Journalism and Objectivity

It’s pretty fashionable to complain about the main stream media, especially on blogs. We bloggers are, to hear us tell it, the answer to MSM bias. Now I do think that blogging has a positive impact by allowing expression of a greater variety of viewpoints. Often bloggers are quality journalists as well. (I don’t count myself here. I’m usually writing opinion based on facts someone else has gathered.)

But it’s not the differences in types of journalism that interests me most. I believe we each need to evaluate information sources one by one for their reliability and double check even the most reliable. There are reliable and unreliable print journals, and reliable and unreliable blogs. There is no way one can avoid the need to think critically and to check facts.

This morning when I first turned on the TV, I came across a show on a public access channel discussing a “different view” of the September 11 attacks. The narrator claimed to provide evidence that it was not civilian airliners that struck the twin towers, that the pentagon attack was faked, and that no plane crashed in Pennsylvania. The main stream media, left, right, and center, are apparently involved in a conspiracy to hide these “facts” from the general public.

And there is fertile ground in which to sow doubt about the MSM, which the designers of the movie exploit with vigor. “They’re lying to you,” is a quite popular refrain. Unfortunately, the general feeling that “they” (however defined) are lying is not helpful to people in making decisions. A reasonable skepticism is useful. Cynicism is often destructive.

This subject was also brought to my attention in the discussion of the NOVA program Judgment Day. Some people have brought accusations of bias against the producers of that show because it favors the anti-intelligent design (ID) side of the argument. And I will definitely concede that ID comes out of the movie looking worse for wear.

So what do I want in journalism? Should I expect to have heard all possible viewpoints on the 9/11 attacks, even those that are clearly ridiculous? Should NOVA present ID and evolution as equal options, no matter how they evaluate them, or should they evaluate and present the results of their evaluation?

I’m troubled that so many people have come to regard fairness as equal treatment of all ideas. If you have a spokesman for both sides (and we do seem to reduce so many issues to just two sides), and you give them equal time, then you have been fair. Now I suspect that few readers think that the idea that 9/11 was a massive conspiracy should get equal time with the well-established views based on a fairly open analysis of the evidence. Many more will believe that it would be appropriate to give equal time to ID and evolution.

But what is the basis for either decision? There has to be some evaluation involved. What we do is informally evaluate ideas as “in” or “out” and then expect fair, or equal treatment for everything in between. I don’t think it is either possible or desirable to be fair in this way.

Here’s what I would like from a good journalist:

1. Careful checking of the facts (not the opinions, the actual data points on which they are based
2. Evaluation of the evidence and views
3. Proportional time in presentation
4. Presentation of the pros and cons of each selected view
5. Sufficient time taken on a topic to provide sources a user can use to follow up

In other words, evaluation and not “fairness” defined as equal time.

While people depend equal time, this type of journalism is not likely to predominate. That is because as much as we, the public, complain about the mainstream media, they are the mainstream because that is what we pay for and watch. If we truly demanded and then watched, listened to, or read more evaluative journalism, that is what we would get, over the long term.

The problem, as I see it, is that our culture now seems to regard it as impolite to tell someone outright that their position is wrong, or is of less value than other positions. But ideas are absolutely not equal in reality. My views of physics are by no means equal to that of a physicist, on medicine they are not equal to those of a physician, and on biology they are not equal to those of a biologist. On the other hand, the views of a layman are not the equal of mine in terms of the meaning of a word in Biblical Greek or Hebrew. Some ideas are just plain wrong, and if we define fairness and objectivity in journalism so as to require that a journalist never points that out, we’ll pretty much guarantee that we will be misinformed.

Let me use one last illustration from the political world. It’s election season. Suppose a group puts on a negative ad about a particular candidate. The ad may be true, false, or somewhat misleading. What is a journalist to do? Many people believe the journalist should just give time both to the ad and to the target’s response. I believe good journalism would do their best to get at the facts and then label the ad appropriately. (In the last election, I saw quite a number of cases of journalists doing just that, for which they are to be congratulated. May their number increase.)

And how do we filter for bias? Frankly I don’t think that is a problem these days. There are so many sources of information that it is quite easy to double check, or at least find alternative views. If we, as the consumers of information, don’t take advantage of that opportunity, we have only ourselves to blame.