Category Archives: press criticism

“News for a New Generation”

Susan Sherr has written an important paper by that title, which is on the CIRCLE website. She interviewed producers of newspapers, magazines, tv shows, and websites that are specifically aimed at youth. She also conducted focus groups of the youth themselves.

The producers believe that young people have very short attention spans, are easily impressed by fancy visual presentations, and are mainly interested in practical news about local issues–things that may affect them directly. One said, “So for instance while most papers might lead with something really important that happened in the UN that day, we’re more likely to focus on, you know, a rapist caught in a neighborhood where a lot of our readers live.” Another said, “like on the money page, it’s not going to be about stock, company mergers, and you know the New York Stock Exchange guy resigning, it’s going to be about how to keep a job, how to get a job, what to do if your boss is a jerk, are they reading your e-mail, things like that.”

Participants in the focus groups suggested that the producers are largely but not completely correct. The young adults claimed that they want more local news and more positive news. “I’ll pay attention more to the things that pertain to New Jersey or New York. … Anything that is global, I don’t really pay attention to, I don’t know why. If it has anything to do with the president I don’t listen to it. It just doesn’t interest me.”

However, these young people despise tricks, such as visual effects designed to exaggerate the importance of stories or “teasers” that promise a topic that is then delayed. They claim to be turned off by elaborate graphics. They have a low tolerance for statements that they believe they have heard before (for example, that the “war on terrorism” will go on for a long time).

Many of the young adults in these focus groups could not identify Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings, but they reacted extremely negatively to both men. “He looked, like, constipated all the time. He wasn’t moving his mouth, he didn’t seem like, it kind of is like when you call up and you need help and they don’t help you. And they act like they hate their job, that is what he sounded like.”

“media literacy” means believing some things

I’m back from a conference on the reliability of information on the Internet. The motivation for the meeting was a concern about false information and people’s excessive credulity. There was a lot of talk about the need to educate young people not to believe everything they read online.

I’m beginning to think that credulity may not be our biggest problem. Every belief deserves to be tested. But what can you test a belief or claim against? Answer: other beliefs. In principle, science can proceed like that forever, testing each proposition and each method. But in practice, you can’t make any progress at all unless you treat much of what you know as reliable. If you doubt everything, you can say and do nothing. To borrow Otto Neurath’s metaphor, we are at sea, and we can repair our boat, but only one plank at a time. If we reject the whole thing, we sink.

I mention this because I suspect that some Americans–especially younger ones–suffer from a blanket skepticism. They doubt everything that politicians say, so they tune politics out. They doubt everything that journalists write, so they don’t use the press. And they note the prevalence of disagreement and uncertaintly in medicine, so they allow themselves to ignore all medical advice (especially the painful parts, like “eat your broccoli”). Thus I’m not as concerned about teaching young people to doubt what they read. I’m more interested in helping them to develop some sources on which they can rely.

The graph shows young Americans’ confidence in the press since 1972. (Source: General Social Survey; sample: ages 18-30). The dramatic drop in trust coincides with a steep decline in readership. Alternative news sources such as the Internet and talk radio have not come anywhere close to replacing newspapers as a source of information for young people.

Iraq and the press: discussion

I chaired a public discussion today about the media and Iraq. The speakers were:

  • Susan Moeller, a former photo-journalist and now a Journalism professor at Maryland who has written a fine paper on media coverage of weapons of mass destruction. Susan has also taught at Harvard, Princeton, Islamabad, and elsewhere and has published two highly relevant books, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, and Shooting War: Photography and the American Experience of Combat; and
  • Christopher Hanson, also a Journalism professor at Maryland and a former reporter who covered the first Gulf War and the civil war in Rwanda from the field. Chris is interviewed here.

    • I talked about why the quality of press coverage matters, in the first place.

    It’s hard to summarize a wide-ranging and serious conversation, other than to say that everyone is deeply critical of reporting about Iraq. Everyone would like to read broader and more substantive stories, not about the daily body-count but rather about the status of Iraq’s infrastructure, or about Iraqi culture and history, or about the reasons for the diverse opinions that Arabs hold. We would at least like to know: how many Iraqis have working electricity today?

    Here are some additional points that struck me as particularly useful:

  • The policy of “embedding” reporters with military units has made them reliant on their sources, but this is nothing new–it’s the problem that usually afflicts “beat” reporters, who become close to the experts and officials in their area of coverage.
  • All the critical questions that should have been asked about the War were asked before the invasion began, but not conspicuously. They appeared once on p. 18 or p. 25, while the Administration’s line apppeared daily on the front page.
  • Reporters take their cues from conflicts among political elites. When there’s little dissent among elected leaders, the press cannot (or doesn’t know how to) create stories that are independent of the official line. Thus the lack of Democratic dissent before the War prevented the press from developing critical articles. Howard Kurtz makes the same point to the BBC today
  • When editors and reporters learn that the public is misinformed about a topic that they are covering, some reply (explicitly): “We don’t educate. Our job is to uncover new information.” They don’t take responsibility for the public’s failure to understand the “big picture.”

    • Whenever I hear that there is a lack of substantive news coverage (for instance, about the state of the Iraqi infrastructure today), I always wonder what factors are to blame: the cost of researching such stories; the (perceived) lack of audience demand for substantive news; a lack of skills in the press corps; or some kind of editorial bias among editors and publishers.

    why do we care about press coverage of Iraq?

    There’s a very hot debate about the quality of news about Iraq. Some colleagues and students and I have created a special website with a lot of relevant information on that topic. I think the first step is to ask what’s the purpose of press coverage. Here are some answers that seem to be implicit in the current debate:

    1. A citizen’s main responsibility is to decide whether the Bush Administration has done a good job so far, and to vote accordingly this November.

    Some people feel passionately that the Bush Administration has been awful–either wicked or incompetent–and that the election results in November should reflect this verdict. For them, it is very disturbing that a majority of Americans still believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or a major WMD program) on the eve of the invasion, and that world opinion is largely favorable toward the war. (See this PIPA report.) They believe that each of these beliefs is false, that the contrary positions make the case against Bush, and that the press is responsible for failing to convey the truth.

    Other people (for example, these folks) have the same view of the press’ function (to inform citizens who are going to vote yea or nay on the Administration’s performance to date), but they believe that Bush is a decisive, visionary leader. To them, it is deeply frustrating that the press emphasizes casualties and conflicts in Iraq, rather than America’s work in rebuilding the country. Many of them were incensed when the press reported setbacks in the initial ground war, which quickly turned into a rout of Saddam’s forces.

    In my own view, citizens need to do much more than vote retrospectively on a president, once every four years. I agree that a president’s performance in his first term provides some evidence about how he would behave in the next four years, although this evidence is very imperfect. But if all I’m supposed to do is make a retrospective judgment of competence, and it takes a lot of my time to get adequately informed, and there are many other important issues besides Iraq, and 100 million other adults will also vote, I’m not sure it’s worth my trouble to follow the war closely. Furthermore, I don’t see a reason to care about the quality of news coverage if each citizen’s role is so limited.

    2. We are morally complicit in what our government does, so we should understand the results and feel appropriate emotions.

    People who implicitly hold this view believe that we are part of a democratic community, so we are morally required to associate ourselves with the actions of the US Government. If Americans are brutally killed by terrorists, we should know all the details and feel a desire for vengeance. If American soldiers are killed, we should grieve for them and their families (and perhaps vent anger against the leaders who sent them into danger, if we think that the war was unnecessary). If our bombs kill Iraqis or Afghans, then we should see pictures and read accounts of what has been done. If people rage against the US in Baghdad, Athens, or New York, we should read what they say so that we can either take patriotic offense or come to share their judgment. Looking away from any of these events is a dereliction of our moral duty.

    For their part, news organizations have an obligation to describe events in all their emotional power. Thus it was right to show the bodies of American contractors in Falluja; and we should all view the coffins of the American dead.

    There are potential criticisms of this position, although I haven’t seen anyone argue against it explicitly. Perhaps we shouldn’t engage too emotionally with current events, because our job is to be sober and judicious judges of policy. Or perhaps we have no obligation to read upsetting news or see upsetting pictures, since we aren’t very complicit in this war. We are not intentional participants in the group that’s fighting. I might say: I didn’t vote for Bush, nobody consulted me before they decided to invade, and I don’t need to wallow in the bad news that has resulted. Finally, one could argue that the focus of our emotional engagement shouldn’t be Iraq. Sadness about deaths thousands of miles away is cheap; we should spend our time worrying about the local homeless, because we can help them.

    3. Policymakers will respond to polls, so poll results should reflect good judgment.

    This is actually a variant of #1 (above), but it adds an important wrinkle. We don’t just vote in November; in addition, we are polled at frequent intervals. Perhaps poll results shouldn’t matter, but they do influence policy. If 90% of the public wanted us out of Iraq, we’d probably be heading out. Thus it’s important that people pay attention and base their opinions on good evidence and careful consideration of alternative views. Unfortunately, the American people deserve no better than a “B” for knowledge and effort, according to this study.

    It’s undeniable that surveys matter. But it’s not clear that they should. Nor do I have a very strong obligation to inform myself and to participate in discussions about Iraq just in case a pollster decides to call me. It would be better to draw a random sample of Americans, tell them that their opinions will really count, and demand that they do their homework so that everyone else can get on with their private business. This is the Deliberative Polling idea–somewhat utopian, but worth thinking about as an alternative to our current system.

    4. The press is a watchdog or whistle-blower.

    According to this thesis, it doesn’t much matter what average Americans think or know about Iraq. The purpose of the press is to “blow the whistle” when the government really messes up or does something unethical. The audience for such stories need not be especially large. It may be various elites. In extreme cases, the only people who have to read an investigative news report are Members of Congress and officials in the Justice Department, who will use the data in their legal actions against the administration.

    It’s clear that the press has played this watchdog role well, from time to time. Watergate is the classic case. However, there are several drawbacks to the idea of press as watchdog. First, the only tribunal that should really judge a president is the people. So unless the people pay attention to the full range of news (good as well as bad), a president will not be fairly judged at the polls. If congressional committees, special prosecutors, and bipartisan commissions become the bodies that assess presidential performance, democracy is weaker–and we risk criminalizing policy mistakes.

    Second, the press has a legitimacy problem. No one elects the White House press corps to be Tribunes of the People. If we don’t approve of their performance, we can’t remove them. A skillful populist can discredit reporters precisely by making this point. Indeed, Bush’s approval ratings rose when reporters began to hammer him on Iraq, presumably because a lot of Americans view the president as more their representative than the networks and major newspapers. Jay Rosen considers this phenomenon in a subtle essay.

    Finally, it really doesn’t make much business sense to imagine printing a national newspaper or running a cable news network for the benefit of, 300 powerful policymakers. The news that appears on TV and in print must interest masses of people. This tends to distort any effort to investigate the details and complexities of alleged government misbehavior.

    5. Citizens Can Do More than Vote.

    People who know me have been waiting for this answer. We don’t just observe policy and render occasional judgments. We can also do “public work.” In relation to Iraq, we can choose to: organize political movements for or against the war; debate and try to develop policy alternatives for our government to adopt; follow the reconstruction effort closely to learn lessons for our own local work in battered American communities; develop relationships with individuals abroad and with immigrants in the US (in order to strengthen America’s “soft power” and make us more responsive); raise money for NGOs like the International Rescue Committee; and even enlist in the US Military.

    I like this position best, for philosophical reasons. But we need to be realistic. A lot of these forms of engagement are very hard or cannot reasonably be undertaken by most Americans. For instance, approximately 0.04% of the American population is serving in Iraq. If we increased that number tenfold, we would still only be able to include four tenths of one percent of the American people in direct work “on the ground” in Iraq.

    Getting good information about Iraq is difficult, since much of the most important data is classified or inaccessible to Americans.

    Also, a lot of movement-building, advocacy, and deliberation work really aims to change other Americans’ opinions. But what’s the point of that, other than to help them cast the correct vote next November (see #1 above)? If voting is a weak form of citizenship, then trying to change other people’s votes is not much better.

    As a personal matter, I feel compelled to watch the Iraq situation very closely and to express my views to anyone who wants to hear them. I try to be a responsible observer. I think this is because of #2 (above), a sense of moral association with the US Government. Perhaps my emotional response contains a dose of bad faith or self-indulgence or moral convenience, since I’m far from the suffering and have nothing to do about it. In any case, we need to decide what obligations we have as citizens, in order to decide what role our press should play, in order to assess the performance of the press in the Iraq war.

    [Two more answers to my original question (“Why should we care about press coverage of Iraq?”), added on May 1:]

    6. This war and occupation is a tremendous opportunity for us all to learn about profound and perennial issues.

    What better way to examine democracy, power, tyranny, military force, cultural differences, law, civil liberties, Islam, Christianity, economic development, and even human nature than to study the dramatic events taking place in Iraq? We ought to understand these issues, because they arise in our own lives and communities; because they are intrinsically interesting and morally serious; and because the views that we form in response to the Iraq war will not only influence next November’s vote–they will shape every decision we ever make about national politics. If this is true, then we should expect the press to be an excellent educator, providing diverse opinions and useful information relevant to profound and lasting issues. We shouldn’t much care why George W. Bush ordered the invasion, but we should ask what are the necessary conditions for democracy to take root. We should also be interested in such perennial questions as: Should societies use the talents of people who have committed wrongs in the past (e.g., former Baathists in Iraq)? What potential for good and evil do we see in Americans under stress, and how can we strengthen our best instincts as a people? How can a government respond when the popular press is fomenting hatred and violence?

    7. The “few-to-many” press is not important; it’s the “many-to-many” dialogue that matters.

    All my previous answers focused on the mass media: the broadcast networks and major newspapers. But today there are said to be three million blogs, not to mention countless Listservs and printed newsletters. Most of this communication is not focused on Iraq, but a substantial portion is. There may be one million people who have created public, accessible commentary about the war and related issues. Perhaps we should prize this conversation. It is intrinsically interesting, it may shape broad public opinion, and it’s so international that it may increase cross-cultural understanding. The paid, professional press still has a major role to play, providing most (although not all) of the basic information that feeds into these informal, public debates. But if we care most about the informal discussion, then we should ask whether the professional press is doing a good job in providing raw material. (I would say that it probably is.)

    the White House press corps

    Jay Rosen wrote an essay yesterday asking why George W. Bush, at a difficult moment in his presidency, would choose to hold a press conference instead of giving a speech. Jay suggests that maybe the White House counts on the press corps to look like a special-interest group, arrogant and hostile to the president and Republicans generally. Thus the administration expects that hard questions from this particular group will make the president look good. They rely on “the idea of press as foil, the useful idiot, so outrageously biased or pedantic, so carping and clueless, that by comparison Bush appears in a flattering light, and gets the people at home cheering when he handles the situation with ease. The President re-connects this way with the audience, which also detests the press.”

    Jay concluded his essay, however, by arguing that this strategy would be “folly.” The president actually needs a “legitimate” and “representative” press to talk to. If reporters look like a special interest group, then there is no point in addressing them in a press conference; but if they look intelligent and ask the questions that people want them to ask, then the president is in trouble.

    As it turned out, the White House press corps acted exactly like “idiots,” “outrageously biased or pedantic,” and “carping and clueless” to boot–or so I strongly felt as I watched the live performance last night. The president was asked: “Do you feel a personal sense of responsibility for Sept. 11?” “Do you believe the American people deserve [an] apology from you …?” “Will [the Iraq war] have been worth it, even if you lose your job for it?” “One of the biggest criticisms of you is that … you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism?” “After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be?” “I guess I wonder if you feel you have failed in any way?”

    Reporters basically asked the president, over and over again, “Do you feel bad for what you thought or did in the past? Do you feel that you are competent?” That kind of question makes reporters look like adversaries (the “liberal media”), but it’s actually a total softball. What can the president say except, “No, I am not a failure”? There was virtually no chance that such questions would illicit interesting news.

    So why didn’t reporters ask more forward-looking questions? For instance, in whom will sovereignty be vested on June 30? Does Mr Brahimi get to decide? Can we negotiate with al-Sadr, or must he be destroyed? Will the Iraqi government have veto power over US military deployments? What changes do you anticipate making in US intelligence agencies? How will democracy be restored in Pakistan?

    And why didn’t they ask a few deep strategic questions? For instance, do terrorist groups still rely heavily on state sponsors? What is our policy toward repressive governments (such as Uzbekistan) that help us fight al Qaeda? Is terror a tactic or an ideology? Does Iraq need a multi-party democracy, and if so, what kinds of parties are acceptable? Is a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians a precondition for mideast peace?

    A serious president would have no problem with these questions, which would be part of any decent administration’s daily deliberations. I suspect that our fearless leader would have some trouble answering cogently, but that would be his fault, not the responsibility of a hostile press.

    So why did reporters pose so few substantial questions? One answer is that they are thoroughly immersed in the campaign horse race. The way the current campaign is shaping up, it’s a contest to see which individual gets to occupy the Oval Office. One contestant is reliable, passionate, but maybe arrogant, stubborn, and not too bright. The other is smarter and personally courageous, but he flip-flops a lot. Given this framework, the press mindlessly asks the first contestant, “Are you stubborn?” He says no, and they report that this proves the point.

    I don’t believe that bias against Bush or the Republicans explains these poor questions. If John Kerry were the incumbent, reporters would ask him, “Do you flip-flop too much? Your opponents say that you change your mind too often. Polls show that people are beginning to agree with this charge. How do you react? Does the fact that people call you a ‘flip-flopper’ show that you have failed to communicate your message effectively?” And Kerry’s answers would be as weak as Bush’s.

    Another explanation of the bad questions is simpler, but I’m afraid I tend to believe it. Namely: White House reporters simply aren’t very smart. They can grasp the story of the stubborn mule versus the liberal flip-flopper, but they cannot understand geopolitics.

    I have been very hard on reporters and have passed over the president’s own performance, which would certainly get no better than a B in a respectable undergraduate course. But we know what to do if we want to replace the president; there’s an election in November. If Bush wins, the people have spoken–and so be it. Meanwhile, a small group of reporters will continue to monopolize the right to put direct questions to the Chief Executive–an enormous power. What can we do if we find them completely inadequate? I honestly have no idea, and this is a chilling thought.

    Update (4/27): Jay has now posted a longer and more detailed essay on the White House versus the press that’s worth reading carefully.