Monday, June 15, 2009

Consider This News

A few weeks ago I got a call from Patrick Hynes, my counterpart on this site, asking if I’d be willing to work with him on a new project. Patrick and I have been rivals for years, beginning with the 2004 presidential election when I handled John Kerry’s netroots outreach and he ran a prominent anti-Kerry blog. His site was a thorn in my side and problematic enough that at one point I resorted to doing oppo on him after he got hold of – and published - sensitive emails harmful to the campaign. Again, heading into the 2008 election, we found ourselves on opposite sides of a presidential race: he consulted for John McCain and I was an adviser to Hillary Clinton. Despite our ideological differences, a number of joint appearances at conferences resulted in an unexpected friendship.

Patrick was planning to launch a site analyzing news and newsmakers and he said he wanted to feature opposing perspectives. My primary writing venues are UN Dispatch, a site I manage in conjunction with the UN Foundation where we cover foreign policy, human rights and various UN-related issues, and Huffington Post, where I write the occasional political piece. I also advise a number of long-standing clients and most importantly, my wife and I have a ten month old baby. Simply put, free time is a rare commodity for me these days. But I was intrigued by Patrick’s idea; I’m always up for a robust left-right debate and I relish the opportunity to make a strong case for progressive ideals and principles. 

So I decided to take him up on the offer. We’re calling the site Consider This News (CTN). True to the name, one of the focus areas will be the editorial decisions by media outlets determining that some events are newsworthy and others not, giving extensive play to certain stories and personalities and consigning others to the proverbial cutting room floor. As part of that process, we’ll explore the intersection of politics, policy and pop culture, the strange amalgam of ‘news’ fed to the public by the media and processed instantaneously by the ever-growing online commentariat. That means looking at everything from Bruno and American Idol to torture memos and health care reform and examining how the clash of millions of simultaneous opinions shapes conventional wisdom.

One caveat: left-right pairings are commonplace on cable news, but far less online; there is the matter of appearing to endorse ideas that are contrary to one’s beliefs by cohabiting the same site. Suffice it to say that although Patrick will likely cringe when I tout someone like Glenn Greenwald and I’ll do the same when he extols the virtues of Fox, neither of us will refrain from (bluntly) telling the other what we think. 

Finally, a note about consistency. The head-spinning change from Bush to Obama is reflected in the dramatic reversal of fortunes on conservative and progressive sites and among left-leaning and right-leaning pundits. Those who were on top - and gloating - are now down, and vice versa. In view of that sudden shift, my personal opinion is that Democrats and progressives ought to hold themselves to the same standards of fairness and accountability that they expected of their political opponents during the years they were out of power. That includes being vigorously critical of the administration and Democratic leaders when they breach core progressive ideals. And it means that no matter how heated our disagreements, we should treat our political opponents with dignity and not the kind of dismissive mockery that progressives were met with when they were the dissenting minority.

Topics: site-news