Professor Neil Buchanan responded brilliantly when asked by a radio producer to go on the air and debate someone who opposes extending unemployment benefits:
While you say that there are ‘schools of thought on both sides,’ the fact is that one of those two sides has no economic evidence on its side and bases its opposition to unemployment benefits on a crass political calculation. Covering this issue as if there are two reasonable sides to be heard, with both sides presumed to be arguing in good faith, is simply not accurate. It is like the ‘debate’ over cigarette smoking (until about ten years ago), when one side (public health scientists) said that cigarettes cause cancer, and the other side (cigarette manufacturers) said that there is no link between cigarettes and cancer. Or the climate change debate, where every credible climate scientist says that humans are causing the planet to grow hotter, but the other side says that a harsh winter in Washington, DC proves that Al Gore is wrong. Finding people who are motivated to say something clearly wrong is not difficult, but they are still clearly wrong.
But I would not be surprised if the producer responded by simply going to the next name down the list, to find somebody who was less principled, less intelligent, hungrier for publicity or notoriety, and ultimately more likely to perpetuate the myth of the controversy on this point. That’s my only objection to the debate-legitimizes-foolishness argument. If there is a “market” for presenting two-sided “issues” in an adversarial or oppositional format (and I think there is—look at the standard methods of “mass media presentations of public policy topics,” as one of the commenters on Buchanan’s post points out), then won’t depriving that market of the most reasonable evidence-based views tend to increase the currency of less reasonable, less well-articulated explanations of technical subjects, and thereby impoverish the public understanding?
Thanks for an informative post. I agreed with most of Buchanan’s reasoning, but what I found particularly interesting was what he had to say about the nature of public radio producers/stations.
I don’t think most of them are necessarily interested in broadcasting “controversy”. I DO think it’s true that there is an enormous pressure on public media outlets to present news and information in a way that gives a “two-sided” account. I’m not sure that that is due to “market” forces, but rather to a fear of appearing biased.
I think you correctly point out the result: that whether motivated by fear of bias or pandering to a market, what gets lost when you dismiss this method of debate (troubled as it may be) is a broader public understanding.
I was really hoping you would comment, to find out the perspective from the broadcasters’ end.
Do you have any experiences where a broadcasting organization presented something without doing the “two sides” treatment, where a two-sided treatment was really not warranted, only to suffer a backlash from the audience?
In other words, more generally, do you think that fear of being biased is based on the experience of actually being accused of bias, even for coverage that is honest, accurate, and even-handedly one-sided, or from something more like what I suggested in a comment yesterday on Bench Dog, a deep skepticism that anybody can really know anything, leading to a compulsive but perhaps irrational need to always include an opposing viewpoint?
Do broadcasters worry that, even if they are secure in the integrity of their reporting, they nevertheless have to do the “opposing viewpoints” routine on every single issue, just to prevent losing their audience?
I obviously don’t speak FOR all of broadcasting, or even FOR all of public media/broadcasting.
But…
Speaking OF public broadcasting, I do think that an “opposing viewpoints” routine is used on almost every single issue…at least by the NPR network. Not only to prevent losing audience (which is a realistic thing to fear), but also because it is almost impossible to report on anything without being accused of bias – loudly.
The NPR ombudsman did a survey of complaints based on coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Over three months or so, the number of stories in which only an Israeli or only a Palestinian source was interviwed were essentially equal; yet there were also an equal number of complaints about slanted or biased coverage from supporters on both sides of the issue. You’d find similar results on subject such as presidential approval ratings, support of various wars, or healthcare reform.
To answer your question more directly, I think the fear of bias is a direct result from being accused of bias.
An additional complication is the fact that not all complaints of bias are reasonable, nor are they made with equal persuasiveness.
Which makes me wonder whether people who complain about others’ “bias” are just concealing their true desire: “Say more things that I already agree with!”
And the pretense of “unbiased” reporting seems pretty simplistic to me. If the world is an infinite set of facts, then every statement by anyone, including a reporter, is a selection of some finite set, according to some selective principle. “Bias” is unavoidable.
Consider these two sentences, straight from the news of today:
“A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.”
“A federal judge on Wednesday blocked some of the toughest provisions in the Arizona illegal immigration law, putting on hold the state’s attempt to have local police enforce federal immigration policy.”
One is from NPR and the other is from Fox News. I doubt you’ll need to follow the links to figure out which is which. Both are obviously biased, but both are essentially true. So why pretend that a news organization has to be “unbiased” to report accurately?
“Which makes me wonder whether people who complain about others’ “bias” are just concealing their true desire: “Say more things that I already agree with!””
Unfortunately, this is true most of the time.
I’m not sure the goal is “unbiased reporting” as much as it is to report in a way that generates the least complaint of bias.
As an offshoot, I’m certain that the fear of accusations of bias is what leads the Fresno Bee to print the most heinous of letters to the editor in an effort to placate the fringe lunatics who would make those accusations. “If you don’t print our terrible logic and hateful rhetoric, then we’ll complain even louder!”
And I don’t doubt it’s the same reason they refuse to moderate their comment forums.
Jay said:
That’s a troubling approach. It tarnishes the integrity of the reporters and undermines the ability of the press to provide a critical voice in the discourse.
Adam said:
And I’m not certain that your certainty is warranted. I take a more dismal view and wonder whether the person or people who choose which letters to print just can’t tell the difference between well-reasoned letters and the other dreck that makes it onto the page.
Peter said:
“That’s a troubling approach. It tarnishes the integrity of the reporters and undermines the ability of the press to provide a critical voice in the discourse.”
Agreed.
I’m with Adam on the choosing of letters to the editor.