Truth in Media
Here are three links, all from Instapundit, all on the same theme -- truth in media.
I read something a little while ago suggesting that people's general trust of journalists has fallen so low, they're now regarded only as more trustworthy than used car salesmen and politicians. I've been thinking about it, and I think that condemnation isn't really accurate.
I have much more faith in used car salesmen and politicians than in journalists.
This isn't just some frustrated spray at modern journalism, nor is it a personal attack on individual journalists, many of whom have excellent ethics and are trying their best to do good. It's just an observation that modern journalism is not structurally capable of consistent accuracy.
If you buy a car from a used car salesman, everyone's aware of the phrase 'buyer beware'. There's money involved, and people don't like to get ripped off, so the cultural tendency is to distrust everything he says. Also, you can get Uncle Jack who knows a lot about cars, or some independent agency, to inspect the car before you buy. In journalism, unfortunately, we haven't arrived at the cultural tendency to be immediately suspicious of everything we see on the news. The surveys show we're getting there, but we're not there yet. Also, you can't get Uncle Jack or an independent agency to inspect the journalist's story to prove its accuracy, because we the consumer don't have access to the journalist's contacts, and the journalist won't give them up even if asked. And it's too time consuming to ask the responsible ombudsman to check it out for you, and his impartiality is usually questionable anyway, because he's often employed by the same organisation.
Then there's politicians. Everytime a politician makes an assertion about anything, there's a howl of public protest from everyone whose job it is to assert the opposite. Opposition politicians, interest groups, skeptical media commentators, etc. The contrary viewpoint is built into the way the system works. In Australia's Westminster system, we have an opposition cabinetmember for each portfolio, so the Education Minister is opposed by the Shadow Education Minister, and so on. As the name implies, their job is to shadow the Minister, and find fault with everything they do and say. Needless to say, the media doesn't have this structure built in either (although increasingly, they have bloggers doing much the same thing).
Worse, the media deal in half-truths. They'll tell you what's going on, but not the context. Bobby punched Billy. Bobby is therefore a bad person, and deserves to be punished. But never mind that Billy assaulted Bobby's wife, you don't need to know that. The media will print that Bobby punched Billy, and that's unequivocally true. But it can be used to create an impression that is an outright lie -- that Bobby is a bad person, and Billy an innocent victim. That kind of bias sometimes arises through prejudice, sometimes through malicious intent, but usually just through laziness, ignorance or time constraints. Or political correctness (insert your own ethnic or religious possibilities for Bobby and Billy here). Context is everything, and it's almost impossible to deliver clearly in most modern media formats, especially when we start talking about nations, religions and geo-politics.
Lastly (although I could go on and on) the media, being commercial, is primarily about attracting eyeballs to read the advertising. That's why all the journalists in Iraq are currently in Baghdad, and they never go to the Kurdish north. Not much explodes in Kurdistan, and the Kurds are more pro-American than Texas, so it doesn't sell. Conflict, blood and gore, controversy. It's not always newsworthy, and it's usually utterly devoid of context, but gets eyeballs on advertising.
I think the future of journalism is increasingly in opinion pieces, which is one reason why blogging is taking off. Sure, a conservative shock jock or a liberal bleeding heart are also completely biased, but neither they nor their readers/listeners have any illusions about it. Knowing that, we can guess where the bias lies, and sort out the rest for ourselves. It's this pretense at impartiality and omnipotence that is slowly rendering mainstream media less and less relevant.
I read something a little while ago suggesting that people's general trust of journalists has fallen so low, they're now regarded only as more trustworthy than used car salesmen and politicians. I've been thinking about it, and I think that condemnation isn't really accurate.
I have much more faith in used car salesmen and politicians than in journalists.
This isn't just some frustrated spray at modern journalism, nor is it a personal attack on individual journalists, many of whom have excellent ethics and are trying their best to do good. It's just an observation that modern journalism is not structurally capable of consistent accuracy.
If you buy a car from a used car salesman, everyone's aware of the phrase 'buyer beware'. There's money involved, and people don't like to get ripped off, so the cultural tendency is to distrust everything he says. Also, you can get Uncle Jack who knows a lot about cars, or some independent agency, to inspect the car before you buy. In journalism, unfortunately, we haven't arrived at the cultural tendency to be immediately suspicious of everything we see on the news. The surveys show we're getting there, but we're not there yet. Also, you can't get Uncle Jack or an independent agency to inspect the journalist's story to prove its accuracy, because we the consumer don't have access to the journalist's contacts, and the journalist won't give them up even if asked. And it's too time consuming to ask the responsible ombudsman to check it out for you, and his impartiality is usually questionable anyway, because he's often employed by the same organisation.
Then there's politicians. Everytime a politician makes an assertion about anything, there's a howl of public protest from everyone whose job it is to assert the opposite. Opposition politicians, interest groups, skeptical media commentators, etc. The contrary viewpoint is built into the way the system works. In Australia's Westminster system, we have an opposition cabinetmember for each portfolio, so the Education Minister is opposed by the Shadow Education Minister, and so on. As the name implies, their job is to shadow the Minister, and find fault with everything they do and say. Needless to say, the media doesn't have this structure built in either (although increasingly, they have bloggers doing much the same thing).
Worse, the media deal in half-truths. They'll tell you what's going on, but not the context. Bobby punched Billy. Bobby is therefore a bad person, and deserves to be punished. But never mind that Billy assaulted Bobby's wife, you don't need to know that. The media will print that Bobby punched Billy, and that's unequivocally true. But it can be used to create an impression that is an outright lie -- that Bobby is a bad person, and Billy an innocent victim. That kind of bias sometimes arises through prejudice, sometimes through malicious intent, but usually just through laziness, ignorance or time constraints. Or political correctness (insert your own ethnic or religious possibilities for Bobby and Billy here). Context is everything, and it's almost impossible to deliver clearly in most modern media formats, especially when we start talking about nations, religions and geo-politics.
Lastly (although I could go on and on) the media, being commercial, is primarily about attracting eyeballs to read the advertising. That's why all the journalists in Iraq are currently in Baghdad, and they never go to the Kurdish north. Not much explodes in Kurdistan, and the Kurds are more pro-American than Texas, so it doesn't sell. Conflict, blood and gore, controversy. It's not always newsworthy, and it's usually utterly devoid of context, but gets eyeballs on advertising.
I think the future of journalism is increasingly in opinion pieces, which is one reason why blogging is taking off. Sure, a conservative shock jock or a liberal bleeding heart are also completely biased, but neither they nor their readers/listeners have any illusions about it. Knowing that, we can guess where the bias lies, and sort out the rest for ourselves. It's this pretense at impartiality and omnipotence that is slowly rendering mainstream media less and less relevant.
4 Comments:
You mention that a little while ago you read that people's distrust of journalists is increasing.
The inference is that journalists have recently become significantly less trustworthy than they used to be.
What I'm thinking, though, is that journalists today are much the same as they were 40 or so years ago, but now we have a relatively simple means of corroborating their stories -- the Internet.
A while back I read some very old news articles (I think in National Geographic from the 1960's) about the war in Vietnam between the US, Australia, NZ, and the Vietnamese. It seemed to me that the only difference between what was being reported back then from Vietnam, and what is being reported now about Iraq and Afghanistan, is how blatantly the journalists present their propaganda.
Basically, in the 1960's, it seems to me that they attempted to make their reports SEEM like they were neutral, and mentioned how easy it should have been to finish the war. In hindsight, of course, one can tell the reports were quite biased toward the views that the US government wanted to presented. Anyway, the point is that (my perception of the situation) is that the only difference between journalists and news organisations now (as compared to in the 1960's and 1970's) is that they worry less about appearing neutral than they used to.
The real difference, though, is with the people that view what's being presented. The difference is that these days people are finally starting to wake up to the fact that news reports are biased. The reason for this seems to be that the Internet has enabled just about anyone with a computer to cross-reference mainstream media reports with external sources, and thus verify the veracity of their claims.
Anyhow, my opinion: Media companies are dodgy bastards, and have always been so, it's just that we're actually noticing it now!
I agree that journalism probably isn't any worse, it's just that new forms of media (on the internet particularly) are exposing its flaws. The best line I've read on bloggers is that at their best, they can bypass the middleman (journalists) by creating a direct connection between the reader and the experts on any given issue. And a lot of the bloggers have more direct expertise on specific issues than journalists do. So the media 'filter' is removed.
Interesting choice of topics. NeoNeocon did a similar thread:
link
Money quote:
"It smacks, among other things, of the somewhat Ratherian claim that the truth or falsehood of certain facts is not as important as the point of view they express"
That was in response to the idea that a microstory in discussion - the death of a small child during an Israeli/Palestinian firefight - was justifiably reported in the way it was because it fit the larger narrative the reporter subscribed to. That's something that's annoyed me since college: That bias in reporting is okay as long as it's openly admitted to. I can go on and on ranting about why that bothers me, but the above quote gets the point across better than I can: That admitting and embracing bias rather than working to eliminate it as best you can leads to the acceptance of point-of-view being more important than analysis from fact. If science worked that way, we'd probably still believe in epicycles in the Solar System (i.e. Ptolemaic astronomy). Or at least, we will not have eliminated many misinterpretations and errors in many theories.
I think it's getting better, though. Not journalism, but rather people's perception of all forms of media. This is a media age, and we're bombarded with so much TV, film and other stuff... average people know what cliches are, they know what spin is, they know how images and concepts can be manipulated. The new multiplicity of blogs and other internet sources only illuminate just how narrow many of the MSM sources are. It doesn't improve the MSM much, but it increases people's cynicism, which in turn increases people's willingness to think for themselves, and seek out alternative perspectives.
That's my rosiest assessment, anyhow.
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