The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Re: They're No Angels

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Re: They're No Angels

By Robert Stacy McCain on 10.23.08 @ 10:30AM

"Selection and emphasis" -- those are the two processes by which bias enters the news. Phil, your account of rowdy conduct by some Obama supporters in Leesburg, reminds me of a conversation I had many years ago with a veteran news editor. The question of what goes into the top of a story and what goes into the 19th paragraph, what goes at the top of Page One and what goes on page B6 -- these are the choices made by editors and reporters that shape public perception.

Whenever I go out on the road to do campaign coverage, I always end up with more notes than I could possibly fit into a 1,000-word story. Choices are made. In the universe of facts, no single article can contain every fact that can be known. So reporters and editors must exercise news judgment in selecting what to repoprt. It is in those selections that bias becomes a factor.

When reporters provide coverage of the McCain campaign where negative stories outnumber positive stories 4-to-1, it's pretty obvious that their news judgment is not balanced. I will note, however, that the First Amendment does not require balance. Newspaper editors and TV news producers can be as biased as they wish; the audience, however, should understand that they're not getting the full truth.

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Mac Thomas| 10.23.08 @ 11:37AM

You are right. The news media, like cigarette packs, should be forced to label all of their products, "This product may contain no truth at all." The media is reliant upon the trust of its consumers. As most consumers have now determined, most of the news mediums are essentially worthless for providing their stated reason for existence; the providing of timely, accurate information to their subscribers. This the overriding reason for the sharp decline of subscribers to most of the Mainstream Media.
"You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Cynical Observer| 10.23.08 @ 4:47PM

And, since these are subjective judgments, there are few objective ways to validate that you're correct, so what do journalists do? Basically, look around at what everyone else is doing. The problem here is, if you happen to see the story differently than the rest of the pack, all too often, you have a professional problem. It's not that you have a different take on the story, which in theory should be welcome; it's that you don't understand "what the story is." Very quickly, you learn that this reflects badly on your news judgment, thus your professional abilities. Most everyone in most newsrooms takes certain things as fact (guns are bad, abortion is good) to a degree that to disagree in your copy eventually begins to tag you as someone who "doesn't get" it, and that begins to have career implications. Anyone of a conservative bent who has ever tried to work for too long in a MSM newsrooms knows exactly how this works.