I'm not really sure when it started. It was certainly present in 2016 but it may have been around for quite a while and I just didn't notice. This is about the peculiar idea of "normalization". This happens when people work hard to present a viewpoint -- particularly in comparison to another -- as "equally valid" even though they aren't even close to equally valid.
The concept of normalization can be achieved in two different ways -- both ways bring multiple people or ideas into the same "normal" umbrella. One way tries to disguise, hide, or ignore aspects such that they appear to be "normal". The other works to expand the definition of "normal" such that the formerly abnormal (not hidden, not disguised) becomes a part of normal. This second form, closer to the dictionary definition, is unusual but not truly abnormal.
Obviously, attempting to portray something as valid when it isn’t is a type of lie in itself. I guess that the economic world can celebrate the birth of a new vocation — the “fact-checker” — because of this devolution of news coverage. Once upon a time, if a newspaper reported something — including quotes from some celebrity news source — it would either only report what was true or would have expansion sentences “clarifying” the reality that exists around the quotes. Quoth the raven, “Nevermore”. Fact-checkers became required since journalists could no longer be trusted to report the facts. (Everyone recognizes that no one can get everything right all the time — but that is why the world invented retractions and corrections.)
Just why did this “normalization” start appearing? In my opinion, mostly because of money.
A quote from John Lydgate but more famously requoted by Abraham Lincoln:
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”
The new profit-oriented owners of newspapers, and broadcast stations, wanted to maximize their profits. They could publish the full facts, as far as they could be determined, and possibly irritate some of their readers or advertisers. Or they could go the realtor “beige” route (few people like beige but almost no one objects to it). Strip enough of the facts away that it seemed more palatable to those that might have objected but leave enough facts that both sides were represented. Or, allow a group to use a name that was highly misleading without putting the name in quotes.
This is “normalization” and it skews reality such that the information presented is no longer useful. In my opinion, this is why “mainstream” corporate media has lost so much credibility — because they aren’t credible anymore (amazing, isn’t it?).
Another way to look at normalization is by looking at two people as an example. Everyone has good points and everyone has bad points. At a certain level of research, person A has 6 good points and 2 bad points. At that same level of research, person B has 1 good point and 10 bad points. In a “normalized” article, they would each have 1 bad point and 1 good point presented. They seem fairly similar in morality, don’t they? Not the same but rather balanced. But the reality is that one is much worse than the other.
So, one form of normalization is where we take two (or more) items or people and start ignoring what we don’t want to disclose about them (it can be applied to both). And, since we also want them to be considered of equal believability, lies are allowed to remain unchallenged and, thus, assumed by the reader to be true.
Another, more constructive, form of normalization works to make the previously unaccepted acceptable. My mother-in-law had her lawn planted in low-water-consumption, low-labor, native plants. Practical, good for the earth, and the only such lawn on the block or even the entire section of the city. Luckily, the property was not part of a HomeOwners Association (HOA) whose primary purpose is to homogenize the neighborhood. Making earth-friendly landscaping acceptable would be a form of normalization. Or the Civil Rights movement. The 1960s did not achieve close to what it hoped in terms of civil rights but it did strive to normalize the existence of multiple skin pigment combinations to be an acceptable part of the community and partially succeeded.
In both situations, normalizing brings the abnormal “into the fold” — either by manipulating the facts or by widening the acceptability of characteristics. In the above example of person A and person B, normalization COULD have been approached by presenting all of the facts unearthed about each person and then an attempt to make all the points acceptable. This is not usually done because it takes much longer to shift community acceptability criteria than it does to eliminate, and massage, the facts to allow them to be perceived as acceptable. This is not the only manner in which the standards of journalism has declined within printed, broadcast, or streaming media — but it is a very important one. Being able to compare a whole idea, or a whole person, to another is vital. Of course, as discussed in a prior newsletter, what is reported cannot, or unearthed, be complete — there are too much data to be able to research and present — but, when known, there should not be deliberate distortion such that the presentation becomes a lie.
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