To explain why his website used a rainbow Twitter avatar to celebrate last Friday’s ruling that the Constitution guarantees gay marriage, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith told his old colleagues at Politico, “We firmly believe that for a number of issues, including civil rights, women’s rights, anti-racism, and LGBT equality, there are not two sides.”
This could be a line from an Anthony Kennedy Supreme Court opinion, standing, as it does, on the border between silly idea and pleasant rhetoric. But I still think it’s important and telling in a few ways. Most importantly, it (1) reflects the ideological cloistering of our national media, and (2) shows the perils inherent in the media pretensions to objectivity and impartiality.
When Smith says there is only one side to “LGBT equality,” he is saying it in the context of his website celebrating the latest Supreme Court ruling that found, in the Constitution, an obligation that states redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.
It’s obvious that there are two sides to the legal question. Nearly half of the Supreme Court justices were on the opposite side of BuzzFeed on this issue. Many supporters of gay marriage disagree with BuzzFeed and the Supreme Court on the ruling, because the Court’s ruling was obviously policymaking from the bench covered with a paper-thin veneer of legal reasoning.
A plurality of respondents said in a recent poll that the Supreme Court shouldn’t rule that gay marriage is a constitutional right.
On the more basic policy question — should states marry same-sex couples? — BuzzFeed probably finds itself in the majority, but not an overwhelming one. That same poll found a 49 to 41 plurality in favor of gay marriage.
A vast majority of states, when allowed to settle the matter democratically, chose not to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.
So BuzzFeed’s Smith is either denying this huge portion of the country — somewhere from 40 to 50 percent — exists, or else his “not two sides” declaration means he and his company view this chunk as holding an opinion outside the bounds of decency.
That’s quite a position.
More interesting to me, though, is how the episode highlights the impossibility of a central pretense of the American media: impartiality and objectivity.
Dylan Byers at Politico juxtaposed Smith’s quote to BuzzFeed’s standards, which read:
I love traditions, rigor, and when possible neutrality. But the fact is every editor and every reporter has views and biases. At the very least, everyone is reporting from a perspective. “Objectivity” is an impossibility, because we’re always a subject trying to understand and explain an object, but necessarily from the outside.
But on some issues, no decent person can be impartial, as Smith states. The New York Times doesn’t act as if there’s a legitimate debate over the propriety of the Islamic State burning someone alive. On that sort of issue, they are brought to admit what they deny in some cases: that they clearly have opinions.
The Huffington Post put up rainbows on Friday, too, and they gave Byers a perfect explanation of why. Byers reported:
Smith could do the same, an admit that his publication takes the liberal position on this question. Instead, in order to hold on to that imaginary chalice of objectivity, he has to pretend the other position doesn’t exist.
