The structure of the anointed

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read:  ’President Can’t Swim.’”
–Lyndon B. Johnson

Part of the problem with the press is the constructed dichotomy wherein the self-appointed “watchdogs” believe themselves to be the most capable to fulfill the role of protecting us from ourselves.

It’s an embedded perspective, one that has history and evidence to back it up. As societies become more democratized, the press-as-watchdogs function helps ensure government transparency. There exists a symbiotic relationship: Freer societies have freer presses that in turn keep government in check.

But technological advances have begun to throw a new ingredient into this dynamic.

The watchdog role is now potentially bestowed upon whoever has the means to transmit information about, say, corporate malfeasance. Media members fall into a historically protected structure in which a large audience was typically guaranteed. Now, the role of individuals has increased to become vital for breaking news.

While citizens now have more power to shape and influence news, the role of protected media has diminished.  Influence by citizens in the past, as in the vibrant independent press, could be more easily ignored. Not so anymore. It’s possible, then, that news media watchdoggery at this stage in the game is becoming more an inflated sense of self-importance than a true reflection of the press’ current role.

Some evidence supports this perspective. Despite the increasing influence of citizen journalists, mistrust of news continues to rapidly grow. The reason for this is, in part, because reporters do not have adequate systems in place to ensure adequate accuracy or fairness. While news outlets sometimes report on themselves, or use their own reporters as sources, it is up to bloggers, researchers and, sometimes, other media, to analyze reporting and contextual errors, a dynamic which substantiates the role of those outside newsrooms.

Nothing better illustrates this better than how the press reports on complex information such as scientific issues, and what others have discovered about such reporting. Here are some examples, most of which are prior to the social media explosion and the downsizing of newsrooms, an indicator that the problem today could be worse:

1. Researchers Vestal and Briers, in 2000, found that journalists’ knowledge of biotechnology was lower than their perceived knowledge of the field. (1)
2. Researchers Cartmell, Dyer and Birkenholz, in 2002, and Cartmell, et. al., in 2003, surveyed Arkansas newspaper editors finding they had no formal training or background in agriculture, but were charged with determining if agricultural news was newsworthy. (2)
3. Newspaper coverage of swine production in Oklahoma was considered negative and covered by reporters who did not have an agricultural background, as found by Sitton, et. al., in 2004. (3)
4. Researchers Haygood, Hagins, Akers and Kieth in 2002 found that from 1997-2000 less than one half of the statements made in articles about agriculture from the Associated Press wire service contained sentences with facts considered verifiable. (4)
5. A CNN report last year glowingly covered a supposed clean-energy technology that had elsewhere been debunked, without any pretense of fact checking.

Given the high potential for misinformation because of lack of knowledge by gatekeepers, and the increasing inability (unwillingness?) to check facts, it would seem that, like with most other types of organizations, an external level of accountability could benefit news accuracy.

Those of us who work in government are used to high levels of oversight to ensure accountability. It’s an imperfect system, one that can increase bureaucracy and inefficiencies, but imagine the outcry were government to be allowed to run itself the same way newsrooms self-correct errors, if at all.

Granted, these two types of systems are radically different, and a comparison between governments and newsrooms is perhaps unfair; at the same time, there’s something to be said for systems of accountability in which others exercise control over operations in order to ensure we aren’t, at the end of the day, kidding ourselves.

The absence of formal external controls over news media is both essential and problematic. The news requires the right to be wrong in order to ultimately ensure a free press. The longstanding history in America of the (relatively) free, uncensored press is practically set in stone and for good reason. The news must be free if in fact the public is to be truly informed.

Such freedoms both come with a price and can conflict with one another. For the news media, freedom of the press has come to mean different things to different people. Reporters seem to think such freedoms automatically remove them from any other role than that of one who merely disseminates information, unless, of course, that role has managed to influence a policy change of some sort; then it becomes something to be championed.

Why reporters adopt such an unassuming stance is puzzling to those of us outside newsrooms, particularly if we are also on the receiving end of negative stories. An examination is therefore needed into what actually goes on in the mind of a journalist when he or she is reporting — and how audiences interpret the subsequent news stories.

* * *

This series of posts, called “And they call US spin doctors?” examines how business-as-usual journalism is fraught with potentials for misinformation, leading to the conclusion that information shapers of all stripes — in particular, reporters and their editors — are unwittingly, or not, significant players in the process of misleading the public. The series is extensively researched and uses real-life, current examples of news outlets deliberately misconstruing news to be more salacious. The series runs for six weeks.

Part 3 will cover specific human traits that bias the news reporting process. Read Part 1 here.

SOURCES

(1) Vestal, T. A. & Briers, G. A. (2000). Exploring knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of newspaper journalists in metropolitan markets in the United States regarding food biotechnology [Electronic version]. Journal of Agricultural Education 41(4), 134-144.

(2) Cartmell, D.D., Dyer, J.E., Birkenholz, R.J. & Sitton, S.P. (2003). Publishing Agricultural News: A study of Arkansas newspaper editors. Journal of Applied Communications, 87(4), 7-22 and Cartmell, D. D., Dyer, J. E., & Birkenholz, R. J. (2002). Gatekeeping decisions of Arkansas daily newspaper editors in publishing agricultural news. Paper presented at the 2002 National Agricultural Education Research Conference. Retrieved November 24, 2003, fromhttp://aaaeonline.ifas.ufl.edu/NAERC/2002/naercfiles/NAERC/Gatekeeping%20Cartmell-Dyer-Birkenholz.pdf (see also this source).

(3) Sitton, S., Terry, R., Cartmell, D. D., & Keys, J.P. (2004). Newspaper Coverage of Swine Production Issues: A closer look at reporters and their objectivity. Journal of Applied Communications, 88(2), 21-35.

(4) Haygood, J., Hagins, S., Akers, C., & Kieth, L. (2002, December 11). Associated Press wire service coverage of agricultural issues. Paper presented at the 2002 National Agricultural Education Research Conference. Retrieved November 24, 2003, from http://www.depts.ttu.edu/aged/research/haygoodAgLit.pdf (see also this source and this source).

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