: Natural science…The expediency bias…
While I was preparing for my Forum appearance (re:
yesterday’s post),
I realized that I must add a "new" bias (i.e. I’m only just now getting around
to adding it) to the list of structural
biases that explain the behavior of journalists: the expediency bias.
One reason I haven’t thought of adding this bias until now is that it strikes
me as a structural bias of work in general. We are biased toward the easy, the
quick, the expedient. In some professions this bias can have profound effects on
performance and utility. But, as I spoke yesterday, I realized that it’s
difficult to properly assess much of journalistic behavior without taking this
bias into account.
Journalism is a competitive, deadline-driven profession. This means reporters
and editors will be biased toward information that can be obtained quickly and
easily. Need an expert/official quote (status quo bias) to balance (fairness
bias) a story (narrative bias)? Who can you get on the phone? Who is always
ready with a quote and always willing to speak? Much of deadline decision making
comes down to gathering information that is readily available from sources that
are well known.
I’ll be writing a full description of this bias and adding it to the bias
page this week. Look for it by Friday.
The expediency bias also often is driven by finances, as well. (cheap=expedient) In a business driven by a desire — nay, a demand — for ever-increasing profits, one the market does not allow the luxury of a bad year, the financial component constitutes a large and growing part of this particular type of bias.
Lex…yes. I’ll be sure to incorporate this in my definition.
The economic facet of the expediency bias may not be quite that straightforward. To be sure, expedient behavior is the norm — in the sense of doing what comes easy rather than doing what the situation requires. In a competitive environment, though, expediency doesn’t result in indefinite profitability. It only takes a few people “doing it right” to take a market away from those who stay in their comfort zone.
So I’d diagnose the expediency bias by asserting that there’s a lack of competitive pressure in major media. I’ve noted before that in a country of 300 million people and a $10 trillion economy, we have, in terms of national political discourse in print, 3 major newspapers, 2 major weekly newsmagazines, and 1 wire service. Television, even with cable, is only slightly more competitive in terms of national news, and radio is notoriously concentrated among a few owners.
Competition isn’t nonexistent, but it seems to operate at a much slower pace in the media than in other sectors of the economy. It took a full generation for cable TV to seriously affect the old networks, and at least several years for USAToday (which I admire for its inventiveness but would not place among the “3 newspapers” above) to influence the design and production of major metropolitan dailies. Possibly because I work in telecom, I can’t imagine being able to drift along for 5-10 years at a time without having to make significant adaptive efforts to survive.
Returning to expediency bias itself — there’s a tie-in to “situational leadership” and management theory in general here. But this comment is already too long, so I’ll save it for the radio show in a couple of weeks.
Jay…more good stuff to think about! And, yes, radio…first week of December.
Useful insights into media bias
Victor recently pointed out this Tyler Cowen column at TechCentralStation, which tries to dig past accusations of left-wing or right-wing media bias. It’s a good piece, well worth the read. Consider the war with Iraq. Leading up to the war, and during …
Useful insights into media bias
Victor recently pointed out this Tyler Cowen column at TechCentralStation, which tries to dig past accusations of left-wing or right-wing media bias. It’s a good piece, well worth the read. Consider the war with Iraq. Leading up to the war, and during …
Upon further reflection, I realized that there is competition — not so much among similar media but for the audience’s attention. Combined with a fixed publishing schedule, this actually inhibits certain kinds of innovation, which is why blogs — the well-written ones, anyway — are so much more interesting than newspapers and magazines; they add content whenever they feel like it, rather than at the same time every day or every week. In project management terms, the triple constraint of time/cost/quality limits the scope attainable by periodicals (imagine a triangle with the length of its sides determined by schedule, expense, and look/feel; scope is the area of the triangle). Since time (publishing schedule) is unalterable and cost and quality change relatively slowly, the scope of the overall product is severely constrained, and the processes behind it all place a premium on what’s fast and easy.