Moderate Bias

Holy crap, something intelligent published in Time Magazine:

All of which underlines the obvious: the news audience, if not news itself, is getting more polarized. But categories like Pew's "liberal," "conservative" and "neither" imply that our society is as simplistic about media bias as we are about politics (when in fact both involve nuanced positions), and they overlook the most significant bias out there: moderate bias.

As anyone following health reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias — i.e., a preference for centrism — whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle." You see it whenever an organization decides that "balance" requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious: "Some, however, believe global warming is a myth." (Moderate bias would also require me to find a countervailing liberal position and pretend that it is equivalent to global-warming denial. Sorry.)

[snip]

Moderate bias also grows from a related phenomenon: status-quo bias. Journalists, like anyone, have a built-in bias toward believing that what was true yesterday will be true tomorrow. Establishment news outlets grow cozy and comfortable with other establishments. One reason some journalists insufficiently questioned the run-up to the Iraq war and underestimated the housing bubble was that they listened to their usual, credentialed sources — and the history of the past decade is the history of the experts being wrong.

And especially in the top ranks of journalism, there's class bias. If I wanted to look at potential conflicts of interest in reporters covering bank bailouts, for instance, I'd be less concerned about their party affiliation than whether they're based (like me) in New York City, where the economy lives and dies on finance.

It's not even so much that "centrism" is the new "objectivity" as it's about (as always) laziness and stupidity. If the default position is always, "Well, both sides suck, so let's take a little of the suck from each and make a new ball of suck that not only sucks but will satisfy nobody," then you really don't have to think too hard or work too much, do you? You just have to split the baby in half and everybody's happy, or at least equally pissed off!

It's amazing how many journalists still believe the old nonsense about how if you're getting criticized by the left and the right the very fact that such criticism exists means you're doing your job right. Never mind the substance of the criticism, or that often wingtards want the content to conform to their views while liberals just want the content to not, you know, be completely full of shit Joe Klein, what matters is that everyone's mad. Accuracy first, then polishing your knob objectivity bona fides, cats and kittens. If it ain't true, don't matter how "moderate" it is.

At a meatspace meeting a couple of weeks ago we got to talking objectivity and transparency and "the line" between covering something and getting involved in it, the kind of discussion that usually drives me wild because it's about process rather than work. But what I finally came away with was that many, many people confuse passion with bias, mistake caring about something with identifying. And so they see any expression of giving a damn as suspect.

A.

Comments

[spocko]

I also think about how they use the "we are getting it from both sides" to justify ignoring it. As you say, the kind of criticism matters.

[marc sobel]

I don't remember very many people talking about bi-partisanship until 06 when the CW decided that the election showed not that voters disagreed with GOP policies but with excess partisanship. That means that Democrats should not push their policies. Center right nation emerged at that point.

It's all bullshit. The press is right wing oriented either by top down directive ala Fox, Time, and Newsweek or by Village traditions. If there was 1 hour of liberal discussion for every 10 in Fox it would be a revolution.

[pansypoo]

i'll just put the gnews in the 'know nothing' group.