense of righteousness, then chipping away at it. Understand why they believe what they believe (or at least the reasons they claim for holding the views they hold), stipulate to it, then call it into question.

Sounds unobjectionable, right? And in certain realms it is unobjectionable. This is what candidates for high office do. It’s the kind of thing you might pick up in How To Win Friends And Influence People, though I’ve never read that book. But it is a strange and telling conception of journalism.

The load-bearing assumptions here are that persuasion operates on a single channel, and that the targets are and must always be open-minded members of the ideological opposition.

I don’t really think this is how journalists, even opinion journalists, should conceive of their purpose. I don’t think it’s what journalism consumers believe they’re signing up for. The conceit is that journalists know a lot of things that elude the public, because they’re closer to the source material, and have chosen, as a vocation, to convey facts and arguments faithfully. Their customers are civilians who have different lots in life, and thus need information distilled to them by trustworthy professionals.

Facts are facts, and should be reported as such. The relative importance of facts is a matter of subjective judgment that should be informed by sober expertise. Opinions vary, but should be rooted in truth and sound reasoning. They should be well crafted, of course, but the craft shouldn’t be employing rhetorical tricks that might spin an audience of less-knowledgeable people into a state of self-doubt.

The idea that these professionals might conceal crucial information to avoid controversy or be more enticing flies in the face of the whole enterprise. Yet this basic practice has, in one form or another, become endemic among mainstream news outlets. False balance is in some sense a Douthatesque tactic for disarming hostile readers. Opinion editors strive to recruit writers who exhibit this exact kind of politesse.

It is of course wise to assume a degree of healthy skepticism within any audience, and try to overcome it. But that’s different from treating readers and listeners and viewers as marks who need to be seduced.

Bringing things back to basics like this—where things that appear in the newspaper, or on the evening news, are meant to be maximally transparent and true—opens up new avenues of persuasion: facts that might make partisans feel defensive, but god help us we would not be reporting them if they weren’t accurate and important; arguments that are forceful, honest, and logically rigorous, such that someone coming in blank and unbiased would find them compelling, and have a hard time refuting them.

This does not typically require rhetorical tools for disarming people with strong priors and convincing them to rethink, or to open their minds. Public intellectuals draw on both sets of tools. Persuasion is a billion dollar industry. People devote careers to understanding what’s persuasive to swing voters. We take great care to reach loved ones, when we disagree with them, by first seeking common ground, then trying to ease them toward different points of view. Some issues aren’t quite as polarized and polarizing as immigration and abortion.

But this is roughly the line dividing journalists and political operatives.