I've speculated in the past about why anthropologists have done such a poor job understanding cultures. It seemed to me to have something to do with them staring intently through a window on some other culture trying to assemble a coherent image in their minds, and failing since much of what they saw was their own reflection in the glass through which they were peering. Said another way:

At this point, most of the folks who would have cited Mead as a straightforward authority about Pacific societies a generation ago have learned to bracket her off and see her more in the context of an intellectual moment, as a cultural philosopher of sexuality and gender, who found the Samoans she studied “good to think” . . .

Mead didn’t invent the Samoa she described out of whole cloth, in accordance with her vision of what human beings ought to be, but neither was the narration of what she observed unaffected by what she felt her own society ought to become.

The same problems are faced by journalists and pundits within their own cultures. They are unable to understand what is before them due to their preconceptions and biases of which they are sometimes blissfully unconscious. They have little self awareness and so are hobbled in any attempt to correct their observations to remove the biases and defects of their instruments: their own minds.

That ought to be a primary rule, a first principle of journalism. It is seldom so:

When certain problems are widely acknowledged — e.g., the untenable growth in the cost of health care — why not focus news coverage around the frame “What are our elected leaders doing to solve these problems?” as opposed to “Can Obama save the world?” I don’t think that frame crosses the line into advocacy — no solution is being endorsed — any more than do other stories that imply a belief in altruistic democracy.

The frame is merely advocacy. Better questions are something more like "why are health care costs growing?" and "why are politicians meddling"? The first question needs to be answered before the second has any meaning. Just cannon-balling into the issue with the assumption that "elected leaders" - who seldom have any useful insights on the subject, or useful methods to address the issues - can or ought to "solve" anything, all but guarantees a muddled mess.

Worse perhaps, they even betray their own stated principles of "altruistic democracy". There's no altruism in what they do, or even enlightened self interest. There's only confusion and blundering in pursuit of status in their narrow circle.

No one is immune to such incentives and motivations. The best that can be done is to be aware of them and decline to believe your own bullshit. It's hard. "Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth".