Although the white-hot allegations that the Internal Revenue Service might have targeted conservative groups for political reasons has cooled in recent months as the media spotlight focused elsewhere, a Dartmouth College professor said it's critical to examine the important role the media had in inflating the scandal and distorting the truth.
Nyhan, who is an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth and a media critic for the Columbia Journalism Review, said that in the weeks after the scandal leapt to the top of the headlines and fodder for cable TV screens, facts indicate that the IRS targeted multiple groups, not just conservative ones, and the media played a political role in feeding the wrong perception.
The controversy began in May 2013 when IRS officials revealed that the agency had targeted political groups applying for tax-exempt status for closer scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to an outcry from conservative leaders that those groups who were targeted were on the right and Tea Party-affiliated groups.
In the subsequent days and with national media attention focused on the topic, the revelations was transformed into a full-blown scandal. Comparisons were made between the Obama administration and the Watergate-era Nixon administration. Some IRS officials resigned under pressure, and President Barack Obama himself publicly condemned the agency's actions.
Nyhan said that the media played a pivotal part in the scandal's growth.
“Scandal is a co-production of the opposition party and a cooperative press. Neither can do it alone. The media doesn’t want to be out in front of a scandal by itself without support from the opposition party at the risk of appearing biased or having an ax to grind,” said Nyhan.
He said that his real concern is for the public when these news stories start to become a media firestorm. He said that is when the reporting of the story stops and instead, the pundit-style analysis starts to saturate the media and facts aren’t really known at that point.
“In this particular story, most of the coverage happened in the first few weeks after the initial disclosure, but when more facts were uncovered in the following weeks, they were given much less coverage in comparison," he said. “By then, the scandal has already been solidified in the minds of the American public.”
After this latest scandal and the critique of the media, Nyhan said he believes things will improve. However, he doesn’t think the improvement will be prolonged.
“There’s an interesting cycle to these things though, after a scandal there tends to be a period of remorse and regret as people remember the excesses of the last time around, and then a new one comes through again -- I expect their might be some interval now, but then we may be heading into more scandals in the future, ” said Nyhan.
