In want of theory…
A reader has asked me to comment on the Mark Halperin memo. I was on a blogging break and “missed” it. Yes I saw it. I harumphfed that it was bad luck that interesting news always seems to happen when I take blogging breaks. I let it go.
Okay, very quickly, I’m largely in agreement with Josh Marshall and Jay Rosen.
That said, I think the memo suffers from a lack of theory, i.e. Halperin would have been better able to state his case cogently had he cited: 1) the actual meaning of journalistic objectivity (more here), 2) the need for journalists to practice a discipline of verification, and 3) the need for journalists to act as custodians of fact.
Instead, as Rosen points out, “some of the word combinations in Halperin’s memo, lifted up, dragged across town, inserted into Holy Liberal Bias Theology and outfitted with scare language at either end, can be made to end up sounding like he’s saying… tilt Kerry or some such sublime thing.”
Question: Does the Halperin memo compare to the Fox memos?
Is the Bush campaign telling more lies or advancing more spin or spewing more propaganda than the Kerry campaign? I have no idea (but I have a guess). I know how to find out: The press should be practicing a discipline of verification and acting as custodians of fact.
Does the Halperin memo compare to the Fox memos?
Yes, and I don’t know. Yes, because it has the management memo flavor. I don’t know, because unlike the Halperin memo, I have not seen a Fox memo or been able to verify one’s contents.
Is the Bush campaign telling more lies or advancing more spin or spewing more propaganda than the Kerry campaign?
I have a guess too. That the campaigns become more aggressive and spin faster based on their own political observations and campaign tempo. Trying to determine which campaign is ahead (or behind) in the horse race of lies, spin and/or propaganda would depend on your window and news cycle.
The other thing the memo implies is that the journalist ought to be able to tell which lies are central to a campaign and which are peripheral. This is one of those areas where people are going to percieve things quite differently. There are ways of doing it ‘objectively’, but many of those ways are very foreign to how news is reported.
It is, however, important as a voter if not as a reporter to be able to distinguish between an anecdote that is embellished to prove a point and a misrepresentation of your own record (or your opponent’s). The connection between what I would consider private misbehavior, such as making up war stories that reflect well on yourself, and bad governance is indirect. The connection between public misbehavior, such as a president telling congress a deliberately false estimate of the cost of a bill, and bad governance is direct.
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-V.
Okay, very quickly, I’m largely in agreement with Josh Marshall and Jay Rosen.
That’s interesting, because I read Rosen: I’m afraid I’m a little cynical about this one: Latest dispatch from the shooting war on MSM. Josh Marshall on the Mark Halperin “scandal.”
To mean that Rosen wasn’t in agreement with, or at least a little cynical of, Marshall’s view.
What aspects of Rosen and Marshall are you in agreement with? Especially where they might differ?
Edit above for less confusion:
That’s interesting, because I read Rosen (I’m afraid I’m a little cynical about this one: Latest dispatch from the shooting war on MSM. Josh Marshall on the Mark Halperin “scandal.”) to mean that Rosen wasn’t in agreement with, or at least a little cynical of, Marshall’s view.
Hmmmmm…I read it as Rosen and Marshall being largely in agreement
I could be wrong.
“There is no such thing as an objective point of view.” – A. Cline
I have read your remarks on the importance of the structural biases in news reporting and find them interesting. These had not occurred to me before. I have read your often-repeated view that these biases are far more important than any group-think liberalism in the news gathering and desemination business, a notion that you are reluctant to give much credence to in any case.
Nonetheless, I am not persuaded that the liberal bias that is widely perceived as existing in the news business is merely an artifact of the outraged sensibilities of not-so-liberal observers. Take this link, for instance:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/specialreports/2004/report063004_p1.asp
It suggests a wide-spread liberal outlook among the people gathering, editing, and presenting the news. The material is chock-full of statistics that I have no way of independently verifying, but based on what I’ve seen here (Halperin), I’m more inclined to believe it than not.
Fox News and Sinclair notwithstanding, can any reasonably honest observer deny that the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, NPR, etc., etc., etc. are not “liberal” in their orientation?
A remark of P. J. O’Rourke comes to mind, who mockingly “quoted” and NPR news report teaser, “World to end tomorrow. Poor and minorities to be hardest hit.”
Anyone reporting the news has to decide what constitutes an interesting story, and what “angle” to use in covering it. And isn’t “angle” synonymous with “slant”?
When a newspaper is put together, someone decides which of those stories get how many column inches, and where they appear. Will a story be “above-the-fold” on the front page or will it appear ten or twelve pages deep?
When a TV news show or Morning Edition, or All Things Considered is produced, the same decisions are made except that the decisions are framed in terms of running time of a story and when it airs.
Is it reasonable to believe that the political beliefs of those who create, present, and disseminate news does not play a big part in their decisions as to what constitutes “news”? Or, let’s turn it around for a more interesting perspective, do you hold that the conservative bias that so many see in the Fox News Channel is an illusion, and merely the result of the structural biases in the news business?
This election has always been about George Bush vs. not(George Bush). MoveOn and Michael Moore are supporting John Kerry because he is not(George Bush). Lest anyone think otherwise, I challenge you to name any other Democratic Party candidate for president who, if he or she had won the nomination, would have pushed these two to support George Bush.
So with MoveOn and Michael Moore operating largely or wholly outside the the federal election laws, I find the reaction of the big media and organizations that more formally supporting not(George Bush) to Fox, Sinclair, and SWIFT Boat Veterans for Truth, to be reminiscent of Captain Renaud who declared himself to be “Shocked! Shocked!” to discover gambling going on at Rick’s American Cafe.
It seems to me this is a situation where people are using a poorly-written memo to support their own biases. I am an antitrust attorney that frequently reads business documents and, believe me, a lot of memos are unclear or subject to multiple interpretations. We frequently have disputes over the meaning of a particular document because what is written often does not reflect what the writer meant to convey. People often write in shorthand or not very clearly. IMO, you have to use a common sense. Even if Halperin wanted the staff to show more bias toward Kerry,I find it highly unlikely that he would write a memo saying that. It seems clear to me that that is not what he meant and that what he was trying to say, inartfully, is more in line with Professor Cline’s point about being custodians of fact.
Re: Is it reasonable to believe that the political beliefs of those who create, present, and disseminate news does not play a big part in their decisions as to what constitutes “news”?
Yes–if you believe that political ideology trumps other ideologies, e.g. professional ideologies. I happen to think that for most journalists professional ideologies (aka the structural biases) trump political ideologies.
How do I know this? Because assertions of political bias cannot and do not predict journalistic behavior as accurately as the structural biases.
Simply put: The structural biases create a better theory.
Granted: Political bias is a well-documented, localized phenomenon. There certainly are many cases in which we may see a political bias (right, left, and center) creeping into the news. This does not mean we can say that the news media as a whole has a political bias. In many cases, the political bias creeps in because of the structural biases, not despite them.
Re: Or, let’s turn it around for a more interesting perspective, do you hold that the conservative bias that so many see in the Fox News Channel is an illusion, and merely the result of the structural biases in the news business?
Yes and no. The FOX bias is not an illusion. They’re proud of it!
FOX provides a perfect example of the localized phenomenon of political bias. But the structural biases are still in play because FOX is still practicing journalism. The structural biases still predict, with a high degree of accuracy, what FOX will do in any given case. This doesn’t mean it will predict who FOX will promote ideologically. The structural biases predict how FOX will *operate*, i.e. choose, gather, and present information.
Political bias exists. I simply do not believe 1) that the news media in general can be labeled accurately as liberal or conservative and 2) that charges of political bias help us gain a deeper understanding of journalistic behavior.
I don’t believe the Fox Memo and the Halprin memo are comparable. I’m not in business anymore, but when I was, this sort of snarky, jokey Fox Memo type of thing was being constantly circulated, mostly about our bosses and our clients. Anyone in a MSM newsroom who says the same type of snarky memo has not been circulated about GWB is a liar. I agree with MWS that the Halprin memo is poorly written (or maybe it’s just that nuance thing so popular with some Dems!), but this memo feeds into the fear I had earlier when this “fact=checking” thing became all the rage —- some candidates were going to get more fact checking than others. With only 30-some % of the public believing the press is telling the truth —- who elected Mark Halprin or his cohort to determine which distortion is OK and which is not? Who elected them to draw an imaginary line? Why don’t they go the transparency route and explain how they determined that Bush had crossed the line and Kerry had not. Enquiring minds want to know. It appears they are trying to help Kerry win. I agree with you,however in that Halprin does not have a liberal bias, he is merely a partisan. But, so what?
Fox owns up to its biases, the others aren’t quite so honest.
I don’t understand what you mean when you refer to “the news media as a whole”, as in “This does not mean we can say that the news media as a whole has a political bias.”
Surely you don’t mean that every single news outlet has to share some characteristic in order for an observer to reasonably draw the inference that political inclination of the major news gatekeepers leans this way or that?
“In many cases, the political bias creeps in because of the structural biases, not despite them.”
Now this one has me stumped. If the major news outlets don’t have a political bias, how can it creep in “because of the structural biases, not despite them”? No. You said that the news media “as a whole” has no political agenda. It’s hard to disagree with that without an encyclopedic knowledge of every local newspaper and broadcast market in the country, which, I must admit, I lack. I think it is enough to be familiar with the product of the major market newspapers and national magazines, network television, and radio broadcasters to draw a fair conclusion about the biases of the people who operate them.
I have yet to meet anyone with a politcal bias toward the center. That is what I would normally call “apathetic”, or perhaps so cynical that he or she holds both the left and the right equally in contempt. When I order a steak and the waiter asks me how I would like it cooked, I sometimes say “extra medium” just to see what kind of reaction I get.
Fox owns up to its biases, the others aren’t quite so honest.
I’d agree with that.
I don’t understand what you mean when you refer to “the news media as a whole”, as in “This does not mean we can say that the news media as a whole has a political bias.”
I just add “as a whole” to point out how utter ridiculous it is to say the media are liberal. Media, being plural, indicates all media when someone says “The news media are liberal.” And we all know that not all news organizations in the news media are liberal.
Surely you don’t mean that every single news outlet has to share some characteristic in order for an observer to reasonably draw the inference that political inclination of the major news gatekeepers leans this way or that?
Who are the major gatekeepers? Who gets to make that choice? How do they make it? What are the criteria?
“In many cases, the political bias creeps in because of the structural biases, not despite them.”
Now this one has me stumped. If the major news outlets don’t have a political bias, how can it creep in “because of the structural biases, not despite them”? No. You said that the news media “as a whole” has no political agenda. It’s hard to disagree with that without an encyclopedic knowledge of every local newspaper and broadcast market in the country, which, I must admit, I lack. I think it is enough to be familiar with the product of the major market newspapers and national magazines, network television, and radio broadcasters to draw a fair conclusion about the biases of the people who operate them.
Take fairness bias as an example: Reporter quotes Sen. A, who has his facts straight. Reporter, to get “both sides,” quotes opponent Sen. B, who is completely nutty. The resulting article (unless verified and fact-checked–a lost art) will appear biased to readers who agree with Sen. A. It is bias–intended or not. It is a structural bias (fairness) *and* a political bias. the structural bias is interesting, IMO, because it says something about journalistic behavior. The political bias is not.
I have yet to meet anyone with a political bias toward the center. That is what I would normally call “apathetic”, or perhaps so cynical that he or she holds both the left and the right equally in contempt. When I order a steak and the waiter asks me how I would like it cooked, I sometimes say “extra medium” just to see what kind of reaction I get.
Extra medium
haha! And what kind of reactions do you get? There is a political center. If it exists, then someone who identifies with it can be biased toward it.