C H A P T E R 1 0 C L E A R T H I N K I N G I N A B L U R R Y W O R L D

The Mainstream Media as a Source of Information

The term ‘media’ can be used to refer to many different things.

What are some examples?

Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising

Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass electronic communication networks

Digital media, electronic media used to store, transmit, and receive digitized information

Electronic media, communications delivered via electronic or electromechanical energy

Mass media, all means of mass communications Multimedia, communications that incorporate multiple forms of information

content and processing New media, a broad term encompassing the amalgamation of traditional

media with the interactive power of computer and communications technology

News media, mass media focused on communicating news Print media, communications delivered via paper or canvas Recording media, devices used to store information

Of particular interest to our topic today will be the news media.

“The news media refers to the section of the mass media that focuses on presenting current news to the public. These include print media (newspapers, magazines); broadcast media (radio stations, television networks), and increasingly Internet-based media (World Wide Web pages, blogs).”

Why Does the functioning of the news media count as a critical thinking issue?

The news media is our (the publics) only source for a wide range of important information that we use to make important decisions.

What are some decisions that we make that are informed by the media?

Beliefs about politics. Voting. Beliefs about the economy. Making investments of different sorts(e.g. buying stock,

starting a business, hiring more employees, buying a house, etc).

What team to bet on in a game. Beliefs about international affairs. Whether it is safe to travel to (e.g. Israel, Libya, Egypt,

China, Cuba, Mexico, Northern Ireland, etc.). Beliefs about the weather. How to dress when going outside.

These decisions can have profound effects on our lives and on the well being of the broader society.

We, thus, have an interest in having good information when we make decisions of the sort mentioned above.

However the media is far less governed by norms of good reasoning then one might uncritically assume.

In fact, the news media is subject to many powerful norms distinct from, and often inimical to, those of accuracy and relevance.

Forming reliable beliefs depends not just on formally correct reasoning, but on having good information in the first place.

No source of information is guaranteed to be perfect, but if we can identify and predict its weaknesses, we can do better at extracting good information from a source. Since we get so much of our information about the world through the mainstream media, analyzing it for problems is an important part of improving our reasoning.

Some of the reasons that news media can lead to a misinformed public are:

-Spin -Reducing costs and Protecting Revenues -Biasing effects of commercial Orientation -Infotainment -Media Control - bias (editor, owner, reporter) -Journalistic competence (or lack thereof)

Being aware of these problems with the information presented in the news media can enable consumers of news media to be appropriately cautious about the information they receive from the news media.

This enables consumers to extract more accurate and reliable information from the news media that they can use to increase the likelihood that they will make good decisions.

In the rest of this lecture we are going to discuss some of the earlier mentioned list of problems in a bit more detail.

Assertions and insinuations that lead to value judgments which may not be well supported.

One example of this is discussed in the text book in the hypothetical case of the Saskatchewan Widget Company and Manitoba Gadget International

“In other news, the questions continue today for Manitoba Gadget International, as the company fends off allegations of industrial espionage from the Saskatchewan Widget Company . . .”

“In other news, the Saskatchewan Widget Company continues its attack on Manitoba Gadget international for alleged industrial espionage”

The first lead in “insinuates that Manitoba gadget international is on the defensive, making it seem that ‘the questions’ are embarrassing or difficult.” The second though “emphasises the aggressiveness of the Saskatchewan Widget Company, giving some intimation that the company is acting in a hostile manner.”

Here is a concrete example of this problem from yesterday’s Globe and mail.

“The McGuinty government is rejecting out of hand a request for more than $350-million in financial help from Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who frequently criticized his predecessor for begging the province for money.”

This statement is problematic on several fronts. First, it gives the effect that Rob Ford’s request is somehow hypocritical invoking Ford’s criticism of predecessors who asked the province for money.

It also conveys significantly more information than it may appear that it does at first glance. All the following propositions are embedded within the above statement.

-Rob Ford requested money from the provincial government. -The McGuinty government is rejecting the request. -The request is for 350 million dollars -The request is for help - The McGuinty government is rejecting the request “out of hand.” -Rob Ford frequently criticized his predecessors for begging the

province for money.

Each of these propositions vary dramatically in the probability one might reasonably assign it. Thus, it is a difficult matter to determine the credibility of a statements of this sort that are not uncommon in the news media.

There are several ways that media organizations can aim to reduce costs that conflict with gathering and providing the best information to their audience.

Staffing (less staff, less in depth investigative journalism) Pseudo-independent confirmation. Homogeneous fact gathering: wire services and press releases

These can result in lowering the diversity of perspectives available in the media and fewer internally and deeply researched stories available.

Other problems such compounding errors made in one report (eg. Obama’s alleged 2 billion dollar trip to India)

Profit incentive for networks to differentiate their coverage through spin, punditry.

(eg. MSNBC vs Fox News)

Avoiding acting in ways that would seriously disrupt their advertising revenue (don’t scandalize public, private or government groups that could impact their revenues).

– Advertisers’ aims and fears play a powerful role in the thinking of owners and editors

(e.g. Images of war casualties: Vietnam vs. Iraq)

Infotainment: Frivolous reporting masquerading as, or at least substituting for, real journalism.

Thousands of citizens died in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, to only passing mention in the North American media, during the months of the Natalee Holloway frenzy.

The world economy was quietly preparing to melt down while Michael Jackson’s child abuse trial occupied vast news media bandwidth.

‘Material Girl’ latest to do capital dance– Jane Taber, Globe and Mail, Page A6 (Politics), Saturday

May 21 2005 “Belinda Stronach was speaker dancing to Madonna’s hit

Material Girl … at the Liberal’s victory party at a downtown bar after the government’s narrow confidence-vote win….[Stronach] just this week crossed the floor and broke the heart of her boyfriend, Peter Mackay: “Boys may come and boys may go,” the music blared, “living in a material world and I am a material girl.”

Bias issues: typically apply most strongly at the level of ownership and editorship; reporters have biases that impact reporting but for the most part are just trying to remain employed.

Can be overt (direct orders on how to slant reportage) or subtle (the various cognitive and social biases that influence reporters and editors to please those above them)

Many pressures on public and private media that result from government regulation.

Decency laws " Canadian content laws " Legislation regulating false or

misleading news in Canada (currently under threat from the conservative government).

Other indirect pressures that a government can apply to manipulate media

-paying broadcasters to cover stories in a certain fashion (American government paid Armstrong Williams 250 000 in 2004)

-pictures of war that are allowed to be shown -Embedding journalist

Paul Hunter discusses some of the problems with being an embedded journalist in the following quotation:

“So how many Taliban were there in Arghandab this week? Truth is, I don't know. And that's the problem. As embedded journalists, our de facto primary source of information is people on the military base. We are largely stuck here, except when allowed out with the troops.”

Another example

“So this week, when we heard from sources in Arghandab that Canadian Forces were moving in to counter reports of massing Taliban insurgents, we tried to confirm it here. We were explicitly told that we would be wrong if we reported that on CBC. About 20 minutes later, video of Canadian Forces soldiers in Arghandab – shot earlier that day – was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Someone wasn't telling the truth.”

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/20/f-rfakandahar-dispatches.html

It is really amazing the lengths that some governments will go to try to influence the way the news media covers their policies.

Consider the following case of the way the bush administration aimed to influence coverage about its terrorism policies by recruiting analysts favourable to their position the and influencing news reporters by granting them access to certain sensitive information and to influential policy makers.

April 20, 2008Message MachineDavid Barstow, NYT

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favourable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

Finally, the lack of competence from journalist can lead to faulty information being presented in the news media.

Science, politics, history, law… often these are complex matters that journalists are illprepared to summarize accurately.

Even the format of media (e.g catchy stories that need to grab the attention of viewers or limited space to write about) leads to a problematic simplification of very complicated technical issues.

The pressure to provide dramatic and concrete information leads to overstating tentative or qualified results/discoveries scientists have made.

Name three different ways that the profit motive leads to misleading information being presented by media

organizations.