Speaking heresy…
Ken Auletta seems to be in tune with the structural biases of journalism, at least according to a Q&A in the online edition of The New Yorker.
For example, he understands how the commercial bias works:
The way that corporations most influence journalism, I think, is not by making reporters worry about advancing the regulatory goals of their corporate parents but by exerting pressure on them to boost circulation or ratings, and thus profits. This leads news outlets to offer more “gotcha” stories, more infotainment, more Michael Jackson and less World Trade Organization. This bias for conflict and sizzle is far more pervasive than any liberal or conservative press bias.
How about the fairness bias:
The Democrats were largely quiet in the lead-up to the war with Iraq, which is one excuse that reporters make for not probing Bush Administration claims. If there was no real opposition to Bush, they say, it is not our job to supply it. This is a fake argument. There were opponents of the war to be quoted. There were factual claims to be adjudicated as true or false. And journalism is not the same as a Ping-Pong match, where we just report the ping and the pong from each side. Our task is to try to sort out the objective truth as best we can.
Auletta, however, speaks heresy suggesting that journalists should sort out the “objective” truth. But he’s in good company. Academics, such as Kathleen Hall Jamieson, have argued that the press should be “custodians” of facts, i.e. it is not enough merely to report, one must also fact-check and report the data from such fact-checking as it affects various claims by politicians (or anyone else).
It would seem that such fact-checking as meta-analysis would fit the epistemology of journalism. The disconnect may be attributed to the role of knower in the noetic field (a closer examination of this to follow in Part 5 of my series, see below). Any evaluation in a subjective, contentious environment appears to be biased (for political reasons). And observers are supposed to be objective and dispassionate. The reader must decide.
Auletta also has some interesting things to say about the Bush administration’s relationship with the press.
