Skippy Speaks: Advice to the Media

Frankly, I'm getting fed up with most of the media. I no longer have cable TV, but when I visit my mother, the TV stays on one of the three main news channels (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) when it's not on Food Network or Tru. (Food and Tru are our 'neutral ground' channels. :) So I hear bad journalism until I just can't take it anymore. And if I make the mistake of reading news online, I usually encounter the same lack of journalistic integrity and it makes me cringe. So I thought that since it's obvious no one is teaching this stuff to journalism majors, I should take it upon myself to do it.

1. Sometimes, there aren't two sides to an issue.

"What?" you may be asking yourself right now. But seriously, it's true. There are occasions when there is only one side, and there are occasions when there are many sides.

When writing (or filming) a story that is based on scientific findings, for instance, you do not have to look up every kook in your little black book of sources to find the one nutjob who has what you'll undoubtedly try to convince the audience is "an opposing viewpoint." Unfortunately, this all too often has the effect of equating valid, sound scientific theory with something completely insane that some idiot pulled out of thin air.

Let's say NASA released a report that showed there was water ice at the poles of Mars and that there is evidence that it has been liquid in the very recent past.

What you should do: interview the NASA people making the claim, talk to some exogeologists who understand the conditions on Mars, read and familiarize yourself with the actual findings, and try to find a way to explain it to your lay audience so that it's not long-winded and boring.

What you should do if the scientific community is genuinely divided:¹ interview proponents of all the major camps, familiarize yourself with the actual findings, and then present the story in such a way as to make it clear which theory (or theories) has the most support and so on. There's probably no such thing as an even division in science unless the discovery is new. A decent "recent" example might be the discovery of the "hobbit" skeletons on the island of Flores (Homo floresiensis). Scientists at the time were casting about for possible hypotheses to explain their small stature and whether they were recent or ancient. No consensus had yet been reached, so any well-written report would have had to show that and note that theory X was favored by the majority, but theories Y and Z also had significant proponents.²

What you should not do: interview the NASA people making the claim, then find some way-out-on-the-fringe wacko who is convinced that Hitler clones have been bred on Mars by Nazi scientists and are merely waiting for the signal to invade Earth. Then present them both as though they are equally valid "theories."

What you really shouldn't do: interview every idiot with a conspiracy theory or delusional belief that there are aliens on Mars, then talk to the NASA scientists, then edit the story so that 95% of the article/show is the idiotic/delusional nonsense, then toss in a sound-byte at the very end from the NASA scientists, generally refuting alternate "theories." (This is usually accompanied by a knowing, superior smirk on the face of said scientists, because they can't believe anyone is actually stupid enough to take the nub-job seriously.)

2. Asking questions without answering them (or asking questions that have no answers) is not journalism; it's manipulation, plain and simple.

Here's the end of a recent article about Joe Scarborough that appeared on a blog called Talking Points Memo:

But it makes us wonder: Did Scarborough, planning a run for Congress from a deeply socially conservative Florida panhandle district, sought [sic] to get involved in the Griffin case as a way to associate himself with, and build support among, the anti-abortion movement? In other words, was Scarborough's political career launched in part by exploiting the dangerous strain of right-wing extremism that views the defense of an accused killer of an abortion provider as a cause celebre?

At the very least, it's worth asking...

Um, no. No, it isn't worth asking. What you've done here—and let me be absolutely blunt—is to ask leading questions in a deliberate attempt to manipulate your readers / viewers into being left with the impression that there's more there. In reality, your research—assuming you did more than look it up on Wikipedia—didn't turn up any evidence to support your claims, so you just decided to ask the question to slant your audience's opinion in the direction you wanted them to go. If a lawyer tried to pull this crap in court, there would be a loud and indignant objection from opposing counsel, and rightfully so.

You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a specific, clear-cut example of this to turn up somewhere I could link to.

3. Propaganda isn't "journalism."

Let's say you're writing a story or filming a news segment about the economy. You have your own opinion, which is that we're all going to Hell on a crowded express elevator. So you contact a number of economists and pose the same question to them: "Where is the economy headed?"

Let's say 33.3% of them say "It will make the Great Depression look like a Presbyterian bake sale." Another 33.3% of them say "Every indication is that we're starting to pull out of the nose-dive." And 33.3% of them say "It's holding steady, with no definite trends in either direction, so it's hard to say." The remaining .1% either had no opinion or didn't answer their phones. :)

What you should do: write the story / edit the film segment in such a way as to represent what the economists actually said. Sure, it wasn't what you thought, but as a journalist, your job is to report, not to preach.

What you should not do: write the story / edit the film segment to highlight only those opinions that support your own opinion (this is a logical fallacy called "cherry picking"), giving little or no attention to those that did not agree, or attempting to discredit them. However you rationalize it, you're no longer reporting; you're propagandizing.

What you really shouldn't do: ignore the economists who didn't agree with your pre-formed conclusion and write the story / edit the film segment to say something like "I asked several prominent economists where they thought the economy was headed, and this is what they said," and then use only the clips that support your foregone conclusion. This is called "stacking the deck"; selecting only the bits of research that support your claim while ignoring all the ones that do not.

4. Word choice means everything.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's extremely difficult to keep bias out of your writing. For instance, if you've read my footnotes, you'll have noticed that I (deliberately) used the term "ID-iots" to refer to proponents of Intelligent Design. I also tacked "Creationism" on after the term. By doing so, I clearly state where my sympathies lie. (Not that there was any doubt, of course.)

But I could do it in so much more subtle a way, if I wanted to. Want an example? How about the way the media reports any story having to do with the issue of abortion? Here are two sentences that say the same thing, but are biased differently.

On one side of the entrance to the abortion clinic were peaceful protesters bearing signs and chanting 'Abortion Is Murder!' while on the other, burly escorts furtively rushed patients past the protesters.

On one side of the entrance to the OBGyn clinic were a mob waving signs and shouting 'Abortion Is Murder!' while on the other, volunteer escorts protectively accompanied patients past the protesters.

Those are fairly crude and certainly a bit heavy-handed with florid adverbs, but I wanted it to be to demonstrate how the choice of a few words could change the entire tone of essentially the same story so that the author's bias is represented, but never openly stated.

"Peaceful protesters" vs. "a mob of picketers." The first implies that there was no violence while the second one connotes a sense of menace. By the same token, "peaceful" could still mean that they were shouting things; just in a non-threatening way.

"Abortion clinic" vs. "OBGyn clinic." While both are factually true, one highlights what's going on there and the other downplays it.

"Bearing signs" vs. "waving signs." Bearing is passive; waving is active. It (not-so-)subtly connotes the opinion of the writer about the group.

"Chanting" vs. "shouting." Chanting conjures images of monks praying in Latin while "shouting" connotes a much more unruly, emotional act.

"Burly escorts" vs. "volunteer escorts." One highlights the fact that the escorts are clearly meant as bodyguards and the other underplays that by pointing out that they are donating their time without compensation. They may, indeed, be burly, but the second sentence doesn't mention that.

"Furtively rushed patients past" vs. "protectively accompanied patients past." This is where I got really heavy-handed. :) The words "furtively" and "rushed" together connote that what the escorts are doing is shady and underhanded. But "protectively" and "accompanied" imply that the picketers are dangerous and that the patients needed protection to get past them.

What a journalist should do is attempt to keep opinion to him/herself as much as possible.

On one side of the entrance to the OBGyn clinic where Dr. Smith also performs abortions were a group of protesters—many of them holding or waving signs—loudly proclaiming 'Abortion Is Murder!' in unison. On the other side, volunteer escorts from Townsville University's football team accompanied the patients to the door.

That's probably still not quite right, but I'm not a journalist. :) I'm a ranter who diatribes with the express purpose of underscoring the negative aspects of the thing I'm ranting against while simultaneously underplaying anything negative about my own 'side.'

All that being said, it's clear that none of the anchors on the news stations fit the bill. TV news is much more about entertainment than actually relating what's going on in the world.

This is why my mother watches all three channels; she likes to get three different reports about the same story, average them, and hope that somehow, something similar to what actually happened might lie at the intersection. It's telling that the shows that get on my nerves quickest (on any of them) are the ones that consist of talking heads yelling and screaming at each other. It's great for ratings, I'm sure. But ratings is about entertainment, not journalism.

We just have to hope that the print journalists will find some way to bridge the gap left by the "infotainmentization" of TV news.

Lest you think I'm being a big ol' hypocrite, I freely admit that writing the supposedly less biased sentence up there took me a half an hour because I kept wanting to point out the unruliness of my fictional picketers. :) And of the shows that my mother watches, I just can't stand Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, or any show with Ann Coulter in any capacity, but I love Rachel Maddow, Kieth Olbermann, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. Yes, the latter two are on Comedy Central, but it's so satisfying to watch them lampoon everyone, I'm filled with delightful schadenfreude every time I watch.

I'd also like to point out that if there is genuine one-sided behavior, then it should be reported that way. For instance, in my fictional situation above, if the burly bodyguards punch or shove the protesters aside and they're not doing anything wrong, then report that. Or if the protesters block the path and shout nasty things at the patients, that needs to be reported, as well. I'm talking about cases where the only real meat in the story is manufactured by the word choices of the journalist in question.

This is also why I get amused reading LJ during any sort of political fray, because I see the same incident as told through the viewpoints of my right-wing friends, my left-wing friends, and my centrist friends, and I often wonder if they were all watching the same event. :)

Hm. I think I've edited this enough times. I'm probably forgetting some really amazing point I wanted to make, but I'm too tired to see it.

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1. And by "genuinely divided" I'm not talking about the "division" between the 99.999% of scientists who understand evolution and the 0.001% who believe in Intelligent Design Creationism. That is a manufactured controversy (manufactroversy) perpetrated by gullible media and ID-iots with an agenda. A genuine divide might be something along the lines of the schism between paleontologists who think the Chixchulub meteor impact alone caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and a very high percentage of life planet-wide and the paleontologists who think the meteor strike was but one piece of bad luck in a string of catastrophes that brought about the extinction over a much longer period of time. You're yawning right now, aren't you? That's why the media likes to create controversies where there aren't any: the real ones are so boring, no one would care. Plus, scientists don't generally yell and scream at each other, but add a devout ID-iot into the fray, and it's like Jerry Springer within minutes.
2. Note that I did not use the recent fossil named "Ida" as an example. This was by design. There was practically no argument among scientists in the archaeological/paleontological fields about what Ida was and what she represents. It turned into a media circus, and almost every one of the news reports (that I saw) got it dead wrong.