Here’s a story that tells you about an important transforming event in my life and sets the stage for this discussion. When I was at NYU’s journalism school, my first draft of a masters thesis was an in-depth report of media bias during the Palestinian Intifadah of 1987. I wrote a 15 page opus itemizing all sorts of media bias against Israel and I was quite shocked when my professor sent it back filled with criticisms and essentially letting me know that he thought my work was garbage. “Liberal self-hating Jew,” I figured. The article was filled with quotes, facts and figures and yet I knew that I wasn’t going to get a masters degree unless this guy passed me. I decided to skip the debate and move to a less controversial topic which turned out to be the Adversary System of Justice.
But the episode haunted me because I felt very strongly about the issue and I had worked hard on that paper. I really didn’t think it was garbage. But then when you really sat down and thought hard about it, you had to conclude that it was. The professor took care to note in the margins why the article was flawed. All my quotes, facts and figures were based on third parties to incidents telling me what they knew, and what they knew with deep conviction was that the reports in the media were wrong. Some of them were famous but none of the people I talked to actually witnessed anything. I had not witnessed anything. I couldn’t back up one single thing in that entire paper. Even if I had gone to Israel to “see things for myself,” it was a year after the incidents I was discussing in my paper.
This episode comes to mind when I read columns and letters in various newspapers or hear speakers at various forums complaining about media bias. I’m not saying the media is perfect, but it behooves us to question whether or not the critic is more or less biased than the media he or she accuses. Most of these columns, letters and speakers are embarrassing because they reflect the very faults they cite. It is an important reason why media critics are often marginalized as kooks.
A few observations based on things I’ve read and heard:
1. People are increasingly monitoring a wider variety of sources for their news and information. However, these sources are tending to represent specialized media with a clear agenda and the reader is less likely to even look at items from categories not specifically of interest. For example, instead of reading the New York Times for international news, a person with a high interest for Israeli news might scan the day’s news from Arutz 7, an information agency publishing in Israel focusing on news about Israel and the Middle East with a right-wing outlook. A person with a left-wing outlook would instead monitor daily newsfeed from the Haaretz newspaper. Neither of these options would have been available a few years ago. Left-wingers are not monitoring Arutz 7 and right-wingers do not read Haaretz. Neither of them are likely to monitor English language sources from its Arab neighbors such as the Jordan Times or the Daily Star in Beirut, both available on the Internet.
2. Media critics often complain that Israel receives too much media coverage but the fact is that’s the only subject they really want to read about and they assume for themselves the role of guardians over what the rest of the world might read about Israel in the media; the average person might not even read or recall the Israel story in the New York Times. The fact is that Israel does get a lot of newsprint; that’s because news happens there, the press is free to cover it and lots of people in America care about what happens in Israel because Jerusalem is central to three religions. The impromptu march on the presidential palace and inauguration ceremony of Mrs. Arroyo in the Philippines was great news yesterday but CNN’s domestic service didn’t interrupt its sports magazine to cover it live and that’s because Americans don’t care about the Philippines.
3. When partisan people do read mainstream media, they increasingly appear to be doing so to confirm or critique that same subject which they have already read in specialized media. If they read something that doesn’t match what they read before or don’t find within a detail they read before, they assume something is wrong with the article and conclude bias exists. It may even prompt them to write a letter to the editor. But very often those complaints selectively cite facts, overgeneralize or refute specific articles without recalling other articles written around the same time.
4. Firm believers in the rightness of their cause want more than objectivity in the media; they want the media to take their side. Objectivity itself is considered bias when you are sure that the only moral position is yours. At a certain point, truth be damned if it doesn’t match expectations. Last month I asked some people for their opinions about an article that discussed the issue of Palestinian textbooks. The article pointed to new developments on the subject that called into question earlier reports that were cited by media critics. The reactions I got had nothing to do with the merits of the article; instead I received criticism aimed at the writer of the article for writing the article.
At one forum this month, a lady who criticized the media as biased walked up to me and asked if I could recommend her things to read because she said she wasn’t getting enough of a variety. Then I mentioned a few titles and she quickly lost interest. She then proceeded to tell me many of her radical opinions and that she herself wrote for a newspaper. I asked her how she handled her stories. She said she wrote features to avoid political subjects. I replied that I hoped she was fair with her feature subjects. She didn’t like that comment but I just had this feeling that this woman probably eats her feature subjects for lunch. You don’t have to be political to be biased.
Such a situation is bound to breed excessive cynicism. People are increasingly alienated because they think the media is biased, but the problem is more that readers think they know better because they are reading not to exercise their minds and explore ideas but to reinforce their convictions.
Here’s where I come out on the issue of media bias:
1. I have the luxury of releasing articles at my convenience here on globalthoughts. I can sit with a draft for a month and tweak it 20 times before it gets posted. No matter what, I always look at it later and find something to change. Something is always left out, either intentionally or not. (After all, there is a limit to your patience and I want you to read my postings to the end; at least I am not limited by space or time as other media is.) Something is later proven wrong and something just looks stupid a year later. Especially since I sit here and constantly receive new information and specialize in a region that is inherently unstable (ie: the Middle East), there is always the yen to reconsider the story. Had I posted my article that discussed Ashcroft a few days ago, it would have been less charitable toward him but I sat on it for a few days to reconsider his virtues. Pity the correspondent for the daily paper that has to turn in his article every day at 6. Does every analysis about the Israel-Arab conflict have to recite an unabridged 50, 75 or 2,000 years of history? Does every incident in this never-ending spiral of incidents have to recite the incident that came before it (and the one before it)? Does every report or on-air panel discussion have to have representatives of all sides commenting? I personally recommend more humility to the critics; to be so perfect requires one to be superhuman.
2. There is a problem, but it is more of ignorance than bias. Too many journalists cover things they know too little about and this is because (a) for-profit media doesn’t allocate resources for training and education; (b) there is no licensing for journalists in the American tradition – any idiot can declare himself a journalist; (c) editors don’t themselves perceive the value of having reporters master their subjects. Last year I spoke with A.M. Rosenthal who was editor of the New York Times for 17 years. He saw no value to having foreign correspondents learn foreign languages and study about the countries they were being sent to cover. He said he learned all he needed to know about India while he was there at the diplomatic cocktail parties. He edited and selected years of news reports about the Middle East but never visited there.
3. People selectively remember and read what they want to read. I read cover to cover everyday from multiple sources and am constantly reminded of what I read and watch. In my opinion, there is plenty of information out there on all sides of various issues for anyone to make a case for whatever he or she wants to prove. Newspapers such The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune are amazingly comprehensive and on the ball. Magazines such as the Economist have an edge but they offer brilliant analysis at the close of each week. The BBC World television and radio services offer a view of the world the American networks don’t. American television is a special genre which has its faults (particularly that they are pressed for time) but I wouldn’t venture to say they are biased in the sense that they are pushing a version of the facts. You may not get the full picture each hour of television or day of newspaper but if you monitor regularly you will.
If both sides are criticizing, either they are both wrong or both right. Some Jews criticize CNN for anti-Israel bias. Some Arabs criticize what they call ZNN – the Zionist News Network. Those Jews reply that Arab criticism of CNN is just part of their propaganda. So what gives? My feeling is that CNN (at least the domestic service we watch in the US) is commercially driven and shallow but this is based on the unsophisticated nature of the American audience. CNN and MSNBC started out more hard-news oriented but became what they are in order to survive. If you want serious news coverage, watch the BBC.
There are biases in the media – exciting pictures for television and base instincts such as murder, sex and power. Story lines such as the underdog against the established power; good vs. evil; winner vs. loser; clean endings; search for parallel trends; come from behind to victory. In my opinion, these are American biases driven by market forces; the British media which doesn’t need commercial sponsorship to survive is more likely to focus on future trends than build contrived contexts (meaning neatly packaged story lines) around incidents of news.
So yes, there are biases and faults but they are more institutional than sinister. I have always felt that the call for objectivity is flawed because it begs too much from fallible humans and is unrealistic. Anyone covering a story who knows his business should have some opinions about it and I’d like to know what those opinions are so that I can better judge the person’s work. I give you my opinions and analysis and take care to make clear which is which. What we should expect is honesty and good work – the reporter has a duty to tell us what he or she knows (and what he doesn’t know) and to make best efforts to find out everything worth knowing. The reporter should be equipped to know enough to sift between fact and fiction and to realize what he should investigate. The editor and publisher should also be committed to delivering the news his correspondents send in and not filter it through his own prejudices or external considerations. We forget that the ultimate power is not what the reporter writes but what the editor decides to publish and how the story is presented to the reader/viewer. As a writer, I know the difference.
These faults are deep-rooted and will not be corrected in our generation, certainly when the causes stem from the fact that American media delivers what the public wants to read and watch. The solution is not to reform media but to educate those that monitor the media to become smarter consumers. This will not happen as long as the most interested consumers become more partisan than intellectually curious and honest who accuse based on their “knowing” facts they really don’t know (and don’t care that they don’t). Ultimately, this vocal but marginal sector becomes cynical and aloof, humored but ignored by the media. They will be heeded if they wield economic power but this is rare. Right-wing Jews are no match for the oil and aerospace industries (although I have no basis to believe these industries are influencing news coverage in America regarding Israel). I and others occasionally speak before “informed” audiences who have opinions bordering on certitude lacking factual foundation and it is demoralizing that people can approach such important issues with knowledge a mile wide but six inches deep.
It is possible to “know” a lot by reading and watching and to still know nothing. I once asked Norman Podhoretz how he knew everything he purported to know about the Arab World and what guided him through 35 years of editing Commentary Magazine, when he never traveled to the Arab World and couldn’t name one Arab person that he knew personally. He said “I know what I read.” I didn’t like Professor Rubin in 1988, but I have eaten my humble pie and can fairly claim to know garbage when I see it having produced a bit of it myself. The subject bears consideration by all who “know.”
