I've
written about the press before. (While I'll refer to the “papers”
and the “press,” that should be understood as shorthand for all
of the media – including the internet.) One of my biggest gripes
is that too many journalists view events through the lens of their
own biases, or sometimes don't even bother with events to justify the
statement of those biases. They are often termed “advocacy
journalists,” and they turn objective news into the columns that
someday they hope to have. It's oversimplification to suggest that
all journalists put a spin on the news, but enough do to make the
concept of informing the public through a “free press” a parody.
It's becoming more and more difficult to trust the reports found in
even the most earnest of publications – ones that we once viewed as
the “standards” and the papers “of record.” “All the news
that's fit to print,” “fair and balanced,” “objective,” and
similar terms cannot be taken seriously. It's safer not to believe
any news reports.
Modern
technology has given us the ability to see events as reported in a
wide variety of media from all over the world, and we wind up with
countless different views of the same facts. Too many stories seem
to be a replay of “Rashōmon.”
It has become obvious that what we used to believe without question,
what we thought represented an objective reporting of the facts,
cannot be taken at face value.
There's
no doubt in my mind that my previous characterizations are true but,
like many of the stories submitted by these reporters, they lacked
context and explanation. No blanket indictment of journalists is
intended – most are hard working journeymen sincerely seeking to
inform us of what they see, but there are those who place themselves
above their profession, some who oversimplify their stories, and
many who face difficult hurdles when it comes to telling us their
stories.
Those
are the issues that I'd like to consider, in an extended fashion,
today. The discussion is certainly not complete, of course, but I
hope it will add to our understanding of what's happening. And
perhaps it will explain some of what contributes to the revisionism
and misinformation which pervade our times. I'm especially
interested in the first and last problems I raised – those placing
themselves above their profession, and the question of “hurdles”
– although to a degree they overlap. As for the second,
oversimplification, which may result from, among other things, the
journalist's failure to fully understand his subject or the selling
short of his readers through his own inadequacy – it's hard to
remedy poor training and poor habits, and reporters who fall into
these traps just don't know enough to do any better.
The
first group are primarily the advocacy journalists, those who are
self-promoters, and the ones who are lazy. In order to convey their
message they don't even have to be at the site of the news. They
have the internet, and, in addition, they know, before they learn the
facts, what they want to say – often emphasizing their own
involvement in the story – or they can get enough to publish
without actually going to the site of the action And it may be
dangerous to go there anyway. They are journalists with no excuse
for their unethical behavior. They have little regard for their
readers.
More
to be pitied are the ones who have constraints imposed upon them from
outside. An illustration from “Honest Reporting” (October 13,
2015) is useful:
“Last November, the PLO warned
[emphasis
added] foreign reporters not to use the words
'Temple Mount' when referring to the Jerusalem esplanade that houses
the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock.
“The site’s Hebrew name, Har
HaBayit
translates to Temple Mount. This is a name that Jews and Christians
used to refer to the holy site before the emergence of Islam, and
certainly before the Jordanian army captured the eastern half of
Jerusalem in 1948.
“But the PLO argument is that
the holy site is located in 'occupied territory,' and that any name
other than Haram
al-Sharif
(literally, the Noble Sanctuary) impinges on Palestinian rights.”
An
authority of some kind – often the ruling government of the country
where the story originates – wants it told in a particular way.
And reporters report it that way out of fear. Government control is
common and not to be ignored when relating a story – inadvertently
or intentionally. Several years ago I wrote to one of the foreign
press groups complaining about the lack of reporting from certain
countries, and the fact that those reports that did come out were
usually governmental propaganda. The organization didn't seem very
concerned about the problem, simply telling me that everyone knew the
there was no free press in those countries, and there was no need to
remind them. The press's own published ethical standards are of
lesser concern, even if they prohibit the publication of propaganda
and require that journalists specify the sources of their stories.
The main concern of most of the news organizations – both the media
and the unions to which the reporters belong – is the maintenance
of sources and the safety of the reporters. (The latter function, of
course, should not be minimized, as illustrated by the fate of Daniel
Pearl OBM [of blessed memory] and too many others, but there should
be great concern as well for the observance of journalistic ethics
and truth.)
But
the authority dictating the slant of the story may be the employer of
the journalist – the publisher or the editorial staff. The media
often have editorial positions and they “suggest” to their
writers that stories should illustrate those positions rather than
contradict them. But journalists, like the rest of us, are most
comfortable around those who share their opinions, and many of them
work for organs with the same biases. And they're eager to protect
their own jobs and their sources of information. What follows are
excerpts from William Shirer's “Berlin Diary” which was published
in 1941.
“Berlin,
November 28 [1934]
“Much
talk here that Germany is secretly arming, though it is difficult to
get definite dope, and if you did get it and sent it, you'd probably
be expelled. … Went out to a cheap store in the Tauenzienstrasse
today and bought a comical-looking ready-made suit of 'tails' for our
foreign press ball at the Aldon Saturday night. A dinner jacket, I
was told, was not enough.
“Berlin,
December 2
“The
ball all right. Tess had a new dress and looked fine. [Paul
Joseph] Goebbels [Reich Minister of Propaganda],
Sir Eric Phipps, François
Poncet, [American
Ambassador, Professor William E.]
Dodd, and General [Walter]
von Reichenau, the nearest thing to a Nazi general
the Reichswehr has and on very good terms with most of the American
correspondents, were among those present. ...”
Clearly
it would have been bad for him and the organization he represented to
be expelled (he was an American citizen and probably wouldn't have
been shot, though there is a real possibility of that today in some
of the countries in the Middle East and elsewhere). He and his
colleagues were aware of many murders and other illegal acts, but not
so indiscreet as to report on all of them while covering the
countries in which they occurred. (After all, they were there to
observe, but not to be affected by
injustice.) And, while in Nazi Germany, it would have been
impolitic to upset General von Reichenau who was “on
very good terms with most of the American correspondents.” (Add to
this the fact that, at least in these entries he seems to have been
more concerned with the press ball and his and his wife's outfits
than in the story he was there to cover.)
The
least obvious problem, however, is the kind that that is dictated by
the others. While I've called it “hurdles,” it refers to the
actions taken that aid in the sale of the story and of the paper:
actions that serve the needs of the publisher and the market.
Reports are edited to a particular length as well as to a document
that slants the facts to fit the publisher's or the editor's views.
Another problem is that although the press has a fetish about
confirmation or a story before printing it, the desire to publish
quickly – to get a scoop – often takes precedence over accuracy.
Add
to that the old saying, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And it sells
papers. As do exciting headlines – whether or not they are true.
(It's another method of tailoring the stories to fit the “take”
of the management.) Too often they seem to be designed to be
intended as a “take-away” message for those who only skim the
headlines. They may not be borne out by the story itself, and they
certainly lack any context or background information which would help
an interested reader understand the truth. The same is true of
photographs and their captions. Since only a small number of
pictures can be used, the ones chosen give the reader a visual
message of what he is to believe, and that message may be incorrect.
Moreover, the caption may be misleading. It is also, sadly, the case
that the pictures may have nothing to do with the story even though
they are shown as such. In short, the papers don't
waste time on context or anything that would take up too much space
or detract from the message they want to convey. Don't give the
reader the chance to think for himself. The
public has
figured it out though. The following citation from the Huffington
Post (2012) illustrates this sad fact:
“A
new Gallup poll on perceived honesty and ethical standards found that
journalists possess a dismally low rating. When asked to rate a
variety of professions on having "very high" to "very
low" honesty and ethical standards, pollsters found that below
25 percent of Americans have positive feelings about the honesty of
journalists.” [I
realize that I am using the press to call itself into question, but I
find the statistic quite believable.]
That
means that 75 percent of Americans don't. What's even more
frightening is that the phenomenon is not new. In a lecture a
hundred years earlier [1912] at the Columbia School of Journalism,
Ralph Pulitzer, the oldest son of Joseph Pulitzer, decried fake
“news,” though he considered it atypical. Clearly, however, the
problem of unreliability in journalism has a long history. And it
demonstrates that journalists may use the press to distribute stories
that have no basis in fact irrespective of the desire of the reader
to believe whatever he sees.
We're
presented with a difficult problem. With all of the sources slanting
the available information to correspond to the message they're
promoting, and with all those possibly conflicting messages on line
and viewable by the reader, it has become increasingly difficult to
know what is true. And many governments – like, for example, those
in the Middle East – rely on that fact, and rely as well on the
recognition that most of the media will repeat whatever they say
without questioning it. They may disclaim responsibility for the
information, or correct or retract it at a later date, but the very
fact that it appeared in print is all that is needed by some readers,
and the subsequent correction is too tedious to be read.
So
the reader is left with a “truth” that is partial – in both
senses of the word. But, of course, he has a choice: take it or
leave it. It's all he's going to get. Will Rogers said it, but it's
just as true now as it was in the days of vaudeville: "All
I know
is just what I read
in the papers,
and that's an alibi for my ignorance."
Actually
it's not true. What you read in the papers will do you a disservice.
You won't just be ignorant. Too often you'll be misinformed.
Next
episode: “The
Sixty-four Dollar Question”
– A quiz for you.
