I am alternately flummoxed, frustrated and furious at news headlines, lead paragraphs and interviewer questions that position Democrats as responsible for Republican chaos.
I began publicly railing about (or documenting, a more appealing verb) biased news framing fairly recently. For example:
This time, it’s @CBSNews normalizing the GOP.
News flash:
CONGRESS is not “paralyzed.”The SENATE IS FINE.
The HOUSE GOP is in chaos and THEY are not functional.
Please explain why Biden’s age is relevant, Scott Pelley, 66, Texan.#JournalisticMalpractice pic.twitter.com/Lsjg82Robt
— ???? Kathy E Gill ? ??mastodon.social/@kegill (@kegill) October 16, 2023
Today I learned that Murc’s law describes, but does not explain, this phenomena. A sense of relief follows validation that I am not imagining things.
Attributed to someone who long ago commented on the blog Lawyers, Guns and Money (maybe in 2017), Murc’s law is “the widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.”
“In combination with BothSidesism, it means the burden of constructive action must always be 100% on Democrats and never, ever, on Republicans,” observed Bruce Baugh in 2018.
* Murc's Law = the assumption that only Democrats (voters and/or politicians) have agency. Tons of commentary contains this assumption, implicitly. Once you're looking out for it, you see it everywhere.
— David Watkins (@djw172) November 24, 2018
David Watkins is right: once seen, it cannot be unseen.
In 2021, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s inclusion of Jim Banks and Jim Jordan as members of the January 6 committee. Both men had “raised unfounded claims of fraud and illegality relating to the 2020 presidential election.”
Alex Shephard paraphrased contemporaneous pundit media reporting thusly:
Why can’t both parties just stop messing around and get things done? If only Nancy Pelosi would stop playing politics and allow people who tried to overturn a legitimate presidential election to serve on a committee investigating a violent attempt to overturn a legitimate presidential election!
Sticking with the January 6th committee, in Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop positions “bothsideism” as being kin to Murc’s Law. Siblings? Fraternal twins?
This is, indeed, bothsidesism as we’ve come to understand the term, insofar as it bent over backward to find Democratic culpability in a problem that Republicans created…arguably, the worst of [the most objectionable coverage] was so bothsidesy that it approached onesideism, scolding Democrats while letting Republicans off the hook.
This is itself a much broader problem than mere false equivalence, reflecting…the commonplace journalistic assumption that “Republican bad faith… is just a feature of the landscape,” whereas a given Democrat is “an actor with agency, and subject to scrutiny” (emphasis added).
Murc's Law: Only Democrats have agency. Everything Republicans do, they were made to do by Democrats. Democrats made them vote for Trump, made them be racist, made them elect Qanon lunatics, made them assault the capitol. https://t.co/zzS8rIFyH0
— David Roberts (@drvolts) February 1, 2021
You’ll often see ‘Murc's Law’ (Only Democrats have agency or any causal impact on American politics) or something close to it up on Yellowstain. Republicans in the Alabama House have 77ish of 105 seats but the reason no gambling bill moved last night is … #ALpolitics pic.twitter.com/Vh9uba5haV
— John Gunn (@JuntoGunto) May 7, 2021
Rarely do you see a more explicit example of Murc's Law: "Only Democrats have agency." It's not until the 24th graf that the story acknowledges that a Republican was president at the time, and the 25th to note that Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. https://t.co/0zolrMNr0i
— Aaron S. Veenstra (@asveenstra) June 10, 2022
I'm going to have an aneurysm. pic.twitter.com/sX51IqWJsy
— Christopher Ingraham? (@_cingraham) October 13, 2023
When fascism comes to America, it will be holding a notepad and asking Democrats why they weren’t nicer to the fascists https://t.co/i61YGpcj4Q
— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) October 14, 2023
.
It’s everywhere, and Republicans aren’t the only beneficiary of the bias. So are the news media themselves.
#JournalisticMalpractice https://t.co/kMkdwplIVv
— Prof Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) February 6, 2023
I do not know how long news media have normalized radical (Heather Cox Richardson) “movement conservatives” that run today’s GOP at the national level. My guess is that this bias went into overdrive after the Electoral College put Trump in the White House in 2017. (Reminder: both Republican presidents this century “won” despite having lost the popular vote.)
News media insistence that Democrats are responsible for Republican failures presents a challenge the size of Mount Everest for 2024.
If you have examples of Murc’s Law, or ideas on how to counter it, please chime in. Comments are open!
Related
- According to Murc’s law, the current chaos in the House is the Democrats’ fault
- “Both Sides” Journalism Will Never Die
- Only Democrats have agency (and other links)
- Peak Murc’s law?
- Uh, Politico? Biden didn’t make Marjorie Taylor Greene “the face of the GOP” — Republicans did
- Why Reactionary Conservatives Get a Free Pass from Local Press
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com