Combating Media Bias: It Isn't What You Think

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is known for touting blog reportage - bloggers actually digging in at the grass roots level, perhaps with notebooks and digital cameras and reporting, as opposed to only commenting on the news. In short, that is the only genuine manner to combat real or perceived bias in the MSM. And individuals with or without a ground-level understanding of media and reporting should come to appreciate that if they want to make a real difference as regards the MSM.

Witness this quote from Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom currently being touted in a new Pajamas Media ad I saw at Michele Malkin's site: Opinion I can handle. It's biased narrative posing as objective reporting that really needs to stop.

Now contrast that with the following from an emerging study on media bias:

here -- Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

My main point is that facts, quoted observations and data make for biased media, not opinion, or narrative.

Allowing for some poetic license as regards the Goldstein quote, bloggers who want to make a real difference in media need to come to understand that biased reporting is not subjective narrative. Most so-called biased reporting is, even by SPJ standards, good journalism or reportage, as opposed to biased narrative. It is an accumulation of facts, data points, quoted observations, and so forth which depict a particular reality for a story or event.

Punditry - a variant of pandit has an important place in the framing of an argument. However, the argument that the MSM is biased has already been more than well-framed and is increasingly being documented as in the study referenced above.

The next, and arguably the only genuinely effective step in combating media bias is not hypothetically pronouncing, or even objectively proving it so. If the blogosphere is to be anything more than a hodgepodge of on line diarists, or right and left-wing pontificates fueling an already burning fire, the next real step for the blogosphere must be reportage - the gathering of facts, quotes, data and trust worthy ground level observations realistically depicting a story or event.

Biased media is not about the reporters - often simply underpaid and over-worked idealists in search of facts to depict a true version of events. It is about the reporting of the facts and evidence most readily available to be reported efficiently as driven by cost and logistics concerns of the media business.

I believe that if bloggers, whether on the ground in New Orleans during a flood, or blogging from Iraq during a war, can put forth reliable information as defined above and not merely opinion, not only will they begin to turn the tide in media bias, they will find MSM reporters welcoming them as a new, so long as it is trust worthy, resource in their own search for truth.

Bloggers already have and can continue to make the job of MSM reporters easier and their final product better, while producing quality product or content of their own. But they can only do that to greater effect if they increasingly begin to report and not simply bitch about it.

It is an admittedly less glamorous, less economically and less ego rewarding task. But it is a necessary one to seriously and effectively combat media bias. Whether the heart and soul of the blogosphere, or more pointedly, the hearts and souls of bloggers in general are up to the task remains to be seen.

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Comments

[Robert]

Nice viewpoint, Dan. I discuss how BNN tried to implement what you're talking about (and largely failed) at

http://theargumentclinic.blogspot.com/2005/12/role-of-blogger-in-news-media.html

My gut tells me there's a way but my brain hasn't found it yet.

[TheAlamo]

It is an admittedly less glamorous, less economically and less ego rewarding task. But it is a necessary one to seriously and effectively combat media bias. Whether the heart and soul of the blogosphere, or more pointedly, the hearts and souls of bloggers in general are up to the task remains to be seen.

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Posted by Dan in Media Bias | Permalink

Well written, and you make good points. But...the problem as I see it is as you state above. Glamor and/or reward...which is why all of us work...for one or another, and sometimes both.
How to effectively remove that natural instinct is a tough one, and I think you are right, the odds of doing that and still making a decent living, might be difficult.

Unfortunately news is a market just like cars, or food. The more tantalizing it is made, the more the market "buys" the product. It is obvious, I think, to most people that the media has been biased for a long time. The problem is that the "right wing" vs. "left wing" confrontation is entertaining to the masses, and no one bothers explainging to the masses that the differences between the two are almost non-existant today. They only argue about which "hero" is going to fleece us today, and by which method. Never question the PATH that these "leaders" take us on, just let it be an entertaining ride.
If there was a way to effectively market the alternative, where VERY little government, and individual responsibility (and reward) was the focus, then the "newness" of such....might sell, but I grant you it would be a long shot, and how to make being responsible as something entertaining...well, guess that is why I don't do what you guys do!

Unfortunately the masses love entertainment. Rush Limbaugh vs. Jesse Jackson provides and outlet for their frustration, and of course, neither Limbaugh or Jackson care as long as the cash keeps flowing. Unfortunately all they do is talk, the consumer gets to relieve his/her frustration (actually thinking they have participated, some way in "changing America")and they go back to their 40-50 hours with football and a cool one on Sunday....then go do it again, and again.

Find a way to make truth profitable, and exciting like the soap opera crap we see now, and you will have hit a homerun. Possibly have the writer always write his/her slant after the story? Heck, I don't do what you do so I don't have an answer, just guesses. It seems when a human being is reporting something there will almost always be a "slant" even if they do not intend it, simply because of who they are.

Short of that, one can report facts and truth, but probably not live an extremely comfortable lifestyle.

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

This is a really, really good post- and highlights an interesting notion. Does media answer to it's consumers? Should it be that way? In a world where agendized media is becoming more o0f a reality, the question is not a moot one- or irrelevent to bloggers, looking to be an alternative resource for news consumers.

You said, "If the blogosphere is to be anything more than a hodgepodge of on line diarists, or right and left-wing pontificates fueling an already burning fire, the next real step for the blogosphere must be reportage - the gathering of facts, quotes, data and trust worthy ground level observations realistically depicting a story or event."

Does that mean accountability- and how do we define accountability?

Good stuff, Riehl.

[Elmo]

Forgetting all the infinite variables in play on PJM/MSM .... (sh*t, forgetting about PJM completely).

I Really like the way things are now. A lot. For myself personally, I feel that with the wide range of both source/site reporting (whatever bias), and downstream analysis/commentary.

That I am then able to triangulate/construct my own version which I can believe in, as a reasonable representation of the truth. Whether it be a singular event, or a related series. I was dumbfounbded however long ago, to learn that the American 'community' used no open source data for their analyses. Blew me tha foog away.

I wouldn't change a single thing. Not one.

[Jeff G]

Dan --

You wrote: "biased reporting is not subjective narrative." Well, it doesn't have to be, but it certainly can be.

But that's not what I objected to -- which makes me wonder why I'm being invoked here. What I wrote was "It's biased narrative posing as objective reporting that really needs to stop.

My quote was about presentation and expectation -- along with the media's pretensions to objectivity. Bias is human. Objectivity is a goal that reporters claim to try to approximate, though they never can be completely objective. Some reporters, however, have a greater fidelity to that goal than others.

And you are simply wrong when you write that "bloggers actually digging in at the grass roots level, perhaps with notebooks and digital cameras and reporting, as opposed to only commenting on the news [...] is the only genuine manner to combat real or perceived bias in the MSM." Why is that? It seems to me that there are many ways to combat biased reporting -- only one of which is to combat it with additional reporting.

Another way, of course, is to draw attention to the tricks of spinning existing stories.

Stories -- including news stories -- are presented in the form of narrative, which uses certain techniques that can be understood structurally apart from the content they are carrying. Those techniques can be analyzed to show how a particular report is being shaped, and in the shaping (or lack thereof) lies the ostensible and specific bias. Similarly, holes in arguments are often well hidden by experienced writers, and so taking the time to unmask them is a way to show how a particular position is hiding its deficiencies.

For instance, you write, "Biased media is not about the reporters - often simply underpaid and over-worked idealists in search of facts to depict a true version of events. It is about the reporting of the facts and evidence most readily available to be reported efficiently as driven by cost and logistics concerns of the media business."

Are you saying biased media is never driven by biased reporters -- those who set out to shape news in a particular way? Because that is ridiculous on its face.

I guess I don't really understand your argument. Maybe you should clarify.

[Dan]

I guess I don't really understand your argument. Maybe you should clarify.

Sure. First, it's honestly not an attemopt to draw you into it personally. There was no context for your quote, it simply presented a jumping off point for an existing line of thought I have been pursuing - what we think of the MSM in general.

Your points, well taken, and my thoughts are probably very similar for the top echelon of reporters, say some from the NY Times, for example. But I would argue that the vast majority of reporters don't possess the skills you mention in terms of constructing narrative, or possibly trying to hide bias. In those cases, we perceive bias because the reporters are often relying on sources or information producing structures which are biased in many cases.

So, my real point - to take Iraq the Model, for example, is that by elevating new and, in our view, more objective sources and facts, bloggers can help to mitigate the appearance of bias in media.

My point isn't to defend the Times, or other obvious left leaning and editorializing "news" outlets, but the average male or female reporter just trying to make aliving on the ground.

Does that help some?

[Jeff G]

A little, I guess, but this bit -- "I would argue that the vast majority of reporters don't possess the skills you mention in terms of constructing narrative, or possibly trying to hide bias. In those cases, we perceive bias because the reporters are often relying on sources or information producing structures which are biased in many cases" -- seems really to misunderstand how writing itself works.

To attain the level of purity you're imagining, we'd need something like a genealogy (cf W. Benjamin by way of Nietzsche) -- and even then, the order in which you place facts, observations, etc. (without the narrative accountrements used to shape them) CAN BE put to use to affect the shape of narrative. And when we're dealing with professional writers, it almost always is.

Historiographer Hayden White notes that "there is an inexpungeable relativity in every representation of historical phenomena. The relativity of the representation is a function of the language used to describe and thereby constitute past events as possible objects of explanation and understanding."

To "constitute past events as possible objects of explanation and understanding" is to capture these past events in narrative representations of those events; thus, what we both capture and study are not the events themselves, but the subjective linguistic refigurations of those events which we allow to stand in for the events themselves. The extent to which writers manipulate or exploit this truism speaks to the degree of bias.

Being able to expose how writers are doing this is one way of exposing and correcting bias. And doing so is just as valid and effective a technique for combatting bias -- writers hate to get caught massaging the facts, particularly when they purport to be striving for "objectivity" -- as is simply supplying additional stories.

[Dan]

Being able to expose how writers are doing this is one way of exposing and correcting bias.

Absolutely, but that's still a task for the pundit and not the journalist. The facts is, I believe, that the average journalist huddled at a bar on a Friday night doesn't give any thought at all to Nietzsche or White when on dead line, and attempting to address their work at that level serves a limited purpose, however valid.

The fundamental assumption at work is whether or not a specific reporter is politically biased to begin with. I don't believe that is close to the case. COnsequently, more of the bias we see comes from their manner of fact gathering than does it from their method of writing.

It isn't an all or nothing proposition either way. Both positions have merit and application in combating bias. I would contend that, up until now, the focus of any blogospheric attack on bias has been heavily skewed in favor of punditry and lacking a practical attack, it will have limited impact. It becomes simply an argument, a he said, she said, whereby better reporting, done by bloggers, can actually bring more objective "meat" to the table for consumption by the masses.