Bad Media

I have been meaning to develop a post on how poorly the main stream media is at informing the public and why this continuing trend is so dangerous. In a previous post, I lamented how far journalistic standards have fallen and how critical analysis and investigatory rigor have completely given way to the ratings game.

Apparently I’m not the only one to notice.

Former CBS newsman Tom Fenton recently sent shock waves through the media establishment with his book called "Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All". In the book he explains that investigative journalism is no more, that ratings are most important driving force and that the media is supremely lazy and incompetent.

In an interview that I saw, Fenton explained quite rightly how the lack of true journalism and reporting has allowed "spin" and "ideology" to prevail. He also observed that recent geo-political events demonstrate that we can no longer "afford a dumbed down public". (In my opinion an over preponderance of spin leads directly to an uninformed and intellectually lazy public.) Perhaps most famously, he tells of how CBS executives continually rejected the idea of investigating and interviewing Osma bin Laden in the late 1990’s. "Our bosses saw him as an obscure Arab of no interest to our viewers," Fenton writes. "More concerned with saving dollars than pursuing the story, they killed the project." No doubt the O.J. trial took precedent.

The media is particularly bad about “dumbing down” issues. Notice when an interviewee answers a question too technically or with too much nuance, the interviewer will interrupt and dumb it down for the audience – often times at the expense of the actual facts being related. Many times I catch myself looking around my living room for the 5th grader that I believe the anchor person or reporter is talking too.

Unfortunately we live in a complex world and an uninformed public, incapable of critically analzying important issues is very dangerous long-term proposition. As I wrote before, the danger here, aside from potentially drawing inaccurate conclusions that have potentially world altering ramifications, is that over time the public is conditioned to simply accept the assertions of their chosen set of authority figures as inerrant fact. Already, the public is too susceptible to misinformation and spin – just witness the election coverage of 2004.

On Obsidian Wings, I came across this apt description of the media’s problems embedded in a comment to a post about Senator John Cornyn’s remark on courthouse violence:

The media is really bad about informing the public. The media has a tendency to:

• Treat Democratic and Republican arguments as equally honest and equally extreme, no matter what the factual merits are.
• Ignore political coverage in favor of celebrity trials
• Replace reporting with punditry, and stupid, shouting match knee jerk punditry at that.
• Decide political stories' importance based solely on how many other people are talking about it, and at what volume.
• Dumb down complex issues--especially in matters of law, economics, and national security.

All of this rewards dishonesty and extremism. If they're going to treat you as equally truthful no matter what you say, why tell the truth when a lie might be more useful? If they're going to treat you as equally moderate or immoderate no matter what you do, why compromise if you don't have to?

That last bit about rewarding dishonesty and extremism should be thoroughly pondered. I just read a piece by the New Yorker's Mark Danner on how Bush campaign strategists intentionally misled the media into reporting a story about “scrambling” inside the campaign because of controversial ads featuring images from 911. The Bush strategists were in fact ecstatic because they in effect received six or seven million dollars of free advertising and despite the “fake controversy” got their message out. The most interesting part here is the controversy may never have been a controversy if the press hadn’t been tricked into reporting that it was a controversy. This is another case where instead of performing true investigative journalism, the media was duped into allowing the subject to "shape the storyline".

Not that the media needs help creating a controversy. The media is very good at creating "fake controversies”. They do so by presenting as equal the views of pundits without regard for the facts or how many people actually support either side of a debate. This was clear in the Terri Schiavo case where polls showed upwards of 75% of people did not approve of the congressional intervention. Yet, from watching all of the debate shows (which are not “news”, but just “opinions” and “speculation”) one might come to the conclusion that the country was evenly divided.

Furthermore, because the media doesn’t seem interested in any investigative and objective reporting, most “fake controversies” linger far longer than they should. For example: If during the election one candidate said he believes the "Earth is flat..." and the other countered "No its a sphere...", today's media would simply quote both and "report" that a controversy rages. They would put on pundits from either side of the debate on talk shows where they would proceed to yell at each other, misinform and distort. But no main stream media outlet would actually investigate and review the data and come back and say: "Well, our findings pretty much confirm the Earth is a sphere..." That doesn't make for good television and worse, it might be construed as “bias”.

Which finally brings me to a recent April Fool's spoof editorial entitled "Okay, We give up" written in this month's Scientific American. In the editorial Scientific American editors apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution because “As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence”. While the editorial is satirizing the evolution/creationist debate it does hit the mark with biting satire that can be applied to the mainstream media.

We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts... Good journalism values balance above all else... Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong.

I’ll end this post by repeating Thomas Jefferson’s warning: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be".

Punishing "Activist Judges"

Recently, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex) implied in a Senate floor speech that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable. He asserted that Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists.

At one point saying "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."

It sure sounds like he is trying to imply a direct connection between the 2 recent court/judge related shooting and conservative's disdain for "activist judges"? (Even though the two shootings had nothing to do with political or ideological desicions) Of course, it may have just been a case of poor choice of words.

But if wasn't implying as much, the right wing talk show personalities have. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and company have also "speculated on the regrettable but perhaps necessary act of punishing judges". And Tom Delay has made remarks about Congress needing to "punish" out of control judges to make them "answer for their behavior".

Is this a vast right-wing conspiracy to further undermine and de-legitimize the judiciary OR an overblown reaction on the left to one single Senator's unthoughtful, but otherwise non-threatening remarks?

Personally, I think there is a dangerous movement afoot by conservative politicians (aided by their well oiled media mouthpieces) who want to discredit any judical descion that they disagree with. The danger is that legions of sheeple whose world view is entirely shaped by the rehtoric of right wing talk show hosts will fail to see how such continued attacks on the judicary (if taken to their desired ends) will threaten the rule of law.

A full debate at this good (but long) thread:

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/04/police_your_own.html

The Non-Partisan Pledge

In a comment to a previous post, I posted the formal definition of "partisan", a word much chided on this blog:

1. A fervent, sometimes militant supporter or proponent of a party, cause, faction, person, or idea.
2. A member of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy, especially within occupied territory; a guerrilla.

I subseqently opined that it is not "partisan" to take a strong and definitive side in an argument so long as that position was argued factually and fairly.

Prompting fellow blogger Gene, to submit the following for posting:

There are certain characteristics that distinguish a rational person from the likes of Sean Hannity. A rational person is not "married" to their ideas. They are not defined by their ideas. They are not uni-dimensional. A rational person's identity doesn't unravel if they change their mind on a subject. All that is required to change a rational person's opinion, is a reasonable argument. That's it!

Many times I have caught myself digging in my heals on something reflexively based on the premise that my original stance was correct. I do it all the time with my teenaged son. I realize this is a flaw and try to open up my mind to another viewpoint when I catch myself doing it. It isn't so easy for politicians or entertainers like Sean Hannity.

It seems that the biggest sin a politician can make is that of changing their mind. Look at what happened to John Kerry during the last election. Bush was continuously promoted as, "resolute." His supporters praised him for sticking with his principles. His detractors criticized him for never admitting a mistake. In politics and conservative blowhard circles, it is better to be strong and wrong than to appear indecisive. News people love to catch a politician changing their mind. "This week you indicated you support the WTO, but in a 1964 speech you made to Lions Club of Boise, Idaho, you said..."

So, I take the non-partisan pledge.

I stand ready to change my mind on any subject when a change of position is warranted by the information presented to me. Changing my mind does not make me a weak person, although I realize it will eliminate the possibility of a career as a politician or conservative talk show host.

Nicely said...