October 11, 2004
Plenty of anecdotes…
Daniel Okrent considers the election coverage of The New York Times and offers some anecdotal evidence for the unremarkable fact that people of different political ideologies can, and often do, read the same news article differently. What this points up for me is another unremarkable fact: charges of political bias in the news media have more to do with prosecuting ideological struggle than coming to a proper understanding of journalistic practice.
Posted by acline | October 11, 2004 | Posted in: Main |
Do you think the public might have a better “understanding of journalistic practice” if the press was required to have the same transparency demanded from business and government? When do you think this will happen? When 0.5% of the public believes the press to be truthful? When donkeys fly? Pick one.
No. The public will have a better understanding of journalistic practice after reading my Media/Political Bias page
Hee!Hee! You’re smooth, Doc. (I mean that as a compliment!) Please answer the question anyway. Some of us are not so interested in theory as we are in action.
I’m happy to attempt an answer, but I’d prefer to keep it in the context of the original entry, i.e. the unremarkable facts that 1) people of different ideologies read the content of news article differently and 2) that most bias ranting is about ideological struggle and not a better understanding of journalistic practice.
Regulating the content of the press does nothing to alter either of these facts. Those who prefer to read through their political lenses first are going to continue doing so. And that means there will always be those willing to rant about bias because they will see bias in everything they encounter.
You *might* be able to regulate how the press presents the news (thus adding overt political bias where very little now exists). But you cannot regulate how people read the news.
RH… one other thing. Are you really RG? If so, send me e-mail, and let me know. It’s important. Thanks.
I’ve attempted to send you email - all rejected. Are you receiving email at rhetorica.net, hotmail or .edu? Yes, RG is a/k/a RH.
Ha! I thought so
dr.cline -@- rhetorica.net should be working just fine.
So, Sherlock, who else refers to as Doc?
That wasn’t the only giveaway. But, what is most interesting to me is this: RH has a little more edge than RG
I’ll try to remember the preview option - what I meant is who else refers to you as Doc? Jeez!
Hee!Hee! You ought to see what I say when I use my gender neutral nom de web (or is it nom de net?) on other blogs. Trust me when I say that you are treated one way when you are an identifiable female as opposed to a gender-neutral commenter. I wonder myself why I only feel comfortable posting under my real name on some blogs, and feel I have to have a fake name on others. I’m still wondering.
Is it as unremarkable when news media use the language of those prosecuting the ideological struggle?
[portions cross-posted at PressThink]
Hed: Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film and lede sentence: “The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group …” [I await the liberal newspaper label to be used in references to the liberal-leaning Dog Trainer™ any day now ...]
Money ‘graph:
Eeevill pressscious … bad pressscious … ugly lil nasty fairnessssss … liessss my presssscious … liessssss ….
TV/Movies/Music: Top Contributors to Federal Candidates and Parties
Total contributions: $22,823,964
Democrats: $15,536,193 (68%)
Republicans: $7,244,784 (32%)
re: “Is it as unremarkable when news media use the language of those prosecuting the ideological struggle?”
Yes–just as unremarkable. Journalists have no access to a neutral form of the language. In fact, despite what many journalists think, there is no such thing. All language choices are political, or, as rhetoric scholar James Berlin said it: “Language is never innocent.”
Journalists choose the language that the culture tells them in “neutral” because they operate under the false assumption that it is possible to be clear, concise, and neutral. This is why so much of politics comes down to a battle over definitions. Win the definition war, win the media war, win the policy war.
More distilled than “Language is never innocent” is this: “where there’s choice, there’s rhetoric.”
RH… yes, some rhetoricians would agree with that. I don’t. I would put it this way: There’s always a choice so there is always rhetoric, and even if no choice exists, there is always rhetoric. You’ll need to revisit my definitions of rhetoric to understand why (linked in the text box at the top of Rhetorica and from the rhetoric Primer).
I agree that people will read the same article differently. But, I think there is more to it than that. Articles are written by people with underlying assumptions as to how the world does or should work. These assumptions cannot help but influence how an article is written. That’s not to say that a reporter should strive to write an “objective” article, giving equal weight to all positions. Some facts are wrong and some positions are crazy. But I think you have to read articles skeptically and try to understand the assumptions that underlie the reporter’s article. That’s not to say that there is a systematic intentional bias (which I don’t think there is), but I also think that its unrealistic to say that new stories never reflect an ideology.
MWS has hit upon two of my current hobbyhorses: reporters and editors should disclose biases (if bloggers can do it, so can journos) and what I probably ignorantly call “rhetoric of the press”. If it’s true that where there’s choice, there’s rhetoric (OK, even if there is no choice, etc.) then if you compare stories on the same subject written in NYTimes and WaPo, also NYPost, Wash Times, USA Today, etc. and check out where the story appears (or doesn’t appear) in the paper, what facts are used, which facts are in the first paragraph and which are buried (or deleted) at the bottom, how much and what kind of spin is used, etc. a reader will begin to see that news goes beyond just the bias, or slant, or partisanship, or ideology in the original article. Each news outlet is attempting to persuade us to see a certain event their way. People who say they are well informed because they only read NYTimes, or say they know what is going on in Iraq and the world by what they see on TV don’t know how wrong they are. As for reporters disclosing biases, financial reporters are required to disclose their financial dealings, so what’s the big deal with political reporters? My guess is that they are afraid they will lose credibility (do they have much now?). My personal experience is that I will give more weight to criticism of GWB from Bill Kristol in Weekly Standard than I will Josh Marshall at TPM or David Corn in The Nation.
I think RH makes a good point in some ways. Look at book reviews. It’s obvious that if you have a liberal review a book by a conservative you will get a different slant than if its reviewed by a conservative and, of course, the same the other way. In some cases, I know the ideology of the reviewer and I can judge the review accordingly. But if I don’t know the reviewer and don’t know his or her ideology, I am out of luck.
I realize book reviews are different from news reporting, but the same point applies. If I write a newstory, I will, as RH notes, emphasize different points, make different assumptions, etc. than someone else would. (Even someone with my same general political inclination.) This is inevitable regardless of whether I am intending to bias the article or not. I agree with Professor Cline that reporters have a professional standard to which they try to adhere and this likely trumps any conscious bias they may have. Most reporters don’t want to be perceived as partisan hacks. So, no I don’t think there is systematic “bias” in the sense that reporters or a newspaper are consciously trying to slant the news to favor one side. But the fact is, if you read the New York Times you will get a different spin on a story than if you read the Washington Times. That doesn’t mean they consciously distort facts or some such. But the different assumptions will color how they present the story.
I agree totally with RH that someone that reads only the NYT or only the Washington Times cannot really call themselves well-informed. Different writers often communicate different stories and even different facts become more significant. My point is that, regardless of how much a reporter may work to adhere to the professional standard, it’s a bit naive to think that a given newspaper with a given set of reporters won’t reflect a particular point of view.