I did not see or hear of any of this happening during my 10 years in journalism. See my earlier comment to Lazy8. A small newspaper may be more subject to that kind of gerrymandering by one editor, but not a large newspaper. I would throw out the example of the Boston Globe when its investigative team broke the story on the massive sexual abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese (subject of the recent movie Spotlight). Those editors and reporters knew that challenging the Catholic church could bring down a deluge of vitriol on their heads.
Thanks, the Globe piece is a great example of doing the right thing for the right reasons. Then there is the NY Times which is rife with examples of journalistic corruption and agenda pushing.
And is the NYT exempt from pressures from, say a major advertiser like Macy's, when it comes to covering Trump for example ?
Disregarding the party affiliation, but shouldn't reporting naturally swing to the left? Having a more progressive rather than conventional view of society?
Not a question of should or shouldn't, but the plain fact that they do.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Jul 29, 2016 - 10:40am
kurtster wrote:
Sure there are the '5 W's', its when it goes beyond them that things change and become more than just an accounting of facts.
Generally, an editor represents the bias of the organization, whatever it may be and must also consider its sponsors or advertisers in the equation. They in turn will assign stories to the journalist best suited to the editor's needs to cover and write a certain story. A good editor knows who thinks what way and why. (Are not journalists or for that matter generally speaking, workers hired that are hoped to reflect a culture that is established within and not confront that culture ? Creating an echo chamber of sorts ?) The journalist may or may not be aware of certain tendencies or biases they may have, but the editor surely must. It is possible that a journalist may think they play it straight, yet the editor knows otherwise and considers this in assignments, without ever letting the journalist know why they are chosen, leaving the journalist to keep thinking they play it straight and in a way confirming that belief within said journalist. Is that not what can be loosely termed confirmation bias ? And over the long term it gets baked into the cake, unwittingly. Then say the journalist moves onto something else, they take this with them and start a blog. The journalist cannot help but to incorporate this into their new product. Then there is finally some feedback which may challenge that unknown inner bias and things get bumpy.
I did not see or hear of any of this happening during my 10 years in journalism. See my earlier comment to Lazy8. A small newspaper may be more subject to that kind of gerrymandering by one editor, but not a large newspaper. I would throw out the example of the Boston Globe when its investigative team broke the story on the massive sexual abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese (subject of the recent movie Spotlight). Those editors and reporters knew that challenging the Catholic church could bring down a deluge of vitriol on their heads. They questioned themselves about whether biases they may have concerning the Catholic church might be influencing their work — both in the sense of overlooking things that perhaps should have been followed up on earlier in time, and letting personal feelings interfere — and strove to combat that. If the overriding goal of the paper was to feed the populace stories that would be well-received, those investigative pieces would never have been published in Boston. But they were.
Can it not be considered a general truth that anything written (other than a journal or diary) is intended to be read by someone besides the author ? The author wishes to be understood by the forthcoming reader at some level and writes to that person(s) in a way they hope accurately conveys their message. As a journalist, you are trying to make your story readable to as large a segment of readers as possible. That means using as direct and simple language as you can. The goal is to bring information to the reader, not to lead the reader to a particular conclusion.
This is not to be confused with those who simply write with the sole purpose of throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Pardon the rambling, its just how my mind is functioning right now.
It was a long time ago, but when I was working as a journalist, those kind of thoughts never crossed my mind — and no one asked me to change or slant stories to better fit the viewpoints of a particular set of readers. Nor did I ever hear any of my colleagues talk about having to alter stories to appease a particular set of readers.
Edit: Journalists are trained to be objective; there are tools one uses, and procedures one follows. The process involves others — editors — part of whose job it is to point out and challenge unsupported parts of a reporter's story. Jurors are instructed to be impartial, but they have not undergone training for being a juror.
Sure there are the '5 W's', its when it goes beyond them that things change and become more than just an accounting of facts.
Generally, an editor represents the bias of the organization, whatever it may be and must also consider its sponsors or advertisers in the equation. They in turn will assign stories to the journalist best suited to the editor's needs to cover and write a certain story. A good editor knows who thinks what way and why. (Are not journalists or for that matter generally speaking, workers hired that are hoped to reflect a culture that is established within and not confront that culture ? Creating an echo chamber of sorts ?) The journalist may or may not be aware of certain tendencies or biases they may have, but the editor surely must. It is possible that a journalist may think they play it straight, yet the editor knows otherwise and considers this in assignments, without ever letting the journalist know why they are chosen, leaving the journalist to keep thinking they play it straight and in a way confirming that belief within said journalist. Is that not what can be loosely termed confirmation bias ? And over the long term it gets baked into the cake, unwittingly. Then say the journalist moves onto something else, they take this with them and start a blog. The journalist cannot help but to incorporate this into their new product. Then there is finally some feedback which may challenge that unknown inner bias and things get bumpy.
Can it not be considered a general truth that anything written (other than a journal or diary) is intended to be read by someone besides the author ? The author wishes to be understood by the forthcoming reader at some level and writes to that person(s) in a way they hope accurately conveys their message.
This is not to be confused with those who simply write with the sole purpose of throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Pardon the rambling, its just how my mind is functioning right now.
ymmv ... peace out, for now. . Edit: I see a lot went on while composing this thought, so pardon any redundancies of thoughts already expressed below.
Are you saying that you deduced these kinds of conclusions based on news coverage you have read, or that you have read that reporters and editors routinely do these kinds of things?
Yes, and from conversations with journalists, and by comparing events I'm very familiar with to the stories that get reported about them.
Reporters and editors are human, just like you. They respond to incentives, they deal with the social situations at work. The journalistic profession leans farther to the left than the population as a whole—this has been confirmed so many times that it's silly to argue about it. Can we really expect that this will have no effect at all?
Disregarding the party affiliation, but shouldn't reporting naturally swing to the left? Having a more progressive rather than conventional view of society?
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Jul 29, 2016 - 10:14am
Lazy8 wrote:
ScottFromWyoming wrote:
Every person has biases. It is meaningless to say "that reporter is biased" or "that news program is unbiased" because every human thing has bias. Toss a dime in the air and count how many times it comes to rest standing on its edge. That's how many people are without bias—and if it happens that you find this person, it's still just a fluke. And they're just as likely to be a plumber as a politician or reporter.
The best we can hope for is a reporter or politician who is aware of their biases and takes steps to ameliorate them. For a politician, surrounding themselves with something other than yes-men is a good approach: develop policy in a room full of people of differing backgrounds. For a reporter, it can be harder, because things go online in such haste these days, but in the old days of a slow news cycle, editorial meetings would be held and the reporter told to get a statement from so-and-so, or include some background information on this person or that...
So anyway, I think we're using "bias" here when what we really mean is the politician or news outlet has an agenda.
I'm not. I assume every story comes to me thru a filter, a worldview, a philosophy, a set of assumptions. And this is trivially true—I'm reading the story in English, the reporter assumes I read English, for instance.
Those assumptions change not just the shape of the story but the stories that get told. Nowhere was this more obvious than in reporting on Ferguson, MO. A lot of it focused on the event that kicked off the protests: the shooting of Michael Brown and whether or not it was justified. Others reported on the damage done by the rioting, or the behavior of the police, or how connected all this was to other shootings of other black men. There was more to the story, of course—there was a deep well of anger that didn't dissipate when a thorough investigation showed that the shooting was, in fact, justified and that many of the eyewitness reports were wrong. There was (and is) a lot wrong in that part of Missouri and the people who live there still face it.
It is possible to get a broad picture of the area and the events, but you have to use more than one source, look at the story thru more than one lens. And sometimes it takes time to get that picture, even if a source you trust tells you everything it can learn at the moment, more will emerge. Not all news outlets give their reporters that time and not all of them give later revelations the space they deserve.
So no, I don't mean agenda, I mean bias. And I don't see it as a condemnation, I see it as inherent in the process and something it's my responsibility as an informed citizen to be aware of and compensate for.
I was on board with you through the middle of this post, but disagree with your conclusion of bias. There are many explanations for why coverage would differ. How many reporters can a newspaper assign to the story? Each reporter from the same newspaper would be searching for different angles on the story. The more stories, the more varied the coverage. There also are space considerations on any given day, and judgments to be made on how much space to devote to each story. That some stories get more play than others is not necessarily evidence of bias in favor or against something. That fast-breaking stories evolve over time is a given; inaccuracies in early reporting can happen, but that is not intentional. If what you are talking about is that an enterprising reporter may see and report on an angle that may not have occurred to another reporter, and that this may partially be due to differences in experiences of those reporters, I could sign on. But if you take it a step further and say the first reporter had a different angle because he is trying to sell one outcome or viewpoint while the second reporter that did not report on that angle is trying to sell an opposing outcome or viewpoint, I would not sign on.
Are you saying that you deduced these kinds of conclusions based on news coverage you have read, or that you have read that reporters and editors routinely do these kinds of things?
Yes, and from conversations with journalists, and by comparing events I'm very familiar with to the stories that get reported about them.
Reporters and editors are human, just like you. They respond to incentives, they deal with the social situations at work. The journalistic profession leans farther to the left than the population as a whole—this has been confirmed so many times that it's silly to argue about it. Can we really expect that this will have no effect at all?
So no, I don't mean agenda, I mean bias. And I don't see it as a condemnation, I see it as inherent in the process and something it's my responsibility as an informed citizen to be aware of and compensate for.
Yes, exactly. Nevermind my agenda stuff. It was too broad and not worth cleaning up.
Which means they probably give the first word to Checker Finn or some other proponent of privatized schooling.
Are you saying they must flip a coin to decide who goes first?
I didn't pick this example to push your buttons (not that, truth be told, I really mind) just to highlight an issue where the news outlet's bias is most obvious.
Look at the language: school choice vs. privatized schooling. School choice doesn't imply privatization, but look where you went with it, and look where NPR goes with it.
NPR is probably my most-used news source. I like them a lot. But they come with implicit biases, biases I need to be aware of if I'm going to be informed on the issues.
Every person has biases. It is meaningless to say "that reporter is biased" or "that news program is unbiased" because every human thing has bias. Toss a dime in the air and count how many times it comes to rest standing on its edge. That's how many people are without bias—and if it happens that you find this person, it's still just a fluke. And they're just as likely to be a plumber as a politician or reporter.
The best we can hope for is a reporter or politician who is aware of their biases and takes steps to ameliorate them. For a politician, surrounding themselves with something other than yes-men is a good approach: develop policy in a room full of people of differing backgrounds. For a reporter, it can be harder, because things go online in such haste these days, but in the old days of a slow news cycle, editorial meetings would be held and the reporter told to get a statement from so-and-so, or include some background information on this person or that...
So anyway, I think we're using "bias" here when what we really mean is the politician or news outlet has an agenda.
I'm not. I assume every story comes to me thru a filter, a worldview, a philosophy, a set of assumptions. And this is trivially true—I'm reading the story in English, the reporter assumes I read English, for instance.
Those assumptions change not just the shape of the story but the stories that get told. Nowhere was this more obvious than in reporting on Ferguson, MO. A lot of it focused on the event that kicked off the protests: the shooting of Michael Brown and whether or not it was justified. Others reported on the damage done by the rioting, or the behavior of the police, or how connected all this was to other shootings of other black men. There was more to the story, of course—there was a deep well of anger that didn't dissipate when a thorough investigation showed that the shooting was, in fact, justified and that many of the eyewitness reports were wrong. There was (and is) a lot wrong in that part of Missouri and the people who live there still face it.
It is possible to get a broad picture of the area and the events, but you have to use more than one source, look at the story thru more than one lens. And sometimes it takes time to get that picture, even if a source you trust tells you everything it can learn at the moment, more will emerge. Not all news outlets give their reporters that time and not all of them give later revelations the space they deserve.
So no, I don't mean agenda, I mean bias. And I don't see it as a condemnation, I see it as inherent in the process and something it's my responsibility as an informed citizen to be aware of and compensate for.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Jul 29, 2016 - 9:35am
Lazy8 wrote:
steeler wrote:
And you know these things how?
I can read.
So you fall into a familiar pattern that minimizes the cognitive dissonance in the audience.
And the reporter in question will have to justify that story to skeptical editors every time, and better not make a habit of it.
Are you saying that you deduced these kinds of conclusions based on news coverage you have read, or that you have read that reporters and editors routinely do these kinds of things?
Every person has biases. It is meaningless to say "that reporter is biased" or "that news program is unbiased" because every human thing has bias. Toss a dime in the air and count how many times it comes to rest standing on its edge. That's how many people are without biasâand if it happens that you find this person, it's still just a fluke. And they're just as likely to be a plumber as a politician or reporter. Â The best we can hope for is a reporter or politician who is aware of their biases and takes steps to ameliorate them. For a politician, surrounding themselves with something other than yes-men is a good approach: develop policy in a room full of people of differing backgrounds. For a reporter, it can be harder, because things go online in such haste these days, but in the old days of a slow news cycle, editorial meetings would be held and the reporter told to get a statement from so-and-so, or include some background information on this person or that... Â So anyway, I think we're using "bias" here when what we really mean is the politician or news outlet has an agenda.Â
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Jul 29, 2016 - 8:57am
Lazy8 wrote:
steeler wrote:
Most people do their jobs — despite of any prejudice or bias a person may harbor. I might dislike a work colleague, but that does not mean I am not going to work with that person to the best of my ability to get the job done in a professional manner. A physician may actually be a bit of a racist; does not mean the physician is not going to do his job and save the life of a member of the minority that the physician considers to be inferior.
Edit: Pardon the double negatives — too lazy to edit.
We also ask people to set aside biases when they serve on juries. And (having served on a few juries) they by and large try—but if you took the case of a black defendant whose fate was decided by an all-white jury of Trump supporters, would you not prepare an appeal?
Yet we're expected to believe that a newspaper story shows no effect of the reporter's prejudices with much less at stake and a friendly audience who shares those prejudices.
Sure, they try. But they are selling words to an audience, an audience with little patience for thoughts that contradict their prejudices. You tell them the wrong kind of story and they stop reading. You give them a perspective on that story they don't want to hear and they claim bias...and stop reading. So you fall into a familiar pattern that minimizes the cognitive dissonance in the audience.
Go ahead and find an article on school choice on NPR that doesn't give the last word to the teachers union. Find a Fox News story with any sympathy for the people of Gaza. There may be a couple, but they will be buried under a mountain of others with the opposite slant. And the reporter in question will have to justify that story to skeptical editors every time, and better not make a habit of it.
And you know these things how?
It was a long time ago, but when I was working as a journalist, those kind of thoughts never crossed my mind — and no one asked me to change or slant stories to better fit the viewpoints of a particular set of readers. Nor did I ever hear any of my colleagues talk about having to alter stories to appease a particular set of readers.
Edit: Journalists are trained to be objective; there are tools one uses, and procedures one follows. The process involves others — editors — part of whose job it is to point out and challenge unsupported parts of a reporter's story. Jurors are instructed to be impartial, but they have not undergone training for being a juror.
Every person has biases. It is meaningless to say "that reporter is biased" or "that news program is unbiased" because every human thing has bias. Toss a dime in the air and count how many times it comes to rest standing on its edge. That's how many people are without bias—and if it happens that you find this person, it's still just a fluke. And they're just as likely to be a plumber as a politician or reporter.
The best we can hope for is a reporter or politician who is aware of their biases and takes steps to ameliorate them. For a politician, surrounding themselves with something other than yes-men is a good approach: develop policy in a room full of people of differing backgrounds. For a reporter, it can be harder, because things go online in such haste these days, but in the old days of a slow news cycle, editorial meetings would be held and the reporter told to get a statement from so-and-so, or include some background information on this person or that...
So anyway, I think we're using "bias" here when what we really mean is the politician or news outlet has an agenda.
Most people do their jobs — despite of any prejudice or bias a person may harbor. I might dislike a work colleague, but that does not mean I am not going to work with that person to the best of my ability to get the job done in a professional manner. A physician may actually be a bit of a racist; does not mean the physician is not going to do his job and save the life of a member of the minority that the physician considers to be inferior.
Edit: Pardon the double negatives — too lazy to edit.
We also ask people to set aside biases when they serve on juries. And (having served on a few juries) they by and large try—but if you took the case of a black defendant whose fate was decided by an all-white jury of Trump supporters, would you not prepare an appeal?
Yet we're expected to believe that a newspaper story shows no effect of the reporter's prejudices with much less at stake and a friendly audience who shares those prejudices.
Sure, they try. But they are selling words to an audience, an audience with little patience for thoughts that contradict their prejudices. You tell them the wrong kind of story and they stop reading. You give them a perspective on that story they don't want to hear and they claim bias...and stop reading. So you fall into a familiar pattern that minimizes the cognitive dissonance in the audience.
Go ahead and find an article on school choice on NPR that doesn't give the last word to the teachers union. Find a Fox News story with any sympathy for the people of Gaza. There may be a couple, but they will be buried under a mountain of others with the opposite slant. And the reporter in question will have to justify that story to skeptical editors every time, and better not make a habit of it.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Jul 29, 2016 - 6:51am
sirdroseph wrote:
steeler wrote:
The question is not whether a person has a particular bias. It is whether the person acts in accordance with that bias.
Yep, you're a lawyer. ;-) I submit that it is virtually impossible to deny one's very essence and this is manifest anywhere from a subtle nuance to full blown prejudice in everything that we do. We are all individuals even if that individuality is to be a lock step follower of a group or one who fiercely rejects the majority opinion whenever they can by virtue of a rebellious personality. In short, we do who we are.
Most people do their jobs — despite of any prejudice or bias a person may harbor. I might dislike a work colleague, but that does not mean I am not going to work with that person to the best of my ability to get the job done in a professional manner. A physician may actually be a bit of a racist; does not mean the physician is not going to do his job and save the life of a member of the minority that the physician considers to be inferior.
Edit: Pardon the double negatives — too lazy to edit.
The question is not whether a person has a particular bias. It is whether the person acts in accordance with that bias. Â
Â
Yep, you're a lawyer. ;-) I submit that it is virtually impossible to deny one's very essence and this is manifest anywhere from a subtle nuance to full blown prejudice in everything that we do. We are all individuals even if that individuality is to be a lock step follower of a group or one who fiercely rejects the majority opinion whenever they can by virtue of a rebellious personality. In short, we do who we are.
