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Jewish World Review
Nov. 6, 2003
/ 11 Mar-Cheshvan, 5764
Lies (and the lazy dunces who put them on Page One)
By
Andrew Silow-Carroll
A respected editor comes clean about his profession and the "news process"
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
When I was working for the Forward I got a call from
a staffer at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle
East Reporting in America, the pro-Israel media
monitor, complaining about a headline that appeared
in the paper. I forget now what the headline said, but
she began by telling me it was biased, slanted,
inaccurate, politically
unbalanced —
I cut her off. "You're right," I
said. "It was late, I typed a
bad headline, no one caught
it, and we regret it. We
messed up." I don't think I said "messed."
There was stunned silence on the other end of the
phone, no doubt because she was used to
journalists defending their product to the bitter end,
bristling at charges of bias, and slamming the phone
down in contempt. I bypassed the broyges (perturbance) by
fessing up to a simple truth: Newspapers often make
mistakes that have nothing to do with the political
slants or personal agendas of the journalists who
work there.
This may be hard to believe, with the best-seller list
dominated by such works as Lies (and the Lying
Liars Who Tell Them) by the liberal Al Franken and
Who's Looking Out For You? by the conservative
Bill O'Reilly, both attacks on the authors'
adversaries in the media. And no doubt reporters
and editors often reveal their political and
ideological prejudices through selective reporting,
loaded language, and the none-too-subtle placement
of photographs and page-one articles.
But I've worked at enough newspapers to know that
readers too often assume bias when there are often a
host of other, more prosaic factors at work. Before
you accuse a newspaper of bias, try to control for
these four things: ignorance, logistics, storyline, and
storytelling.
Ignorance. I've fielded calls from local leaders who
were incensed that we left information out of an
article about their institution, or that we wrote one of
those unfortunate headlines, and assumed it could
only be that we hated them and their work. It's
flattering, in some ways, to be considered so
competent that the possibility that we didn't know
any better is not taken into consideration. The truth
is, we try to get the facts, but nothing exposes a
knowledge gap like tight deadlines and packed
schedules.
Logistics. A reader of the paper I edit, the New Jersey Jewish News, recently asked why a
Washington story he considered important was
deemed worthy only of a brief article on page 36,
rather than more extensive treatment closer to the
front of the newspaper. He could only assume that
we downplayed the story because we didn't share
the protagonist's politics. The truth was the story
broke late on a Tuesday afternoon, shortly before
we went to press and many hours after we had
selected which earlier stories went where. I'm still
not convinced the story was worth more extensive
treatment. But even had I wanted to "front" it, our
usual Washington correspondent was on vacation,
and the wire service on which we depend to
supplement our coverage of the capital sent us only
a three-paragraph article on the topic.
At this point, I'm tempted to write "and then the dog
ate the article"; but my point is that there are plenty
of reasons, not excuses, for the decisions we reach.
Take the often controversial decision about which
articles make it to the front page. At a weekly tabloid
like ours, only two, perhaps three, articles get that
treatment in a given week. We have a strong
preference for local news, under the assumption that
there are plenty of other outlets covering the big
national and international stories. Non-local stories
get extra points if they include a local or state figure,
such as a politician or communal leader. We could
run a front-page article on Israel or anti-Semitism
every week, but we try not to; we think it important
to vary the diet. A good illustration is important, and
we've sometimes "fronted" uninspired stories that
are accompanied by great photographs.
Storyline. In the most recent issue of The New
Republic, Jonathan Chait writes about media bias:
"Once the news media has settled on a perception of
a political figure, it becomes nearly impossible to
dislodge." That's true of many, if not all, news
phenomena: Lazy or time-pressed writers fit the facts
of a story into one of a number of preconceived
templates. One of my favorite examples was in The
New York Times' coverage of the tensions at
Rutgers between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian
groups. On Oct. 11, Maria Newman wrote, "Rutgers
has become embroiled during the last few months in
a fierce debate about politics in the Middle East.
And at times the debate has degenerated into
incidents of incivility." Those two sentences imply
that both sides of the debate carried out "incidents
of incivility," when, in fact, the reporter would be
hard-pressed to find a single example of an Israel
supporter misbehaving (it was a Palestinian
supporter who tossed a pie at Natan Sharansky, and
the Hillel House that suffered a graffiti attack).
According to the reporter's storyline, each side in
the Middle East conflict, or a campus tussle, must be
equally to blame. In this case "balance" perverted
the truth.
Storytelling. Finally, journalists love a good story —
and, let's be honest, so do readers. And the
temptation is to tell a tale from an unusual angle. I'm
guessing that's why, of the two main stories in the
Times on the Rutgers conference, one profiled
Charlotte Kates, the woman who organized the
pro-Palestinian conference, and the other led off
with Abe Greenhouse, the Jewish student who
tossed the pie at Sharansky. The editors guessed,
correctly, that we'd be fascinated by a profile of a
young woman who joined the Communist Party at
age 13 and still reveres Lenin. And Greenhouse is a
classic example of "man bites dog" — the Jewish kid
who joins the Palestinian cause (that's why NJJN
also wrote about him). The Times may or may not
have it in for Israel, but in this case, I'm guessing
they merely wanted to entertain.
Of course, controlling for ignorance, logistics,
storyline, and storytelling does not mean you won't
find evidence of bias. Nor does it absolve editors of
the responsibility of rooting out bias, overt or
subconscious. But if editors agree — really agree —
to examine their own prejudices, then readers should
be willing to understand the pressures and
constraints under which journalists' work.
"Journalists aren't biased, just incompetent" (or
"lazy" or "overworked") is not exactly a rallying cry,
but readers and reporters should remember that it
sometimes fits.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading."
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JWR contributor Andrew Silow-Carroll is Editor-in-Chief of New Jersey Jewish News.
Send your comments to him by clicking here.
© 2003, New Jersey Jewish News
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