From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Subject: Managing The News (was Political Speeches)
Organization: Glassboro State College (No Journalism School, I Think)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 04:23:12 GMT


The book I have been pushing semi-weekly, _Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric_,
by Howard Kahane, includes a chapter titled `Managing The News'.  It goes into
some detail about how news organisations fall down on the job, why they do,
what to look for, and how to correct for it.  (Various newspapers and
magazines are also cited as examples of sloppy reasoning throughout the book.)

Several important things to remember:

 a) Journalists are people, not Vulcans.  If they hear a speech or statement
    which attacks one of their own beliefs/opinions, they will remember it
    unfavorably.  If they don't misremember the words, they will put their
    own impression on top of the setting, the tone, the crowd response, the
    speaker's confidence/attitude/guilty-look, and many other "non-concrete"
    things.  They often try to be objective, but they are not perfect.

 b) Mechanical recording devices, while common, can't fix every problem.  A
    quote may be garbled on a tape, and a reporter will fix it using his own
    memory.  It may be perfect on the tape and transcribed incorrectly.  It
    may be transcribed correctly and later edited improperly.

 c) A lot of news is _given_ to the media by other sources.  Some newspapers
    independently investigate most stories, but those with fewer resources
    have to rely on wire reports, reports in/on _other_ media, or press
    releases.  The resources to check every fact and interpretation are not
    always present.  In those cases, the paper may have to trust that the
    police department has not put a politically convenient spin on statistics;
    that Joe Politician did his research before speaking; that General Motors
    really has complied with EPA rules for 25 years.


Two stories:

In 1988, Robert T Morris sent a `worm' (a program which spreads itself to
computers like a virus, but which does no actual harm) out on the Internet.
The Baltimore Sun came to UMD (where I worked at the time), and interviewed
some of the Chief Hackers (our computer systems had been rendered immune to
the worm because of changes we'd made to the software).  One of these people
was a fellow named Chris Torek, who has a very distinct speaking style; among
other things, he virtually never uses contractions.  But the newspaper story
was full of purported quotes, including "can't" and "don't" and "won't" and a
number of other things Mr Torek never said.

A few years back (I don't remember when) the Ombudsman for some newspaper (the
?Washington Post?, I think) ran a column about abortion.  In particular, that
his newspaper treated news about abortion unfairly, with a clear bias toward
pro-choice groups.  There was a large story about a pro-choice rally, with
several pictures, and estimates of attendance.  But a much larger rally 3
months later got only one picture, no estimate of crowd size, and half as much
text.  It was, he said, clearly unprofessional.  I don't know if anything has
been done to fix this, but I was gratified that somebody working for a paper
had noticed the discrepancy and spoke up about it.


Kerry Stephenson asked:

> If they can't get a simple sentence right, how can we trust them
> to tell us more complex things?

You can't; you can trust them to get basic ideas correct, and you can usually
trust them when their own reporters investigate stories.  They aren't going to
be perfect anytime soon; but they ARE the best defense against most people who
intentionally mislead us.  Print media are better at going in-depth, but often
at a cost of accuracy in details such as quotes.  Televised media can
reproduce images and events and sound almost flawlessly, but you can't go back
to look at what was said two minutes ago, and they usually don't go into great
detail.  An intelligent combination of the two, and a healthy skepticism, can
go a long way toward giving an accurate view of the world.

One of my favorite innovations in this Presidential race was the televised
telephone interview.  By removing the filtering layer around the newsmakers,
the live call-in TV show enabled us to hear the full answer to a caller's
question, without some editor cutting words and phrases out.  This comes at
a cost: a reporter may have facts that we don't, and thus be able to ask
better followup questions or correct errors made by the interviewee.  But at
the same time, the callers are not so interested in quotable newsmaking as
reporters, and in some cases asked better questions than the professionals.

Sadly, now that Ross Perot has taken the heat off the other two guys, they are
not doing as many call-in interviews.  Hopefully there will be a lot of
well-argued debates.  Warren Rudman and somebody else (name forgotten) had
suggested a one-hour televised discussion of the deficit: Mr Rudman, his
partner, and one of the three candidates -- alone.  No phone calls and no
other candidates.  I'd have liked to see that, because it would again be a
fairly direct channel of communication.  However, with Mr Perot out of the
race, the other two guys seem to have decided on "politics as usual".  Alas.


In short, you should be a determined skeptic about anything you hear, and
moreso if you hear it from somebody who has something to gain.  Commercials
and print ads, politicians, newspeople/researchers/whoever with their own
agenda, religious leaders (broadcast or otherwise) -- anybody.  Mr Kahane's
book is all about training people to be skeptics; I've recommended it before,
and I'll recommend it again.  As long as one or two people go get it, I'll
consider the bandwidth justified.  (In fact, Lon Mendelsohn already got it, so
I suppose that counts.)


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly." -- Simeon Strunsky

"Quotation, n.  The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.  The
 words erroneously repeated." -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
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