Trust Me

Jim Miller notes that the Killian memos story at CBS is likely not a departure from normal practice. From the recent "Israeli spy" story that came and went without a ripple, to the sensationalism surrounding the Abu Ghraib abuse stories, to a story on the Bradley IFV when I was a child, CBS's "standards" have been appallingly bad.

But it's not just CBS, because NBC got into quite a bit of hot water for faking a story on pickup safety, and it goes downhill from there.

And it's not just TV "news" that is at issue. One name for you: Jayson Blair. And if BBC radio mentions the time at the top of the hour, I check my watch first. Reuters and AP cannot even correctly use common English; thus terrorists are anything but.

So the question has to be asked: on what questions of fact can you actually trust the mainstream "news" organizations? I think that the answer has become: none of them.

Most "news" falls into three categories: editorial commentary (aka punditry), straight reporting, and investigative reporting.

Editorial commentary is just expressing an informed opinion; it's what the blogosphere specializes in. It's also what most "news" organizations actually spend their time doing, though they tend to say it's actually the smallest part of what they do. I have no problem with this, as long as editorializing is distinctly separated from reporting. My qualms begin when editorial opinions are inserted into the middle of other stories - as they often are - without any note that what is being said is not fact but opinion.

Straight reporting is simply stating observed facts, without any attempt to insert opinions or draw together strands of evidence. For example, "President Bush gave a speech before the United Nations yesterday, in which he [made certain statements]" is reporting, while "President Bush failed to convince UN delegates yesterday that his decision to invade Iraq was justified" is opinion-mongering. While most "news" organizations claim to do mostly reporting, anyone who reads or watches "news" reports can tell that most stories are largely punditry.

It is not difficult to separate out some of the punditry, but other editorializing goes by unnoticed. For example, choosing not to run stories if they contradict a newspapers editorial line (how many stories on the economy have you seen since it started improving?) is a way of hiding the truth while telling it. Then there are the outright lies and repeated failure to follow initial reports to their actual conclusion.

Investigative journalism is a hybrid, where observed facts are placed together in a sequence, along with supporting evidence and statements, to tell a story that is not evident from the individual disconnected facts. This is what "news magazine" shows like 60 Minutes, magazines like Newsweek, and some newspapers are famous for. But it is apparent from the evidence noted above that investigative journalism is far more selective and often even invented that we are led to believe by the mainstream media. It is this kind of reporting that is actually most susceptible to fraud, because it reports as fact some things which are not, while making inferences which may not be justified and leaving out critical disconfirming evidence. Unlike straight reporting, it is very difficult to separate out editorial opinion from fact in an investigative "news" story.

No one trusts a blogger, until that blogger has established a reputation over time by being right when he reports facts, ready to accept criticism when he is wrong, and honest when he makes a mistake. It used to be different with the mainstream media: we expected every journalist to be a Cronkite or a Murrow. Now we know Cronkite wasn't necessarily any better than Dan Rather. I only hope Ed Murrow and David Brinkley don't turn out to be equally off-base. Now we know that the mainstream media is no more trustworthy than any random person pulled off the street.

"Trust me," says Dan Rather while perpetrating a fraud. "Prove yourself worthy of trust, first," is the only rational response.

Posted by Jeff at September 22, 2004 05:22 PM | Link Cosmos