“Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his
thin brown arms.”
– Janet Cooke, Washington Post, September 29, 1980

Teresa Carpenter: Simon and Schuster press photo by Marion Ettlinger

Promoted by her Washington Post Editor, Bob Woodward, reporter Janet Cooke was nominated for and received the Pulizter Prize – journalism’s highest honor – for her reporting on “Jimmy,” an eight-year-old heroin addict.

Fifteen years later, Cooke received $750,000 for a book and movie proposal to tell her story. The amount would climb to $850,000 if her story actually became a movie; after agent fees, Cooke would get 55 percent of this amount.

Cook’s piece on Jimmy was, of course, a hoax, one that the Washington Post initially defended, and her book/movie deal came after she eventually moved to Paris only to later become a Liz Claiborne clerk in Kalamazoo, Mich. making $6 an hour.

After the book and movie deal was announced, she was quoted as saying:

“Five years from now, I hope to be sitting at a keyboard, running off at the fingers, rushing to make a magazine deadline,” Ms. Cooke said. “If the keyboard was in Paris and the magazine was Vogue or Ms., I certainly wouldn’t be at all unhappy. I understand that there are people who will always think ill of me. But I needed to face up to what I did in order to put it to rest. I was looking for closure — and I think I’ve found that.”

The Pulitzer committee faced a conundrum upon quickly finding out Cooke’s story was fabricated, but the journalism scandal didn’t end just with the unveiling of Cooke’s hoax.

The committee then awarded the prize to Teresa Carpenter of the Village Voice, who was in second place under Cooke to receive it. One of her stories, about the slaying of U.S. Rep. Allard Lowenstein, was said by the National News Council to be “marred by the overuse of unattributed sources, by a writing style so colored and imaginative as to blur precise meanings and by such reckless and speculative construction as to result in profound unfairness to the victim of the demented killer.”

Carpenter was accused by the council, a group that examined complaints made against news outlets, of numerous errors, misleading readers to assume she had interviewed Lowenstein’s killer and for alluding to homosexual advances made by Lowenstein to friends.

The Village Voice, in response to the National News Council*, issued a statement:

“(The council report was) obviously partisan and irresponsible.”

Writer and researcher Loren Coleman, in his book The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines,” sees it differently:

“The media loved the Sweeney-Lowenstein story. Teresa Carpenter even won a Pulizter prize for her Village Voice exclusive in which Sweeney was quoted as saying that the shooting was a gay lovers’ quarrel. The only trouble was that Carpenter never interviewed Sweeney: She had made the whole thing up.”

Today, Teresa Carpenter’s Web site describes her like this:

“Teresa Carpenter is the author of four books, including the bestselling Missing Beauty. She is a former senior editor of the Village Voice, where her articles on crime and the law won a Pulitzer Prize.”

Her motto:

“The truth can make people angrier than a lie. Tell it anyway.”

***

Given the litany of imperfections with the journalistic process outlined in this series, it would seem the news media has an opportunity to set new standards of accountability. Clearly, like the cotton gin, the day of old media is over. And despite some hints, nobody knows just yet where new media will take the news business.

In the meantime, if what’s left of journalism wants to be viewed as credible rather than laughable, things will have to change. Here are my suggestions to both ease the transition into whatever is next for news, as well as to present a more honest front for an industry with a noted credibility problem.

1. Remove filters. The practice of interpreting what others have to say should die with old media. Individuals and organizations are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, and if nothing else, social media has eliminated the need to selectively quote, inject opinion and otherwise skew of the source’s intention and therefore generate error. By accepting unedited submissions, news outlets not only get free news, media can more efficiently allocate scarce resources.
2. Divide news into two sections: 1. news and 2. opinion. News is what is sent in or covered, staying as true to the source of the message as possible. Opinion, which is what most journalism is anyway, would be where reporters can take people to task, pontificate and editorialize. Such a structure still transmits important news and would also more transparently reflect the true attitudes, values and beliefs of journalists. The spirit of the source and the spirit of watchdoggery are left intact.
3. Adopt public relations principles. In an era that increasingly demands accountability, the press should be the last to adhere to what appears to be an archaic stance of “never explain, never apologize.” Citizen journalism means news media outlets that enact inept public relations tactics in times of crisis grant carte blanche to others to tell the rest of the story.
4. Fire the worst offenders. Like with any business, reporters and editors who repeatedly fail to adhere to the principles of fairness, accuracy and context – especially those who invent news – should be considered underperformers and thus potential liabilities.
5. Seek credible sources. Journalism’s long-standing reliance on the he-said/she-said fallacy promotes a false mean, and thus an incorrect portrayal of reality. Journalists should eye activists, whistle-blowers and other naysayers with the same level of skepticism with which they aim at public officials, politicians and public relations spokespeople, or they should not source them at all and instead focus story material on those with greater levels of expertise.
6. Fix the broken system of accountability. The airline industry figured out (and continues to), after devastating tragedies, how to counteract human bias that killed people because of pilot and systemic errors. A system of checks and balances, which include stern questioning of pilots by copilots, helps to ensure such accidents are not repeated. Journalism, on the other hand, seems to be doing its level best to destroy what systems of accountability it once may have had. Imagine what it would look like, on the other hand, if reporters and editors broadcast and published as if people’s lives depended on journalistic fairness and accuracy.
7. Embrace the Fifth Estate. Many will gladly fall into place to fulfill the empty niche of what journalism fails to do. Rather than going away, the Fifth Estate of bloggers, independent and citizen journalists and self-anointed watchdogs continues to gain influence and presence, which is indubitably having some effect on news site pageview counts and online advertising revenue. Rather than adopt a sneering stance toward bloggers, as exemplified by refusing to create link-backs or crediting citizen sources of stories – something archaic news outlets are still doing – smart news outlets will partner with a community’s best bloggers, acknowledge their existence and perhaps even co-opt their talents.

While these are just suggestions, and I welcome yours in the comments below, it is doubtful any one of these will ‘save’ journalism. Like Smith Corona had difficulty predicting and adapting to the demise of the typewriter, the news business is on a perilous edge. What will likely never die, however, is news itself.

The question then remains: With the business of news in doubt, what will ensure people get timely, accurate and honest information? The answer is uncertain.

What is clear is that until journalism begins an honest reflection of its industry, what it produces should be consumed in best-case scenarios with a heavy dose of skepticism.

* * *

This series of posts, called “And they call US spin doctors?” examined 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 was extensively researched and used real-life, current examples of news outlets deliberately misconstruing news to be more salacious. The series ran for six weeks. Read part 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

*Mike Wallace described the National News Council as being “set up not to send anybody to jail, not to fine anybody, not to collect dues or hand out certificates of qualification, not to do any of that but rather to act as a kind of jury of our peers — composed of broadcasters, print people, academics — to receive complaints, to look into them, and, if warranted, to publicize what amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

“To say that the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”
– Bob Woodward, The Washington Post

To public officials, the role of the news business is obvious. We see the process of information shaping first hand, warts and all. But ask a journalist their perspective of their role, and the reaction will likely be different.

A public official being openly critical of the news media is quickly spun by journalists to mean that reporters must being doing the right thing. Conversely, journalists keeping public officials on their toes is considered a noble, expected calling of the news business, one that media outlets use to promote upcoming news.

The logic is fascinating.

Reporters are sometimes quick to minimize their role in news process despite adequate research that suggests they are noted players in the misinformation game. The notable Bob Woodward, despite his list of extensive credits, believes the press’ role is somewhat limited. In response to the contention that his and Carl Berstein’s reporting on the Nixon administration was part of why Nixon resigned, he is adamant:

“To say that the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit,” he says. “The press always plays a role, whether by being passive or by being aggressive, but it’s a mistake to overemphasize” the media’s coverage.

Woodward is not alone as a journalist trying to minimize his role in shaping information, policy or even the impact of his own reporting. When former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s term ended, he unleashed a scathing critique of the news media. Despite being ill-advised, his points were frequently on the mark, and not so surprisingly, the media fallout was predictable: Journalists rushed to twist his critique into self-validation that they had done right.

One editor, Simon Kelner, said Blair’s critique was a direct “attack” on the U.K. Independent, and snapped back: “Would you be saying this, Mr. Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq?”

A local example serves to illustrate the same point. Rather than address the criticism, a diversionary issue is strung up the counter the critique. My commentary here was linked liberally on Facebook by various people involved with the Reno area’s re-branding effort and by those who were merely in support of the effort.

I wrote:

“Your local news media should bear the brunt of that responsibility for repeatedly ignoring the campaign’s developments for months only to take a slice of grandstanding by an elected official and turn that into a loaded headline (well, a few loaded headlines, as the headlines keep changing depending on the spin of the moment the editors want to take with the story) guaranteed to incite readers and encourage misunderstanding of a brand roll-out.”

Naturally, some journalists were tuning in. And they were shocked and dismayed to learn they were being criticized. One, a news radio personality, said, “Blaming the media is a cop out.” Another wrote: “Seriously, Bob? It’s the media’s fault?”

Had the text not been read? Are reporters above criticism? Do reporters actually believe they are merely the messengers of presumed facts? Do they not see how they shape information and therefore influence context and set agendas?

Their dismay was perplexing. Either they really don’t pay attention to what people really think about them, or perhaps they are really that ignorant as to the true role they play in the information dissemination game.

There is considerable research that supports the fact that the news media are in fact agenda setters, and as I pointed out in the first post of this series, the mere act of deciding what is and is not news, as well as what level of importance news items receive, is the first step in shaping context.

And as part two of this series mentioned, social media is leveling the journalistic playing field, presenting a conundrum to old-guard journalists. David Myers, communications professor at Loyola University New Orleans, puts it this way:

“But now, all of sudden, the news comes out everywhere.  If someone has a blog, the news comes out there.  If someone has a mobile phone, the news comes out.  If someone has a Twitter account, out comes the news.

“This is a big problem for journalists, particularly for those journalists — and their bosses — who are concerned about their status.  So those journalists and those bosses get a little defensive.  And when their banners go belly up, and when their bylines fade into he said and she said, those journalists and those bosses stand fast and defend their status.

“Those journalists say, hey, I’m a journalist and you’re not.  I get to use your stuff in my news, but you don’t get to use my stuff in yours.  And if any one of you bloggers or tweeters or cellphoners breaks a story and I report that story, guess who gets the Peabody?  Who gets the Pulitzer?  I do.  Because it’s my news.  Because I’m a journalist and you’re not.

“And if I’m reporting a really important story (like the Iran election protests, for instance), and if I’m writing under a really important banner (like The New York Times, for instance), and if I’ve got a really important byline (like Andrew Sullivan above the fold, for instance), then I’m a journalist and you’re not.  You (like http://iran.robinsloan.com/, for instance) are just an ‘aggregator.’

“Well.

“I would feel a whole lot better about journalists (and their bosses) getting defensive if journalists paid more attention to the function than the status of their journalism.  And I would feel best of all if journalism functioned.”

So either journalists have impact or they do not. To take credit in the limelight is one thing; to disavow impact when criticized is something else entirely. Even more so, as the response to Tony Blair showed, members of the news media are often lacking in honest self-reflection.

A series of articles about Blair’s speech in the journal The Political Quarterly echoed at least one aspect of Blair’s critique: “What is required is a more self-questioning media, being held to account on the internet and on specialist blogging sites,” the article’s abstract says.

Self-questioning, however, is but a starting point.

* * *

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. Read part 1, 2, 3 and 4.

“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.”

–Oscar Wilde

Social psychologists have confirmed that cognition is an important ingredient in how information is perceived. They have found that perceptions can be swayed relatively easily by racial stereotypes, body language, facial expressions, previous bias (1), and self deceptions (2).

While the peer-reviewed process of research – in which other researchers evaluate, critique and edit manuscripts before results are officially published – can guard against perceptual biases, perception by journalists and the public is not as easily safeguarded.

The tiers of accountability for what constitutes news are comparatively sloppy, inconsistently applied and may not even be reviewed by editors or producers prior to airing or publication.

What compounds the situation is the mindset of the journalist before he or she ever gets a story on record. The book Medical Journalism: Exposing Fact, Fiction, Fraud (3) identifies particular cognitive biases that affect a journalist’s perceptions and how he or she interprets news events. They are:

1. The eyewitness fallacy. (Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate and unreliable and yet are a staple of news writing and reporting.)
2. Underutilization of statistics. (Reporters tend to rely on anecdotes, which can have a greater emotional impact than drier, less enticing statistical information.)
3. Confirmation bias. (This is the tendency to seek, select and recall data according to preexisting expectations or theories.)
4. Misperception of risk. (Dramatic events or risks are often overestimated or given more attention. Consider the example of coverage of airplane crashes, which are infrequent, versus car crashes, which are so common and statistically more deadly but are given far less prominence in the news.)
5. Misinterpretation of regression. (If one extreme has been observed in a population, people may falsely predict another, a trait that tends to guide news coverage.)
6. Illusory correlation. (The frequency with which two things are related is overestimated.)
7. Fundamental attribution error. (People are more prone to attribute a person’s behavior to his or her disposition rather than to situational factors.) (pp. 90-91)

If reporters can be easily swayed by perceptual biases, of which they might not be aware, how well equipped is the public to interpret media-filtered information?

Media effects researchers (4) have established that media do not necessarily cause changes in behavior or in setting public agendas, but instead, media can have significant influence on shaping the importance of topics and on public perception (5).

The aforementioned psychological biases explain how information can become skewed. In addition, a book by the Glasgow Media Group (6) describes three factors that determine how audiences perceive media messages:

1. Direct experience. Somebody who experiences an event firsthand will tend to discount media accounts of the event.
2. Use of logic. Independent of personal political beliefs, audience members detect differences in media accounts of the same story and may come to opposite conclusions from the media.
3. A sequence of processes that include cultural ties and values. Someone with a vested interest in a media portrayal may either be interested or reject that portrayal based on their personal beliefs (p. 285).

Perhaps more cynically, researchers Vestal and Briars summarize the situation like this:

If a person has limited knowledge and experience about a topic, then he or see cannot accurately perceive it (p. 141).

In other words, media events can be misinterpreted by audiences because of self-deception, which is a concern because an individual’s perceptual biases can hold more weight in one’s mind than otherwise verifiable information, such as scientific evidence.

Indeed, people will tend to skew new information toward their own frames of reference and will gravitate toward believing negative or familiar information over new and potentially challenging information if the new information goes against ingrained beliefs.

This is important to understand in the news reporting process because if reporters are frequently guided by cognitive and reporting practices that can enhance misinformation, it follows that there is a dubious level of understanding by audiences who consume the news.

Still, reporters are quick to assert and defend their role in society despite so much evidence that the news reporting process is inherently flawed.

* * *

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 4 will outline the consequences of reporter bias. Read part 1 and part 2.

Sources

1. Vallone, R. P. Ross, L. & Lepper, M. R. (1985). Believing is seeing: Partisan perceptions of media bias. In Abelson, R. P., Frey, K. P., & Gregg, A. P. (Eds.) (2004). Experiments with people: Revelations from social psychology (pp. 41-51).
2. See Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Penguin Group.
3. The information from Medical Journalism is taken directly from the book as well as my interpretation of the author’s list of psychological biases. See the original source for the exact information: Levi, R. (2001). Medical journalism: Exposing fact, fiction, fraud. Ames, IA: Iowa University Press.
4. Bryant, J. & Zillman, D. (Eds.) (1994). Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
5. 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.
6. Philo, G. (1999). Conclusions on media audiences and message reception. In Philo G. (Ed.), Message received: Glasgow Media Group research. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.
7. Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. (2003, May 22). When media, science and public policy collide: The case of food and biotechnology, November 21, 2002. Retrieved November 24, 2003, from http://pewagbiotech.org/events/1121/
8. Federoff, N.V. & Brown, N.M. (2004) Mendel in the Kitchen: A scientist’s view of genetically modified foods. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press.
9. 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.

See also:

Cialdini, R. B. (2001) Influence: Science and practice (4^th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

First Amendment Center (1997). Worlds apart: How the distance between science and journalism threatens America’s future. Retrieved November 24, 2003, from http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?id=6270

Hayes, D. J., Fox, J. A. & Shogren, J. F. (2002). Experts and activists: How information affects the demand for food irradiation [Electronic version]. Food Policy, 27, 185-193.

Miller, J.D., Annous, M. & Wailes, E. J. (2003). Communicating Biotechnology: Relationships between tone, issues, and terminology in U.S. print media coverage. Journal of Applied Communications, 87(3), 29-40.

Voss, M. (2003). Why reporters and editors get health coverage wrong: Health journalists need and want special training [Electronic version]. Nieman Reports: The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, 57(1), 46-48.

Whaley, S. R. & Tucker, M. (2004). The Influence of Perceived Food Risk and Source Trust on Media System Dependency. Journal of Applied Communications, 88(1), 9-27.

“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).

“It’s a bizarre world where flacks are more vigilant than reporters
when it comes to trying not to mislead readers.”
– JOHN COOK, Gawker
“The Spitzer Files: How the New York Times and the Press Serviced Client No. 9”

The American Left’s favorite punching bag – Sarah Palin – should, at the least, be thanked for one thing: her ability to draw out the nastiness of her media critics. Palin’s shortcomings, which are many, help elicit inherent problems with news media reporting that might otherwise go unnoticed. There’s something about Palin that emboldens news media to go out of their way to misconstrue news or to simply create a kind of context that might not otherwise exist. Palin makes a good target, one that media will quickly and somewhat cavalierly defend their actions against after going on the attack.

We’re not talking, necessarily, left- or right-wing bias. Nor is this “news” of the demagogic type exemplified by the increasingly omnipresent partisan news media outlets. The bias exhibited against Palin and many other public figures is inherent in the news journalism business.

It is, in fact, the business-as-usual modus operandi of news reporting that is flawed and is too often seemingly incapable of maintaining accurate context for what happens in real life. It’s not just partisan “news” that is problematic; it is the news business in general that is fraught with potentials to drive innuendo and encourage misinterpretation and misinformation.

Palin and many public officials unfortunately know this too well. What is most striking about her recent appearance on the cover of Newsweek magazine is the defense by Newsweek to justify context creation, despite the potential illegalities of reproducing that particular photo in the first place. Newsweek insisted that its choice of cover photos was appropriate. Editor Jon Meacham said,

“We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do.”

Which is why what constitutes news is deceptive. It routinely (re)defines context and frames agendas FOR us rather than taking a stricter stance of merely reporting information. It is an attitude in which reporters deem — influenced no doubt by their training in journalism schools — they are qualified to shape context. Meacham, like many journalists, is cavalier in assuming the journalist’s role, irrespective of ingrained assumptions that insert reporters into a process of decision making for the presumed benefit of countless others.

David Barker, staff writer for the State News and a reporter presumably fresh out of journalism school — which perhaps gives him the benefit of clearer reflection on the journalistic process — puts it this way:

“As reporters, we aren’t simply people who regurgitate facts. We gather information and test its veracity. Our job requires that we interpret and shape information — contextually and factually — for the reader.

“Our job is to tell stories, to make facts relevant, but never to skew them.”

But the process of interpreting and shaping information is precisely what begins the progression of skewing information, deliberately or otherwise. Barker basically admits to this but quickly attempts to soften the reporting reality by denying that interpretation has the potential to skew. He continues:

“We have a code of ethics because our jobs require us to decide not only what is essential, but pertinent.

“After that, it’s up to the reader to decide.”

Inserting yourself into the position of deciding what’s relevant is the first place where bias initially occurs. Researchers know this, which is why double-blind studies are so critical. By taking themselves out of the equation, scientists reduce the potential for bias. Reporters on the other hand are ingrained in the filtering process. Barker, at least, is refreshingly honest about his role. His colleagues, however, seem too often to lack this characteristic.

Such is the case with the process of attempting to correct news, let alone context. Media personnel enact an essentially black-and-white moral obligation of speaking for the masses with a frequent disregard for their own accountability in fulfilling the “watchdog” role. It may be possible to get factual mistakes corrected in the news, usually a day or two later and with far less prominence than the original errors were committed, but adequate corrections are questionable, as the site Regret the Error frequently points out.

So what happens when context is incorrect or distorted? Not much. Reporters and editors are typically quick to respond defensively when called onto the carpet for miscontextualizations, as the Newsweek/Palin example shows.

The reason for this is because it is the business of journalism to reshape reality according to preconceived notions by and for journalists and their editors.

* * *

This series of posts, called “And they call US spin doctors?” examines just 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 2 will cover how news organizations are structured and how this influences practices that lead to misinformation.

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I vividly remember

What reminded me of this was reading the local weekly (online) yesterday. The editor wrote a stunning piece. It’s a first-hand account of his drunk-driving arrest. The paper placed it on its front cover, and the article is a stunning admission of what happened. As I was reading it, I couldn’t help but wonder how such an open acknowledgement of wrongdoing could feasibly raise the bar for those caught in the act of screwing up.

Too often journalists prey on public figures and their misdoings, real or imagined. Yet when their own hands are caught in the cookie jar, reporter transparency becomes askew. Not in this situation.

I have maintained that trying to prevent wrongdoing can be a futile effort; rather, the act of owning up to misdeeds is more telling of character.

There’s much to be learned from this article. While the moralists will, predictably, pick it apart as if they have never done anything wrong in their own lives, and most surely judgments will be passed, I consider this one of the finer pieces of journalism I’ve read locally in a long, long time.

I don’t know Sarah Soczka, but if I ever meet her, I’m going to buy her a beer. Sarah is the unwitting victim of the “watch what you say online” crowd, specifically one Jeff Bentoff, APR, of Bentoff, LLC from Wisconsin. Bentoff writes in the June issue of the Public Relations Society of America’s TACTICS newsletter about “A cautionary Twitter tale: Young professional learns a tweet lesson.”

Bentoff details the story of how Soczka wrote a brief and, in my opinion, relatively milquetoast blog post on her own blog, and presumably on her own time, about why Newshub (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) is better than BizJournalMke (Milwaukee Business Journal). She was clear to say the post and her blog and Twitter account represent her own views.

Nevertheless, Bentoff writes:

“Her blog posting might have gone unnoticed, but bringing attention to it via Twitter was like throwing birdseed into a bird’s nest.

“Only 10 minutes after Soczka posted to her Twitter account, the Journal Sentinel’s main Twitter writer retweeted the item and headline to its many followers.”

Bentoff admits that Soczka was correct in her post, and he makes efforts to praise her as “a social media natural” … “who is fluent and comfortable with the tools.” His tone ends up as chastising, however, and what he does to Soczka next is a classic case of shooting the messenger.

He recounts:

“The twittering crescendo quickly reached the ears of Mark Kass, the Milwaukee Business Journal’s editor. Kass said that his first reaction was, ‘Who is she, and why did she do this?’ He added that he agreed with the points that she made on her blog, but was disappointed that she hadn’t contacted him before posting. Kass said that had she done so, he would have explained that his paper had started tweeting two weeks before and had already made plans for reporter tweets in the style Soczka advocated for.”

Kass’ initial, ad hominem reaction of “Who is she?” is alarming coming from someone in the news business. The news media regularly defends itself as reporters of information against those who blame journalists for the impact of putting out the news and commentary. That’s what basically what Soczka was doing: commenting on the use of social media by newbs, ineffective use of social media being so omnipresent that it’s a wonder Soczka wasn’t harsher. For Kass’ first response to be of the shoot-the-messenger variety puts his own credibility in question.

Next, there is no reason whatsoever that Soczka should have contacted the Milwaukee Business Journal prior to posting. Commentary legitimately does not require letting parties have a “fair” say prior to publication. The news media certainly wouldn’t do this; why should a blogger? Kass’ response is more about his own ego than about anything Soczka wrote.

What happens next is even more telling. Back to Bentoff:

“Kass said that he didn’t think Soczka was fair with her comments in comparing a new Twitter feed with a mature one. After hearing about the tweets, Kass also contacted Soczka’s supervisor and the three of them met so that he could explain the Business Journal’s plans to her.”

Let’s get this straight. Kass expects to be notified before anyone writes something potentially negative about his use of Twitter but then goes to the messenger’s supervisor, who has nothing to do with this issue, so he can “explain” his social media plan?

There is only one reason that Kass approached Soczka’s supervisor and that was to put her on notice. It was a veiled threat and a way for him to put the practitioner in her proper place with a subtext that says, “How dare you criticize me.”

Put another way: Reporters frequently don’t extend polite courtesies to PR people (I have vivid memories of being verbally bullied by a belligerent, screaming reporter leveling all sorts of his personal allegations at me on one occasion, along with a number of other examples), and its erroneous to assume that kissing reporters’ asses will get you very far. Prompt, polite responses, useful information, access to the right sources, yes. Gratuitous niceties, no.

Lest we forget: Journalists in general consider PR people a necessary evil. Anyone who has been in the business awhile, especially in public sector communications, knows it’s not uncommon for an “official” perspective to be looked upon with far more scrutiny than, say, that of an accuser, protester or any other kind of agitator. This all in fairness, of course.

This situation raises another critical point that gets little attention; the change in culture as a consequence of social media. Social media reduces the need for a middleman and conversations are open to the world. While this means caution should be exercised, it also means there is an emerging acceptance and acknowledgement of online behavior previously viewed as taboo, behaviors that arise because of the nature of who we are as humans and because this is how we now communicate.

In addition, the public relations profession mandates the free flow of information. Nowhere to date but in social media can this happen so effectively. The free flow of information also means not all information is first created equal and, second, will be interpreted the same way among publics. Because of this, along with the reality that PR people are blogging all over the place, we finally get to voice our concerns, perspectives and opinions. This is something to be celebrated, especially in an industry that prior to new media had far less of a voice. Bloggers are supposed to be provocative; PR people should weigh in on the effective use of media, even if they are critical. We’ve tolerated enough of the cheeky, third-grade level pedantic commentary from our local media sources. It’s time we had our say.

On the flipside, there’s plenty of room for outlining consequences and, most importantly, developing skills for handling inevitable crises and controversies. The problem isn’t that controversies arise; the problem is how they are frequently mishandled. Sure, PR people should be vigilant about what they say online and elsewhere, but it’s a basic error to attempt to enforce a bogus professional morality in professions – news reporting, PR – that inherently don’t play by the same rules and do not extend mutually equitable courtesies.

Sarah Soczka: You deserve a raise. The main thing you need to be vigilant about is which of the anachronistic views that come your way are actually worth a listen. Keep blazing trails, my friend.

POSTSCRIPT

Just before hitting publish, I went to the Milwaukee Business Journal’s Twitter account. True to Soczka’s original criticism posted in February, the Business Journal’s Twitter follows nobody and merely posts news back to its own site. It has 671 followers. If Kass agreed with Soczka’s point, as he claimed, it might behoove him to do something about it, like he said he was going to. I’m now even more baffled as to why Bentoff wrote this “cautionary tale” in the first place when Kass and the Business Journal, especially in contrast with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Twitter, are enacting what we involved with social media refer to as an “epic fail.”

[EDIT 1:41 p.m.: I was just informed that the Business Journal has a number of reporters who Twitter, including the editor, Mark Kass. Please consider this in the context of the above statement. I apologize for jumping the gun about the Journal's social media use without checking it out first. -Bob.]

Question: Do you respond to anonymous attacks?

Answer: Most likely, no. If the attacks gain legs later as news stories, then you can respond to the issue, but not the attacker.

The rationale: The knee-jerk response from communicators is to communicate. This is often a counter-productive approach to take. When facing an attack, especially an anonymous one, there are many dynamics at play.

First, anonymous attacks, commonplace as they are online, speak volumes in and of themselves about the attackers. Who are they? Why are they anonymous? If attacks in general hold little credibility (they do) – as opposed to reasoned and informed dialogue – anonymous attacks offer less to take seriously. Attacks in general come from those who have usually made up their mind about people and issues. They attack because they are waging a war of ideology. They are not attempting to actually work with those who they criticize or to try to understand complexities of issues and perspectives or to come to any sort of mutual understanding.

Second, it’s now confirmed that anonymous attack forums are part of the news business model, one that appears to be borne as a survival strategy. Whereas newspapers would once spend time verifying the identity of authors to letters to the editor, media now appear to gladly provide forums to the uninformed and bitter. As newsrooms continue to shrink and be eliminated, the “anything goes” approach to increasing news site visitation and repeat pageviews can now be spun to advertisers as the maintenance of a “vibrant community.”

Finally, given the above, there is little credibility found in online news forums (and, frankly, the news itself doesn’t hold much weight in court)  and even less so among anonymous bloggers and Twitterers. While they can be entertaining and can serve a self-validating function for one’s own beliefs, bitterness and/or paranoia, at the end of the day it’s best not to feed into this cycle by simply not participating in it.

Second best would be to respond to issues on your own time and in your own domain. Any direct response to attacks only feeds an ever-hungry beast that news agencies seem desperate to continue to feed.

PR people should take the high road by not playing a role in this downward cycle of information dissemination – in most cases, by keeping their mouths shut.

Michael Jackson image from TMZ

This has been a long time coming. Although people have had in their pockets the means to transmit breaking news for at least a decade, increased social networking – particularly Twitter, Facebook and Youtube—has finally garnered enough traction to spread information to the masses.

Three events just this year have set the stage for this.

1. The crash landing of the plane into the Hudson River, which was first broken visually on Twitter
2. The death of Neda in Iran, which went viral globally after being posted on Youtube, and
3. Michael Jackson’s death just hours ago, which was first reported by TMZ and spread like wildfire within minutes on Twitter.

The traditional news media, although generally doing admirably in the social media arena, cannot be in all places at once, especially with shrinking newsroom personnel. Ordinary people on the ground, and non-traditional media–such as blogs, video sites and Twitter—are inherently in better positions to document events as they happen.

The role of journalism should focus now on sorting through rumor and innuendo in breaking stories, providing context and objectivity after the fact and it should emphasize feature and more lengthy exposes like the stunning series published this week by the St. Petersburg Times.

Journalists and newsrooms should no longer put resources in trying to break news especially when there is so much competition surrounding them. A part of me hopes I am wrong about this, but a significant era of journalism is over.

[EDIT 6/25/09: Mashable has a great comment on this subject:

"Social media’s role in rapidly distributing globally-significant news like this will likely be analysed in great depth over the coming weeks. It’s notable that despite early news reports of Michael’s passing on blogs, the timing of the tributes coincided with confirmation by the LA Times – for the most critical information, it seems, we continue to trust mainstream news the most."

In addition, I should amend my original statements. Contrary to my post title, it's not that jounalists will no longer break hard news, but that their role has been changing rapidly to the point where more of the hard news is being broken by less traditional media outlets--such as blogs--and ordinary citizens. Though journalism's role is shifting, it nevertheless remains critical to society.]

[Edit 6/26/09: Bad Pitch Blog posted this statement today : "...We’re doing a point counterpoint – 250 words each on why the Michael Jackson Internet frenzy spells the death of mainstream media and the rise of TMZ and other emerging news outlets." Thought it was relevant to what I posted above yesterday as well as all of the comments below. I'm looking forward to it.]

[Edit 6/26/09: Based on the comments below, I have changed the post's title and deleted a later reference to hard news. The previous title was: "It's official: Journalists no longer break hard news." The new title I think more accurately reflects what I was originally try to convey.]

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Facebook causes slavery, violence and lousy media coverage, a new study released today shows.

There’s an inherent danger in promoting research studies that are not yet peer reviewed. Foremost is that many people, reporters in particular, probably do not fully understand what peer-review technically means. This being the case, Ohio State University recently had to go on the offensive against an avalanche of misinformation reported about a study the university had promoted.

Earle Holland, Ohio State’s assistant vice president for research communications, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review this month, details the situation.

He says:

From the start, we knew that the news release we were distributing had a chance for ample news coverage. After all, it involved the ubiquitous “social media” and student grades, either of which is all-but-guaranteed to garner attention.

What we didn’t figure was how badly most of the conventional news media would muck up the story in the process. Ultimately, the entire episode offers a good lesson in the inherent risks of reporters’ cavalierly covering the social sciences, as well as the risks that young researchers can face in dealing with the news media.

Holland notes the university was upfront about the limitations of the study in question, which showed a correlation between Facebook use and lower student grades. The key point is, of course, that correlation is not the same as causation. Scientists and researchers know this. Reporters do not, and it’s a great source of misinformation (see here and here for examples).

Holland continues:

Our office produces a lot of stories on social science research. We’re very careful to narrowly report the findings and avoid extrapolations or conjecture beyond what the data provides. After the Facebook study’s author, Aryn Karpinski, reviewed the draft of our press release and deemed it accurate, we distributed the story through both Eurekalert and Newswise, two of the largest distributors of research news releases to the media. It was embargoed until April 16 to coincide with Karpinski’s presentation at the educational research conference.

But that weekend, the Sunday Times of London ran an article about the research that carried the following statements:

“Research finds the website [Facebook] is damaging students’ academic performance. … Facebook users … are more likely to perform poorly in exams, according to new research. … The majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who shun the site.”

But that’s not what the study showed. The news media in general got the gist of story wrong, and subsequent stories blindly repeated the incorrect information. Holland notes that the problem boiled down to a fundamental misunderstanding – he calls it ignorance – of correlation and causation.

Karpinski’s study showed that students who described themselves as Facebook users reported studying less and having lower GPAs than students who didn’t use Facebook. The Facebook users also said they believed, in their cases, there was no connection between their poorer academic performance and the social media engine.

So the study simply pointed to an apparent relationship between students’ lower grades and less time spent studying, and their Facebook use. It did not say that latter caused the former. As one writer very nicely explained, “Facebook may be a symptom of a big procrastination habit, not a cause.”
Unfortunately, most of the initial news stories didn’t get that.

Fortunately, Holland notes that some subsequent coverage got was correct, and the Wall Street Journal even blogged about the incident, clearly outlining the caveats for such research and promoting research prior to peer review.

In an age when newsrooms are facing constant scrutiny, and not just because of budget cuts and changing news priorities, it behooves reporters to be extra careful with conveying complex information. The reason: As this case shows, journalists and news outlets are more easily becoming the story simply by being cavalier, careless and ignorant.