Owens Rhetoric

Talking about media and bias.

I think it was in my media law class that I learned about the factious early-American pamphlets and their difference to today’s purportedly neutral press.  But, I never looked into why that norm shifted. In support of my point below, I’m obliged to NPR.

The Planet Money crew, in the December 28 podcast, “The Price of Bias,” interviews Matthew Gentzkow to dig into the economic causes for the transition from bias to purported neutrality in media.  That, by the way, is what is so great in the podcast – they’re like Freakanomics, but not sold out.  Here’s my summary, but I suggest clicking over for the real thing.

Bias, in early American print media, was expected; in point of fact, most publications were explicitly affiliated with factions and parties.  Publishers did a basic cost-benefit and made an economic choice.  In return for trumping a party, publishers tended to get, from the party, government printing contracts, government posts (like the lucrative post office general), and straight up cash.  Those rewards tended to outweigh the money to be gained from selling the publications to a broader than partisan audience.

Then, some big post-Civil War changes in publishing came about.  Literacy rose and the telegraph sped along wired news.  And, the cost for material on which print was printed fell drastically.  One likely read reports of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in columns printed on linen.  The introduction of paper made from wood pulp, somewhere around the 1870s, made the physical part of publishing far cheaper.

So the factors going into publishers’ cost-benefit analyses changed, resulting in the conclusion that it was better to sell more (cheaply produced) papers to as many as would buy.  Thus, neutrality, and the larger bi-partisan audience, became the norm for news publishers.

Now, there’s one bit to that story about which I’m left wondering.  Gentzkow said in the interview that neutral/balanced papers tended to sell more copies when this change in the 1870s came about.  Would that be the case today?  Was it really the case back then?  Cass Sunstein has built a school of lectures on the notion that we’re a society of choirs to whom we love to be preached.  We feign fair-mindedness, but unconvincingly.  If we are, as I suspect, a partisan society, how do neutral papers sell more copies?

I thought it would be fun to draft an outline of items with which we can quantify problems in news media.  For the most part, I list bullets in an order of descending problematic weight; but, the main categories (facts, analyses, and presentation) are of equal weight.

So far, I intend the outline to address an individual story, rather than an entire news outlet such as NY Times, NPR, or Fox.  To analyze the entire outlet, I imagine two main steps: (1) apply the outline to a sample of individual stories and (2) weigh the ‘problematic score’ of those stories appropriately based on their respective prominence within the outlet (for instance, a page D18 story in the Post would not rate equally with A1; however, a story in the middle of All Things Considered is really equal to the front piece because that show loops and is not usually heard start to finish, in my experience).

Here’s a first crack at the outline – and it’s just that; I’ll revise on reflection and comment.  And note: transparent bias is not a problem; bias, for purposes of this outline, is that which distorts truth or that affects a purportedly neutral story.

• Factual errors (biased research): Inaccurate reporting resulting in a story more favorable to X
  • Wrong facts intentionally used
    • No sources apart from journalist
    • 3^rd party sources researched by journalist while knowingly ignoring contrary evidence
    • Bias party’s (X’s) sources used by journalist without checking for contrary evidence (willful ignorance)
  • Wrong facts unintentionally used
    • Bias party’s (X’s) source, but journalist does not know source derives from X
    • Reporter’s assumption erroneously used as fact

• Analytical errors (biased conclusions)
  • Conclusion resulting from assumed/biased premise
  • Failing to conclude
    • Allowing opposing arguments equal status without concluding on their veracity
      • (this is not so much bias as journalistic laziness; however, it can weigh as more heavily biased if the story concludes that reasonable people differ)
    • Allowing an argument to serve as a counterpoint when it does not, in fact, address the substance of the point

• Biased presentation

• • Misleading headlines – where headline or lead in do not match with logical conclusion to the story
  • Context
    • Selected context selected to misrepresent language or action
    • Failing to provide context of item
    • Incomplete context
  • Biased story-structure
    • Allowing opposing arguments equal status in order to present side as legitimate
  • Wording/Tone
    • Use of descriptors that present an overall bias

A friend and I had a good, but short, debate on news-biases after he buttressed his claim to neutrality in news-listening by noting his propensity to be equally disgusted hearing the bias in Fox News and NPR.  Having been on the “What Liberal Media” beat a few years ago on this site, I had to engage him on this one.

For purposes of transparency: I argued that NPR has the least profit-motivation and is the most accurate.  I also argued that NPR fell least into the error of thinking that fair reporting equals allowing two people from a story’s opposing sides to have their say (who determines those sides, and the representatives of those sides).  My friend embraced the notion that a news outlet should aim to tell the truth of a story rather than present sides, and largely based his perception of bias in the substance of what NPR chooses to report.  We were cut short, at that point.

After that discussion, I saw this bit, from a column in the Richmond Times Dispatch:

We love nearly everything about NPR’s supremely well-done shows, except for two things: (1) the navel-gazing personal essays in which every third word is “I,” and (2) the supercilious leftism that pervades the programming like the odor of patchouli at an Earth First! powwow.

I don’t have a high opinion of the material that comes out of the TD editorial page, particularly when it has the Palin/Giuliani tone of sarcastic.  I’m not sure what he has in mind on criticism #1; and his hot hatred of haughty environment-loving liberals is just off-putting.

His conclusion exposes his notion of fair media – choose supposed spokespeople for supposed legitimate views in a debate:

Ironically, NPR execs complain that by airing commentary from Liasson and Williams, Fox can deflect the charge that it’s dominated by right-wing voices. “Fox uses Mara and Juan as cover,” an NPR source complained to Politico.

Perhaps. But at least Fox leavens its right-wing bias with liberals. Still doubt NPR is even more biased than Fox? Just imagine NPR inviting Sean Hannity as a regular guest commentator.

I’m reminded of a phrase that my Torts professor used, and that I like: “reasonable people can differ.”  I like that, because it is important to remember that reasonable people can maintain opposing presumptions or conclusions on a given item – and the important thing in a debate is to identify those points of difference, and examine, where possible, the weight of evidence supporting the opposing views.

Remembering that, two major flaws in much news media come to mind:  One, sometimes reasonable people cannot differ – it is, in fact, unreasonable to hold some opinions.  Two, the news ought not feel it’s job done in airing the opposing sides when reasonably differing – a news source ought examine and report the evidence that allows the audience to determine which view persuades.

News is about truth-telling.  (By the way, none of all this is to say that news is the best source of civic information.  I’ve argued on here before that I would rather read transparently biased civic opinion, like 18^th Century pamphlets, than feeble-minded news that fails to knock the door of substance.)

A couple more things.

It is helpful to remember our college paper-writing, and the difference between primary and secondary sources.  The primary source is the thing, and secondary sources explain the thing.  The primary source is Federalist 26, the secondary source is Lilly’s description of F26 below.

With news, primary sources are legislative bills, press conferences, fires, battles, and other things that get reported.  Secondary sources are the scripts read by Brian Williams.

Largely because of the internet, we are much more able to study the primary sources that we used to rely on secondary sources to convey.  Anyone can go straight to the latest health reform bill.  I’ve argued before that, with blogs, there is no inherent authority; so, good blogs hyperlink to the primary source (be it a bill, an article, or youtube clip) on which they offer exegesis.

The accessibility of primary sources, I think, is one of the crucial changers to news.  And that is why the question of bias, as pondered in most conversations I hear, is off-point.  A secondary source inevitably carries with it a perspective and a background bias toward some end – be that in political viewpoint, an urge for commercial success, or aesthetics.  Access to primary sources relied upon by secondary sources allows the news recipient a more complete knowledge than in a setting wherein the recipient simply absorbs.  Thus, bias has as much to do with the audience than the news source.

Finally, I don’t think there is any way to have perfect news.  My call for pamphleteering is a response to that conclusion – it is better to have transparent bias than purported objectivity.  It is more useful to me to read two opposing arguments, court style, than one summary that purports to get it right.  The items in the outline ought not be understood as a checklist that can be conquered.  Rather, they are items that we can keep in mind while receiving news; much like the rules of evidence that guard against the fallibility of our information intake.  In other words, to repeat the sentiment of the penultimate paragraph, the items are more relevant to the news audience than the reporters.