It isn't my usual approach to give away the conclusion in the title, because I like to keep readers in suspense, but ever since the derisive epithet "Faux News" was invented I have found it objectionable.
My first objection was that "faux" is a French word, and its correct pronunciation, even in English, is "f" followed by long "o" (rhymes with "doe"). Pronouncing "faux" so it sounds anything like "fox" is something people should do only when they are making fun of those who pronounce everything French in a way that I would describe as an illiterate Americanization. But I digress.
Regular readers know that I enjoy taking the news media to task for sloppy reporting, and I am sometimes harsh in my criticism. There are organizations that have set themselves up to be critics of the media, and I must say I find no small irony in their existence. From the left we have Media Matters, which criticizes news reporting perceived as having a right-wing bias. And from the right we have the Media Research Center, which criticizes news reporting perceived as having a left-wing bias.
We all have biases, unique perspectives, and opinions. Most of us recognize that we should try to separate opinion from fact. Sometimes this can be challenging. When I first heard lawyers speak of "true facts," I thought it an absurd redundancy, but then I realized it was an admission that the truth of claims set forth as facts is sometimes not straightforward. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late U.S. Senator from New York, is credited with having made the observation that we are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not all entitled to our own facts.
On a clear day the sky is blue, and that appearance is caused by the way sunlight is scattered by water vapor in the air. Few people (I hope) would argue the factual nature of this statement. On the other hand, a statement to the effect that this summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been unpleasantly hot should be regarded as a matter of opinion, regardless of what percentage of Pittsburghers surveyed might agree with it.
When it comes to public affairs, lines between opinion and fact are often not so clear. For many years Walter Cronkite concluded the evening newscast on CBS with the trademark line, "And that's the way it is..." (typically followed by the day's date, because the way it is today isn't necessarily the way ... well, you get the idea). Had I been a bit more inclined to question the authority of "the most trusted man in America," I might have said, "Oh, yeah? Says you." But I didn't.
As the years have gone by, Americans have been increasingly disposed to doubt the accuracy and objectivity of news reporting. In 1980 Ted Turner founded a cable news network with that as its name, abbreviated as CNN. Some to the right on the political spectrum thought the network lacked objectivity and editorialized (with a decidedly liberal slant) within its news reporting. There was a perception that CNN reflected the biases of its founder, as Turner was widely viewed as having leftist leanings. In the early 90s some Republicans began derisively referring to CNN as the Clinton News Network because it seemed to report the news in a way so favorable to the Administration. Many thought it was time for some competition, and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation obliged in 1996 by launching the Fox News Channel. Unlike CNN, News Corp said, FNC would report the news in a way that would be "fair and balanced." Further, on Fox News the reporting of "straight news" and the programs featuring analysis and opinion would be clearly separated. There would be no editorializing in the straight news reporting, and the analysis and opinion segments and shows would include voices from the right in proportions far exceeding the token conservative one might (infrequently) find on CNN. Finally, in reporting of straight news, FNC insisted that different people had different views of the facts, so Fox would tell its audience what those different views were and let them decide for themselves which were the "true facts," so to speak. "We report ... you decide" was the tagline.
It's this last aspect of the FNC approach that some find unacceptable. Facts are facts, and people who disagree with the facts should not have their opinions reported as being equally legitimate. Perhaps I should illustrate with an example.
Let's use climate change. There's a nice controversial subject for you. The CNN approach is to tell you that the vast majority of climate scientists say the earth is getting warmer, that it's getting warmer faster than ever before in our planet's history, and human activity is largely to blame. If you watch enough coverage of this issue on CNN you may catch mention of the fact that there is a vocal minority of scientists who differ, but you could easily miss that, and that perspective is presented as an outlier barely worth acknowledging. On FNC, on the other hand, both perspectives are presented, with equal weight (and time) given to presentation of the bases of these diverging opinions. You may even find a suggestion that climate scientists who disagree with the majority view are not quite as tiny a minority as we've been led to believe, because many are afraid of being shunned (loss of research grant funding, among other possible repercussions) if they declare themselves skeptics.
Viewers who prefer the CNN approach say there is a strong consensus of scientific opinion, and it is irresponsible journalism to be "fair and balanced" by giving equal weight to a kooky minority view. Those who like Fox say that's exactly what's wrong with CNN: that network decides what is "kooky" based on whether it does or does not serve the political purposes of the "liberal establishment," and they tell their audience that the kooks are not entitled to their own facts.
There are some who think CNN is well left of center in its reporting, while Fox is squarely middle of the road. I'm not one of them. First, FNC's analysis and opinion segments and shows are overwhelmingly conservative in their orientation. Second, their straight news coverage features reporters and anchors who ask more pointed and challenging questions of interviewees and guests who are Democrats or seem to have viewpoints from the left of center than they do of conservatives. Third, the commercial success of FNC has not been lost on those running the business that is CNN, and Fox has forced CNN notably to the right. Now, when CNN's reporters are interviewing guests whose perspective seems to be coming from the right, their hard questioning is more respectful, and the skepticism with which the answers are greeted is more subtle. And there is less blatant editorializing within the reporting of straight news. The analysis and opinion are still overwhelmingly liberal, but that's OK, because it's analysis and opinion.
If you want criticism from the left, go to the Web site of Media Matters, and for the opposite perspective the Media Research Center will suit you just fine. But is there anyone providing a critique that's right down the middle?
(Just in case you were hoping, based on the name of my blog, no, I'm not going to claim that I am the ultimate, objective arbiter of who is doing things right in news reporting and who isn't. You are free to reach that conclusion, however. Now give me a minute to extract tongue from cheek.)
Remember the 2010 election? It didn't go well for the national Democratic party. So some savvy folks at the University of Maryland decided to explore the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, and any number of other influences, may have flooded the American electorate with "information" of doubtful quality. Note the way I introduced this study, connecting it with the outcome of the election rather than presenting it as a matter of pure intellectual inquiry, thereby suggesting that those conducting it may have had a political agenda. Not to worry: I shall find a yardstick and rap my own knuckles for doing that.
The study is called, "Misinformation and the 2010 Election: A Study of the U.S. Electorate." The purpose of the study was to examine where voters were getting their information, what the voters themselves thought about the quality of the information available to them, and whether some sources of information were associated more than others with creating a "misinformed" electorate.
If I were to scrutinize the methods, the results, and the conclusions (interpretation of the results) in detail, the way I would if we were reviewing a paper from a medical journal at my teaching hospital, this essay would go on so much longer that those of you who are still with me would soon not be. So let me summarize: conservatives are more misinformed than liberals, and those who watch Fox News are more misinformed than those who get their news from other sources. Further, the more they rely on Fox News and the less they sample other sources, the more misinformed they are.
Voters were asked questions about economic stimulus and its effects on jobs; health care reform; the state of the economy; climate change; the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP, also known as the bank bailout); the bailout of GM and Chrysler; whether the income tax burden on the middle class is getting better or worse; the war in Afghanistan; and the "birther" controversy over the president's origins.
The investigators tried to tease apart voters' own personal views from what they understood to be generally accepted facts. But this is challenging at best. Let us take, as an example, the question of whether the Obama Administration's economic stimulus package "saved or created millions of jobs." If voters thought otherwise, they were misinformed. So how was that question phrased?
"Is it your impression that most economists who have studied it estimate that the stimulus legislation ... (a) saved or created several million jobs; (b) saved or created a few jobs; or (c) caused job losses?"
I consider myself to be a well-informed voter, and that's more than a matter of intellectual egotism. I read a lot and seek out a wide variety of news sources. I remember reading that the Congressional Budget Office issued a sanguine estimate of the effect of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on job creation. But I also remember thinking the phrase "saved or created" was itself created to facilitate optimistic claims, and I certainly never assumed that the CBO's estimate was based on the carefully considered opinions of "most economists who have studied" the question.
So, assuming I do not wish to answer the question by saying "I don't know," I might choose (a) because I think that's the answer they're looking for even though I am deeply skeptical. Or I might choose (b) because I think economists tend to be realists or even pessimists (remember, they call economics "the dismal science"). Or I might choose (c) because I think little the government does has the intended salutary effect, and economists are surely smart enough to figure this out.
How do you think I will answer the question if I am a conservative or a Fox News viewer (two subsets of respondents to the survey with, I would guess, substantial overlap)? Right. I'm misinformed.
This is just one example. But most (not all) of the questions on the survey, subjected to close analysis, would tend to lead to a similar result and conclusion.
Fox News has its detractors, and some of the points they make are legitimate. We should get our news about public affairs from a variety of sources. If we gravitate toward sources that are full of opinions that mostly agree with our own, we may stay in a comfort zone, but we are less likely to be well informed - and much less likely to understand divergent views.
The study from the University of Maryland has been cited by many who dislike Fox and believe (1) conservatives are dimwitted; (2) conservatives watch Fox News, which keeps them misinformed; (3) conservatives won't watch anything else, because they do not wish to be enlightened. Some of FNC's detractors believe most or all of what Fox News does is an unconscionable breach of journalistic ethics, and FNC should be forced off the cable systems. At least until they remember the meaning of the First Amendment.
Here's what I believe. Fox News is reactionary. It is a reaction to the perception that for decades the news media have been populated chiefly by people whose political ideology is clearly left of center and who have been a good deal less than successful in keeping their ideological biases from affecting the way they report the news. Sit with me at home as I watch CNN or read the news on CNN.com, in my car as I listen to NPR, or anywhere as I read the articles linked from my daily e-mails from the New York Times. I will be happy to point out countless examples. Well, not countless. We can count them. The number will be large.
And that is why Fox News exists.
No comments:
Post a Comment