Chris, Chris, Chris
The
Commercial Appeal's Editor in Chief, Chris Peck, launched a
salvo against press critics Sunday. But what it says about him and his paper is enlightening. Let's delve:
You've heard about media bias.
A day doesn't pass without some critic complaining about his or her treatment in the media.
So, it's personal is it? Not a legitimate criticism, but a "complaint?" Already, the buck is in hand, the pass soon to come.
In the news business, editors routinely must cope with those who see gay or anti-gay bias; pro-Bush or anti-Bush bias; support-the-war or anti-war bias; pro-business or anti-business bias. The list could go on.
Note that he's talking political bias right now. Remember that.
Isn't it interesting what pops into his mind when he has to find examples. Although the sides fall both ways, it's always "anti"-this or that. The two topics he chose that don't rate a modifying "support" clause are gays and the War on Terror. I'm not sure what all this means, but it hints at something fun.
After 30 years of working in news organizations, I worry about bias, too.
But from inside the news business, my concerns look different from what I hear on talk radio or from the guy on the street.
Notice who the critics are now: "Talk radio or... the guy on the street." See how's he's subtly begun to shift the topic, from the concerns of readers about coverage bias to his concerns as a newsman.
For example, I don't think media bias is about some liberal agenda. That's too simple and too easy to fix.
And yet the criticisms continue. Why is that? The shift continues, as we see. He's now narrowed it down from "pro-this or anti-that" to an accusation of liberal agenda.
It is easy to fix. Hire more diversity of viewpoint in the newsroom. Studies still show the overwhelming liberal political bias of reporters and editors. If you're surrounded by folks who think like you, do you really believe they'll offer dissenting or unheard points of view? Or will they reinforce the prevailing point of view?
In most newspaper and television newsrooms, reporters and editors routinely hunt for political spin. A discipline journalists learn early on is the ability to wring out loaded words, one-sided accounts and blatant examples of political grandstanding. Yeah, sometimes reporters get taken in and their editors are asleep at the switch. Far more often, however, the spin of liberal or conservative tone gets edited out.
Ahh.... But if everyone agrees in the newsroom that something is a bad thing, will they see the "anti-bad thing" bias in an article written about it? Or will it sound just right to them?
Peck is being disingenuous anyway. One of the things the blogosphere (notice he hasn't mentioned any of them yet?) has done is to point out the routine examples of just the kind of errors Peck lists above. Time and time again, in papers large and small all over the country. For heaven's sake, how does Peck square CBS' and Dan Rather's massive failure over the Texas National Guard story?
Peck sounds too much like the Catholic priest reassuring the flock that the incident with the new priest from the faraway parish was an isolated one with no precedent and no chance of being repeated.
Nor is media bias about journalists being anti-American. I don't buy that criticism, even in this time of war.
The very foundation of our constitutionally protected right of free speech and a free press comes from an understanding that the media can, indeed must, be skeptical and critical of government and politicians, even during national crises. That's what keeps people honest, even as those in power protest that the media aren't with the program.
Wow, what a loaded paragraph! So, the War on Terror is a "national crisis?"
What "keeps people honest" is a fear of consequences. That's been one of the goods of the blogosphere, keeping newspapers' feet to the fire of public exposure for lapses of fact and abuse of position.
It's a topic way to large to discuss well here, but let's touch briefly on reporters and freedom of speech. That freedom comes from the limits placed on government by the Constitution of the United States, Amended. That freedom is intrinsically and uniquely American. The British, Canadian and Australian press can all be muzzled by the government, with suitable reason.
So, when folks like Peck wave the First Amendment around, it's hard to square how they can then approach international affairs with the same neutrality they impose on domestic coverage. To place other nations' actions against us on the same level as American actions, to take no America-centric position but to abrogate their Americanness is to repudiate the nation and the lives that bought that freedom for them.
There is also the fact that what the nation's local papers report about international news comes from a mere handful of people working for a mere handful of news organisations. The
Commercial Appeal routinely lets the writers of the
New York Times, Reuters and the
Washington Post do their international news reporting. Anything those reporters introduce into their coverage gets picked up by and carried in hundreds of smaller papars around the nation.
There is no question that that coverage is concerned with "what went wrong" or "who got hurt" -- the standard definitions of news. Explosions and bombings always get reported; not so for the rebuilding of schools and power plants and hospitals. The
Memphis Flyer, to my knowledge, has written exactly one story on West Tennessee soldiers fighting in Iraq. Writer Chris Davis went scouring North-central Tennessee to find a disgruntled soldier, while passing hundreds who weren't. Is this bias?
The media are part of the program. It's just that our part is to ask questions and seek truths. If anything, more media skepticism about the push to war in Iraq might have helped our nation be better informed about the need for the war and better understand what it will cost for the nation to prevail in the Mideast.
There is a huge difference between skepticism and reflexive opposition. Too much of the national press is reflexively opposed to whatever they are told, regardless of reason or common sense.
But this is all national stuff, which the
Commercial Appeal doesn't do itself, relying on a handful of national newspapers to do it for them. Do they question the people who hand this stuff to them? Are they skeptical of what they are presented? Somehow, given Peck's faith in the power of the media to police itself, as he noted above, I doubt it.
Does his
Commercial Appeal approach local issues with this kind of skepticism? It doesn't often seem that way, especially in his new, local editions, where stories are printed that are written by the companies, businesses, etc. themselves, and not by skeptical
CA reporters. Or take the FedEx Forum, for example. It's the biggest public expenditure in Memphis history. Does the
Commercial Appeal approach its operation and funding skeptically? Not on the evidence. They seem rather credulous of what they are told by the Mayor and the people who run it and the Grizzlies.
I'm concerned about a different kind of bias I see creeping into news.
After long disquisition on reader perceptions of political bias, wherein he proves its unwarranted, Peck now shifts to what he really wants to talk about.
I've heard it described as informational bias. It's a big challenge.
Here's an example of how it creeps into the work of newspapers, TV stations and online media.
Notice how he suddenly wants to include the onlne and television news media? If you read his paper, it has a disturbing and myopic talent for pretending there is no other source of news in the city. Stories originated in television news will never find the station involved identified. I like to call it "competition bias" but that's just me. See, I can invent a distracting bias just like Chris!
A story a few days ago quoted the new head of the National Academy of Sciences saying that global warming is caused by human beings and their modern, fossil fuel-driven lifestyles.
Ralph Cicerone is a renowned expert on climate change. He knows what he's talking about. His views reflect the overwhelming majority of scientific thought and research on global climate change. By burning tons of coal to make electricity and driving millions of automobiles that emit gases, we're causing the world's climate to change.
Standing against this record of the human causes of global climate change are some political forces in Washington who continue to say that we need more research and that the record is unclear about whether human activity is causing increases in the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming.
Sorry to make you wade through all that. Notice how we've gone from "perception bias" to "factual bias," with Peck trying to prove the issue of global warming is somehow settled.
Many newspapers and other media feel compelled to include these minority political views in reports on global warming.
Chris, it's called "the need for balance." It was pioneered by newspapers trying to prove they weren't biased by interviewing "both" sides of any issue, regardless of whether there might be more than one side or whether one side is even worth hearing or not. It's a reflex these days, and not an effort to be truly fair and balanced. That's why so many stories now appear in print with "We were unable to contact so-and-so to comment on this story." They are in a rush to print, even to the point of not running the story until the "other side" has their say.
That is a kind of informational bias. To offer equal weight to the scientific record and the political doubt, in fact, creates bias. These two views on global warming are not equal. One has the weight of decades of research behind it; the other has the weight of a political agenda holding it up.
Yet a study in 2003 of news accounts of global climate change published in major newspapers in this country found that one-third of all news stories presented the science and the political posturing against global warming as equally supported explanations of what is happening in our world.
Is that fair and balanced reporting, to insert doubt about global warming by quoting the politicians who want to deny the science?
And yet newspapers every day, including the
CA, run stories on the latest report from this or that study, regardless of what it contradicts or what it really might mean. How many reporters even have the basic knowledge of science and the scientific method to understand what they are covering?
No. The constant reference to ''the other side'' of global warming clouds the issue and makes it much more difficult for citizens to understand what needs to be done to preserve our lifestyle and save the world.
Again, notice how Peck's shifted his focus? We aren't talking -- haven't been for many paragraphs now -- bias, but poor newspaper writing and bad editorial practices.
Journalists must wrestle with similar kinds of informational bias issues when reporting on everything from evolution to vaccinating children against childhood diseases.
And they do so with little to no understanding of the science involved or the issues that provide context for that science. Again, notice how we're still not talking about the
Commercial Appeal and what it writes, but on wire stories they pick up from other sources. And run uncritically every day.
Simply giving "the other side" a say in a news account doesn't necessarily provide balance or a true picture of an event or a debate.
Great example: the kerfuffle involving County Commissioner Walter Bailey and renaming or rebuilding three Confederate-honoring City parks. There is a lot of history and detail involving those parks, why they were created and named, the social climate of when these actions were taken, what codicils and laws allow, and the people or events being honored. There is also a lot about Bailey and why he has chosen to champion this issue over many others. None of it comes into the reporting, nor does the paper make a point of presenting stories that are compilations of historical fact or contemporaneous reporting.
What do we get? Guest columns written by self-interested parties in a "both sides" format that is precisely what Peck is criticising. In other words, he practices what he criticises!
Or take City and County budget issues, the kind of reporting over which Peck has direct control. The
Commercial Appeal has
never, to my knowledge, printed any examination of the details of the way City or County government is set up, nor of the details of the budgets themselves. What we do get is, TA-DAA!, a summation of events with "he said - she said" comments attached, in reaction to events. No pro-active examinations here.
The public seems schizophrenic about the issue of "giving the other side" versus "giving us the best facts" that can be learned.
Ahhhh, and now it's our fault for being "schizophrenic." Peck started with our complaints, briefly tossed them around before going in-depth into something he has no control over and isn't related to Memphis reader concerns, before coming back to the original complaints and finding them our fault. Thanks!
When the media didn't dig more deeply into the cooked books of Enron or WorldCom, for example, critics said the reporters failed to get to the bottom of a story. What we did do, however, was ''report both sides,'' which in the case of Enron and WorldCom meant regurgitating the rosy forecasts of those companies' fabulous business successes.
Ah, Chris. Again, you don't have the resources to investigate those stories.
But, in thsoe stories you
could be investigating -- locally -- your paper again falls down. I cannot recall any story about wrongdoing at a local company that was initiated by research and investigation by the paper's reporters. I do know that the "new"
CA has lots and lots of friendly, fawning stories about Memphis business.
Take FedEx, for one example. I have heard countless stories from folks who work there about the kinds of abuse the company dishes out to employees it wants to terminate, but cannot fire. Ugly, ugly stuff. Yet the paper, which theoretically has the resources and weight to investigate, has never written anything. Or take their stories on "predatory lending" which attacked the people who meet a need for small, short-term loans. Did the paper ever turn its light on the reasons these lenders exist, which is that large banks refuse to serve them? Any light shined on the big banks, asking them to explain themselves?
My hope is that the role of the media as watchdogs, diggers and skeptics who ask tough questions will be a role that survives in this nation and is valued.
All of us need good information to lead informed lives. The media, at their best, can get us what we need.
And no answer to the original question about bias! What he does manage to do is to make the press look like heroes while dodging real questions.
The whole canard about "real information" is a howler. How much of the "news" in Peck's
Commercial Appeal is important and vital to our lives? Comics? Sports? How much of the important activities in our community, the actions of the few which will impact the lives of the many, doesn't get mentioned in the daily paper? How many important investigations were never launched?
Quit patting your own back, Peck. You just keep pressing down on the target taped to your shirt.
