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May 22, 2004
PressThink's Questions and Answers about Media BiasI don't think "unbiased journalism" is a particularly noble or desirable thing. The Q and A explains why...You have said (here) that you prefer to leave “bias” criticism to others. Why is that? You don’t believe there’s bias in the news media? You don’t see it yourself? Of course I see it. To me, any work of journalism is saturated with bias from the moment the reporter leaves the office—and probably before that—to the edited and finished product. There’s bias in the conversation our biased reporter has with his biased editor, bias in the call list he develops for his story, bias in his choice of events to go out and cover, bias in the details he writes down at the event, bias in his lead paragraph, bias in the last paragraph, bias when his editor cuts a graph. The headline someone else writes for him— that has bias. There’s bias in the placement of the story. (No bias in the pixels or printer’s ink, though.) Bias, bias, bias. Yes, I see it. I see it everywhere. I often disagree with those who see it only somewhere in the press. Bias against Bush. Bias against the anti-war Left. Bias against believing Christians. They don’t go far enough, in my opinion. “Bias, bias, bias.” Isn’t that a way of trivializing the question? No, I don’t think it is. Mine is just another way of saying that human judgment tells you what to do in journalism— not god or the rule book or the facts. That’s not a trivial point: journalism is saturated with judgment, and a lot of that judgment belongs to the individual journalist. The trouble arises (and this is the whole reason we have the bias debate) because American journalists some time ago took refuge in objectivity, and began to base their authority on a claim to have removed bias from the news. This claim was not just hot air. It corresponded to things journalism did. Things like what? Well, to give you the compressed version… First journalism removed the political party from influence in the newsroom. Then it removed, as much as possible, the publisher and his pro-business mentality. Then it removed the political opinions of its own people. Then it removed the community— local bias, if you will. Then it removed the public because it had polls instead, and they were more objective. At each step in these strategic removals, the justification was objectivity: producing more unbiased news. And in this way the press wound up basing its authority—the professional journalist’s bid for public trust—on the claim to have mastered the removal of bias. When actually, they just kicked everyone else out. Well, you can be better at it than anyone else—total bias removal—and still be pretty bad. Why? Because journalism is saturated with judgment. Good journalism is. So sometimes the press claims to be dependable because it is said to have mastered something it is actually very bad at— “curing” the news of bias. But then anyone would be terrible at that. So the reason I leave bias criticism to others is that I don’t think “unbiased journalism” is a particularly noble or desirable thing. It’s not my ideal. Nor do I see it as humanly possible. That it’s not possible to be totally objective— we get that. But still: don’t we want journalists who are as unbiased as possible? Don’t you? People say that. I almost never believe them. The appetite for factual truth when it conflicts with fixed views is extremely small when compared to other appetites that do get expressed. Everyone forgets this. Ironically, journalists know it very well. Online, of course, this appetite seems even smaller. In any case, if we do want unbiased journalism we should not. We should want journalists who show good judgment. After Matter: Notes, Reactions & Links… Related posts: Questions and Answers About PressThink. Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate, part one. (PressThink’s questions for bias hunters.) Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate, part two (Answers to part one.) No, Media Bias Is Not a Dumb Debate, Says Bias Hunter (Tim Graham of the Media Research Center responds from the Right.) Has Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate? A Man of the Left Responds to PressThink’s Questions (Brian Dominick of the New Standard from the Left.) Roger Simon, novelist and weblogger, comments on this post: “… journalism is saturated with bias and that is a good thing. In fact, I would go further — it’s completely irrelevant whether it is good or bad anyway because it is bred in the bone. Journalism is created by biased creatures — humans. One of the advances in knowledge these days is that most of us finally realize institutions like The New York Times are not ex cathedra authorities, but just somebody’s idea of the truth — ultimately the publisher’s.” (And see the comments section too) Peter Levine comments on bias criticism: For my own part, I can’t figure out how to assess charges of left-wing or right-wing bias in the press. There’s too much diversity in the coverage, and the political spectrum is too poorly defined today. I do detect a disturbing set of professional biases in favor of …. Andrew Cline of Rhetorica responds to PressThink (May 24): I modify “bias” with “structural” to speak of the frames of thought that I believe are far more important to understanding journalistic behavior than the “bias” many call “political.” All choices are political to one extent or another, so “political” is hardly modification at all. To insist on partisan political bias (“the press is liberal” or “the press is conservative”), to take one of these sides to the exclusion of contrary evidence, is to engage in partisan struggle for rhetorical and political purposes. Editor of the Seattle Times, Mike Fancher, in a Sunday column: “Complaints about political bias in The Seattle Times seem to be at record levels, and they keep coming from all directions.” (May 23)
Posted by Jay Rosen at May 22, 2004 6:00 PM
Comments
I actually agree with this -- to a point. Nothing is more frustrating than the article that says "one side said x, and the other side said not x" -- while giving the reader no guidance as to which position is right. Good journalism should give the reader facts to help them decide between competing viewpoints. But it shouldn't distort facts, bury facts, or mislead. And there's something suspicious going on if the facts always seem to point to the leftist position being the correct position. Good stuff, Jay. Two thoughts come to mind. One, the First Amendment wasn't written to protect the publication of facts. Two, any discussion on this topic is helped by acknowledgement of the father of professional journalism, Walter Lippmann, and his social engineering motives. As Christopher Lasch has so brilliantly observed, the decline in participation in the political process in this country is directly tied to the rise in the so-called "professionalization" of the press. Posted by: Terry Heaton at May 23, 2004 9:15 AM | Permalink We all operate within mental structures. It's inevitable. Whenever we receive facts, they are catalogued within the structures we already have. Statistics, too, are biased, because they are based on a human process: Someone wrote the questions, someone asked them - in a tone of voice, and people are generally forced to answer within a preset structure. Full disclosure here. It's a false email to protect me from Nigerian scams. Maybe this all goes back to a "belief" in science as able to supply answers, when physics tells us that even at the subatomic level, the observer changes the structure of what is observed! Every fact, every observation, every effort to explain inevitably changes the face of "reality." To me good journalism takes the facts and puts them in context. Naturally, different journalists will see the facts according to their differing mental structures. So it is interesting to see how the emerging facts in any story are construed by different people. And of course as the news is disseminated, it changes the very events which it tries to report. This cannot be avoided. But also needs to be reported as well. One of the things that I noticed for a while last week was that the news cycle related to the Iraq prison scandal was so fast that the news began to consist of more and more facts being put out there without the requisite context being supplied. And I was left to wonder, gee, doesn't that new fact contradict something I think I read or heard a few days back? Sure enough, a few days later someone put those things together and suddenly it was clear that things were even darker than they had appeared, when "just the facts" were out there - minus the context. As a layperson, I appreciate it when people with the ability to dig into background provide that for me. When that does not happen with certain issues or when things seem to be omitted that I already know about, then it's my responsiblity as a reader or viewer to bring that to somebody's attention. Even now there are issues related to the abuse scandal that have not been dealt with to my satisfaction. And I can only hope that somewhere, someone is digging into things based on my pleas for them to do so. (I wonder if one day we will have a way for people to post missing stories, like a missing person's list but for the news?) I agree with your statement that "we want journalists who show good judgment." With regard to the scandals emerging related to Iraq etc., I am suddenly appreciative of certain writers with whom I often disagree politically, but whose reasoning with regard to what is going on strikes me as sound and helpful. I have indeed sent emails to several people commending them and acknowledging my own background, so that they can see their writing is appreciated across a spectrum. I certainly applaud you here, Jay, for what you are doing to shine a light back onto the work you participate in. And thanks for allowing "public" participation! Posted by: Mary Ann at May 23, 2004 2:40 PM | Permalink I agree that we're all biased. Any selection of facts will necessarily represent a bias. I think the main problem most Americans have with the current incarnation of the mainstream media is not that they have biases, but rather that they all share the same rather narrow biases, a reflection of the fact that almost all the media is now controlled and produced by a very narrow and unrepresentative slice of the population. It is geographically unrepresentative and has little or no knowledge of various important sections of the world, such as business or the military, upon which it reports (necessarily ignorantly) on a daily basis. Do you believe in facts? Do you believe in an external reality independent of our thinking? I personally do not believe that the world consists only of opinions. I believe such a view to be a dangerous one, one which leads to the childish view that my fantasies can trump reality. When it comes to newspapers, I'd like to see a lot more facts insofar as that is possible, and a lot less of somebody else's synthesis of the facts. Posted by: WichitaBoy at May 23, 2004 2:50 PM | Permalink Mary-- Quantum mechanics tells us that the observer influences reality only at the subatomic level; when at the ordinary (macro) level the influence is necessarily negligible. Reality is out there. Posted by: WichitaBoy at May 23, 2004 2:54 PM | Permalink Jay, thanks for once again bringing a sensible perspective to a vastly misunderstood and wildly overrated aspect of the news. One obvious point that often gets lost in the heat of the debate: Objectivity is a technique, not an ethical principle. When I am writing a complex story on controversial issues, I deliberately try to wipe my mind clear of the biases I inevitably bring to the story. That's not to make me neutral or indifferent but to help me hear all sides and report them fairly, to weigh evidence judiciously, to clarify the issues fully. Objectivity doesn't make me pure, but it helps me listen and report better. Much of the official neutrality that plagues media today has less to do with good reporting than with presenting as bland a public aspect as possible to avoid offending advertisers on either side of the aisle. Posted by: David Crisp at May 23, 2004 5:43 PM | Permalink Isn't it probable that the move towards "objective" journalism was a result of media consolidation - i.e., the fall of the daily newspapers combined with the rise of radio and television, which because of technological limitations and governement regulation regarding broadcast bandwidth, and because of the resulting market pressures, were forced to adopt the pseudo-objective stance. Cable changed that, and so has the internet. So the move toward objectivity wasn't a liberal plot, but a result of technological and regulatory compromises, and of capitulation to the market? Posted by: panopticon at May 23, 2004 7:40 PM | Permalink Terry, Two, any discussion on this topic is helped by acknowledgement of the father of professional journalism, Walter Lippmann, and his social engineering motives. As Christopher Lasch has so brilliantly observed, the decline in participation in the political process in this country is directly tied to the rise in the so-called "professionalization" of the press. Could not professionalization of the press also be tied into the professionalization of all professions throughout society and a resulting loss of trust in more than just our partisan political system? David, I find that writing objectively makes the most sense when problems are complex, mostly because it helps tease out the issues in my own mind. Thanks for cohering something I've experienced! Jay, I've been meaning to ask you a question on media bias for awhile, and this gives me an opportunity. On both the left and the right, the idea of bias is used to justify ideological positions and revert to a solipsistic worldview that cannot be disproven. That is, if there's bad news in Iraq, it's only because the media is liberal, or if there's good news in Iraq, it's only because the media is shilling for the administration. How does the institution of journalism defend itself from these attitudes? I find the biases in the media natural, but the lack of awareness of these biases on the part of (usually older) journalists themselves quite appalling. It's like journalists are trying to deny their humanity as a play to appropriate more power. The result of this attitude seems to be a long-term weakening of the public's appreciation for journalistic integrity, and thus more sensitivity on the part of the public towards well-funded partisan propagandizing. I have penned an open letter for a newspaper to start a 'smear beat' as an institutional defense against this charge, because the inevitable resulting smears on all sides bear remarkably similar patterns and are calculated to influence the press specifically. What do you think? Posted by: Matt Stoller at May 23, 2004 9:27 PM | Permalink Wichita Boy: "...observer influences reality only at the subatomic level; when at the ordinary (macro) level the influence is necessarily negligible." Ever been at a demonstration when the TV crew shows up? ;-) Posted by: Old Grouch at May 23, 2004 10:02 PM | Permalink Patterico: Two points...First, you point to "something suspicious going on if the facts always seem to point to the leftist position being the correct position." I don't know what the referent is for this statement. Which "always" are you talking about? Second, I would like to ask you something. Occasionally, in your examination of the Los Angeles Times (or as you call it, the Dog Trainer) it must happen that you run across an example that disconfirms the "liberal bias" hypothesis, and in fact points the other way. I'm not saying it happens a lot, only that it must, from time to time, occur to you: "geez, that was really rough on the left," or "This writer has a beef with liberals..." or just "that was unfair to the other guys." So on those rare days when this happpens, and you're reading the paper: how do you treat these "exceptions?" What kind of evidence do they offer-- I mean to you? Does the appearance of a counter-example in the LA Times--spin that injures the left, let's call it--seem to you a significant event, because it's so rare, or an insignificant one, because it's so rare? I would be interested to know what the consequences of a counter-example are for you, intellectually speaking. Or to put it another way... what do these anomalies do to your story about the LA Times and its editors?
Matt - The problem isn't in the answer, it's in your question -"the media" - "the institution of journalism". Posted by: panopticon at May 23, 2004 11:05 PM | Permalink Matt: I think you put it very well with: "if there's bad news in Iraq, it's only because the media is liberal, or if there's good news in Iraq, it's only because the media is shilling for the administration." This is one of the bigger problems with the media bias debate. When distorted readings of the press accompany charges of distortion in the press, you're going to have a distorted and quite disorienting debate. We passed that point long ago on the subject of media bias. That is why I am not a regular participant in that discourse, but rather a student of it, and I try to be conversant with its terms, ideas and people. "How does the institution of journalism defend itself from these attitudes?" Well, this is one reason we have such a defensive press. Also one reason journalists tune out a lot of criticism, which in my view has been a mistake. In fact, many sociologists who have studied the way journalists make decisions have agreed that a crucial factor (not the crucial factor, just one of them) is protection-seeking behavior in a newsroom; that is, journalists write and present the news in a way that gives them some refuge from the instant criticism they are always vulnerable to because the news, even when accurate, is daily, rushed, a "first draft," approximate in its truthfulness, and open to criticism from everyone. News also tends to be something people argue fiercely about, as well they should. Protection-maximizing behaviors are well known in journalism and openly discussed. For example, get an expert to say something and quote her, rather than assert it on your own authority. Is it artificial? Absolutely. A broad opening for bias and "spin" to enter in? Yes. It's not a very good use of experts, either. But there's just more refuge in doing that way, so they do it that way. Sometimes what seems inexplicable, outrageous--or just dumb--about news stories is clearer if we assume that journalists are seeking refuge as much as they are seeking news. One of the consequences, of course, is pack journalism- a far bigger problem, in my view, than ideological commitments or leanings among journalists. Of course this happens in all occupations. It's called Cover Your Ass-- CYA. Except that in journalism your ass is hanging out more, and you're out there every day, reporting on things that are by nature controversial, and a lot of what you do cannot be defended except through some workplace logic like the deadline's reporter's practical motto: "go with what you got." Makes perfect sense in a newsroom. As an explanation to the public--"sorry, we went with what we had"--it is not quite as convincing. It's a good question. I'm trying to think of such an example. Sure, I've run across the occasional example where I am surprised that the paper is being *fair* to the right. But I honestly am stretching my memory for an example of the paper being *unfair* to the left. I have a vague recollection of this having happened a couple of times, over the past ten or eleven years. Although the details are sketchy, my recollection is that these situations arose in the context of a political race -- i.e., the liberal political candidate was getting a raw deal, somehow. My memory of my reaction was: I ranted at my wife (as I often do in cases of liberal bias) and basically said: "See, I get upset when they do this to liberals too." I don't remember this having happened since I began my blog, back in February 2003. How does this affect my view of the paper? Not much. It's about as rare as a lightning strike. By the way, I cannot recollect this *ever* having happened on a hot-button "culture war" type issue. I have repeatedly challenged people to give me a single example in the L.A. Times (or NYT or WaPo, for that matter) of unfairness to the left on issues such as abortion, affirmative action, gun control, criminal justice issues, and the like. I'm still waiting. And that is the referent for my statement. Panopticon: "Isn't it probable that the move towards 'objective' journalism was a result of media consolidation?" Most probable. Objectivity as it came to be defended and practiced is a "compromise" position, a kind of balancing of forces, or you could say it's workplace peace secured by mutual bargaining among contending forces. * Journalists got to make a bid for professional status that transcended status within the company, which is what a profession of "journalism" is-- a horizontal identity that competes with company (vertical) loyalty. And so on... Objectivity serves many masters, none all that well today. From a daily newspaper publisher: Bias is a tendency to misrepresent, which is not the intent of editorial judgment. Of course, editorial judgment does involve selection, which may be mistaken. I have never believed in "objective" journalism and never believed in "public" journalism. I have always believed in trying to be fair and balanced. Newspapers help improve readers' mental map of reality, always keeping in mind that while the image under the lens of the media may seem clearer, it is distorted relative to everything else. My sole instruction to new reporters and editors is this: "Write so that tomorrow you can look back with pride on what you have written today." Roger Simon wrote: "One of the advances in knowledge these days is that most of us finally realize institutions like The New York Times are not ex cathedra authorities, but just somebody's idea of the truth -- ultimately the publisher's." This is an oddly postmodern formulation, considering the source. I think it's very dangerous to suggest that a truth is "just somebody's idea of the truth" - as if a political bias makes a publisher's/reporter's facts less true.
Posted by: panopticon at May 24, 2004 12:42 PM | Permalink i'm a consumer, only, but i consume news from a wide variety of national & international sources, and here's my take. the conversation that starts with 'bias' and/or 'corruption' masks the more corrosive weakness' in/of the press: sloth&indolence, arrogance, knee-jerk defensiveness, incompetence and distrust of the citizenry to synthesize complex data into a continuum. as example that touches most of the above bases: by near-universal agreement, everybody accepts 'the press' does a lousy job with even the most modest stories about: science, tech, finance, economics, military affairs ... none of which are all that hard to gain a fifth-grader's baseline of the subject - which is sufficient for most stories. reporting from uncured ignorance is an insult. i have never been overly impressed with the '1st draft approximating the truth' argument/excuse *especially when the '1st draft' lacks context and perspective, but *always contains conclusions and analysis. if i ever saw a '2nd draft', perhaps i would feel somewhat differently. (note: spelling names correctly in the 'corrections box' does not constitute a '2nd draft.) i have no clue where the idea that a story *must contain 'what it all means'(especially from those ignorant of the basis of the story, as above), but that is a direct, personaal insult to the customer. does this come from j-school, jay? or is it perhaps from when journalism ceased being a 'trade' and became a 'profession'? on a related tangent, i noted with both dismay and disgust the level and quantity of criticism about the lack of analysis - by working journalists - of woodward's book. shame.shame.shame. still, there are a lot of good journalists out there (as defined by me) who: pound all the 'w' into the first three grafs, provide perspective & context, go light & conservative on the analysis, and let me know they are dipping-up only a cup of 'truth' - but it is only a 'cup' and there is a lot more 'truth' still left in the bucket; woodward, dana priest, britt hume and robin wright come to mind. there are others, but they are thinly spread.
Posted by: diderot at May 24, 2004 1:38 PM | Permalink OK, the objectivity quest is a sham. But with the lopsided ideology of the troops, how does switching to judgment result in a more informed public? Do we expect a liberal journalist with good judgment to produce a "fair and balanced" report, or are we relying on a conservative journalist with good judgment to provide a balancing report? Is seperate, but equal, the goal? Is the goal to get as many witness statements as possible from people with good judgment published? Pew Survey Finds Moderates, Liberals Dominate News 'Liberal' Media Image Persists Posted by: Tim at May 24, 2004 1:49 PM | Permalink I find this site entirely fascinating. It took me a while to figure out what it reminded me of, but it finally came to me: the Far Side cartoon of lemmings rushing to the sea, with one wise guy wearing a swim ring. Fascinating as a train wreck. Here we have a whole group of highly intelligent people driving directly toward disaster, congratulating one another about how well they are performing in doing the Right (or, rather, Left) Thing and how badly their critics have misinterpreted and misunderestimated them. Brian Dominick: "Yet the Right is screaming bloody murder that the media are not reporting every case of the US Army Corps of Engineers rebuilding a school (that the US bombed), or providing medicine to the Iraqi people (quietly prevented for 12 years under sanctions), etc." No; he later upbraids a commenter for lack of reading comprehension, throwing stones in his own glasshouse. What I, in particular, and I think Patterico from a different viewpoint, complain about is more like a grasp of physics than anything comprehending the word "bias." Mr. Dominick lives in a world where the Sun rises in the East; things fall down; and every cracked window and skinned elbow in Iraq can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush, who ordered one of his Myrmidons to break something or hurt someone. Trouble is, that last is a lie, a whole lie, and nothing but a lie -- but because it's part of Mr. Dominick's physics, anything he writes will conform to that physical law, and end up looking as ridiculous as the street person who mutters that stones would float if we only believed. Similarly, part of the physics of Mr. Dominick's Universe has it that every child who missed a meal or contracted sniffles under sanctions can be explained by the Right's insistence that the Proletariat's faces be ground into the dirt of the road. It therefore follows that the legions who were stuffing their faces (and wallets) with both hands with the proceeds of having denied Iraqi children their food and medicine -- simply do not exist; they cannot; entropy always increases. And it follows as the day the night that such stories cannot be considered "newsworthy." Bias is inevitable, as stated here. The journalist is human, and therefore has opinions, preconceptions, and a certain worldview made up of those. I cannot and do not object to anyone, journalist or otherwise, interpreting events in the light of their bias in this sense; and, to the extent that I find such things objectionable today it is primarily due to the fact that consolidation has reduced the number of alternate voices available to consumers. What I do object to, and that strongly, is having to depend on people whose preconceptions and prejudices are so deep that events not contemplated by that worldview simply do not occur, are not observed (and therefore not reported on) because their pseudophysics will not allow them to exist. Mr. Rosen's contention that the search for objectivity is a cause, perhaps a primary cause, of this situation is interesting and thought provoking. At first glance I think he might be right. Certainly the profession of journalism seems to be moving toward the same caricature it attempts to apply to politics, in which it can be stated that anyone who knows enough about any subject to comment intelligently is conclusively disqualified for office on the grounds of conflict of interest. ("It's all about oil! Halliburton!" etc. etc.) It ultimately means that journalism becomes incestuous, a matter of reporting what other reporters are reporting and critiquing their viewpoints and presentation -- and gets farther and farther from anything that might imply impingement of matters from some other field upon their little self-contained world. Which would be fine, except that there are events outside that microcosm that affect us -- and them -- and knowledge of them would be useful if available. Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at May 24, 2004 1:52 PM | Permalink Bush just finished his speech. If someone had a transcript of the first five minutes of CNN's Paula Zahn and John King, it would be worth looking at the "insight" they provided with their post speech exchange. It starts: "First," Zahn says, "let's talk about what he didn't say." followed by the comment that Bush didn't say when we would get out of Iraq. Since it doesn't make sense for troops to leave Iraq before conditions are met to stabilize the country, it would have been foolish for Bush even to suggest a timetable. What Zahn and King were engaged in wasn't journalistic bias, because it wasn't journalism. If you find a transcript, analyze it yourself. Jay writes: "If we do want unbiased journalism we should not. We should want journalists who show good judgment." As someone who sees truth on both sides of the debate over political bias in the news, I am inclined to agree with the idea that total objectivity is both impossible and, to a certain extent, not desirable. However, if you believe that bias is unavoidable, I think at the very least you should ask that journalists be more upfront and acknowledge their own biases. As a journalist, it is an insult to the intelligence of one's audience to insist that one has no bias or insist, as Lesley Stahl once did that she "had my opinions surgically removed once I became a reporter." Many journalists believe Fox News has this problem to a certain extent (I agree), but as that recent poll conducted by the Pew Center for People and the Press revealed, most big-time journalists have the same problem as well. I do disagree with you, however, that political bias is something with which journalists should not concern themselves. While it is true that no one can ever write from a completely neutral perspective, it is very possible that the most egregious forms of bias (be they personal, political, socio-economic, religious, racial, sexual) can be eliminated through effective diversity regimens. Thankfully most news orgs realize this in the case of race and sex, I would hope, though, that more would be sensitive to political, religious and cultural biases. It really isn't too much to ask. Nor is it too difficult to implement. Posted by: Matthew Sheffield at May 25, 2004 6:13 AM | Permalink The "bias" argument is a red herring. The real problem with journalism is that a lot of journalists don't know how to think. Logical fallacy rules the newsroom, especially in broadcast journalism. Weak thinkers prevail. The problem isn't bias - the problem is *incoherence*. Many reporters wouldn't be able to express a coherent ideology with a year's tutoring. What you have instead is a mishmash of bits and pieces from all over the political spectrum.
Posted by: panopticon at May 25, 2004 9:57 AM | Permalink I think there's a lot of truth in that, panopticon. The common attitude about ideology is Bob Woodward's in a Boston Globe piece this week: Woodward disdains ideologues, saying: "I've seen too many true believers on both sides. It's fun to watch them, so many people who are so sure." And that is disdainful. I fail to see, panopticon, how stupidity and bias are mutually exclusive. In fact, they can and do exist within the same person all too often. Sometimes one is the product of the other, other times, not. You're forgetting also that most people are the exact same way that you say journalists are: unable to express a coherent ideology. Poll after poll has shown that most people hold conflicting beliefs about a wide variety of issues. Acknowledging these contradictions, however, does not imply that the original opinions do not exist. A journalist may very well hold a few beliefs from one side of the spectrum and most from the other, but it doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that he/she cannot be biased in favor of them. Posted by: Matthew Sheffield at May 25, 2004 12:17 PM | Permalink The overriding value in journalism, along with accuracy, must be not objectivity but fairness. Not the kind of fairness wherein for every Hannity you have a Colmes, but the kind of fairness where, regardless of the journalist's personal feelings, he or she can judge a piece of reporting on whether all the important points of view have had a legitimate chance to change minds. That means, in reporting on abortion, that you tell the story of the woman who believes her abortion saved her life, either for physical or psychological reasons; and you tell the story of the woman who believes her abortion was the worst mistake she ever made. In reporting on gun ownership, you tell the story of the father who shot a home invader and protected his family; and you tell the story of the father who shot his only son by mistake. The enemy of ideology is nuance. Ideologues who see nuance in reporting often mistake it for bias, because they don't like confronting compelling evidence in conflict with their beliefs. (Let's go back to reconciling the Abu Ghraib photos with the notion that we're the undisputed good guys in Iraq.) And the truth is, good journalists who immerse themselves in this kind of fairness can develop a kind of objectivity that only comes from seeking out the most powerful arguments from opposite sides of an issue. You can reach a point where, as Bob Woodward implies, your biggest bias is against people who think they're always right. Posted by: Perry Parks at May 25, 2004 4:34 PM | Permalink This is all fine and good but eventually, what does it have to do with getting the stories written, edited and published for those waning numbers who like to read the paper with their morning coffee? There is indeed far too much arrogance and laziness that corrodes good journalism. I don't believe journalism is biased, however. I don't believe 'conservative' or 'liberal' for that matter. And I don't believe journalism quests after The Truth. It would be too difficult to package it into a 30-inch story with sidebar and a locator box. Newspapers, by definition, can't be definitive finders of truth. There is no 'second draft' since time starts over each day for journalists like some continuous loop of "Groundhog Day." Journalists take a cursory look at a limited number of possible events of the day and report them. More times than not, the expert cited is whichever one returned a phone call before deadline. Critical thinking? On such limited evidence? We ferret out those facts possible to find in a limited time and report them fairly and honestly. Anything beyond is gravy. It's a miracle just how often we get it right. Posted by: David McLemore at May 25, 2004 4:53 PM | Permalink "As a skeptic, I agree with Woodward. We leave open the notion that new information may change the situation. Ideologues never do. Journalism like science is self-correcting. Dogma stands firm in the face of contradictory evidence." Well it's dogma that "ideologues" are narrow thinkers. The opposite is true. People who have actually made an effort to politcally educate themselves tend to be more conscious of the source and the extent of their ideas. That you regard "ideologues" as universally narrow-minded is in itself an example of non-thinking. No one is free from ideology, there are only people who think they are - the "non-ideologue ideologues" like Woodward. The inability to express a coherent ideology for people like Woodward isn't due to "stupidity" like Matt Sheperd says, but due to the illusion that one can live outside of ideology.
Posted by: panopticon at May 25, 2004 8:17 PM | Permalink And I would add that the best example of an "unbiased" "ideology-free" journalist is Bill O'Reilly, who by occupying his non-existant "No Spin Zone" has raised incoherence to heights never before acheived on a national broadcast network. The guy can't string together three sentences without engaging in an egregious semantic distortion. Posted by: panopticon at May 25, 2004 9:16 PM | Permalink We're not going to agree on much when focusing on events and coverage close at hand, our politics and prejudices get in the way of our logic. How about if we focus further out - geographically, as Rebecca MacKinnon did ( in http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/techjournalism/2004/04/04 when addressing the dangers of mass opinion unmoored by (or disdainful of) factual reporting), or chronologically, by looking at press coverage of events decades past. Given the existence of multiple factions and strong opinions, how should the civil rights movement have been covered? How should Al-Jazeera be covering events for its audience? Posted by: Anna at May 26, 2004 12:21 AM | Permalink Simple bias or simply blunders? A Belmont Club blog article headlined "An intelligence failure" at http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_belmontclub_archive.html#108557152205455635 suggests that the NY Times' hindsight may not see itself. it says: "The real source of error was more basic: sloppy fact checking, the lack of collateral confirmation for important stories and the absence of an internal mechanism to detect mounting inconsistencies within the developing story." and follows with another example: "Jason Van Steenwyk convincingly shows, by laying out the verbatim transcript of US Marine General James Mattis and coverage by the Globe and Mail, the Guardian, the New York Times, Reuters, Agence Presse France and the Independent how the basic fact of what Mattis said slipped through the toils of these famous newspapers." My observation? As the "Law of Coinciding Blunders" explains: People make simple mistakes all the time and, typically, they don't matter much. Occasionally, however, simple mistakes happen in a sequence that builds on previous mistakes to create a major catastrophy. The problem with panoptical's idea is that it provides no solutions to the problem. Saying that everyone has bias means nothing and is no solution at all. There are either two ways to deal with bias: 1) to admit the obvious fact that you have them and then let the readers judge you, 2) to try and minimize the predominant biases in your group by hiring people who think differently and, for the institutional stuff, be very open to reader criticism and/or give real power to the ombudsman. Simply saying, "Well we all have biases, so what?" is a cop-out and really nothing more than an excuse to continue being unfair. "Simply saying, "Well we all have biases, so what?" is a cop-out and really nothing more than an excuse to continue being unfair." That is not remotely what I'm saying. That's the second time you've paraphrased my comments in a form that distorts what I said. You are free to argue against the "cop-out" and I agree with you, but it has nothing to do with what I posted. I'm saying people who believe they are free of ideology are in fact the most dogmatic and incoherent people you will find. I'm saying that people who can articulate an ideology are more open-minded and coherent than people who can't. I'm saying that bias and truth are not mutually exclusive. I'm saying that truth *always* takes a side and is always biased. I'm saying that everyone has already taken a side whether they realize it or not, and those who are unconscious of their ideological stance are the most dogmatic and incoherent. Posted by: panopticon at May 26, 2004 3:32 PM | Permalink and I'm saying that the pre-eminent example of a journalist who is simultneously dogmatic and incoherent is the hot-tempered "Shut up!" shouting Bill O'Reilly, who perceives himself to inhabit a no spin zone free of ideology. Posted by: panopticon at May 26, 2004 3:37 PM | Permalink You think that people who "believe they are free of ideology are in fact the most dogmatic and incoherent people you will find." I think that's true for O'Reilly and some others, but it's not at all true for the many reporters, professors, and editors who say that they are moderates or nonideological but, in fact, hold very consistently liberal views (which do cohere with one another). O'Reilly's problem is different than theirs because he actually takes the "I have no ideology" argument seriously and as a result, he flip flops on the issues and has no consistency whatsoever. Can you name anyone else who has this problem (aside from O'Reilly and Woodward)? I can name you a huge list of people who profess to have no views but actually hold very liberal ones: Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Lesley Stahl, Don Hewitt, Pinch Sulzberger, etc. This idea of thinking you have no ideology but actually having a very consistent one is far more common than O'Reilly syndrome. What few conservatives who occupy slots in the establishment media (like Hume and Stossel) are generally not adverse to admitting that they have political opinions. Also, I'm wondering what solutions you would offer to the problem as you've identified it. It's also quite noticable that Jay hasn't commented on the Pew poll. Kind of dissappointing since the poll reveals a very big problem in journalism. If you are a supporter of racial and gender diversity programs (I am), then you must be a supporter of ideological diversity ones as well. But perhaps I should hold my fire in case you're preparing something for later... I could not agree more as most of the so called unbiased wingers embody the purest, and most vulgar, strain of partiality... Currently Down Under a program by a public broadcaster entitled the Media Watch is being watched by unbiased watchers in order to report any biases... Bizarre (sic) By bringing up al-Jazeera, Anna touched on another important consideration: How, and to what extent, do cultural differences (not just ideological differences among individuals) affect media bias? The Bush administration and other American conservatives routinely criticize al-Jazeera and other Arab news outlets for their perceived slant against the U.S., or at least against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Based upon American cultural values and standards, they have a point. But they're overlooking one vital factor: Al-Jazeera, like any other news outlet, must respect the values and sensibilities of its target audience if it hopes to retain their trust and respect. Al-Jazeera's target audience is, obviously, the Arab/Muslim world, which has vastly different cultural values and sensibilities from America's. Even without taking language barriers into account, it's not hard at all to understand how journalism considered "fair and balanced" in the context of the larger Arab culture might come off as hopelessly biased outside that context. I suspect that cultural factors have also affected news media bias within America itself. Once upon a time the print and broadcast media were mostly locally controlled, and as such, reflected the distinct cultural sensibilities and political "centers of gravity" of their own communities. On the other hand, the corporate news media that emerged from consolidiation tend to reflect the political and cultural landscapes of the bulk of their would-be readership and viewership base: Large cities and heavily populated regions (especially on the East and West Coasts), whose political "centers of gravity" tend to be well to the left of the rest of the nation. Posted by: Joshua at May 26, 2004 5:48 PM | Permalink "I can name you a huge list of people who profess to have no views but actually hold very liberal ones: Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Lesley Stahl, Don Hewitt, Pinch Sulzberger, etc. This idea of thinking you have no ideology but actually having a very consistent one is far more common than O'Reilly syndrome." Libralism has no coherence. Those people you name are consistently liberal, but it doesn't follow they are consistently coherent. What's the frequency, Kenneth? Libralism is the exemplar of the ideology that dare not call itself that. It is dominant and incoherent. What you frame as an objection to my argument is actually in agreement. Posted by: panopticon at May 26, 2004 5:57 PM | Permalink And O'Reilly is the reductio ad absurdum of libralism. He is a parody liberal veneer over a conservative. But even though he is a parody, he suffers from the same incoherence and dogmatism - only it's amplified in combination with the common conservative personality defect -sadism- that charges his dogmatism with an extra ooomph of bullying energy. Posted by: panopticon at May 26, 2004 6:15 PM | Permalink I can see how you might think that, panopticon. If you believe liberalism is not coherent then your argument does combine with mine quite well. I don't think modern liberalism is that way mostly but I certainly have heard that view expressed very cogently here and elsewhere. Still, though, what do you do about it in the context of the media? And Jay, what do you think should be done? Maybe people are having trouble understanding what I'm saying because they don't where I'm coming from. I'm not a liberal. There's no such thing as a conscious liberal, and the few people who actually call themselves liberals are merely confused. That's why it's useless for the right to criticize "liberal media bias" - because if a liberal ever became aware of his bias, he would no longer be a liberal. A conscious or coherent liberal is otherwise known as a "socialist". That's where the truth lies. As a socialist I don't bother with all the little contradictory liberal causes - instead, overthrow capitalism and the rest will follow. The truth is on my side, all of you are wrong, and if you had any sense you'd be calling for *more* media bias, not less. Posted by: panopticon at May 26, 2004 7:26 PM | Permalink I apoligize for my mispellings of "liberalism" but my ideas are sound despite the beer. Posted by: panopticon at May 27, 2004 12:31 AM | Permalink Matthew: First, I agree with Perry Parks that while objectivity is not a very good guide for journalists, the notion of "fairness" is. He adds, smartly: "Not the kind of fairness wherein for every Hannity you have a Colmes, but the kind of fairness where, regardless of the journalist's personal feelings, he or she can judge a piece of reporting on whether all the important points of view have had a legitimate chance to change minds." Diversity in mainstream journalism is desirable, and perhaps even essential, but two things hamper it. One is a narrow definition of diversity: race, ethnicity, gender count big; such factors as social class, political ideology, religion, region do not. But the larger problem is the philosophical incoherence of the diversity project in journalism, made worse by the fact that most journalists are terrible at philosophy and think it has nothing to do with the practical demands of being a journalist. Here's what I mean: Journalists hired to diversify the newsroom are brought on board in the belief that many different perspectives are needed to provide a full and fair news report. But the doctine of objectivity says it's a no-no to bring the perspective of "your people"--your class, party, religion, group--into news judgments. Therefore there is a deep philosophical conflict between the logic of diversity efforts, which value the view from somewhere, and the "view from nowhere" that still rules in the newsroom. Since journalists don't "do" philosophy very well, they just let the problem sit there. Which is why, despite a lot of good faith hiring, the news hasn't changed much as a result of the diversity project in the press. To me, it's a perfect example of what panopticon means by incoherence. Joshua: "Al-Jazeera, like any other news outlet, must respect the values and sensibilities of its target audience if it hopes to retain their trust and respect." First, the failings of Al-Jazeera have no demonstrated connection to "values and sensibilities" of its target audience. One can respect values and sensibilities and still give accurate news. Second, it does not logically follow that trust or respect would be threatened by providing content that promotes clarity of understanding in useful context. Third, The remark's proposed sophistry, its relativism, undercuts any hope for communication between cultures and, if true, suggests cross-cultural civilization is so improbable that we might as well give up on attempts at communication entirely. That is absurd. Finally, Jay suggested that diversity is an answer to Panopticon's incoherence when what Panopticon is really saying -- clearly, even through his beer -- is that charges of bias often miss the point: Poor thinkers produce fuzzy writing and poor writing ain't news. No, I said the diversity project is an example of Panopticon's incoherence, meaning: it is not clear thinking. "Poor thinkers produce fuzzy writing and poor writing ain't news." Amen. That is quite true, Stephen. Jay: " diversity project is an example of Panopticon's incoherence" Now I understand what you meant. Thanks for the clarification. Sorry folks, but Jay wasn't saying that *panopticon* is using fuzzy logic. He meant that the diversity project was an example of the incoherence I was deriding. Posted by: panopticon at May 29, 2004 6:54 PM | Permalink in other words, "the truth is always biased" does not mean "all biases are true". that's the problem with the liberal diversity project. Posted by: panopticon at May 29, 2004 11:29 PM | Permalink Enjoyed reading your posts. Posted by: online casinos at July 29, 2004 1:51 PM | Permalink Excellent, that was really well explained and helpful Posted by: best online casinos at July 29, 2004 1:51 PM | Permalink Hello! Super work performed. Top PAGE, further so! Posted by: 仮想都市カジノ at September 2, 2004 11:51 AM | Permalink It's also quite noticable that Jay hasn't commented on the Pew poll. Kind of dissappointing since the poll reveals a very big problem in journalism. If you are a supporter of racial and gender diversity programs (I am), then you must be a supporter of ideological diversity ones as well. 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