Responsibility of Media: Facts or Editorialization

Great Debates
1

Several years ago, I had a discussion with an Israeli friend of mine about the responsibility of the media. As a starting off point, I think we can all agree that it is the duty and role of a citizen in a democracy to be informed or inform oneself of the goings-on of the country and world, so as to be a better voter.

The debate my friend and I had was regarding how the news should be presented to the citizen. I was of the opinion that a neutral-toned, facts-based report that allows the person to draw his or her own conclusions is better. The weak point of this, as he pointed out, is that it requires the people to be very well informed and intelligent.

HIs opinion was that the media should fill in the blanks, so to speak - tell the citizen about the connections and why something happened. The weak point of this, as I pointed out, is that it allows the media to bias and spin reports.

So, which is better? Or which is not as bad? Or different strokes for different folks? Newsmax for some and AP for others?

2

Well, I say let them be informed, or not. If people are too lazy to inform themselves about issues that may impact them, to hell with them. I see nothing beneficial about people relying on one news source or another that plays solely to their, or my own, pre-existing prejudices.

I prefer factual reporting for the most part. Relying on opinion-based reporting pretty much guarantees that one will be fed a string of lies and half-truths.

I have no patience whatsoever with the incessant spin put on news items by organizations such as Newsmax (on the right) or Pacifica (on the left).

3

My views on this have been evolving of late.

I used to believe, as does El_Kabong above, that to have a neutral and objective press is the most desirable situation. However, I’m starting to move away from that position. There are two reasons.

First, I wonder if there is such a thing as true impartiality. Any news story, of necessity, will be a distillation of available facts; even the most neutral journalist is still forced to choose which items to include and which to leave out. The only way to represent an event with true impartiality and objectivity would be to put a dozen video cameras in strategic locations (assuming you know what these will be in advance), record the event from all perspectives, and then play every single one of the recordings for the public, beginning to end, without edits or commentary. Anything else is a subjective condensation of the event, and thus subject to manipulation, whether deliberate or inadvertent. (One of the best history books I own is titled “A History of <subject>,” rather than “The History of <subject>” or the even more questionable “<Subject>,” which I think is a subtle but interesting acknowledgement of this phenomenon.)

Second, if one promulgates what seems to be a myth of journalistic objectivity, it becomes possible to manipulate the news even more effectively. On one hand, if some people expects unvarnished facts from its media, those readers and viewers will be vulnerable to deception, because they won’t know how to question what they’re told. On the other hand, if that type of manipulation is occurring, and some people recognize some media are untrustworthy and given to mendacity, they may erroneously conclude that all media are deceptive, and thus give up on the whole thing and decide they’d rather just quit paying attention if they know they can’t get reliable information anywhere. In both cases, the population ends up ignorant and out of touch.

So I’m starting to think that it may actually be more useful to have openly partisan media who selectively choose what facts they will represent to the public, and which assertions from the other side they will attack and attempt to refute. In some ways, this is very similar to what we have in Great Debates: Hardly anyone here tries to hide their political leanings, and we end up with what you might call a Cite War: whoever can marshal the most convincing set of studies and expert opinions tends to come out ahead on an issue. A similar journalistic system might feature dueling arguments from different outlets, and in a pseudo-Darwinian sense, the best argument, the one with the best scientific or economic or military or historical foundation should, generally speaking, gain the most popular acceptance. The responsible citizen, then, must listen to and evaluate both points of view, and decide which one is the most plausible.

The problem, of course, is that you may end up polarizing the population, with walled camps who listen only to their preferred preachers and pay zero attention to anything coming from the other side. My response: True, but we already see this today with our current so-called unbiased media, so we might as well be honest about it. And besides, any system will be flawed, and no journalistic paradigm will be perfect — so just speaking for myself I tend to gravitate to whatever situation has the smallest amount of bullshit, or at least the smallest amount of concealed and disguised bullshit (“no-spin zone,” indeed).

My thoughts are still taking shape, though, so the above is somewhat unformed as yet. I’m open to modifying or refining my view, depending on how the debate progresses.

4

I’m leaning with Cervaise on this one: the construction of a formula for unbiased reporting is probably never going to exist, though I wouldn’t suggest that this is because unbiased reporting is impossible, only that there is no format that will guarantee, or even encourage, it.

5

Then where does the line between “biased reporting” and “propaganda and lies” come in?

6

There isn’t. However I think it’s an important goal or standard for the press to maintain. Once you stop holding people to that standard, you’re practically asking someone to spin you or lie to you.

[quote]
Anything else is a subjective condensation of the event, and thus subject to manipulation, whether deliberate or inadvertent. (One of the best history books I own is titled “A History of <subject>,” rather than “The History of <subject>” or the even more questionable “<Subject>,” which I think is a subtle but interesting acknowledgement of this phenomenon.)

I don’t think the truth gets any easier to find when multiple people lie to you in multiple ways. I do understand what you’re getting at and there are advantages. Nonetheless, I think these days public discourse features much too much of “I’ll think whatever I want to think,” and the news media reflects it. People are watching whatever outlets tell them what they want to hear, and that doesn’t contribute to the public becoming informed at all.

I don’t think anybody calls the media unbiased anymore. If you’re on the right, CNN is “the Clinton News Network,” and the New York Times is (as a crackpot I know put it) “the old gray whore,” and much has been made FOX’s bias. One thing that I don’t think anyone expects from the news media any more is objectivity, and national news of the last few years has made this abundantly clear.

As one of my profs liked to say, people consider reporers less trustworthy than used car salesmen- and since they expect so little, they let them get away with a lot.

7

That’s a good question. Unfortunately, my only general answer is “the subject”, by which I mean the content and the audience member viewing it. Generally I want to say that (to me) “proaganda” is from the government or other formal organization about itself, but we’re not talking about the government in this thread (it seems) so… I guess I just wouldn’t use the word.

8

Well, for instance, there is a difference between:

“A 15 year old artillery shell with sarin nerve toxin was detonated as part of a roadside bomb”

and

“Iraq has WMDs and used them against US troops”

9

Well, first of all, there are some people who are gullible enough to believe anything, so I’m not sure there is a point in including those people in our discussion. Clearly, news can’t be all editorialization (especially since even editorials require the declaration of at least some facts), but it’s pretty difficult to choose to be completely objective, too–as Cervaise has mentioned, any summation of a subject entails the omission of certain details. So it’s unlikely that you would ever have either of the extremes, but if you did, I’d prefer a rundown of the facts.

Of course, you have to be reasonable. There are sources that can, for all intents and purposes, be called objective. To me, a reasonably fair and reasonably impartial handling of a subject is a sign objectivity (i.e., not taking sides). But not all sources have to objective–a good faith consideration of the opposing viewpoint and a lack of vitriol can constitute a trustworthy (albeit not objective) news source. To toss out some examples, I consider Spinsanity.com an objective source and the Columbia Journalism Review and Reason to be non-objective but credible sources. Both CJR and Reason have a collective lean (CJR toward the left and Reason toward the libertarian right) but they also feature articles by people who do not necessarily have the same political views. More importantly, they consistently show a willingness to honestly debate issues.

There is also an important difference between sources of criticism (like Spinsanity), and primary news sources (such as CNN). It is easier for secondary sources to be objective because they are more removed from the situation by both time and place. Additionally, if they make it their goal to criticize the primary sources, they are able to focus their energies toward a clear purpose, which helps them avoid falling into the trap of biased reporting.