“Cokie’s
Law,” named for the condescending and compromised reporter Cokie Roberts, can
be summed up thusly: “It doesn't matter if it is true, it is what people are
talking about, so I have to talk about it as if it were true.”
Cokie’s
Law was inspired by this comment from its namesake: "At this point, it
doesn't much matter whether she said it or not because it's become part of the
culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was
talking about."
“Here’s how it works,” John Cole wrote. “Obama
says something, Republicans completely lie about it, the media notes the lie is
catching on without ever actually calling it a lie, the Democrats have to waste
resources and respond to the lie, Republicans double down, this sucks the life
out of everything else for a couple weeks, and in 10 years this will be
conventional wisdom that Obama called Americans lazy, just like Al Gore claimed
to invent the internet and the rest of the bullshit that wingnuts have adopted
as received truths (snow in November refutes climate change, the more you cut
taxes the more government revenue you raise, if a bombing campaign does not
make people like you, it means you didn’t bomb hard enough or your targeting
was off, liberals lost Viet Nam, waterboarding isn’t torture, etc.).
We’re so
fucked as a nation."
The
online pundit Bluegal elaborated: “It’s the idea that if George Will says that
Ebola is ‘in the air,” well then we have to discuss that as if it’s a real
thing. If Phyllis Schlafly says that Ebola is being sent here by Obama to get
back at us for Africa, we have to report on that. That’s what reporting is.”
Cokie’s
Law is a particularly shameless example of false balance, which is the greatest
fault in contemporary American news coverage. Also referred to as false equivalence, it’s a bias that
lets reporters present an issue as being balanced between opposing viewpoints while ignoring the
overwhelming weight of evidence and fact on one side. “Both Siderism” is
another variation of this intellectual scam.
Paul
Loop put it this way, explaining Politico, CNN, the news networks, the Sunday
shows and the corporate-owned punditocracy in general: “When you assert that
’both sides are equally to blame,’ and they are obviously NOT equally to blame
after a simple objective analysis, you are essentially covering for the side
that deserves all the blame. In Politico's case, it's beyond obvious by now
that putting lipstick on the conservative pig is an essential part of its
mission.”