Lies (and the lazy dunces who put them on Page One)

[ForestsBeatBushes]

When I was working for the Forward I got a call from a staffer at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, the pro-Israel media monitor, complaining about a headline that appeared in the paper. I forget now what the headline said, but she began by telling me it was biased, slanted, inaccurate, politically unbalanced — I cut her off. "You're right," I said. "It was late, I typed a bad headline, no one caught it, and we regret it. We messed up." I don't think I said "messed."

<snip>

Storyline. In the most recent issue of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait writes about media bias: "Once the news media has settled on a perception of a political figure, it becomes nearly impossible to dislodge." That's true of many, if not all, news phenomena: Lazy or time-pressed writers fit the facts of a story into one of a number of preconceived templates. One of my favorite examples was in The New York Times' coverage of the tensions at Rutgers between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups. On Oct. 11, Maria Newman wrote, "Rutgers has become embroiled during the last few months in a fierce debate about politics in the Middle East. And at times the debate has degenerated into incidents of incivility." Those two sentences imply that both sides of the debate carried out "incidents of incivility," when, in fact, the reporter would be hard-pressed to find a single example of an Israel supporter misbehaving (it was a Palestinian supporter who tossed a pie at Natan Sharansky, and the Hillel House that suffered a graffiti attack). According to the reporter's storyline, each side in the Middle East conflict, or a campus tussle, must be equally to blame. In this case "balance" perverted the truth.

Storytelling. Finally, journalists love a good story — and, let's be honest, so do readers. And the temptation is to tell a tale from an unusual angle. I'm guessing that's why, of the two main stories in the Times on the Rutgers conference, one profiled Charlotte Kates, the woman who organized the pro-Palestinian conference, and the other led off with Abe Greenhouse, the Jewish student who tossed the pie at Sharansky. The editors guessed, correctly, that we'd be fascinated by a profile of a young woman who joined the Communist Party at age 13 and still reveres Lenin. And Greenhouse is a classic example of "man bites dog" — the Jewish kid who joins the Palestinian cause (that's why NJJN also wrote about him). The Times may or may not have it in for Israel, but in this case, I'm guessing they merely wanted to entertain.

Of course, controlling for ignorance, logistics, storyline, and storytelling does not mean you won't find evidence of bias. Nor does it absolve editors of the responsibility of rooting out bias, overt or subconscious. But if editors agree — really agree — to examine their own prejudices, then readers should be willing to understand the pressures and constraints under which journalists' work. "Journalists aren't biased, just incompetent" (or "lazy" or "overworked") is not exactly a rallying cry, but readers and reporters should remember that it sometimes fits.


http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1103/silow_carroll_2003_11_06.php3

[rini]

1. IMO

"The Times may or may not have it in for Israel, but in this case, I'm guessing they merely wanted to entertain"


most (not all by any means) of the media (at least in this country) cares not one whit about integrety, the facts behind the truth, or much else besides money, ratings which equals money, and how to get the most readers and viewers which once again = $$$.

[Darranar]

2. He has a point...

Bias is often exxagerated, by all sides, for a political purpose. Often, such bias is non-existant and is simply a product of the person's mind because they are far from objective themselves. Other times, things which could be seen as biased are simply mistakes or incompetence of the sort the author of this article speaks about.