On fairness in the media

November 20, 2006 in Media, Politics

by Jay Stevens 

I promised a few thoughts about Ed Kemmick’s column on fair coverage in the media in Sunday’s Billings Gazette. In it, Kemmick defends traditional media against criticism lobbed against it from both the right and the left and makes a case for sticking to traditional forms and ethics when covering the news:

Any thinking person will have beliefs and opinions, but a good reporter will bend over backward to prevent those beliefs and opinions from slanting a story. That is much different from failing to acknowledge those beliefs, or simply giving into them and becoming a partisan hack. Good reporters, trained in skepticism and objectivity, can still serve an important public function.What I mean by objectivity is that the reporter stays out of what he writes, not that he slavishly presents two “sides” to every story. If we report that a petroleum geologist has located oil in a formation 150 million years old, we are not obligated to tack on a disclaimer saying, “Many people, however, believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.”

What I mean by being fair and objective is presenting facts without comment and conveying the words and thoughts of other people as they would want them to be conveyed. That is not an easy thing to do, but I think we should continue to demand that reporters at least try.

First, I think we can all agree that everybody likes reporters and traditional media outlets that actually strive for “objectivity” and high ethics when presenting its consumers with its media product. And for the record, I’ve long been a loud critic of the “he says / she says” style of “objectivity” that so often finds it way onto the pages of our newspapers or onto our television or radio coverage.

But, see, the problem isn’t good reporting, it’s the consistent bad reporting from traditional media outlets that lands us into trouble. Ed assiduously defends his craft’s form from blog rhetoric or radio talk-show style, but completely ignores the huge questions surrounding the form, content, and performance of newspaper, television, and radio journalism. No one seriously believes that blogs will supplant journalism. Instead of defending journalism and his own work, Ed might have been better off identifying the real problems and offering solutions.

For example, Ed doesn’t like the “he said/she said” style of objectivity? Unfortunately that’s how the issue of global warming was covered. Despite near scientific consensus that human activity contributes to global warming, and that global warming exists, over half of all audited news articles on the subject gave “…roughly equal attention to the views that humans contribute to global warming and that climate change is exclusively the result of natural fluctuations.”

Journalists lazily and dutifully presented the “other side” of the issue, ignoring (or ignorant) of the fact that those studies were often funded by organizations (e.g., energy companies) whose financial interest ran afoul of good science and reporting. That is, journalist “objectivity” has likely contributed to our nation’s slow response to the climate change.

Or take the example of the New York Times’: they admitted their coverage of WMDs leading up to the invasion of Iraq was deeply flawed. What the apology doesn’t mention is that most of its misleading news articles came from a single source, Judith Miller, who dutifully reported WMD propaganda from administration stooge, Ahmad Chalabi, which was then used as support for the administration’s case for the war. Rumor has it that the newspaper liked having Miller on their staff, because she balanced the criticism that the paper had a purely liberal viewpoint.

The Times’ Miller fiasco easily stands as a synecdoche for the media coverage as a whole between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. In a time of great crisis and importance, our national media gave the government the benefit of the doubt on every issue and is culpable for the disaster that ensued. The Bush administration exploited the media’s willingness to present its view, even if its view was manufactured propaganda.

In both cases – global warming and the WMD coverage – journalists stuck to out-of-date notions of “objectivity,” ignoring the fact that these ethical forms were crassly exploited by those looking to influence public opinion. By trying to remain neutral, journalists were forced to present…well…“fake” positions and became co-conspirators in the campaign to mislead the American public.

Problems exist in journalism. The question shouldn’t be, which is a better media, blogs or traditional media, but how can we change the traditional standards to make them less difficult to exploit? How can we ensure fairness in the media?

One possible way is with objective analysis. We saw some in the Montana Senate race with the series on analyzing the content of political ads. State reporters tried to objectively parse the accusations and promises of both candidates based on the television commercials they each aired.

That was a great start. Unfortunately no similar effort was made for debates or the gibberish coming from campaign spokespeople.

Update: Ed continues this discussion at his blog. Be sure to check out the comments, some of which are about 6 times as coherent and enlightening as this post.