The Public Bias against the Press

The public bias against the press is a more serious problem for
American democracy than the bias (real or perceived) of the press
itself.

That is one reasonable conclusion to a study of media credibility
conducted by Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. As a good Catholic boy growing up in the 1950s, I was devoted to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. But no such devotion can I feel to the prejudiced conclusions some
scholars and politicians have drawn from this survey.

Let me begin my argument with an analogy. If my first daughter says I’m a bad parent one year, and the next year
two daughters say I’m bad, and the following year all three of them
say I’m bad, does that make me bad? It is not a good sign, I’ll
admit, but is it possible that the perception of my daughters has been
influenced by factors other than the character of my decisions and
actions as a dad? Maybe all their friends insist I’m too strict.

In short, I protest the idea that the perception of bias is, as expressed
in the Sacred Heart poll, evidence of bias in the work itself. It is possible
— I would say in this case probable — that the perception is a
creation of forces over which journalists have little influence or
control.

Before I build my argument that there is a public bias against the
press, I will begin by listing the rational circumstances in which a
perception of press bias is warranted, categories in which journalists can do useful work:

• In spite of any firewall created between departments of news
  and of opinion, the audience will assume — without countervailing evidence — that one sides bleeds over to the other. 

• The story choice of an editor — or story play
  — may be seen as an expression of bias, even when no slant is intended.

• All journalists understand that the personal bias of the writer or
  photographer can ooch its way into a story, which is why the protocols
  of “objectivity” were established to create checks and balances within
  the systems of news judgment, reporting, writing, editing and
  publishing. But sometimes the system fails.

• My colleague Rick Edmonds reminds me that many people who come to
  the press without prejudice form their biases after failing to recognize
  themselves or their values in the news. That
  can be true for the young or the old, for evangelical conservatives, for members of minority groups, etc.

• The public often misinterprets incompetence for corruption. Members of the public with specialized knowledge too often see the
  worlds they know mangled by distorted or inaccurate portrayals
  in the press.

• We’re better
  now than we used to be, but some journalists still spit in the food of
  complaining readers or viewers, and our arrogance damages our
  credibility — no matter how accurate our reporting may be.

Journalism expresses itself through media, but most media expressions are not forms of journalism.OK, so I’m granting the public those legitimate grievances and acknowledge that
journalists need to work hard at doing better. But I hold journalists less responsible —
and the public more responsible — for misperceptions of news media
performance. In short, the last two decades have seen
unprecedented attacks upon the legitimacy of the news media, so many
messages from so many directions that they are as impossible to ignore
as, say, the soft-core sexual images that pervade American culture. Here are examples of some of the attacks:

• Christopher Lasch once criticized American life as a “culture
  of narcissism.” Neil Postman argued that we were entertaining ourselves to death. And who can deny that the culture of
  entertainment and celebrity has come to dominate interest in news, foreign affairs and civic life generally. How can the public see our best work when they are blinded by Britney?

• Politicians under pressure — from every political party —
  try to kill the media messenger. It’s the easiest trick in the
  book, and the Bush/Clinton dynasties have been particularly good at
  it. Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University and author of the journalism blog PressThink, has described in great detail the current
  administration’s efforts to de-certify the press by ignoring it, by
  moving around it, by ducking it, by creating its own message machines. 

• The interpretations of the Sacred Heart poll serve only to compound
  the public
  confusion that lumps the news media (journalism!) with other forms of entertainment and
  professional gossip. Journalism expresses itself through media, but most media
  expressions are not forms of journalism.

• Media credibility continues to fall during a period when
  America’s political culture has become dangerously polarized. On radio
  talk show after talk show, in best-seller after best-seller, an
  industry has grown up with many agendas. Among the greatest of the agendas is to destroy the credibility of the mainstream press. A case can
  be made that sensitivity to such criticism — along with accusations
  that journalists are disloyal to American interests — softened the
  skeptical edge of the news media during the lead-up to the Iraqi war.

• As a dork, I need, love and respect the geeks. But part of the geek news revolution has undermined public
  confidence in the press, not only by endorsing the attacks of partisan bloggers,
  but also by a knee-jerk (emphasis on the second syllable) dismissal of
  the value of what is termed “dead tree” journalism. So alienated
  are some in the technocracy that they express the hope that old
  modernist forms of journalism will die quickly so that “liberté,
  égalité, fraternité” can reign forever — pop-up ads and porn
  notwithstanding.

• We have traveled a dark and dreary road since the days when
  the alter-ego of Superman was crusading reporter Clark Kent, or when
  the heroes of Frank Capra movies were dashing reporters, the booze-swilling champions of
  the little guy. Now, instead, we have the “Law & Order”
  effect. Of the hundreds of episodes you’ve witnessed of that TV show,
  how many times have you seen a reporter or photographer portrayed as
  helpful? The usual shtick is that they are slimeballs or part of
  the wolf pack that runs up the courthouse steps with notebooks and
  microphones extended.

• “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and the satire of
  Letterman, Maher, and Leno are not uniformly hostile to the news media,
  but their pointed humor has the cumulative effect of cultivating the
  cynicism of the American public, especially among the ironic and random young.

Critics of journalism would argue that these are effects and not
causes, but I disagree. Even with shrinking resources,
journalists have never been more responsible or better trained.
The public can see the occasional examples of gross journalistic malpractice written in the sky,
while the many examples of news media restraint are by definition
invisible.

So where do we go from here?  Here are three possible paths to sanity, none of which I’m endorsing here:

• Critics be damned. If the public is as predisposed to
  distrust the media as the Sacred Heart poll suggests, then let’s accept
  our fate as fulfilling an unpopular role within society and
  democracy. The defense attorneys of child pornographers cannot aspire to
  popularity, but they can embrace their role within a system that
  strives for justice. We can strive to publish nonpartisan truths
  in the public interest and work hard to make them stick.

• No credibility workshops, ethics classes, focus groups or
  courageous acts of enterprising journalism will reverse this trend. The mirror has two sides. What deserves
  support in every community are programs in critical thinking and news
  literacy, such as the ones Stony Brook University is developing with the support of the Knight Foundation. More
  transparency on our part can help, but only in an environment where
  citizens or students are willing to engage us with skepticism by parking their cynicism on a side
  street.

• Journalists tend to despise public relations and
  marketing, but if we believe in our calling, we may have to find ways
  to reveal our best practices and best consequences to anyone who might
  be receptive. Let’s remind them of the journalists who have
  risked their lives as war correspondents, or who have worked hard to
  create an environment on the home front (I’m thinking of The Washington
  Post’s investigation of Walter Reed Army Medical Center) where returning military men and
  women can get the physical and mental health care they might
  need. 

The pollsters at Sacred Heart, along with at least one member of
Congress, have concluded that their results show that the public knows
bias when they see it and that members of the media should change their
ways. Fair enough. Without
public support and a growing audience, journalists will find themselves
vulnerable to political and judicial mischief and a shrinking of the
financial resources they need to fulfill their duty to inform.

But nothing journalists do will reverse the dark tides of popular
cynicism. The wrecking balls destroying the credibility of the
press cannot be stopped until we focus more attention on the
credibility of those who are pulling the levers, including a public
that has been conditioned, like rats in a Skinnerian dystopia, to hate
us. 

[Do you think there’s an erosion of press credibility and if so, who’s responsible? Share your thoughts here.]