58 Responses to “Truth, Balance and the News”

1. zeke Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 1:57 pm

   Balance too often has come to mean merely repeating the claims of each side. This, in turn, is an incentive for the contestants to simplify and amplify extreme positons rather than voice any possible areas of agreement. The alternative need not be for journalists to adopt their own positions; there are already separate places for that on the op-ed pages and in the blogosphere.

   Rather, what is badly needed is to cast a critical, skeptical eye on the sloganeering of both sides. Instead of counting words and awarding “equal time” in order to make an absurd claim of being “fair and/or balanced,” the media could provide what current coverage so badly lacks: context, historical perspective, and identification and questioning of assumptions.

   The public would be better served if all parties felt insolently treated. To paraphrase Hemingway, journalists should help arm the public with “built in crap detectors.”

2. zeke Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 2:02 pm

   A further thought. Why can’t editors insist that virtually every story include some analysis of the Latin (and criminal justice) concept of cui bono–who benefits?

3. mulp Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 3:05 pm

   I listen to so much NRR/PRI/BBC/PBS that I can’t recall where I heard the comment on science reporting and balance. The theme was that the idea of presenting opposing points of view on science is an insult because science is a harsh task master that demands consensus and nothing less. (My words, not theirs).

   Perhaps a story on Newton (some date or event is triggering stories on Newton I believe) needs to have someone presenting opposing points of view when discussing Newton’s Laws of Motion. If anthropomorphic climate change needs to have an opposing point of view, then why doesn’t there need to be an opposing point of view on the Laws of Motion. Why shouldn’t we believe that God is the hand that propels that apple to the ground, not gravity.

   The basis for science arriving at consensus is a common view of the facts, the idea that everyone has the opportunity to, and should, examine the facts that lead to conclusions and find independently that one leads to the other.

   Now science, like law, are arenas where we might say “the rules are strict, but they don’t provide many answers”. On the contrary, both make many findings, mostly in the “negative”. While science can’t disprove God, science can say that God has never been shown to act in the natural world outside of the natural laws. While some claim that they have seen proof of God in a miracle, such observations do not constitute science because there is never an explanation for the event that allows others to independently observe the same nature of God – the Pope et al, and science, each maintain their own NOMA (Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria).

   Ok, so how can we apply this to the news.

   Let’s take the situation in Iraq. The clear consensus in Iraq is that the US, the coalition, the Iraqi government do not have control of the country, not even in parts of Iraq. Further, the clear consensus is situation is not improving and is generally getting worse.

   There can be no opposing point of view. The statistics support this: more reporters killed in Iraq than in all of Vietnam; the trend in the deaths per month over time; the rate of bombings per month. And the direct observation of the reporters in Iraq all form a very loud consensus.

   The only opposing point of view can come from someone who is reporting from Iraq after spending some time in Iraq. Someone that is successfully reporting all the “good news that the liberal MSM doesn’t report”. Clearly the burden of proof is on the “conservatives” because they are the ones who claim that it is the “liberal MSM” that is presented the news with a “liberal bias”. When the “conservative media” spends money to send reporters to Iraq to report daily on all the school and health clinic openings, and is able to deliver such reports, is there any possibility of an opposing point of view.

   And by the way, the idea that there is “no audience for good news” doesn’t cut it as the “conservative media” that I see is able to frame any thing as bad news. If there is good news in Iraq in the form of daily openings of schools and health clinics, then they would be able to run the stories with the title “Bad news for liberals, another school opened in Iraq”. If there are so many conservatives in the US, then the first conservative TV channel and newspaper would have a lock on half the market!

   The fact that there is no “conservative” media in the US which actually has reporters working for them to bring the conservative news to the public basically “proves” that the “liberal MSM” is not biased, just reporting facts and consensus on the meanings that conservatives don’t want to hear.

4. allison Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 3:38 pm

   This may be redundant, but I don’t know that skepticism is the work I seek. I do seek analysis. And if it doesn’t bear out that two (or more) sides of an issue fair equally under analysis, then they shouldn’t be presented as equal.

   My conviction that the moon is made of cheese, doesn’t deserve to be presented as equal to the reality that it is not. I would be better served by a little “tough” love than an assuaging of my ego. Our citizens deserve the respect of being allowed to process the truth.

5. evan Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 4:01 pm

   NPR’s leagues better than local television news, in my opinion.

   But one thing I noticed: television news only works if it’s reporting about your area, or, more importantly, news you’ve seen. Take the scaffolding crash down at Emerson. Watching it covered on the news the next few days, I felt like reporters were addressing and hitting on all the right points.

   So the problem seems to be in the telling, that one portion of the lack of balance puzzle comes from the fact that they’re telling the story to too many people and don’t know how to handle it.

6. Matt Peckham Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

   In Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s book THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM (Three Rivers Press, 2001), the authors write:

   Balance, also, is too subjective. Balancing a story by being fair to both sides may not be fair to the truth, if both sides do not in fact have equal weight. Is global warming a fact? The preponderance of scientists argued for years that it was, but the press coverage continued long past the time of the scientific debate to give equal weight to both sides. And in those many cases where there are more than two sides, how does one determine which sides to honor? (p. 46)

   And then a bit later in the book:

   Balance, for instance, can lead to distortion. If an overwhelming percentage of scientists, as an example, believe that global warming is a scientific fact, or that some medical treatment is clearly the safest, it is a disservice to citizens and truthfulness to create the impression that the scientific debate is equally split. Unfortunately, all too often journalistic balance is misconstrued to have this kind of almost mathematical meaning, as if a good story is one that has an equal number of quotes from two sides. As journalists know, often there are more than two sides to a story. And sometimes balancing them equally is not a true reflection of reality. (p. 77)

   The question not directly addressed from this vantage, which implies (I think correctly) that “reality” ought to be conveyed by journalists to the public according to simple, rationalist principles, is how journalists pull this off without–as the Dvokin column implies–alienating an audience which seems more prone than ever to treating the news like a sports contest. When I watch Fox or CNN or any of the evening broadcast “news” networks, my sense is that their notion of journalism has become little more than pseudo-analytic talk-show populism: we’ll give you (the majority public) what you want, they seem to say, as long as you give us what we want, i.e. good ratings and, bottom line through ad spots and merchandizing deals, profit. As literary theorist Terry Eagleton would say, news and analysis have become instantly consumable. To put it less politely: we might as well be talking about Big Macs and “Freedom” Fries as Iraq, gay marriage, abortion, and so on.

   Balance thus becomes a matter of ratings/poll-derivative presentation, not independent-minded scientific analysis which refuses to give people what they want simply because they think they want it (like unfortunate shouting matches between evolutionary scientists and ID wonks).

   And bear in mind where we live and the relationship of contemporary religious belief in this country to everyday judgments about “fairness” and “balance.” After all, if you think the scientific method with its self-correcting error bar is simply an alternative 50/50 way of engaging “reality,” then meaningful discussions about “facts” are off the table and we’re back to semantic games about “centerless” webwork.

   If I could, I would put Kovach and Rosenstiel’s book in everyone’s hands, and certainly not just journalists. I cannot recommend it strongly enough as an introduction to the craft, its principles, and present challenges.

7. dsuciu Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 4:17 pm

   Guys,
   Politics is not a science. If it were then the sociologists and polly Sci majors would not all be working at Starbucks. The complexity of current events does not come down to simple yes no answers.
   This is why a dialog between both sides is the only way to get near the truth.
   Incidentally, don’t you guys get lots of federal funding, and as such have a mandate to present both sides of every story ? If not, tell me so I can call my congressman. The fact that you can even ask ridiculous questions like dvorkin’s tells me you guys are in lalala land.
   The show tuesday night on the blogosphere was so full of hot air and hand waving about the absence left-wing blogi-ness. Psst ! let me tell you a secret! It’s because you guys are a bunch of popous arrogant bores. Who wants to rehash your bs on their own time?!!

8. Matt Peckham Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

   Just for the record, it’s not being a science that’s at issue, it’s acting scientifically. There is a difference. Journalism isn’t math, but that doesn’t dismiss its core requirement to approach information scientifically in terms of providing information and then (perhaps endlessly) vetting sources and refining subsequent presentations. So science as in physics? Of course not. But scientific in terms of its heuristics? I think absolutely.

9. dsuciu Says:
   June 14th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

   This is about acting scientifically!
   Some issues social or even scientific are simply unresolveable with available data. Some issues are not amenable to a yes no answer. In this case, expanding the dialog is the only thing one can do:

   Even in science itself, new data continually overturns prevailing wisdom:
   Global warming is caused by human activity. Global warming is happeneing anyway. Have a look at this paper in Science. I am shocked no one has said anything about it yet Right or Left: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5752/1313?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=siegenthaler&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
   Science 25 November 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5752, pp. 1313 – 1317
   If you look at Fig. 4 you see the CO2 trace in antarctic ice cores in the past 650kyr indeed we are at the highest point in the last 100kyr; however, this trend has been moving upwards for the past 22kyrs, not the past 50yrs as the prevalent debate would have you believe.

   There is always another side that bears listening to. The second one assumes they are right, that the other side is bankrupt and not worth mentioning, is the moment one becomes a propagandist. No one will do that on their own time.

   The best news show I have seen in years in Frontline. I don’t know how they do it but they manage to give both sides a balanced viewpoint. When Bush was being elected the first time, they had a show about his spiritual development it was called “The Jesus Factor”. The commentaries were telling: “thank you for your show I know Not to vote for him” as well as “Thank you for your show I know To vote for him”. That’s how you do investigative reporting.
   At the core of science on the one hand and journalism and History on the other, should be an assumption that your question may not be completely answerable. Any attempt to apply some standards as to which viewpoints are to be represented which are to be given only one side, quickly degrades into junk science and propaganda.
   The simplest rule of thumb one should apply, is the following: if there exists an organized controversy over a topic, it is worth investigating and presenting both sides in a balanced way. In science, you should always begin with the assumption that you are wrong, do every control, only then can you pop your head above the frey and make a tiny little statement.

10. Jon Garfunkel Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 5:44 pm

    This whole topic because some knee-jerk NPR listeners objected to the Zarqawi coverage? Snore. I think we’re suffering from a surplus of media sensitivity. Or, as Dvorkin wrote last month:

    The blogs encouraged people to complain to NPR, and hundreds did, many with a surprising level of rancor and vituperation, which was shockingly intense, even in these times of “take-no-prisoners-and shoot-the-wounded” political debate.

    I’m glad you cited Mooney’s CJR article; that’s most pertinent to this discussion. Here’s another paper I thought would be pertinent as well,Is Accurate Understanding of Global Warming Necessary to
    Promote Willingness to Sacrifice:

    Although not definitive, the data suggests that there may be real benefits to raising the knowledge level of the general public concerning global climate change. Heightened concern, based on either accurate or inaccurate information, can promote support for environmentally friendly policies. Accurate information, however, may increase the willingness to accept personal sacrifices. Inaccurate information does not appear to have this effect, at least not in the case of global warming.

11. allison Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

    dsuciu,

    What about things like WMD in Iraq? And the falsely claimed link between Iraq an 9/11? There is plenty of evidence to show that there was no link between Iraq and 9/11, so why do we need to present the opinion that there was link? this is a political topic that does have a truth to it. So, yes, there may be topics that are subject to opinion. Fine. But when there are topics that where facts point most heavily in one direction, it is a disservice to give “equal” weight to the the other.

    Pushing the press to report both sides as equally valid is one way of forcing propaganda into our brains.

    And then there’s the idea that all viewpoints deserve consideration. Really? I don’t feel the need to give airspace to hate speech. Especially when it is presented as news. The recent ugliness spewed by a supposed poiitical ‘pundit’ is an example of just how far from delivering analyzed news we’ve gotten. I don’t want to be entertained. I want to be informed.

12. Potter Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

    Tonight, as is all too often the case on the Lehrer Newshour we had a good twenty minutes of the hour on pure administration “propaganda” ( the President this time) and after a balanced 50-50 debate between Zbigniew Brzezinski ( in opposition() and Walter Russell Mead ( supporting). Sometimes we get an all one- right side- debate. This is not unusual of late and we are getting really fed up with this. These “newsmaker” in depth interviews ( always it seems from the administration POV, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld) and panel discussions afterwards seem heavily, very heavily, weighted in favor of this administration.

    I am familiar with complaints such as mine from either side in the past and thus the PBS assessment that “we must be okay”… but things have really changed of late for us as compared to the past as we remember it. I don’t ever recall feeling that I wanted to give up watching the Newshour altogether for it’s lack of balance not to mention total feebleness regardling truth-telling, for allowing itself to be used as a propaganda vehicle. I wonder what Robert McNeil might say.

13. scribe5 Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 5:57 pm

    The problem as I see one of a poorly educated audience.

    How can you present a meaningful report on science if the most listeners have no idea about the scientific method is all about.

    With regards to the news poor background information is also an issue. If listeners don’t know where a country is how much will they know about a basic outline of its history. Without such knowledge its impossible for the listener to understand what is being presented.

    In addition at times one gets the feeling that the news presenters themselves don’t know much beyond some basic contemporary factoids about the places they are reporting. The smarter reporters may have read a single book about the places background but that isn’t nearly enough to make sense of the broader picture.

    In addition the time constraints of the newscaster don’t allow for in depth presentation of the issues involved.

    The problem, then, is much broader than the issue of bias.
    Many people who complain of bias are themselves woefully misinformed about the topic. The problem, then, encompasses an uneducated audience. It also encompasses ignorant news gatherers as well as writers. Add to this the time constraints that limit a newscaster’s presentation of the story and you get a sense of the difficulties involved in offering a meaningful news program.

    What looks like political bias is often the result of other issues.

14. scribe5 Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    Correction:

    The problem as I see it is one of a poorly educated audience.

    How can you present a meaningful report on science if the most listeners have no idea about the scientific method is all about.

    With regards to the news poor background information is also an issue. If listeners don’t know where a country is how much will they know about a basic outline of its history. Without such knowledge its impossible for the listener to understand what is being presented.

    In addition at times one gets the feeling that the news presenters themselves don’t know much beyond some basic contemporary factoids about the places they are reporting. The smarter reporters may have read a single book about the places background but that isn’t nearly enough to make sense of the broader picture.

    In addition the time constraints of the newscaster don’t allow for in depth presentation of the issues involved.

    The problem, then, is much broader than the issue of bias.
    Many people who complain of bias are themselves woefully misinformed about the topic. The problem, then, encompasses an uneducated audience. It also encompasses ignorant news gatherers as well as writers. Add to this the time constraints that limit a newscaster’s presentation of the story and you get a sense of the difficulties involved in offering a meaningful news program.

    What looks like political bias is often the result of other issues.

15. aaron in NM Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:12 pm

    So-called “objectivity” has allowed the media to insert opinion in the place of fact. Objective journalism is one of the biggest misnomers in history.

    The practice would allow a headline such as “The Moon: Swiss Cheese or White Cheddar” Leaving 2 wholly improbable possibilities as the only choices one must decide reality upon.

16. eriksq Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:14 pm

    It’s not that NPR should have an edge, or be unbalanced.

    What I want is for journalists to stop being so complacent about allowing the subjects they are covering to define the dialogue. Pointing a microphone at one person and then another (for instance) and letting each have 20 seconds is useless to me.

    I am hungry for journalists who don’t just accept the press releases and go in and ask more about it, dig in, find out, are we even asking the right questions?

    It’s not edge, it’s depth, it’s context, it’s asking questions about whether the stories that are being pushed upon us help us understand our world better or not. Sorry, I’m angry that I’ve written at length at this, and it’s being “sexed up” as “edge”

17. Stilgar Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:21 pm

    It always drives me crazy when journalists try and be “fair and balanced” when it comes to science. Science is often objective and wholly unfair and unbalanced. Take global warming, or gravity, or the speed of light. Most scientists feel a certain way about these issues. But whenever you hear a story about global warming you will find the opposing view, only if its one scientist that works for Exxon. I would love to see less fair and balanced science coverage.

18. allison Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:23 pm

    Yes, press releases get at the heart of the matter. On a micro-level, I can speak to my business and its attempts to get local coverage for some things that we get noticed nationally for. When I speak to the folks at the papers, they pretty much tell me that I have to write the story myself. I have to report on myself and submit photos I have taken. So, where’s the journalism? They don’t have the time to question us themselves? Fact-check? It makes me wonder how many news articles were written by the subjects.

    So far, I have refused to submit a finished piece. I feel that they are forcing me to compromise my integrity. I can’t write a piece and talk about myself in the third person and feel that it is honest. Because I have taken this stance, we have suffered from no local PR.

19. polsmeth Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:25 pm

    The combination of “fair” with “balance” is part of the problem

    To be “fair” to the truth, what you report are all the elements of the story. If one side of the “story” has a lot of misleading and false statements as justification of their position each one of those is a point of reference to how false and misleading the position is and every one should be reported.

    The idea of “balance” says that we have to (1) find a similar false and misleading statement by the opposition and (2) ONLY report one for one.

    If the ratio of false and misleading statements is 50:1 betwen the two sides all that gets reported is 1:1 and this seriously misrepresents the truth.

    There is no natural balance to truth.

20. allison Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:29 pm

    Is “he said, she said” news? Do we need to distinguish between “news” which is simply reporting whatever happens or whatever someone says, and “journalism” which inquires, analyzes and gives us insight?

21. teddywolf Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:35 pm

    What I want is for journalists to start actually investigating the items they quote from people in their news articles. Right now, much of the press seems to adopt an uncritical eye in pursuit of what is mistakenly (and I do mean mistakenly) termed ‘balance’. ‘Balance’ should not mean that we hear one voice from one side of a debate and another voice from the opposing side of a debate. Balance should mean that some research is done, research which would shore up or deflate either or both people who have discussed a subject. This used to happen in the newspapers – back in the 70s, if you read, “Senior officials at the State House have declared that the moon is made of green cheese,” you would also get an analysis that included as manay relevant facts as could be crammed into the column inch, though not to the point of boredom, to either support the frommage-itude, or lack thereof, of the moon. Now all we get is he-said-it’s-cheesy-she-said-it-isn’t-have-fun-figuring-it-out-because-we-aren’t-giving-you-any-more-information-here. Critical analysis is missing.

    We are tired of having opinion reported as facts. Yes, the fact that somebody has an opinion on something is itself a fact. Their opinion on the subject is not necessarily an actual and factual truth about the subject, though it might be – but we can’t know this without critical analysis.

    The only media routinely doing this kind of analysis on politics and culture, sadly, are relatively-unknown journals of opinion such as Mother Jones and The Nation, which sometimes do ignore convenient truths although far less often than the journals of opinion on the other end of the ideological spectrum; occasionally NPR and PBS; the fake news shows on Comedy Central, if only to skewer with gusto; and a number of foreign news sources such as the BBC and The Economist. And, yes, many bloggers. Is it any wonder why newspapers are seeing declining readership and news stations are seeing declining ratings? Wonder no more: the lack of critical analysis renders much reporting useless garbage which is not worth our time, our money or our advertising dollars.

    We don’t get news. We get ideology masquerading as news, and I call that idiotology.

22. aracelis Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:39 pm

    Hi, I recently began listening on xmpr, I would like to comment on this truth with edge issue. We do not need truth with edge we need truth and accuracy.

23. eriksq Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:43 pm

    OK, let me redefine edge.

    Edge: Asking questions that no one wants you to ask. If we define “Edge” that way, I’m happy with it.

    And, by the way, this predates 9/11 by a long while. I sent the ombudsman an e-mail and got a reply about this about when he was first apointed. So this is not new. What’s happened is that the blogs have forced news organizations to become relevant to the discussions that people are really asking or die. Maybe the recent McDonald’s grant also is allowing NPR to finally talk about this openly, but this is NOT new. I’m kind of upset it’s taken this long to come out into the open, and when it does it’s not only sexed up. but we can’t call in to comment about how they are getting it wrong, because they already have the “experts” to tell us how we want edge. Bleah.

24. seanogden Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 6:54 pm

    “Every man is a product of his time� Thomas Mann and every media outlet is a product of its audience
    News bias is part of the equation NO ONE can tell (report) about any topic without a point of view just cop to this and start from there

    I travel the world for my work as a DJ. I listen to news and cultural programming from all over the globe

    Almost all of the major media in the US is just skued to the older white male agenda
    Even the cultural programming of NPR and PRI have this problem

    While it is understandable to be a slave to your primary demographic news media needs to be beyond this, a bit of irony and skepticism has to be part of this mix

    And YES the Daily Show is as close to reality as the any news media has come to illustrating the reality of the US that we live in, a sad truth when a comedy show has taken on this role

    tx
    42 year white music producer and dj

25. scribe5 Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 7:11 pm

    I was surprised that Chris didn’t seem to know what one of his guests was talking about when he said in Europe major papers like Combat and Figaro in France or The Guardian and the Times of London include opinion even in their news stories.

    As an American I don’t think this is a good thing and I have said it repeatedly to my European friends. They in turn don’t believe that there is such a thing as objective reporting.

    I am probably one of the last people on earth to believe in objective reporting thought I think that as I said above a poor education system, and the way news is presented make it almost impossible to pursue it as a goal.

    Lack of time on the part of the news presenter and lack of an attention span longer than a half a minute on the part of the listener makes objectivity an unattainable goal these days.

26. mirella Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 7:15 pm

    About tonight’s show: Truth with an edge means FACTS. I get the overall sketch from NPR, but I get the facts from WZBC at Boston college:;lDemocracy Now, sounds of dissent–and theyminterview many of the PLAYERS in issue and the witnesses of events.
    I totally disagree with Dvorkin that people don’t want the edge of BBC. I listen to NPR primarily for the news from the BBC–in the morning, Morning Edition is pablum followed by chewy Scotch oats on the BBC. I love the way the reporters on the BBC hang on, like pitblls, pushing their inquiry, and when they let go, it’s always respectfully. I want that kind of interviewing, which is nowhere on NPR. Terry Gross comes closest.
    I find it hard on All things considered to listen to the voices of the two women reporters, both bright, but with voices that are completely out of sync with what they’re reporting. Melissa chirps, and Michelle exemplifies the “how good it is in woman to have a low and gentle voice” or something like that. They sometimes make the whole report sound ludicrous, when the issue is politically critical or even horrifying, but the sunshiney voice keeps on chirping and the mellow voice keeps on soothing.
    Why doesn’t NPRmake more use of women reporters like Jackie Lydon, who’s terrific, or Julir McCarthy. Whatever hjappened to sara chase?

    And why are people like Greg Palast and Naom Chomsky never invited onto NPR? I know the answer, but I’ll bet J. Dvorkin wouldn’t say it on the air. As for providing a full cultural plate to America, NPR does try to do that, so much so that I can no longer stomach Weekend Edition, S&S, and programs like Day to Day. I am grateful for WGBH and its music, which has now replaced, for me, the programming of news and culture that is so often provided by young men and women whose voices and “cute cute” writing, perilously close, sometimes, to advertising copy (e.g. Marketplace) strips them, for me, of the credibility I would like them to have.

    One last example of truth with edge: topics the mainstream media won’t report. I said this above, I know (I’m in a hurry, so I’m rambling). why haven’t we heard a word about the eviction, by a developer, of the all the people whose land was taken from them in Los Angeles, of the way the largest urban farm in the country was taken by a developer, who broke the law, destroying their plants and trees, trashing their property, and having the police drag them away brutally? Why haven’t we heard about the way water is stolen from villages in Africa and Asia by international corporations, which buy the rights to the ,and and force the people to pay for their water or die?

    Why is NOTHING being said, in sheer outrage, about the 9 billion that disappeared in Iraq a few years ago, about the money dsispursed in new Orleans. These latter are reported like the weather. and for that, i really fault the media, including NPR. I don’t think it’s fair and balanced to report crimes against humanity and outrageous acts and events in a nice, calm vouice and then never go back to the issue in an exploratory way.

    Well, I made my point, if badly. Truth with an edge means, in fact, the whole truth as it is really known, with all the facts, not selected facts that everyone’s reporting and that won’t upset wnyone.

    And, yes, one last thing, and J.Dvorkin made the point himself: EDUCATE the lsitening audience. he gave an excellent exampole of a woman who couldn’t think logically because she was so emotionally upset. All he had to do (though what he did with her in a kind of Platonic dialogue was good work) was to ask her:
    “If the law says that marriage is between a man and a woman, can two people of the same sex marry?” That makes the point re the ban on gay marriage. The main poin, though, is that, instead of saying “Oh, our audiences wouldn’t go as far as the Brits or Canadians do in listening to their BBC and CBC,” why not try it? Isn’t that a bit insulting to American audiences? and if it’s true, how about getting a little creative and even more, a little bold, and teaching the audience how to think through an issue.

27. Zenpundit Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 7:50 pm

    Greta asked me for a comment regarding the show topic and foreign policy:

    Setting aside whether or not it is possible, in a philosophical sense, to achieve perfect objectivity, deliberately skewing ones’s information sources toward confirming preexisting biases (i.e ” activism”) would seem to me to be a remarkably stupid choice.

    In navigating our – that is America’s – way throughout the world we could use a wider, not narrower, information stream from our major media outlets for several reasons.

    First, the “activism” here is entirely self-referential in terms of the concerns and angst of American politics that have little, if anything, to do with how most people on the planet view events. Increasing myopia under the guise of being “skeptical” does not change the field of vision – you are simply looking at the same things but with a more critical attitude.

    Secondly, the American media has a soft power ” broadcast” effect on elite opinion in other countries and having, for example, an ” activism” war between FOXnews and NPR serves primarily to give foreign decision makers a highly distorted impression of how most Americans might view an event which in turn, affects how they make decisions.

    Corrupting your feedback loop is not a wise policy.

    best

    Mark

28. mike seccombe Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 7:59 pm

    Hi,
    First, let me say NPR is the best part of the US media, which overall is dreadful. TV is worse than Australia — I watch almost none here. Newspapers are perhaps a little better than OZ, where Murdoch controls the lion’s share (around 70 per cent of metro circulation), and even Fairfax, my former employer, is now heavily influenced by heavily politically conservative management. Radio here also is worse.
    Anyway, to specifics. I greatly enjoyed the “truth with edge” discussion. If I have a criticism of NPR it is that its news content IS a little too much “he said, she said”. I forget who brought up the Guantanamo suicides example, but it was fine case in point. The administration’s spin, that the suicides were a political act by terrorists, was a perfect opportunity for truth with edge.
    The statement should immediately have been followed with cmuch more ontext: that there was evidence the great bulk of detainees were not terrorists, that only a tiny fraction have been charged, the numerous findings of objective authorities about the conditions there and lack of proper process, etc, etc.
    I appreciate that news is news and comment is comment, and the two should remain largely separate, But context is not comment; it is the provision of a fuller factual picture, which allows the news consumer to make a better-informed judgement. Yes, I know that those consumers can be led in one direction of another by the way the reporter contextualises, but there is, I believe, agreater risk in NOT contextualising. Otherwise you end up in the situation like “In reply to Mr Churchill, Mr Hitler said….”
    I really do appreciate your efforts to be fair, but you can be a little too Marquis of Queensbury, particularly given the fact that three-quarters of the media (I may be being a bit generous here), maintain no semblance of fairness or balance in their regurgitation of the right-wing world view.
    I am reminded of a comment by, someone (was it Robert Frost), that “a liberal is someone too broad minded to take his own side in an argument.”
    Cheers
    Mike Seccombe

29. winston_dodson Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 8:42 pm

    “We have only to look at the struggle in the conservative blogosphere to supplant traditional media — and in the progressive blogosphere to reform it”

    What does this statement sy about the pespetive of the person who wrote it?

    I once heard someone claim that “Journalism is like science, a search for the truth”.

    If the first statement in this post is an example of the search for that truth about the truth within journalism then I think that we can see that it has failed.

    I think that the idea for this show was a good one but it is ironic that the attempt was proof of its own futility.

30. winston_dodson Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 8:51 pm

    I must have listened to 3-4 hours of the coverage of this subject by NPR and found it, as usual, less that balanced but in the opposite direction from the comments as sited in Dvorkin’s article.

    The problem with NPR is that your “base” doesn’t want the news / facts, they only want to hear things that reenforce what they already beleive.

    “Not biased enough to maintain thier audience, not balanced enough to maintain their credibility”.

    An equilibrium position leading to obscurity – what happens to the public money that keeps NPR alive when the only portion of the US public that supports it is furious that it will not give it the news that it wants?

    Oh well, I am sure the Pacifica Radio and Democracy now need a few, hosts, producers and writers.

31. winston_dodson Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

    “Striking, isn’t it, how quickly these pro’s developed a sort of consensus that the big truth to be assembled — with documentation, context, balance and passion as well — is an Iraq War version of Neil Sheehan’s Pentagon Papers in the New York Times more than 30 years ago.”

    Sure Chris is correct, the big truth to be ‘assembled’ is an Iraq version of the Pentagon papers. The only problem with that charge is that anyone making it has already come to the conclusion that there are events in this war that when “assembled” are like those in the Pentagon Papers of “30 years ago”

    Chris, I predict that the only parellel is that you, and the listeners of OpenSource, will try and “assemble” it.

    The problem in this “war / crusade”, that you have tried to birth, is that you are gathering an “army” of moonbatty kooks who, for example, think that Joe Wilson is a fellow “crusader” in your war.

    Good luck Chris and just remember, as you march forward, people like me will watch and just chuckle.

32. cgrenier Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 9:29 pm

    To me, truth with edge would require no more than factual statements within news stories that would point out, for example, glaring hypocrisies or inconsistencies. For example, after Bush says Iraq is a central front in the war on terror, it could be added that it was not before he put our troops in there. Is that not a plain fact? When Bush says he was forced to go to war, would it not be right to point out that that has not, in fact, been proven true?

33. tracey Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

    As a WNYC listener I get to hear the BBC followed by NPR in the morning reporting on the same world, and what a world of difference. I hear “truth with edge” on the BBC. They challenge authority, ask tough questions, and refuse to simply broadcast what the government hands them. NPR does these on occasion but relies too often on “experts” for this so-called balance.

    We need to recast the argument into a question of “independent” media, meaning independent of government, corporate, political, labor, or other institutional influence.

    Instead of subjecting us to saturated coverage of whatever news conference or speech or spin the government(s) would choose to have the news media broadcast on its behalf, the BBC reports that “The U.S. President told a news conference blah, blah about his view of what is going on.” Full stop. No clip. No sound bite, or the most minimal clip followed by a full account of what was really going on by thorough and thoroughly skeptical reporters in the field interviewing real people. Not talking heads. And this would be a story they had been covering for days, not just because the government trotted out the main newsmaker to deliver the government spin.

    If NPR really does have the luxury of 40 more reporters, get them out there reporting on real people who really know what is going on. And ignore the easy bait offered by the government and other institutions.

34. jhupp Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 11:24 pm

    I’ll repost the quote that really crystalized this issue for me initially:

    “I think it’s important to realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”
    –Oxford evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins

    And I think this gets to a point that no commenter yet has: we can’t give you “truth with an edge,” skeptivism, activism, or any other simple answer to what makes for the best journalism. The correct answer is that it depends on the scenario.

    Let’s use the issue of global warming to illustrate a particular aspect of journalistic failure. Scientific consensus is rare, so when we see consensus (e.g., global warming), it becomes necessary to ask why. Global warming skeptics like to point to consensus as evidence that scientific discourse is being silenced because overwhelming consensus is rare. A good, probing journalistic investigation would challenge that notion. Indeed, there is historical counterevidence. Scientific consensus says the earth is round, and no one is using that as evidence that discourse on the subject is being stifled.

    The problem with asking why is that it’s hard. It requires the journalist to do second-stage thinking. Journalists have decided that “he said, she said” reporting is journalism. As a result, they lose practice in second-stage investigation.

    The other problem illustrated by global warming is, as mentioned earlier, the weight given for too long to warming opponents. This isn’t because journalists disagree. And I doubt it’s even because they wanted to be fair. It’s because they want controversy. Journalism is built on controversy; that which fits swimmingly makes for bad copy. So they give weight to a largely ridiculous attitude toward climate change.

    Fast-forward to the absolute present, the last couple months, and suddenly we see journalistic consensus that global warming is real. And this, though it might represent a success, actually represents another failure. It’s journalistic piling on. The meme “Al Gore is a liar” is journalistic piling on. There is basically no truth to this notion, while there is great truth to global warming, but they are both being reported en masse because it’s the easy frame for the story.

    This is what “he said, she said” journalism really fails. “He said, she said” journalism consistently favors the dominant frame. That is almost always reported first (he said) followed by someone else’s disagreement or denial (she said). Thus the first is painted as the story and the second is painted as the naysayer’s view.

    All of this happens why? Out of practice in deep investigation, desire for controversy, piling on, “he said, she said” … each of these sound bad, but they’re actually great from an economic perspective. They reduce the opportunity costs of being a reporter. These are easy tacts, and they reduce journalistic effort. But bad effort equals bad journalism.

    So let’s get back to the beginning. I mentioned they need to ask WHY there is scientific consensus on global warming. The same is true of disagreement. Do the “he said, she said” thing, then ask the completely obvious question: WHY do they disagree? Any journalist that answers that question has done a real service to his profession and to observers, and he has a leg up on competitors. That is the question that goes unanswered too often, and it baffles me because it’s so obvious. We know who said what when and where. But nobody ever asks, “WHY is there disagreement?”

    “WHY?” is the first step. The second step is to get rid of balance as a criterion. If one side is lying, is wrong, is making bad arguments, that should be said. Fair is a good standard, so long as fair is seen as “just,” rather than “balanced.” But let’s just take the first step first. But journalists won’t provide meaningful coverage until they are willing to ask WHY again.

35. mike yarrow Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

    Christopher, I am impressed by the sensitive, probing and intelligent way you conduct interviews.
    My beef with NPR news is about the inside the beltway “balance”. They use a very narrow notion of the spectrum of opinion and news source. There are a lot of non-elite news and information sources virtually ignored by NPR, eg with respect to Iraq there are many NGOs and nonelite sources in Iraq who could give another – more accurate – view. The administration and many others have such an obvious need to give a version helpful to them.
    Also I think journalists should evaluate what they get from a source and not just parrot it.
    Thanks, Mike Yarrow, Seattle

36. toddjmoore Says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

    Hi,
    our govt. can say anything it wants (i.e. Syria suspected of having WMD’s!) and NPR will repeat that statement dutifully at least once or twice every news hour, 24- 48 times a day. After I get it hammered in my ear all week, even I begin think it might be true. After all, NPR is reporting it over and over again. Then NPR will find one or two programs that fairly addresses for pov’s. So you have 160 blurbs by the govt. and 2-7 against. That’s not fair. I wish this could be addressed in a reasonable way. This has nothing to do with edge, this is making the govt be held to the same principles as you hold everyone else.

37. sirius Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:38 am

    ….Where to begin? It’s not news that the MSM will rarely, if ever, reports “facts” of any story which may incite a negative response toward owners/advertisers….not to mention the current administration…. Given the corporate mandate to guard those quarterly earnings, reporters must go…..Too expensive….Press releases suffice…….Just add a juicy J-Lo photo, and you’re good to go…. Sadly, a large portion of the populace prefers to avoid critical thinking, so this suits this group just fine….

    Trying to uncover actual news – you know – the type of information adults are presumably predicating decisions upon – requires more than switching on the radio, or the tube, or grabbing a paper….. Thank God for the ‘net….and pray we manage to retain some semblage of it, given the congressional treatment of net neutrality……(back to those quarterlies again, which we know are to be elevated above mere democratic processes).

    I’d love to buy a newspaper which contained, well, actual news……and a lively editorial page with a true mix of views. Unless and until they return (I have no hope whatever for t.v. news), I’ll muddle thru with what NPR I can handle, and my beloved open net…

38. sirius Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:41 am

    …apologies …. (shouldn’t type at this hour)….. that’s semblance…. how annoying!

39. chiph Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 6:30 am

    Listened to tonight’s show on “Truth, Balance, and the News” and ended up feeling like many of the writers responding online–that journalism needs a lot more than an artifically-constructed “balance” to be truly valuable. In fact, by the end of the show, even the “truth with an edge” phrase was starting to feel like an artificial benchmark. It seems so effect-focused, so yang as opposed to yin. Producing “truth with an edge” by jacking up the adversarial investment on both sides is simply putting artificially-balanced coverage on Viagra. What’s the alternative? News organizations can pool enough savvy, inside knowledge, and resources to understand which questions need to be asked. Those questions, faced directly and honestly, may have profound implications for stakeholders on all sides of an issue. Then courageous reporters and writers should go after the best information that speaks to those questions without worrying about who will feel threatened or justified by what is learned and shared. Regardless of my personal viewpoint on an issue, if I’m honest enough to recognize how it matters not only to those who agree with me, but to those who don’t, I can do a respectable job of digging up the information we all have to come to grips with. That’s totally different than using “he said, she said” to sidestep exploring those questions with depth and integrity.

    It’s interesting to think about how education and the rise of truly public information have evolved — not exactly in tandem, but their histories are tangled together. Even though moveable type made publishing possible half a millenium ago, the notion that the entire public should be literate enough to make genuinely informed public decisions has yet to be universally honored. “No Child Left Behind” is policy-marketing rhetoric, not an ethic that supports universal competency and full preparedness for the decision-making forum. Ever check the amount of real attention paid to current events in either public or private schools? Or read “Time for Kids?” On some level, the news media have probably unconsciously or deliberately shaped themselves to suit the preferences of their audience and their financial base for most of their history. Think of muckraking, of yellow journalism, and the current spectrum–degrees of red, white, and blue or what some might still call pink. Unbiased transparency, like perfect circularity, has tremendous conceptual value, but rarely enters our field of vision.

40. carrollt Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 11:25 am

    What does this metaphorical use of “balance” suggest? Two possibilities come to mind:

    (1) Weighing alternatives; seeing which of the alternatives has more weight when measured against the other.
    (2) Distributing weight evenly so as to enable stability.

    As for (1), balance would work best as a model for inquiry when facts and values can be clearly identified with respect to the topic in question. Of course, things are rarely this simple in political debate (although partisans often try to frame issues in such simple ways). Rarely are there really two alternatives to weigh in light of the known facts and clearly identified values. Knowledge of the facts may be incomplete, theoretical understanding of the facts may be contested, and values regarding what to do in light of the facts may themselves likewise be contested.

    As for (2), balance is what enables the business of news to persist in a (economically and politically) competitive environment. While the business of news may be depressing (especially TV news!), I think it is best to try to accept it and then view one’s news sources as critically as possible — in light of who their intended audience is.

    I take objectivity to be more of a long-term goal than something easily achievable in the moment. Objectivity is a good thing to strive for, but in the moment — and in radio shows on contemporary topics — I do not expect complete objectivity. Seeking “balance” in the portrayal of a topic can have the unfortunate effect of dumbing it down by oversimplifying the many alternative view points.

41. hilde45 Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    Dear Chris,

    I’m a philosophy professor and pragmatist who is done with NPR. Give me Huffington Post, Salon, TPM, Raw Story, and a bevy of newspapers along with Open Source, Diane Rehm, Media Matters, and of course Democracy Now.

    A couple quick points about “truth” and “objectivity” in journalism.

    We might consider thinking of truth as a process rather than an object. What kind of process is it? Well, in the view of pragmatism, it is one which accomplishes a kind of satisfaction.

    But we need to be careful: it’s not merely a private satisfaction, but one which, in journalism, must satisfy the common good. Here’s John Dewey on this:

    Too often, for example, when truth has been thought of as satisfaction, it has been thought of as merely emotional satisfaction, a private comfort, a meeting of purely personal need. But the satisfaction in question means a satisfaction of the needs and conditions of the problem out of which the idea, the purpose and method of action, arises. It includes public and objective conditions. It is not to be manipulated by whim or personal idiosyncrasy. (Logic the Theory of Inquiry, LW 12: 170)

    The same misinterpretation was applied to the term “utilityâ€? as in “the truth is what’s useful”:

    Again when truth is defined as utility, it is often thought to mean utility for some purely personal end, some profit upon which a particular individual has set his heart. So repulsive is a conception of truth which makes it a mere tool of private ambition and aggrandizement, that the wonder is that critics have attributed such a notion to sane men. As matter of fact, truth as utility means service in making just that contribution to reorganization in experience that the idea or theory claims to be able to make. (mw 12: 170)

    The point here, Chris, is this: when journalists seek “truth” they are seeking evidence relevant not to some misbegotten notion of “balance” or “political neutrality” but to evidence which serves the common good.

    This is not rocket science.

    The common good is not global warming. Allow THAT to be your context.
    The common good is not war. Allow THAT to be your context.
    The common good is not torture. And so on.

    The fact that an administration is comfortable with war, torture, and global warming should not budge a journalist anchored by a notion of truth that is tied to the common good.

    One more point. No one should imagine the blogosphere as a counterweight with any significance in the news industry. The NYT editors may read Josh Marshall but most people read a rather poor daily paper or, more likely, a really really bad local news. Propaganda succeeds most of the time and the blogs are a drop in the ocean in comparison with the mighty engines churning out public consent.

    Dr. David Hildebrand
    AssistantDepartment of Philosophy, Box 179
    University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center
    P.O. Box 173364
    Denver, CO 80217-3364

42. hilde45 Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

    Sorry–I wanted to edit my last post but don’t see how.

    I wanted to add a link to a post about this general issue. The post is called

    “The harm of fake pundit discussions on important issues”

    and it’s here:

    http://blog.davidhildebrand.org/?permalink=DailyBlather/fakemediadiscussions

    David in Denver

43. DrDan Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:21 pm

    ================
    “I’m a philosophy professor and pragmatist who is done with NPR. Give me Huffington Post, Salon, TPM, Raw Story, and a bevy of newspapers along with Open Source, Diane Rehm, Media Matters, and of course Democracy Now.”
    ================
    Prof. Hildebrand: I couldn’t agree w/you more. For me, NPR was diluted to irritating “Milquetoast-itude” and ceased being relevant years back. Besides Chris Lydon, who I’ve been a fan of for years, I am also an aficionado of http://crooksandliars.com and Air America Radio. The latter has both a website, a sound streaming, and a podcast presence.

    You may be interested in some further discussion of this particular ROS program that’s happening elsewhere on the ‘net:
    http://www.frappr.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=460702

    It’s a string in a web forum, not a blog commentary string. There’s a couple of amenities there that’re user-friendly: You can edit your text and you can get email notifications of replies.

    There’s some general intro here:
    http://www.frappr.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=460702
    – read whatever, read anything, join up and comment if you like.

44. DrDan Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:23 pm

    Damn, that second URL (that I can’t edit!!) shoulda been
    http://www.frappr.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=455611
    (blush) (sigh) and there are other places in that BBS where others say it much better.

45. DrDan Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:28 pm

    whoops, I hadn’t realized that this blog supports “smilies.” The preceding big blank gray square should have been a “smile emoticon” caused by “Colon Right-Paren”. FYI Brendan, the file
    /wp-images/smilies/icon_smile.gif has “gone pear-shaped” as the British sometimes say… (grin)

46. Bill Branley Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 4:34 pm

    I can’t help recall images of my late father reading the newspaper. To him, a good news story was one he agreed with, or, more precisely, one that reaffirmed his point of view. How many of us do the same thing, I wonder? Who is to say that we don’t form relationships with news organizations wherein they give us the perspective we want, and we reward them by paying attention?

47. altartifacts Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 9:12 pm

    Ahh, the news or should we call it the bits between the advertising for stuff. It’s evident that major contributors and advertisers have far more to do with what we see and hear than ever before just as the lobbyists are influencing government more than ever before. Karl Jaspers may have gotten it right when he said the end result of mass production was mass culture serving the production and consumption of objects (loosely paraphrased). We all have something to do with what’s happening to our culture and the news about it.
    George Bush told us to go buy things as a cure for 911. It may have been ridiculous but it was dead on to what Americans see as a daily worthwhile activity. Lets see… I think every news organization covered that “Bushian” philosophical war command without any serious critisicm of it. I’ll bet a few widespread boycotts in the right place would loosen the news up a little.

48. Rick Kennerly Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 6:11 am

    I don’t hear the OS until the next morning. I was struck by the comments about the Daily Show, however. For me, the Daily Show is the television version of political cartoons. It takes a certain amount of background knowledge to “get” a good political cartoon. The same is true for the Daily Show.

49. Nightwatchman Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 8:51 am

    I am a fan of OS and also of Pacifica Radio because of their commitment to giving a place for voices that often are not heard. I would much rather hear Giuliana Serena talk from her hospital bed about how the Italian vehicle was shot at from behind, and that, without warning (Democracy Now) than to hear Sylvia Poggioli’s take on the shooting (NPR news).

    I do not believe there are “two sides” but many perspectives. I listen regularly to NPR to hear the “safest” news around but I would applaud them airing thoughtful and earnest voices from a variety of views.

50. Sherry Chandler » Truth, Balance and the News Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 11:40 am

    [...] June 14th, discussing questions of objectivity and truthtelling in the main stream media, Truth, Balance, and the News. It is also a discussion about how the main stream media [...]

51. jdyer Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 11:44 am

    hilde45 Says:

    June 15th, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    “The point here, Chris, is this: when journalists seek “truthâ€? they are seeking evidence relevant not to some misbegotten notion of “balanceâ€? or “political neutralityâ€? but to evidence which serves the common good.”

    Dr. David Hildebrand should know that the “common good� is a reference neutral term. For those who believes that abortion is evil outlawing abortion is justified as a moral act undertaken for the “common good.� Islamic regimes legislated for the “common good.�

    The common good often excludes individual rights especially tho

    I prefer news programs that strive for objectivity rather than those which set themselves up as broadcasting for the “common good.�

52. hilde45 Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

    Thanks, jdyer, for your point about the “common good.”

    I didn’t mean to oversimplify the “common good” or make it seem as if it was something not prone to perspectives. Of course that’s true. It’s just a very complicated topic to try to write about in a blog.

    But now that you’ve commented, I’ll say a word more. The meaning, as I used it, at least, is that “common good” is not a noun or easy to read adjective that we look for, find, and present. There are many conflicts over what the common good is.

    But I guess I am suggesting that there are some “common goods” (see my list, e.g., environment health) that we don’t have to debate endlessly. As in the NYT deciding in the 1930’s to stop presenting “both sides” of lynching, it was just obvious at a certain point what was in the common good–or what was commonly thought bad.

    And your point about individual rights speaks directly to this point; I’m glad you mentioned it. Protection of privacy is a common good which many agree is now being treated too carelessly and without proper limits. So…the news media should not wonder aloud about “Big Brother’s side of the issue,” I take it.

53. jdyer Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 5:04 pm

    hilde45 Says:

    June 16th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
    Thanks, jdyer, for your point about the “common good.�

    “As in the NYT deciding in the 1930’s to stop presenting “both sidesâ€? of lynching, it was just obvious at a certain point what was in the common good–or what was commonly thought bad.”

    But lynching is murder. Murder is a crime and when covering a crime story one has to follow certain rules. Presumption of innocence, etc.

    I have no idea why the NY Times ever covered lynching as a crime free story. I also have trouble understanding their current coverage of stories about suicide bombers who are also engaged in mass murder. These are not political acts with a point of view. They are acts of war whose aim is to obliterate the enemy. They are or should be war crimes.

    I don’t believe the NY Times should be used as a standard about what is and what is not good reporting.

    I don’t understand your idea of the common good as an adjective, btw. What exactly does it qualify?

    I think you are groping for a way fo justifying what used to be called the societal needs such health and welfare. But isn’t that why States (commonwealths) exists to begin with? Isn’t this what the “social contract” is all about.

54. jeremy Says:
    June 17th, 2006 at 6:17 am

    How to discuss truth with edge without having a bigger discussion around truth and facts?

    I am glad to see the philosophers weigh in.

    Even a minimalist epistemology (how we know) obliges us to acknowledge that we select a subset of the world to examine, that in examining we interpret and weigh the data, and in making sense of these interpretations to draw conclusion we often use more than simple deduction. And we repeat this process. People can, do and should argue with each step in what has been called a “ladder of inference.” This linear description moving from facts to conclusions doesn’t capture the iterative repetitiveness of the actual process.

    In addition to the pool of data we have access to, our pre-existing models of the world (our biases, previous conclusions, models and expectations) and our abilities to gather information influence the data we select, the interpretations we make and the conclusions we stand on and report. Most of our arguments are at the level of conclusions. More interesting, our conclusions drive our next steps in ways that can result in actions that reinforce them. Much reasoning is rationalization.

    This doesn’t have to mean that we construct our truths from whole cloth. But it illuminates how a barrage of stimulation overwhelms a press corp who all want to keep their jobs, bring their own class and professional jealousies, have to file stories quickly and are drowning in a flood of spin.

    How often is speaking truth to power merely speaking facts to power? Being naive about facts doesn’t really capture the challenge of reporting. The examples from the show, American institutions of torture and global warming, illustrate all of this really well. I actually think that Fox news illustrates this beautifully. O’Reilly going to Guantanamo to check for himself demonstrates that with the right model you can gather facts, interpret them and conclude what you set out to conclude… and he an his producers may actually do this without cynicism but merely as a benefit of soaking in his own myopic stew. (They may have gotten their talking points from a Rove… but I don’t think you have to posit that.)

    So truth with edge could be self-reflective about the process of moving from information gathered to interpretations and conclusions. Reporters can not be experts in all the stories they must cover, we must not ask them to conclude for us. We can ask them to shed a light on motivations (e.g. qui bono as one of the blog entries advised), and ask their experts how they move from information to conclusions.

    This can be especially helpful when covering science where the experts are often not too self-critical about this process (as all the stories about single genes for this or that complex trait attest). It can also take a he said/she said (or more often the administration said/the marginalized victim said) and illuminate how they came to their conclusions.

    Much of our national discourse has been debased. We don’t merely have differently crafted, internally principled conclusions, banging into each other but rather a cynical use of balance and a willingness to say anything as long as it manifests particular “facts on the ground.â€? The multiple rationalizations for the war on Iraq, the sense that any and all facts lead to the inevitable conclusion that we should lower taxes on the rich, …

    Though even this could be reported on from a point of view that examines and critiques the lame conclusions that x repeatedly drawn. Why does only John Stewart’s Daily Show (in one of their most dependable bits) demonstrate the organized use of talking points by cutting from one talking head to the next across all the networks saying the SAME thing. This joke makes its point very quickly. And should be part of the armamentarium of the news.

    I don’t think that a conversation about this topic can happen without a short excursion into epistemology, but it can be short and we quickly return ready to apply what we learned.

55. David Says:
    June 17th, 2006 at 11:49 pm

    Jdyer characterizes my post as “groping.” Insulting word. Jdyer, we’re done.

56. worths1 Says:
    June 18th, 2006 at 5:53 pm

    I know this can’t be an original idea, but here it goes: instead of “truth with edge” how about “truth for the little guy.” In other words, if the government says it, be skeptical. If a multinational corporation says it, be skeptical. To borrow from Rush Limbaugh, you wouldn’t need to be balanced, you would be balance.

57. Delysid Says:
    June 20th, 2006 at 11:58 am

    There’s a lot of straw men being kicked around in these comments. But if you pay attention to what people are saying, nobody is saying you should *never* present both sides of a story equally — I think rather most would regard that approach as the default and appropriate if both sides are sincere and have legitimate points. The problem with forcing every story and every debate into a balanced equal-time format is that the right wing, including foremost the Bush administration, has adopted a deliberate strategy of “gaming the system”, taking advantage of that balancing reflex in mainstream media to press forward patently untrue or unfounded claims and arguments. Sometimes they believe them, sometimes they know they’re lying (e.g. most of what Bush & Cheney say).

    I single out the right not out of prejudice but because it’s accurate. Much of the right wing, particularly neoconservatives and the crasser variety of Christian right ideologues and God-profiteers, seems to have decided to grant themselves permission to lie for a “higher good”, to further their cause or manipulate public opinion. Neocons and their philosophical mentors explicitly advocate in their books and journals a policy of lying to the masses for their own good, to implement an agenda that most people would object to because they’re too stupid to realize the sublime wisdom and infallibility of the neocons and their political allies. They have a radically anti-enlightenment philosophy which accords with the anti-secularism and anti-humanism of the Christian right.

    Recall the famous quote from the Seymour Hersch article on the neocon and Christian right elements dominating the Bush administration, where a White House official says that journalists, academics, mere mortals in general belong to a “reality-based” community, which the official sneers at because right-wing ubermensch like himself operate in a faith-based or vision-based world, where they are the great actors creating reality. The hubris and self-aggrandisement fairly drips off his words, and the ongoing debacle in Iraq and general state of chaotic breakdown that marks most everything else the Bush admin touches makes the official’s claims of godlike powers all the more laughable.

    But the point is, people like that feel no obligation to truth telling, don’t even recognize the value of “truth” or don’t feel that it will do any good to let the publich access the truth — on the contrary, they regard truth as a dangerous thing to give the public, because they don’t feel the public has the capacity to understand truth and will only react irrationally to it. They feel much safer if the public only gets crafted propaganda carefully designed to manipulate and create a world image that they want the public to have.

    The more regressive elements of fundamentalist religion have similar fears about the effects of raw truth on the unwashed masses, a sentiment dating back centuries to their opposition to the enlightenment itself and its challenge to the church’s exclusive right to dispense and define “truth”.

    So when these sort of folk exploit the standard journalistic mandate for balance and not favouring either side to gain a platform for signing out the right’s party line regardless of its relation to truth, they should be called on it by the reporter explicitly in the interview and/or in the article. If Dick Cheney declares that Saddam Hussein was directly linked to 9-11 after it has already been established by investigators and even admitted by the Bush Whitehouse to be utterly false, the reporter shouldn’t just report Cheney’s blatant lie without comment. That’s being dishonest.

    This is the specific kind of case where mechanical imposition of “balance” does not serve the truth or the readers. Otherwise, journalistic balance and objectivity is still a valid principle, and does not preclude the author having and expressing an opinion or fact-checking and calling out falsehoods in interview statements.

    That’s all fer now….

58. limefink Says:
    May 13th, 2007 at 5:18 am

    My frustration with National Public Radio’s
    disinclination to hit hard leads me to tell
    other people that “NPR” stands for Namby-
    Pamby Radio.

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