A Final Word on the Elizabeth Warren UPL Story

Michael Drew says:

I would think there would be some toldja so’s here, but apparently everyone’s cool with just moving on.

Anyone who believes that “the [relevant, i.e. MA] media” is biased and would have treated this differently had it been a Republican obviously (like Mr. Marshall) already believed that anyway, and this uncontrolled experiment certainly isn’t inconsistent with it, but neither is it dispositive. You have to take on faith what they would have done. It seems to me that, with all the lawyers who have run for office in Massachusetts, what there is is simply a clear record of just not thinking that finding evidence of potential licensing problems in candidates’ practices (which then would have to be presented in terms of he says/she says accounts of possible interpretations of the relevant regulations) were attractive enough investigative targets in terms of reader interest and potential political impact to put the resources into investigating them.

Marshall says that lawyers in Massachusetts tend to be Democrats or liberals or something, so I suppose that amounts to a de facto liberal bias if squint? OTOH, there are these things called primaries, where the competition in a place like MA can be every bit a fierce within the party as between them. I don’t know, but it just seems to me if I were a newspaper editor, I really don’t know that I’d know how to present these facts in a way that was 1. responsible to actual factual content, 2. responsible to the regulatory context in which they are ostensibly interesting to the public, while still telling a story that’s 3. clear and compelling and not completely buried under interpretive hedging (“under this person’s interpretation of professional regulations, these facts would constitute a violation, but under these, not,” etc.,), and 4. still actually newsworthy.

In short: the lawyers still aren’t sure what the fact pattern here means. If I’m a responsible mainstream, “neutral-brand” local news publisher/broadcaster, I’m still not really sure what story I’m supposed to print here. (Whereas if this were about Scott Brown, obviously MSNBC would be reporting it out like crazy, just as Fox is. Which also seems fine to me — no one is confused about what kind of product these outlets claim to be delivering.)

I’d be curious as to your thoughts on this part of the question, Mark, as it does make up a significant part of Marshall’s post (which I agree is quite judicious, though it kind of trails off into navelgazing about his own opinions and perspective on the matter in its second half).Report