: Campaign maneuvers…Screeching about ____ bias…
I’ve come to loathe the word “bias” even as I use it to explain journalistic behavior that I think is far more important to a proper understanding the press than the pointing out of political partisanship (overt or otherwise).
Jay Rosen does us a great service by pointing out the obvious:
To me, any work of journalism is saturated with bias from the moment the reporter leaves the office–and probably before that–to the edited and finished product.
There’s bias in the conversation our biased reporter has with his biased editor, bias in the call list he develops for his story, bias in his choice of events to go out and cover, bias in the details he writes down at the event, bias in his lead paragraph, bias in the last paragraph, bias when his editor cuts a graph. The headline someone else writes for him– that has bias. There’s bias in the placement of the story. (No bias in the pixels or printer’s ink, though.)
“Bias” demands modification. The bias Rosen speaks of is the kind no human can ever escape (nor would you want to). Bias is made necessary by the judgment required to make choices as presented to us in limited systems.
I modify “bias” with “structural” to speak of the frames of thought that I believe are far more important to understanding journalistic behavior than the “bias” many call “political.” All choices are political to one extent or another, so “political” is hardly modification at all.
To insist on partisan political bias (“the press is liberal” or “the press is conservative”), to take one of these sides to the exclusion of contrary evidence, is to engage in partisan struggle for rhetorical and political purposes. Claiming overt, partisan, liberal or conservative, political bias fits the needs of ideological struggle, not greater understanding. And this means we will continue to suffer the cultural white noise of all those flamers screeching about ______ bias.
I agree with you that the “press is liberal vs. press is conservative” struggle is useless, but aren’t you blaming the victim here? It would go a long way in quelling “those flamers screeching about ________(?) bias” if the editors and reporters, and even columnists would admit bias and inform the public of their specific bias, no? What has poisoned the well is the press insisting they are “objective” and people like the editor of WaPo claiming he has “no idea” of the political impact of any given story featured in his publication – this stuff is just beyond the beyond. Doesn’t Jay Rosen call this “The View from Nowhere (orsomething like that)?So I say put the onus on the press to quiet all this “bias” hysteria, after all, they have the most responsibility for it. On a side note – I used to be one of those who thought the press had a liberal bias, but since reading Rhetorica for several years, I’ve changed and refined my opinion about it. Thanks, Doc, for the education.
Rebecca…I think the first bit of good news is that objectivity (as I have described it) is falling away. I agree, and Rosen would too, that objectivity has caused certain problems in journalism–problems that need correcting.
But the coming clean you’re talking about, if I understand you correctly, won’t do much more than accentuate the problem. In my experience, journalists are far more likely to be biased toward the structures of the profession than toward a political ideology regarding the practice of journalism (I’m bracketing our columnists here). IOW, professional ideology is stronger than partisan ideology for the average journalist.
Much of the nonsense you see that appears to be partisan bias may be attributed to an imperfect practice in regard to the structural biases. And, yes, some of it is hair-tearingly maddening
Journalism has a lot of work to do. I hope I can make a difference at SMSU. And thanks for the compliment
PressThink’s Questions and Answers about Media Bias
I don’t think “unbiased journalism” is a particularly noble or desirable thing. The Q and A explains why…
Well, “access bias” is suggested by an InstaPundit reader in this post, which certainly makes sense from a process standpoint, especially for TV “journalism.”
The general case is that stuff that’s easier to cover gets more coverage. Stuff that takes a lot of legwork gets less. To the extent that this applies to newspapers, your idea for turning them into collections of deep-contextual second-day reportage would make the *journalists* work harder, as well as the readers. Add in the hard-working listeners of “Radio Rhetorica,” and maybe your slogan should be “we make _everybody_ work harder.”
Sometimes, when I re-read my comments, I’m convinced I’m channeling Hunter S Thompson! Add to that the fact the we sometimes use different vocabularies to describe the same thing and confusion ensues. Fortunately, I saw something on Dave Copeland’s blog that crystalizes what I mean by “come clean”. Paraphrasing, he says that reporters should be willing to discuss and disclose their political leanings, financial interests and personal opinions on whatever subject they are covering. If, in the process of reporting, they have a “Road to Damascus” moment, as Tony Ortega suggests, they would be free to include that since they would be freed of the “objectivity” fantasy. Copeland says, and I agree, that this would make for more lively reading and open a more honest discussion of issues. I’m going to quit now before I have another HST moment, but I hope this clears up any confusion about my meaning.
Oops – almost forgot my training – here’s Copeland’s original post for anyone interested:http://www.davecopeland.com/archive/2004_05_16_archive.htm
rebecca…there’s a lot to be said for this idea. And now I know what you mean!