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acroyearThe Intersection:
When I'm speaking about how to fix the politics-of-science problem, I often target the media for special criticism. I point out that if journalists weren't so addicted to the norm of fify-fifty "balance," they wouldn't be so vulnerable to the machinations of science abusers who attempt to create phony "debates" over topics like evolution or global warming.To this I would add, if you're eventually going to show that one of the two "sides" is full of crap, make sure you've made that clear in the first few paragraphs so to the casual reader it doesn't look like you're praising a side that really needs to be condemned. This was the main flaw, more than any other, of the recent column in the 'Post over that NVCC teacher shoving Wells's Icons b.s. down unsuspecting students throats.
But when asked what to do about this problem, I don't throw up my hands in despair. Quite the contrary: I think that, at least to a large extent, journalists are amenable to reason. Sure, we need better science education in journalism school. But we also need to take the argument straight to journalists: There's no justification for fifty-fifty balance in coverage irrespective of the issue being covered. Rather, in each and every story, journalists have to make a judgment about how credible their sources are. The obvious reductio ad absurdum is Holocaust deniers: Should their perspective be provided, for "balance," any time someone writes about the Holocaust? Of course not.
Faced with this argument directly, I doubt any journalist would really reject it. The good news, then, is that the argument is being made more and more prominently. To give just one example: I saw Good Night, and Good Luck last night, and the Edward R. Murrow character makes this very point about the limits of "balance," quite explicitly. It was extremely heartening to see such a position being adopted in a popular movie. And as more and more media critics make this point, I am optimistic that it will eventually stick.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 04:24 pm (UTC)That's how I was trained back in j-school ... I guess I somehow missed that they'd stopped teaching the importance of weighting the information you received. Example: evidence from a Stanford professor is more accurate than evidence from an 8th grade dropout.
How hard can it be to figure this stuff out?
no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 10:44 pm (UTC)intent is important in interpreting the interpretations of data -- just as "you can always see what you went to look for" in statistical surveys of people, you can always see the evidence that supports what you were looking for in statistical analsys in nature.
if a scientists finds something that's extremely beneficial to his financial supporters (like "there's no link between smoking and cancer", a common one throughout the 50s to 80s), it should automatically be considered suspect. scientists are skeptical by nature, especially where financial backing is concerned.
when global warming "debates" are presented in the media, because the far-right and big-business side have "scientists" on their side, the media presents the two positions as if they were equal *constantly* (rob's protests not withstanding, i'll look up examples if he really wants me to, but Chris Mooney has made a career out of finding them), regardless of the actual level of evidence (more specifically, the large quantity of ignored facts) and the crappy methodology of the scientists supported by the big-business side.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 06:54 pm (UTC)I think the key phrase, for me, in your statement is "if you're ...going to show...full of crap..." As you know from my comments to that entry, I don't think the article's purpose was to show that either side was full of crap, but to show the different viewpoints and why they were arguing. (I still don't think most people know what the different positions are beyond a superficial level.) As such, I think the article did a very good job.
Rather, in each and every story, journalists have to make a judgment about how credible their sources are.
I don't know any responsible journalist that would disagree with that. The problem is that many readers confuse "source" with "viewpoint." If an article seems to to give credibility to a viewpoint that the reader disagrees with, the reader feels the journalist used poor judgment about a source. Not the same thing at all. I get the feeling that what the writher here really wanted to say was that journalists have to make a judgment about how credible a viewpoint is, which is very shakey ground journalistically. It's because that happens that we start getting accusations of media bias.
The holocaust example is flawed in that there might still be journalistically valid reasons for writing an article exploring or explaining the viewpoint of persons who deny the holocaust happened. For example, as an expose' showing why the viewpoint lacks credibility, or as a story examining the group and its views if the group is starting to have an impact in the political or social arena.
Finally, I think the author is perceiving something that doesn't exist. Although nearly every story of a controversy will include differing viewpoints, rarely is it a 50/50 split; and most stories focus on what is "news" and usualy only include a minimal comment from an opposing view, if one is needed at all. For example, most of the stories I recall about teaching I.D. in schools usually focused either on the ID supporters or the non-ID supporters. Stories where the "news" element was something the I.D. supporters did or were about to do usually emphasized the I.D.er's views and only had minimal comments from the opposing side: stories about the science supporters accomplishments or plans focused on their points and agenda. But I don't recall any until the Post article that did a 50/50, he said/she said treatment of the stories.