A new way to think about bias

Many of you wrote about the way people perceive the press in your bias interviews. The following essay has created a lot of dialogue in the journalism community.


Poynteronline
Posted, Jan. 30, 2008
Updated, Jan. 30, 2008

The Public Bias against the Press

By Roy Peter Clark (more by author)
Senior Scholar, Poynter Institute



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Sacred Heart University poll: "Americans Slam News Media on Believability."
The public bias against the press is a more serious problem for American democracy than the bias (real or perceived) of the press itself.

That is one reasonable conclusion to a study of media credibility conducted by Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. As a good Catholic boy growing up in the 1950s, I was devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But no such devotion can I feel to the prejudiced conclusions some scholars and politicians have drawn from this survey.

Let me begin my argument with an analogy. If my first daughter says I'm a bad parent one year, and the next year two daughters say I'm bad, and the following year all three of them say I'm bad, does that make me bad? It is not a good sign, I'll admit, but is it possible that the perception of my daughters has been influenced by factors other than the character of my decisions and actions as a dad? Maybe all their friends insist I'm too strict.

In short, I protest the idea that the perception of bias is, as expressed in the Sacred Heart poll, evidence of bias in the work itself. It is possible -- I would say in this case probable -- that the perception is a creation of forces over which journalists have little influence or control.

Before I build my argument that there is a public bias against the press, I will begin by listing the rational circumstances in which a perception of press bias is warranted, categories in which journalists can do useful work:

* In spite of any firewall created between departments of news and of opinion, the audience will assume -- without countervailing evidence -- that one sides bleeds over to the other.

* The story choice of an editor -- or story play -- may be seen as an expression of bias, even when no slant is intended.

* All journalists understand that the personal bias of the writer or photographer can ooch its way into a story, which is why the protocols of "objectivity" were established to create checks and balances within the systems of news judgment, reporting, writing, editing and publishing. But sometimes the system fails.

* My colleague Rick Edmonds reminds me that many people who come to the press without prejudice form their biases after failing to recognize themselves or their values in the news. That can be true for the young or the old, for evangelical conservatives, for members of minority groups, etc.

* The public often misinterprets incompetence for corruption. Members of the public with specialized knowledge too often see the worlds they know mangled by distorted or inaccurate portrayals in the press.

* We're better now than we used to be, but some journalists still spit in the food of complaining readers or viewers, and our arrogance damages our credibility -- no matter how accurate our reporting may be.

Journalism expresses itself through media, but most media expressions are not forms of journalism.OK, so I'm granting the public those legitimate grievances and acknowledge that journalists need to work hard at doing better. But I hold journalists less responsible -- and the public more responsible -- for misperceptions of news media performance. In short, the last two decades have seen unprecedented attacks upon the legitimacy of the news media, so many messages from so many directions that they are as impossible to ignore as, say, the soft-core sexual images that pervade American culture. Here are examples of some of the attacks:

* Christopher Lasch once criticized American life as a "culture of narcissism." Neil Postman argued that we were entertaining ourselves to death. And who can deny that the culture of entertainment and celebrity has come to dominate interest in news, foreign affairs and civic life generally. How can the public see our best work when they are blinded by Britney?

* Politicians under pressure -- from every political party -- try to kill the media messenger. It's the easiest trick in the book, and the Bush/Clinton dynasties have been particularly good at it. Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University and author of the journalism blog PressThink, has described in great detail the current administration's efforts to de-certify the press by ignoring it, by moving around it, by ducking it, by creating its own message machines.

* The interpretations of the Sacred Heart poll serve only to compound the public confusion that lumps the news media (journalism!) with other forms of entertainment and professional gossip. Journalism expresses itself through media, but most media expressions are not forms of journalism.

* Media credibility continues to fall during a period when America's political culture has become dangerously polarized. On radio talk show after talk show, in best-seller after best-seller, an industry has grown up with many agendas. Among the greatest of the agendas is to destroy the credibility of the mainstream press. A case can be made that sensitivity to such criticism -- along with accusations that journalists are disloyal to American interests -- softened the skeptical edge of the news media during the lead-up to the Iraqi war.

* As a dork, I need, love and respect the geeks. But part of the geek news revolution has undermined public confidence in the press, not only by endorsing the attacks of partisan bloggers, but also by a knee-jerk (emphasis on the second syllable) dismissal of the value of what is termed "dead tree" journalism. So alienated are some in the technocracy that they express the hope that old modernist forms of journalism will die quickly so that "liberté, égalité, fraternité" can reign forever -- pop-up ads and porn notwithstanding.

* We have traveled a dark and dreary road since the days when the alter-ego of Superman was crusading reporter Clark Kent, or when the heroes of Frank Capra movies were dashing reporters, the booze-swilling champions of the little guy. Now, instead, we have the "Law & Order" effect. Of the hundreds of episodes you've witnessed of that TV show, how many times have you seen a reporter or photographer portrayed as helpful? The usual shtick is that they are slimeballs or part of the wolf pack that runs up the courthouse steps with notebooks and microphones extended.

* "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and the satire of Letterman, Maher, and Leno are not uniformly hostile to the news media, but their pointed humor has the cumulative effect of cultivating the cynicism of the American public, especially among the ironic and random young.

Critics of journalism would argue that these are effects and not causes, but I disagree. Even with shrinking resources, journalists have never been more responsible or better trained. The public can see the occasional examples of gross journalistic malpractice written in the sky, while the many examples of news media restraint are by definition invisible.

So where do we go from here? Here are three possible paths to sanity, none of which I'm endorsing here:

* Critics be damned. If the public is as predisposed to distrust the media as the Sacred Heart poll suggests, then let's accept our fate as fulfilling an unpopular role within society and democracy. The defense attorneys of child pornographers cannot aspire to popularity, but they can embrace their role within a system that strives for justice. We can strive to publish nonpartisan truths in the public interest and work hard to make them stick.

* No credibility workshops, ethics classes, focus groups or courageous acts of enterprising journalism will reverse this trend. The mirror has two sides. What deserves support in every community are programs in critical thinking and news literacy, such as the ones Stony Brook University is developing with the support of the Knight Foundation. More transparency on our part can help, but only in an environment where citizens or students are willing to engage us with skepticism by parking their cynicism on a side street.

* Journalists tend to despise public relations and marketing, but if we believe in our calling, we may have to find ways to reveal our best practices and best consequences to anyone who might be receptive. Let's remind them of the journalists who have risked their lives as war correspondents, or who have worked hard to create an environment on the home front (I'm thinking of The Washington Post's investigation of Walter Reed Army Medical Center) where returning military men and women can get the physical and mental health care they might need.

The pollsters at Sacred Heart, along with at least one member of Congress, have concluded that their results show that the public knows bias when they see it and that members of the media should change their ways. Fair enough. Without public support and a growing audience, journalists will find themselves vulnerable to political and judicial mischief and a shrinking of the financial resources they need to fulfill their duty to inform.

But nothing journalists do will reverse the dark tides of popular cynicism. The wrecking balls destroying the credibility of the press cannot be stopped until we focus more attention on the credibility of those who are pulling the levers, including a public that has been conditioned, like rats in a Skinnerian dystopia, to hate us.