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August 23, 2005
An Open Thread After a Closed OneSome people aren't too happy that I shut down the comments on the previous post by Austin Bay, Roll Forward: Why the Bush White House Needs the Press to Win the Big One. But in blogging, life goes on. So here's an open thread to talk about it. Or what Austin said.Some people (like the up and coming neo-neocon) aren’t too happy that I shut down the comments on the previous post, which was by guest writer Austin Bay: Roll Forward: Why the Bush White House Needs the Press to Win the Big One. (See other reactions by Neuro-conservative, Don’t Press, Don’t Think, and Norma, “what a hypocrite.”) But a weblog’s life goes on. So here’s an open thread to talk about it. Or what Austin Bay (“Weekly Standard writer, NPR commentator, Iraq War vet, Colonel in the Army Reserve, Republican, conservative, blogger with a lit PhD…”) said: “The Bush Administration must revitalize its public diplomacy, and that means ‘rolling forward’ and establishing a new, more mature relationship with the press…But the NY-DC-LA axis must also ‘roll forward.’ It’s in their institutional interest as well as simple survival.” And here’s my suggestion to participants in the previous thread. The bias discourse, however justified you may find it, is making many of you dumber by the day. You should be concentrating on getting more of your people into the mainstream media, and making great journalists out of them. And you should be discussing the bias the press should, in your considered view, have. Instead you have driven yourself into a logic loop. Deep down, you don’t believe in an objective press. Deep down you don’t believe our press is objective. Meanwhile, Dean Esmay has something to say about the big comment shut down at PressThink (after 168 posts): The criticism was withering and went on for days, and he finally said “screw this” and shut off the firehose. Maybe he was a little snippy about it. So talk to him. Thanks to Dean for his words, too. I think my point in the previous post could have been better put: say what you will about the performance of the press, Austin Bay is talking about what we need the big institutional press to do. Let’s make sure to have a discussion about that. If you’re suggestion is: we need the big, institutional press to die, fine. Maybe in the end it will. It’s an open question. This is an open thread. A PressThink sampler on the matter of “media bias.”
Posted by Jay Rosen at August 23, 2005 10:57 PM
Comments
I have always wondered why some much time is wasted on the "bias discourse." The question is not really "does the press have a liberal/conservative bias?" (whatever those labels can be said to mean these days -- and I don't think they mean much at all.) The interesting question is, if the press is biased, what difference does it make?. If the case is that the press has a liberal bias, then it is hard to look back on the Reagan Administration and the Bush Administrations and GOP majorities in the House and Senate and Governor's offices and imagine that it has made much of a difference. If you are old enough to remember back to when the press was part of "the establishment" and viewed by many as conservative the whole business seems a little silly. What we need the press to do is to tell the truth. The first step would be for the press and others to recognize that there is a truth to be told and this is harder and harder to do when so many respond with charges of agenda! agenda! to any set of facts that don't match their preconceived assumptions about the way the world works. Oliver Cromwell said it: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, please consider that you may be mistaken." Posted by: PRW at August 24, 2005 12:02 AM | Permalink Jay, What I want to know is, where do you draw the line between constructive presstalk and dumb bias course? I find myself quite mystified by how clear and intuitive the distinction seems to appear to you. From my perspective, Austin Bay is very articulate and he is very uncharacteristically diplomatic and inclusive. But at the end of the day, he is a man who makes his living as a professional right-wing media operative. He is uniquely ambitious in the sense that he thinks from the perspective of someone like Karen Hughes--about how to shape the original message-- than he does like Hugh Hewitt, someone who is concerned with how to spin the message what brung ya. But the three of them share essentially the same goals and biases, and every word Bay has to say on your blog is toward the end of advancing the same agenda Hughes and Hewitt are advancing. My question: Why are the neo-con trolls on your blog more annoying than Austin Bay? What makes Bay more than a super neo-con troll on steroids presenting his design for full-spectrum neo-con media dominance aside from his having better manners? Where is this mysterious line between constructive discussion about how to build a better neo-conservative media system, and brain dead neo-con bias criticism? Austin Bay is laying out his PR strategy for PROGRAMMING right-wing bias into press coverage. Why do you see Bay's PR strategy as a serious discussion about the future of the press and your commenters affirmation of the bias Bay self-consciously advances in his post--in precisely the manner he intended to elicit by what he wrote--as dumb bias discourse? Wasting my time reading a respectful and articulate neo-con plan for full-spectrum neo-con media dominance that is not as immediately self-destructive and reality-challenged as Karl Rove's totalitarian approach bores me with its relentless "media not following my agenda are broken media" ranting. Austin Bay's bias rant makes me feel dumber. Why do you post it? Why aren't you bored by it? Being annoyed with the commenters' bias-oriented responses to your posting Austin Bay's bias rant is like being annoyed that Yankees fans show up for Yankees games. Bay is playing the bias game, and when you put his post on your site, so are you. Why the judgmental praise and blame about commenters playing the game you started with your conservative friend? Posted by: Mark Anderson at August 24, 2005 3:11 AM | Permalink Mark, the trolls are more annoying because they keep saying the same thing over and over while Bay just said it once, and because when you distill his opus down to its essence — "The press should be an instrument of government policy so long as it's a government and a policy of which I approve" — it's considerably more honest than most similar polemics. You had to run a lot of traditional, dishonest press-baiting through the still to get to the moonshine, but at least it was actually there to be found. Jay's desire to find an honest debate with someone on the right is understandable. It's depressing that Bay chose to abuse Jay's hospitality, but oh well. Maybe John Cole will step up. Posted by: weldon berger at August 24, 2005 5:26 AM | Permalink Lesser of Two Evils? So what about the rumors of Google or Yahoo buying that big classifieds outfit over in Europe? Maybe the two giants will battle it out, leaving a niche for those who put the citizens above the bottom-line? One can hope, right? ;) I mean, it's spooky thinking of Google or MSN as a huge local information player. The fact that Gannett and Knight Ridder (and Tribune?) bought into Topix.net is interesting. It's another 'journalism algorhythm' type of site. Will the victor be the one who removes people from the process, from the newsroom? Or will the ones who include outside citizens in the process with the help of local people, human journalists, come out on top in the long run? -kpaul This is really an interesting blog to read, especially for someone without affiliation to the MSM. However, I often think about it as the "Buggywhip and Wagon Manufacturing Association" discussion about how they're going to reform their industry to get back the business from those upstart automobile makers. At times it's really kind of sad. If you want to change, yet fail to see that bias IS a big piece of your problem, the rest is futile. Posted by: Mike in Colorado at August 24, 2005 9:01 AM | Permalink FYI, you might want to fix two of the links in this post. First of all, the neo-neocon post you link to is a completely unrelated post on spambots, not either of the two recent posts that addresses these issues. Second, you give Neuro-Conservative's name as "Nero-Conservative," which I have to imagine would be a different kind of conservative entirely... Whoops, I see you've already fixed the neo-neocon link. Thanks! I don't have a problem with bias. We all have it. My only complaint about the MSM is they try to pretend they don't have any. I say, just let the reporters report, but also let them state their bias up front and let the readers decide. A democracy is best served by many voices, not a few. But it is also best served by truthfullness. If someone is reporting on the war that's fine. But they should also have a disclaimer about how they feel about the war. Much like a stock adviser on TV saying I think GM shares are a good buy and then in the same breath says, "I hold GM stock." That's just being upfront with people. That's all I ask. Give me your reporting but also give me your disclaimers. Perhaps journalists could have a web site where they list their bias on Bush, the war, Cindy Sheehan, and alien abductions. "Instead you have driven yourself into a logic loop. Deep down, you don’t believe in an objective press. Deep down you don’t believe our press is objective." -- JR Instructive on this point is Nick Lemann's profile of Hugh Hewitt in the current New Yorker. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at August 24, 2005 11:14 AM | Permalink Jay, "And here’s my suggestion to participants in the previous thread. The bias discourse, however justified you may find it, is making many of you dumber by the day. You should be concentrating on getting more of your people into the mainstream media, and making great journalists out of them." I AM one of "my" people in the press (what are we, an ethnic group?). I tried to relate my impressions of someone who is IN THE BUSINESS who sees bias all the time. What I got was dismissal as some sort of delusional nut-job, mostly from a guy who has shown himself to be wholly unobjective in his owns words, printed originally on this very site. We both know who we are talking about. But I am not going to argue with you. There is no point: "And you should be discussing the bias the press should, in your considered view, have." This is a great example. It is a complete misrepresentation of what was written. Actually its worse then a misrepresentation. Its fabrication. Again, I have no need to argue with you. Everyone can reread it for themselves. Let them decide. The emperor truly has no clothes, but instead of no one willing to tell him, he is of no mind to hear it.
Posted by: Captain Wrath at August 24, 2005 1:33 PM | Permalink This is completely an aside, but it has to be done. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at August 24, 2005 1:56 PM | Permalink Wow. I feel that I've just stumbled into Delusion City. "Apolitical" reporters, indeed. Posted by: mac at August 24, 2005 3:57 PM | Permalink I'm with Mike in CO. This thread and the last one have the tone of buggy whip manufacturers debating how to improve their product. Here's what Bill Quick had to say at his blog in response to our genial PressThink host: What I know about technology is that it destroys centralized systems... What will remain is the talents and the expertise of individuals, and the intelligent systems that will be developed to aggregate them and provide "trust product" to those who will consume news-based products. The news information caravan of the future has moved on, and the bias and MSM dogs bark. Posted by: kilgore trout at August 24, 2005 4:52 PM | Permalink Recognizing that you are biased is a good thing. Doing your best to tell the truth is your (or our) intellectual responsibility. The way to reconcile those two points is not to say "I'm biased and I'm proud", but to say "I'm biased and so I must make additional effort to make sure that I'm confirming things that agree with my bias, make an additional effort to find sources that disagree with my bias, make an honest effort to report them fairly, and give thought to what must be done to be a trustworthy source in the face of that bias." You got off on a better track this time: you quote Bay's point as: “The Bush Administration must revitalize its public diplomacy, and that means ‘rolling forward’ and establishing a new, more mature relationship with the press…But the NY-DC-LA axis must also ‘roll forward.’ It’s in their institutional interest as well as simple survival.” I don't care if you think it's fair to criticize "bias", frankly. But it's in the profesional mainstream press's self interest to figure out why they have so lost the confidence of the people who are buying their output. There are some obvious things that can be done: - be careful that you aren't using the adjective "conservative" any more often than the word "liberal," (and for some instruction on that, look at how often Judicial Watch is described as "conservative" when attacking a Democrat, but merely as a "watchdog group" when attacking a Republican.) - break the habit of thinking that because someone disagrees with you, they must be mentally insufficient (Jay, you might want to rethink "making yourselves dumber".) - care more about trying to find truth than which side you're on; criticize Paul Krugman's falsehoods as well as Rush Limbaugh's. If the mainstream press can put their greater resources and existing infrastructure to work in a way that increases the currently abysmal level of trust they receive, there may be a place for them. Otherwise, they're lost. If's come down to that: reform or die. Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at August 24, 2005 5:02 PM | Permalink The problem is not one of bias, but one of quality. We can all cite examples of they said this, but not that and then point to bias as the reason. The second anyone points to bias they are inviting victim status. I believe that the MSM truly tries to validate everything they report to fit the story they are telling. They just don't tell all sides of the story. This is an example of poor quality journalism, not bias. In my mind it is that journalists try to "make a difference". It is just as important to report the things you don't find as much as the things you do. However, the things you don't find don't sell newspapers or attract viewers. But not reporting them at all does not present a full picture of what is happening. That is what is reflected in the lack of quality in recent reporting. One word: pitiful. I didn't participate in the now-closed thread (too busy creeping out people other than Mr. Rosen), although I wrote about it with some amazement on my own weblog. To tell the truth I thought the ex-thread was getting a bit silly, especially once it got to the "press hates the military" thing. The only worthwhile thing about it was that it exposed the demons lurking inside the participants (including and especially Rosen), culminating in a weird display of pique. Fine, we all have bad days. But then why open a thread to people he basically regards as sad dupes? Why the bitter, chiding intro to an open thread that he didn't want to open in the first place? Was he stung enough by criticism from the likes of neo-neocon and norma that he decided, grudgingly, he had to do damage control? And that he had to do it in such a way as to appear ridiculous? Here's what he could have said: "This discussion hasn't been going in the direction I wanted and some of the important ideas are getting overlooked. I'm going to close this out and spend some time thinking over how to re-address the subject...blah blah blah." (Which he's done before.) For that matter, if all Rosen wants to talk about is the stupidity of Bush's "rollback" strategy, he doesn't need Austin Bay, who did plenty of digressing of his own in his piece for PressThink (and also closed his thread, but without blowing a gasket). But if he wants to talk about rollback and have a very controlled discussion in which everyone genuflects at this utterly brilliant notion of Jay's, he should just change this to an invite-only roundtable or start banning people vigorously. I'm not being facetious, I've seen forums that were ruled with an iron fist and benefited from that. I'm not sure Rosen has the temperament to do it well but at the very least people he doesn't like--people with that nasty right wing disease of the mind--will quickly get the message and go elsewhere. What frustrates people, including me, is to see the promise made of a really open exchange about the press (and that will include noise, it always does) and instead get "embarrassing" histrionics and condescension from someone who can't let go of the need to control the dialogue he keeps asking for. So here's a thought that crossed my mind during the cool-down phase. Many posters, here and elsewhere, seem to take it as a given that if soldiers report conditions in Iraq one way, and reporters see it another way, then the reporters are wrong. What makes that so obvious? Clearly, soldiers have a better handle on certain aspects of war than reporters ever could. But it's not clear (at least to me) that they necessarily have a better handle on the war as a whole. Military historians have known for eons that individual soldiers' accounts of battle vary so widely that they can't be used reliably to trace the course of battle unless they are put in the context of numerous other accounts. That isn't because soldiers are incompetent or liars but because war is so complicated, scary and confusing that even soldiers a few hundred yards from each other on a battlefield may come away with vastly different experiences. If that's true in a single battle, then it's true by many multiples in war as a whole. Soldiers are certainly no less biased, and not necessarily any better informed, than reporters who try to do on a daily basis what historians take years to assemble. So why assume that soldiers are more likely to get it right than reporters are? Don't say it's because reporters never served. My three years of active duty did not even remotely prepare me to understand the shape of an entire war. Posted by: David Crisp at August 24, 2005 6:00 PM | Permalink OK, I'll bite. Let's work on Mr. Bay's question, as Mr. Rosen frames it. If the Bush administration believes the most important legacy they can leave is continuity in foreign policy, then they need to try to re-engage not only the institutional press, but a significant portion of the public. Members of the administration may believe that they are communicating perfectly clearly. But as I'm sure any human has experienced, sometimes you understand what you're talking about but the listener doesn't. That's the signal to ask "Where did I lose you?" and start over again from there. In a way, I think the bigfoot press is hungry for this sort of discussion. It's clear that there's a search on for people outside the administration who can explain the thinking of those inside it, because reporters can't get anyone inside to explain. (I saw a story on this somewhere recently, about the meaning of the phrase "a source close to the administration.") There's a phrase I use for this when I'm dealing with newsmakers who refuse to explain themselves. "I'd like for you to treat me like a grown-up." When officials make an announcment and then act without much explanation, it's hard to tell their story well. It's much better if they explain their reasoning, tell you about the options they considered and discarded, share some background documents, etc. Yes, treating reporters like grown-ups means you legitimize them. This may not sound like a good idea to you if: Although if you believe the last, It would be interesting to hear what any administration's media strategy should be after the revolution. Posted by: Jeff Amy at August 24, 2005 6:06 PM | Permalink It's great you have an open thread here, Jay -- I really appreciate you putting up with the abuse your conservative readers, like me, give you. Dean Esmay's comments defending you, about being tired, were seconded by Steven Den Beste. Please read David Frum's Another Lost Opportunity about how Bush failed to say much in his last big speech. Lots of emails complaining about Bush repeating repeated repeats being booooring. You'd like it! Funny how Instapundit talks about Bush PR failing; and some Bush supporters almost echo Dean -- "he's tired."
You know that an honest, objective Free Press kills more US soldiers in Iraq than does Public Relations for Bush. I support such a Free Press, and the additional US deaths, but accept there is a cost. In lives. But Public Relations against Bush kills even more US soldiers in Iraq. This enrages me, and makes it hard be anything but cynical about a press that won't even try to "measure the difference" they're making in Iraq.
I see on the right sidebar: Psst...The Press is a Player (in the campaign). As it was in Vietnam. Whose side is the Press playing for? How do know? Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at August 24, 2005 6:09 PM | Permalink David Crisp asks: "So why assume that soldiers are more likely to get it right than reporters are?" I think it might be because reporters in Iraq admit they are too afraid to leave their hotels and the Green Zone, and soldiers are out in the streets. But for some reason, reporters will try to convince us they have a better view of the war in Iraq reporting from their hotel rooms, than from being embedded with the military, because Gaia forbid, their "objectivity" might be compromised. What does this say about the press and their sacred "ethics?" Mostly that they don't give a damn about informing the public. A recent poll confirms this. Posted by: kilgore trout at August 24, 2005 6:26 PM | Permalink Once again (how many times, O Lord ?) Posted by: Steve Lovelady at August 24, 2005 7:34 PM | Permalink "So why assume that soldiers are more likely to get it right than reporters are?" The point is not to assume that soldiers are more likely to get it right. The point is that what the soldiers think and see and know should be a part of the reporting mix. It's a huge part of the story. Talking once in a blue moon about how their families are coping back home and playing up the suffering angle is not sufficient and not doing them or the story justice. Many of us who are critical of the press get accused of wanting the press to not report any bad news but just highlight good things. That is untrue. What we want, and what we've said over and over again that we want, is for the press to broaden their reporting way beyond the narrow scope they cover now. Why don't we regularly hear from U.S. soldiers, from Iraqis on the front lines both literally and figuratively, and from others risking everything to make that country a better place (including both the good and bad things they see)? We need perspective, big picture perspective, to judge how things are going and mostly what we get is crisis-of-the-day body counts or "the country just might descend into civil war" type reporting. It's been "descending into civil war" for so long now that the term is meaningless. It's just Chicken Little stuff about the sky falling that's easy to tack onto the end of a news report but provides mostly heat and very little light. It doesn't give us enough material to decide for ourselves what the big picture means. That's why we need the soldiers and others. To round out the particular narrow perspective most journalists (perhaps by virtue of the logistics of their profession) are trapped in. Is that too much to ask for or too hard to understand? Posted by: kcom at August 24, 2005 8:05 PM | Permalink Steve Lovelady writes No matter how often Jay tries to stretch the rubber band, it snaps back to its default position:I don't know any other way to put this, so I'm just going to be blunt. This is a lie. No one has ever said they aren't biased and the media is. No one! Only a fool would say such a thing. (Clearly Steve thinks many are fools, but that's only his opinion.) However, journalists' constant mantra, "We're not biased!", smacks of Macbethian blindness. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's see if we can begin a honest dialogue. (I have very little hope of it, but I am willing to try, one more time.) What the (so-called) "right" is demanding is not bias, it's balance. For example - stop calling murdering thugs "insurgents". They clearly aren't. Any fool can see that, and using the word "insurgents" decreases the credibility of the story. "Insurgents" might have been the right word early on, but it clearly is not any more. They're also not "rebels", for God's sake! The use of these words implies an agenda. If your style guides are telling you to use those words, then get new style guides! Stop using anonymous sources. Nobody believes them any more because it's obvious they have an agenda - both to promote the administration story and to denigrate it. Journalists might think it's "sexy", but it is not. If someone doesn't have the guts to put their name behind a story, then the story shouldn't be written. Period. Not using anonymous sources would probably increase press credibility 10 percentage points in short order. Stop quoting political flacks and presenting it as "news". It isn't. It's political bs. Everybody knows it. Saying "Senator So and So said this" is meaningless. It's the Senator's opinion. Get some facts and present those as news. And my personal pet peeve - stop reporting US military deaths as if they occurred in a vacuum. 7 Marines were killed in western Iraq when a bomb went off is meaningless without some context. Were they sitting around smoking cigars when a bomb suddenly appeared out of nowhere? Or were they fighting insurgents and 12 of them were killed in the same operation? (A big part of this problem is the media's completely irrational fear of "embedding". Some of the absolutely stellar reporting in Iraq has come from embeds because the story has context.) That's a start. If this doesn't degenerate into another food fight, I'll add some more. The reporter in the parable didn't need to go with the sniper unless he wanted to do a sniper procedural. Snipers shooting at unarmed and unknowing civilians don't have a particularly complex job, so there isn't much to report. However, having gone, the reporter has no guilt at the sniper's actions. The sniper was going to kill whomever he was going to kill--whenever the whim struck him--and making the reporter feel guilty was just a little icing on the cake for the bastard. If a reporter or a news organization claims to be internationalist, then they don't have much room to complain if somebody calls them un or non American. The reason to mention Saddaam's crimes in the context of, say, Abu Ghraib, is not to say, he's worse. It's not to mitigate. It's not to excuse. It's not to say, what we did was bad but the result is a net improvement. It's to say, hey, you guys who are complaining about Abu Ghraib, where were you when Saddaam was doing his thing? Nowhere to be found? Then permit us to doubt the sincerity of your professed concern. Lacking such evidence, we must believe your concern is with something else, like trying to discredit the whole effort. Posted by: RichardAubrey at August 24, 2005 9:02 PM | Permalink Two questions, stemming from two distinct issues: 1) Is there no such thing as objectivity -- as opposed, i.e., to "bias" -- in any sense of the word, and even as an ideal? 2) Regardless of whether or not objectivity is possible, is in fact the "press", or -- slightly different focus -- the most culturally dominant or "elite" media, biased in a broadly systemic or patterned manner? I realize that these aren't questions that Jay Rosen asked Austin Bay to talk about, but I think they get at issues that underlie the topic and that have inspired the most heated debate in the comments. And I think at least some of the waste heat derives from their confusion. I also realize that the broad issues of bias, "mission", objectivity, "making a difference", etc. have been around a long time, and that Rosen has written quite a bit about them. I realize that they've become mere fodder in the various political and cultural wars. But I wonder, naively perhaps, if it really is beyond the scope of human intelligence to make any headway in at least clarifying the two questions posed above, in ways that that might be more or less agreeable across the board? And if we could do that, wouldn't we get somewhere? Posted by: Larry at August 24, 2005 9:18 PM | Permalink Steve, I'd dearly love to see what Austin Bay said get discussed. As I understand it, and as Jay restated his points, they would appear to be: (1) Bush's interests will be better served if he does a better job of communicating through the press, but they are hindered in this because they (along with something like two out of three citizens, according to polls) no longer believe they can trust the press to present their side fairly. (2) The press's interests will be better served if they can re-establish the trust they've lost, and thereby both have better access to sources in the Administration and have a product that more members of the public want to buy. We can argue why the perception of bias exists, and if you'd like to go down that path, I suppose I'd go along. But I don't think that serves you or Jay well, honestly. While we had that argument, the press would still be losing mind-share and major newspapers and magazines would still be struggling for readership. The issue isn't whether or not there's bias: the issue is that the mainstream press doesn't appear to be trustworthy --- and trust is all you have to sell. Without trust, the mainstream press is poor blank verse. You're on a sinking ship, man. You can argue about the unfairness of it later: you'd better figure out how to plug the leak. Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at August 24, 2005 9:40 PM | Permalink Kilgore Trout, What poll would that be? Posted by: David Crisp at August 24, 2005 9:55 PM | Permalink Larry, I'll take a stab at your questions. 1) Yes, I think there is, but not in the strained way that the present media defines it. For example, you can be perfectly objective about the fact that a man is a serial murderer if the facts support it. You can be objective about the fact that Islamists who murder women and children are not insurgents. 2) Frankly, I think the (what I call) old media is biased, but not the way that some would define it. I think their bias is toward two things that, in my view, are antithetical to good journalism - a) they want "to make a difference" when what they should be doing is reporting facts and b) they believe their role is adversarial when, in my view, it should be impartial. The former tends to cloud one's judgment about what matters in a story, and the latter tends to steer the story in the direction opposite from the perceived adversary. Much of what people define or label as "bias" stems from these two, in my view, flawed visions of what a journalist should be, but is perceived as political bias. I'm not denying there is political bias in the media. There clearly is. Multiple polls and studies have shown this. But I think the political bias has been overplayed and the real root of the problem has not been addressed. Automatic adversarialness [no trademark, use it if you wish] presumes the institution being reported upon is wrong, or at least fudging the facts about why it's doing whatever it's doing. The problem: The institution might be right. The adversary position--paradigm--will not report that, because the facts don't fit the theory. And the facts have to give. It's not necessarily, stress the necessarily, that the journo is lying. It's that he has a paradigm, meme, template, and the facts will dammit fit. Of course, us wingnuts think the choice of when to be adversarial is sort of predetermined. Just for the fun of it, during the last presidential campaign, while people were turning Bush's military records upside down and even forging the most desireable ones, did anybody in the MSM challenge Kerry to release his? Hmm? Posted by: RichardAubrey at August 24, 2005 10:39 PM | Permalink "If someone doesn't have the guts to put their name behind a story, then the story shouldn't be written." "If someone doesn't have the guts to put their real name behind a comment to Press Think, then that comment should not be written or posted. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at August 24, 2005 10:41 PM | Permalink This came in the mail. Seemed pretty intelligent to me: Many Americans percieve that the Main Stream Bi-Coastal Press acts as a fifth column irregardless of the intentions of reporters. Notwithstanding good intentions, it is the resulting product that matters to most Americans. Why do many Americans have this perception? I made the same point about "citizen of the world" here, and I criticized the "make a difference" philosophy here. Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 24, 2005 10:51 PM | Permalink From a speech by Donald Rumsfeld in Dallas Aug. 2. "Indeed, the murders of innocent Iraqi citizens now appear to be hardening the majority of the Iraqi people's determination to defeat al-Qaida and to defeat the insurgents, and to succeed in building a free country." In June, Rumsfeld used 'insurgent' three times in brief remarks to the Senate House Services Committee. Take it up with Rummy, antimedia. It's what the military and the government have used to refer to the forces opposed to a new Iraqi government since before there was one. Which is, by definition, what an insurgent is. Any press agenda is in your mind. This is why I find the whole 'bias' argument empty. The press largely reports things as they are said. There is no quarterly meeting to determine which usage/facts will best further the cause of liberal ideology. If the commander at the press briefing or Rumsfeld or the president calls them insurgents, you write 'insurgents' in your notebook. But because it doesn't fit your perspective of the moment, it's bias. And, Kilgore, for your edification, life in the Green Zone is dangerous. That's where the car bombs go off. That's where journalists and diplomats are kidnapped and sometimes killed. Yet they do go out with army patrols. They go to cities other than Baghdad, often traveling in packs for safety. Or they work with local stringers who can travel more easily. And reporters are the targets of IEDs. So they can do their job and you can take snotty shots at them. To suggest they're reporting from their hotel rooms solely to avoid danger is a flight of fantasy I don't think you want to take. Posted by: Dave McLemore at August 24, 2005 10:57 PM | Permalink Jay's latest post is certainly an interesting one, and especially so in trying to come to grips with the meaning of "objectivity". There are still nation-states, after all, and cultures that adhere to them, or to particular groupings of them. And these cultures are all that we have to define the values and beliefs that we need to structure the world, which structures or conditions our perceptions. I.e., I doubt that you could tell a comprehensible story of any kind, however "factual", without making use of this to some extent always parochial cultural baggage, and to think otherwise is to believe in the fiction that there exists some supra-human stance outside of all actually-existing cultures. It's not just that there is no "world" of which to be a citizen, in other words, it's that there's no world culture of which to be a member. This presents a real dilemma, and the necessity of a real decision, for news media that purport to serve the entire globe from a single, consistent stance. You can try to duck the problem for a while, but when war comes -- conflicts that involve whole nations and cultures, and their bedrock beliefs -- then you're in a spot. So maybe the real problem with people like Bob Franken is that they're pretending (to themselves, I don't doubt) that they can attain or even strive for an impossible, or inhuman, kind of "objectivity". And maybe that pretense, or bad faith, actually serves as cover for an underlying commitment to another aim altogether -- to what Richard Arbrey (see also antimedia) calls "adversarialness" within their own state/culture. Posted by: Larry at August 24, 2005 11:50 PM | Permalink Steve: "If someone doesn't have the guts to put their real name behind a comment to Press Think, then that comment should not be written or posted." Well, Steve, I'm not sure who you're referring to, but I'll note that my real name is Charlie, my real email address is part of the information I give this system, and from it and the name I use, you can deduce not only my real last name but where I live. Now, have you simply decided to establish that you have no intention of dealing with the substantive comments of Austin Bay or anyone else? Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at August 25, 2005 12:13 AM | Permalink Larry. Forgive me if I misunderstand your last comment. If I get you right, you think journos may be using some pretense of objectivity, or bad faith, to cover up for or justifiy adversarialness. Or you think I do. I think the use of adversarialness could be the cover for another agenda. Reporting, say, Abu Ghraib on the front page daily for six weeks straight while missing stories on US soldiers helping Iraqi civilians and security forces. The excuse could be speaking truth to power, but the result/possibly genuine motivation could just as easily be to discredit the war effort. After all, if journos get out, or go with US troops, it's possible they could write about something favorable, if they wished or if they thought their editors would run it. Not to cheerlead for us, but not to cheerlead against us, either. What kind of adversarialness would generate a story on US medics treating terrorist wounded with professional care? Or Iraqi civilians? Geez. I can't think of any, either. Posted by: RichardAubrey at August 25, 2005 12:18 AM | Permalink This presents a real dilemma, and the necessity of a real decision, for news media that purport to serve the entire globe from a single, consistent stance... I agree with almost every word of that, Larry. You make excellent points. It might interest you to know that in 1999 I wrote a book about the problem. It was called, What Are Journalists For? meaning: what do they affirm, stand for, and what are they willing, in the end, to stand up for? I added a question mark to the title of my book because I did not think it easy to give a good answer. For the reasons you mention. There's also a critique of "adversarialness" in there. I questioned whether CNN's Bob Franken understood what he was saying, when he argued that as a journalist reporting in Iraq he operated as a "citizen of the world," because his statement (in the circumstances he was in...) struck me as absurd. Any political sociologist or cultural historian would, I think, agree with several posters here that professional journalism is a national "formation" (an academic term), and so the question of its relationship--or loyalty--to the nation is deep, serious and unavoidable. If you blow it, you lose authority and ultimately market share. Technology can force these issues forward, and I think most of us feel it has lately. I agree, in particular, that those who have tried to avoid it with various strategems of neutrality are paying the price. On the other hand they were also wary of some very real dangers in appearing to be "for" anything at all. The risks of claiming no position ("objectivity") never, I think, occured to them. But we can see them more clearly now. If you claim objectivity as basic to your authority, then every time you fail at it, you weaken your base. I also think, reaching back to the previous discussion, that critics of the press--and any dissatisified citizen or user I consider a "critic"--ought to know what they want journalists to be for, and why that's a good thing to ask of the national or local press. Some disagreements that come out as "bias" may actually be about differences in what can and should be affirmed by journalists. Anyway, the point of writing a book called, "What Are Journalists For?" was to raise these questions, and show how I answered them, in the years 1989-99. Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 25, 2005 12:24 AM | Permalink Steve wrote "If someone doesn't have the guts to put their name behind a story, then the story shouldn't be written." "If someone doesn't have the guts to put their real name behind a comment to Press Think, then that comment should not be written or posted.Steve was referring to me, Charlie. He thinks he's being cute. For someone who claims to be a college grad and supposedly world-experienced, you would think the guy could figure out that, if you can visit my blog and read my posts, I'm not exactly an unknown person. The difference between an anonymous source whose identity and credentials are never revealed and a writer using a nom de plume apparently escapes his sharply sophisticated mind. However, if Jay wants to ban me for not revealing my real name, that's his loss, not mine. Readers know where to find me. As I've said many times, the reason I write anonymously is because it's the ideas that matter, not the identity of the writer. I have yet to see Steve engage those rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks. Since every man puts his pants on one leg at a time, I don't see the point of knowing a man's name rather than his thoughts. If I was looking for friends, I'd ask their name. But Jay's blog and these discussions are supposed to be about ideas. If we can get back to those it would be nice, but I somehow doubt it. Posted by: antimedia at August 25, 2005 12:32 AM | Permalink Okay, I think I take your point, Richard. I'd say that the Adversarial Role is something journalism has adopted since, roughly, Vietnam. I think it's something journos are aware of, and in fact proud of -- perhaps, as you say, in the guise of "speaking truth to power" or some similar formula. But, since it conflicts with other commitments, to neutrality, "objectivity", etc., they can't really espouse it in an open or official maner (except those in fringe, advocacy media). Hence the need for some sort of cover. This is distinct, however, from the whole more controversial issue of systemic bias, which, assuming it existed, would account for reporters looking, consciously or unconsciously, to find material that would discredit a war they perceive, for political/ideological reasons, to be wrong and doomed. That's, as they say, another story. Posted by: Larry at August 25, 2005 12:39 AM | Permalink I'd be interested, Jay, in your response to my two points above, namely that adversarialness and utopianism, if you will, contribute to the distrust of journalists by the public. Agree? Disagree? Why? Posted by: antimedia at August 25, 2005 12:43 AM | Permalink I think that adversarial-ness, in the style employed by professional journalists, contributes to public mistrust (but then journalists know that: "they hate us when their ox is gored" is a common newsroom belief.) The view from nowhere--which is utopian, in my view--has also hurt. Then we agree. What would be the solution? Do J-schools need to change what they teach? How they teach? Does the problem not originate in the J-schools? If not, can J-schools still contribute to a solution? How endemic is the problem? How likely is it that change can occur? Another thought - "they hate us when their ox is gored" certainly applies to the one whose ox is being gored, but if journalists apply that thinking to the consumers of their product, then doesn't that tend to make them discount all criticism? For example, I've seen more than one journalist, in your comment threads, make the common statement along the lines of - both the right and the left critcize us, therefore we must be doing something right - which completely ignores the possibility that the basis of the criticism coming from opposite spectrums may have a common root. Your thoughts? I wrote a post about the failures of the Watergate myth and the implications for journalism education. So far that post is what I have to say on your questions. I don't think the press is very adversarial, by the way. Not really. But there is no question that it thinks it should be. And there is no question that an adversarial style comes through the television set and at big press rituals. Thank you, Jay, for opening up this thread and especially for the rich set of links to go through. I have been working my way through them, but I have not had a chance to read them all (much less their subsidiary links), so please consider my comments provisional: First off, I find myself in substantial agreement with your e-mailer, Scott Harris. The idea of the being a citizen of the world is: a) nonsensical, as there is no such world government issuing, passports, press credentials, or protection of free speech; b) intrinsically undemocratic if not anti-democratic; c) not likely to be popular domestically, as an overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves to be citizens of the USA; d) not deserving of Americans’ trust in reporting on War on Terror, as most Americans trust that their country is morally superior to the enemy. Most importantly with respect to the original topic of Austin Bay’s post, it would make absolutely no sense for the Bush Administration to entrust such an entity with special privileges in the setting of America’s destiny. To the extent the press holds this attitude, they should not expect to be treated any more warmly by George Bush than Jacques Chirac. So, one aspect of the “religion” of journalism, as Jay has described it, is this “view from nowhere.” While this perspective is consistent with the dominant myth of objectivity, it is also important to point out that it is more consistent with left/liberal ideology than with conservative thought. (If this does not seem obvious, I would be happy to elaborate in future posts.) Note that I am specifically not trying to play “gotcha” in a bias game; I am merely trying to demonstrate one reason why many conservatives might observe the effects of the-view-from-nowhere religion in action and shout “liberal bias.” Moreover, the objectivity religion seems more likely to be a comfortable fit for someone who views concepts like good and evil, as applied by George Bush (and most Americans) to the terror war, to be Manichean if not downright primitive. If you view the enemy as evil, certain “balancing” techniques, commonplace in the coverage of this war, would never occur to you. How often did the White House press corps challenge FDR with Goebbels’ perspective or with fears of inflaming the German street? Again, forgive my reference to a website maintained by the players of the bias game, but I would interpret this report as an almost comical example of a bizarre ritual practiced by followers of the objectivity religion (in this instance almost literally a cargo cult religion): (T)he Taliban . . . claiming, first, that the United States was trying to poison food. The United States, at its briefing, saying that in fact, the concern was that the Taliban would be poisoning the food so it could blame the United States. So you can see the kind of battle that was going on. The U.S. offers no proof of its claims, the Taliban offers no proof of its claim. The reporter: Bob Franken! If you believe, as George Bush and most conservatives do, that our Islamofascist enemies are morally equivalent to Nazi’s, then certain forms of reporting (including the sniper parable) become unthinkable. And many forms of reporting, such as the identification of heroic acts by American soldiers, would naturally occur to broaden the horizon of Iraq reporting (think Iwo Jima photo vs Eddie Adams photo). Ernie Pyle was not a citizen of the world. I think there are several other governing myths in this religion, which perhaps Jay has also written about, which owe their intellectual provenance to the historical left. The so-called skepticism of the reporter (usually applied to American institutions, as opposed to say, the UN) actually seems to me to be a form of utopian cynicism, if I may coin a phrase. I believe that the tendency to somewhat relentlessly criticize the shortcomings of American policy and actions stems from a deeper utopian belief that man and his institutions are perfectible. Similarly, the philosophical origins of the idea of “fighting for the oppressed underdog,” are certainly not to be found in Edmund Burke. More importantly, it begs the question of who is to be identified as the underdog. Who decides, for example, that the prisoners at Gitmo were the underdogs who needed defending? To return to Austin Bay’s original post, he was operating under the principle that all participants shared an underlying set of goals, and needed to take steps to repair the dysfunctional relationship that impeded the achievement of those goals. It is not yet clear that his underlying assumption was correct. As a conservative, I do not believe, for example, that Bush should work more closely with the UN on terror policy – I believe that in many cases he should work around (where possible), and against (where necessary) the United Nations, which is demonstrably not seeking the same goals or valuing the same ideals as the US. Finally, I know that I am far from alone amongst conservatives in thinking that the most decisive factors in the outcome of war are belief and will: belief in the rightness of your cause, and the will to keep fighting. I believe that Islamofascism represents an existential threat to our way of life, but that America will prevail as long as we maintain our belief and will. When Americans lost these two pillars of our fight in Vietnam, the war was lost, as General Giap has described in his memoirs. And many conservatives believe that the role of the American press was critical to that loss, as has been described here, here, and here. Please be aware that the passion of the bias gamers of the right derives in no small part from the fear that history will repeat, with much greater consequences. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at August 25, 2005 1:16 AM | Permalink I also think [...] that critics of the press--and a dissatisified citizen or user I consider a "critic"--ought to know what they want journalists to be for, and why that's a good thing to ask. Some disagreements that come out as "bias" may actually be about differences in what can and should be affirmed by the press. "Dissatisfied user" fits me pretty well. I know precisely what I want from the press, and I'm not getting it, so I don't consume or pay for its product. Instead I find other sources, or do without. It comes to this: I can't be everywhere. Sometimes I need, and very often I want, to know what's happening in places I can't be, because I can't afford it or I'm in some other place that's also important or of interest. So what I want of the press is to be my eyes and ears elsewhere. By aggregating all the contributions from advertisers of women's underwear and different sorts of soap, and all those quarters dropped in newspaper machines, the press can afford to send reporters who will then report back what's going on. It's also less intrusive on the scene to have one or two people, perhaps with cameras, than to have everybody who's interested go look for themselves. And if you have any agenda or intentions other than seeing what went on and reporting back, you've failed me. Bias makes it worse, but the failure at the beginning is the "make a difference"/"speak truth to power" agenda, and fundamentally the whole "Fourth Estate" paradigm. If your self-image requires you to participate in the scene in any way, you are not a "reporter" -- you're an actor, and actors by definition have an agenda within the action. What you should be teaching your journalism students is invisibility. It isn't truly possible, but it ought to be the ideal -- the reporter should not be attempting to influence the action, or participating in it in any way; he or she should be a fly on the wall, invisible and impalpable, simply telling the rest of us what happened and what is to be found there. We have to make decisions, and need data. Supplying data is what the press should be all about. As I said, bias makes it worse -- but the opening wedge is journalist as participant. Several people have remarked that everybody is biased, reporters no less than anyone; that's true enough, but once the fatal decision to join the action is made, the journalist's bias leads him or her to choose a side and promote it. The data I get is then filtered through a model that includes the journalist as one of the actors on the scene, and that contaminates the data, often beyond usefulness. Reporters are useful. They tell me what happened, and I can decide what it means to me. Journalists are an insult. They tell me what it means, implying that I'm too stupid to figure it out. We have a surfeit of journalists, but reporters are fairly thin on the ground. How about training up some reporters, Jay? Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at August 25, 2005 1:30 AM | Permalink "I'm not exactly an unknown p"erson." Fine, then use your name here. It's not that you have to. The rules of the forum still allow for titles like yours. I know I would take what you have to say more seriously and I think most readers would-- including you, if the roles were reversed. "The difference between an anonymous source whose identity and credentials are never revealed and a writer using a nom de plume apparently escapes his sharply sophisticated mind." Mine too. But anyway, his point was not that there aren't differences between the two uses, but that we mistrust the two (or apply a discount rate) for the same reasons. Lack of accountability. Unwillingness to risk reputation. Now I do understand that when you make these points you are dissing James Madison and the Federalist Papers and all, but that's the price Jim, John & Alex sometimes have to pay for being cultural reference points... Ric: Thanks for your post. Way more interesting than another bias rant. Let me ask you a question: If you had the opportunity to advise Jim Lehrer just before he moderated and asked questions at a make or break Presidential debate, in addition to telling him to be careful not to take sides, would you say something like, "and remember this, Jim, you are not an actor in this event." And if you did say something like that, would it be true? Jay, you wrote "The difference between an anonymous source whose identity and credentials are never revealed and a writer using a nom de plume apparently escapes his sharply sophisticated mind." Mine too. But anyway, his point was not that there aren't differences between the uses, but that we mistrust the two (or apply a discount rate) for the same reasons.Somehow I think you jest. To be clear, you know nothing about an anonymous source except what the reporter tells you. You know everything you need to know about an anonymous writer because you can read what they've written. It's the difference between using a proxy to purchase an antique vase and buying directly from the seller. If a man is not his thoughts, then what is he? Would Jim, John and Alex's points have had the same power were their identities known at the time? They were very intelligent men. Their decision to use a nom de plume was deliberate and calculated, as is mine. (Not that I'm comparing myself with them, mind you.) If anyone wants to correspond with me privately, they can email me. I will answer. If you want to know what I think, you can read my blog. Nothing is hidden. My agenda is out in the open, for all to see, expressed in the preamble of my blog. In fact, I repeatedly warn my readers that I am biased and they should not take my word for things but read the same stories I'm commenting on and make their own judgments. How would knowing my name change a thing? (And just to settle any nerves, I am no one special. I'm not affiliated with any political party or journalism organization. I'm John Q. Public. No hidden agendas here. I have written professionally and been paid handsomely for it, but only in my field of expertise - computer security.) However, out of respect for you, if it bothers you that greatly, I'll bow out and never post here again. I can easily read your articles and comment on them on my own blog. I forgot to mention - you're free to discount my thoughts as well, if you truly think my anonymity lessons their value. However, I would point out that the world in which we live places far too much emphasis on titles and appearances and superficial reference points that have little to do with true worth. Since I work in academe (but am not an academic) I am very familiar with the aggrandizement of position rather than accomplishment. (And no, this is not meant as a slight toward you whatsoever. What I know of you I've read here, and I like the critical thinking and observational skills very much.) Your choice. I will leave if you so desire. Here is what I said: The rules of the forum allow for titles like yours. They are my rules. I would take your ideas a lot more seriously if you used your name. I don't think that's unclear at all. Oh, and the point you made here is one I have made many times myself. It is a logical error (and a political blunder) to conclude that criticism from both ends proves you are doing something right. It could mean you are doing everything wrong. Which is my final thought for the night. "It is a logical error (and a political blunder) to conclude that criticism from both ends proves you are doing something right. It could mean you are doing everything wrong." That may be the single most intelligent observation I have ever seen on this topic. Alas, it will likely fly right past a lot of people. Posted by: Dean Esmay at August 25, 2005 3:31 AM | Permalink However, if Jay wants to ban me for not revealing my real name, that's his loss, not mine. Readers know where to find me. As I've said many times, the reason I write anonymously is because it's the ideas that matter, not the identity of the writer. I have yet to see Steve engage those rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks. If you had the opportunity to advise Jim Lehrer just before he moderated and asked questions at a make or break Presidential debate, in addition to telling him to be careful not to take sides, would you say something like, "and remember this, Jim, you are not an actor in this event." No, because in the circumstance it would be wrong. As somebody pointed out above, the referees are part of the game. I think there are journalists who are perfectly capable of serving as referees. But remember: I can't attend that debate -- I don't have a press pass, and I'm not a member of any League of XX Voters. I need to know what's said there, how the candidates react to the questions and the audience. If the TV crew always focuses on Lehrer as he asks the question, then cuts to the candidate, that's one form of showing. If they show the candidate's expression as he hears the question, then cuts away to audience reaction as the response comes, that's another type. But if they always use one method with one candidate and the other with another one, then they're not reporting, they're participating, and distorting the data. I don't mean "objective". I agree with the folks who say that opinions are inevitable. What I'm saying is, the ideal should be report before opining. The opinion is useful. It's more data on the subject. But the original data is necessary, or the opinion has no context and the entire presentation is useless. If the ideal is the fly on the wall, "bias" will sort itself out. If the ideal is participation, bias inevitably and irretrievably corrupts the data and makes the press useless. Declining readership and viewership should tell you the public's judgement on how you're doing in that respect, hmm? Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at August 25, 2005 8:22 AM | Permalink Bias/Schmias! The dissatisfaction with MSM is evident in the site meter readings of Blogs: Belomont Club = 7.9 million This is just a quick sampling. Posted by: Shekel at August 25, 2005 9:10 AM | Permalink You left out PressThink: 1.0 million. Here's Scott Johnson at Powerline today: For a serious consideration of the press's Iraq war coverage, see Austin Bay's "Roll forward: Why the Bush White House needs the press to win the big one" at Jay Rosen's Pressthink. This is an important piece. In a message to us, Austin adds: I don't think they got my memo. (Of course, Powerline doesn't allow comments.) Ric: I asked my question because you wrote, "If your self-image requires you to participate in the scene in any way, you are not a 'reporter' -- you're an actor, and actors by definition have an agenda within the action." The case of Jim Lehrer and the Presidential debate suggests there are situations where the journalist is inevitably an actor even if the same journalist is careful not to advance anyone's agenda. (And if you've ever met Jim Lehrer, as I have, his passion for being agendaless is quite obvious.) Saying, "I'm not a part of this event" doesn't help him know what to do, although saying, "I am not the star of this event" does. Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 25, 2005 10:01 AM | Permalink From antimedia: "To be clear, you know nothing about an anonymous source except what the reporter tells you. You know everything you need to know about an anonymous writer because you can read what they've written." That is a bulls-eye in describing the apples and oranges difference between the two situations. We don't need to know the identities of opinion writers to judge the logic and strength of their arguments. Their arguments will stand and fall on their own. I don't see how not knowing the true identity of a writer is going to weaken the logic of the argument he is presenting (as long as he is not introducting new facts into the argument). By definition, it can't. However, when someone is presenting facts, the situation is 180 degrees the opposite. We have to know their identity because we have to know the reliability of the facts they are attempting to introduce into the public discourse. We need to know where they are coming from in both the literal and figurative senses. That is why anonymous sources are problematic and why discounting facts from them, to whatever degree, is entirely rational. That skepticism was proven entirely justifiable when the identity of Dan Rather's "unimpeachable" source was revealed, for instance. What I don't understand is the confusion between the two cases. We are are not being offered facts from an opinion writer, we are being offered an argument. The logic of the argument wouldn't change even if another name was put on it. To use an analogy, Jay, are you saying all the great movies written by black-listed writers in Hollywood under other names (sometimes even award winners) were less good because we didn't know the true identities of the authors? Posted by: kcom at August 25, 2005 12:02 PM | Permalink I don't think it's humanly possible not to be involved in some stories. Recall Walter Cronkite announcing the news that John Kennedy was dead. Reporters are sometimes placed in ethical dilemmas the likes of which most people will never encounter. Do they try to save someone's life? Or report the story? If they get involved, will it color their report in a biased way? To ask a reporter to always be dispassionate is to ask the impossible. Asking them to be fair and report the entire context of the story is another matter..... Posted by: antimedia at August 25, 2005 12:14 PM | Permalink Charlie -- Hold off on the life jacket. Fortunately, I'm not on the ship. I run a blog, which stalks the ship and chronicles the sinking. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at August 25, 2005 12:52 PM | |
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