Posted by Helen on: 06.27.2007 /
David posted some interesting thoughts last week about information sources in a comment on the post Replacements Needed on our Justice and Compassion blog. From his comment
The internet has lowered the barrier for dissemination of information. That has been good in some respects because it has allowed stories to become known that would never have come to light in the past. However, it doesn’t really help answer the question of who can you trust to get the truth about anything.
My best guess is that most Americans these days turn to information sources that tell them things with which they already agree. Getting them to look beyond those sources appears to be becoming increasingly difficult BECAUSE of the vast array of information choices provided by the internet.
How do you decide whether an information source is trustworthy? Which sources do you trust (if any)?
Comment by: Laura M.
1This is a great topic. I have a lot of personal frustration about this issue. In my family just about everyone seems only interested in information sources that they already agree with.
None of them seem willing to step outside their comfort zone to learn something new or consider the possibility that they could occasionally be wrong.
In my immediate family we run the full spectrum from extremely liberal (that would be me) to moderate to extremely conservative. It doesn’t matter which end of the spectrum the folks fall under though. To me I see no difference at either end. Everyone’s stuck in their little box.
I don’t get it. I spend more time reading the opinions of those I disagree with. Fears seems to have everything to do with it, IMO.
They seem to be afraid they might be proven wrong (and they must really, really want to not be wrong)?
I, on the other hand, am always afraid I’m already wrong. I always want to hear the other side, ’cause I’m always sure I’m probably missing something important :8-)
I don’t know what to say about what sources to trust. Trust is a touchy word for me. It’s uncomfortably close to faith, IMO.
I take most things at face value, which to me means I have no way of knowing if it’s true or not, maybe yes maybe no. I await confirmation from other sources. Unless someone is telling me their personal experiences. Then I believe them until/unless I have a darn good reason not to.
Comment by: Helen
2Thanks for your comment, Laura.
I’m really struck by your comparison that -
Some people don’t read what people who disagree with them say because they’re afraid to be wrong
You do read what people who disagree with you say because you’re afraid you might already be wrong
Isn’t it amazing how our respective fears can send us in opposite directions?
I like the direction yours sends you in better because yours encourages you to explore the various viewpoints rather than shutting you off from all but your own.
I used to be afraid to be wrong, so I know how that is. But after my faith broke anyway, then I had nothing to lose by reading a variety of viewpoints.
Comment by: John Koh
3I used to work in computer security - those days taught me “in god we trust, all others we test”. ;)
Could there ever be a totally netural information source? I’m not sure. history is written by the victors, writers are generally opinionated and biased, and we all know the adage: “bad news sell”.
as an example of biased and opininated writtings, an author pointed out in a political commentary that “Western Journalists, in covering non-western events, are conditioned by both western prejudices and interests. The claim of *objective* reporting is a major falsehood”, citing examples of how reporting draw direct influences from state policies. At the same time, his article failed to address the topic of “how asian journalism is not as transparent as they should be”..
I don’t have a fireproof way of ensuring that my information is absolutely correct. I will however, attempt to verify the sources when possible, and attempt to search out similar articles/books on the same topic to gain a different point of view.
Concerning biblical topics, when paul spoke to the bereans (acts 17), the bereans did not just listen to him, but searched the scriptures to see if it was according to what paul preached. Luke described the bereans as “of noble character”. In fact, believers are urged to test everything (1 Thess 5:21) and to test every spirit (1 John 4:1) - in short: don’t just be a sucker for everything.
Comment by: Helen
4Thanks for your comments, John.
I really like the ‘test everything’ verse in Thessalonians.
Comment by: David H
5Recently many in newspaper journalism have begun to reconsider the concept of being objective. Even if you try it isn’t possible to be objective (not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased). Everyone is biased by things both concious and unconcious. The discussion is now turning toward ways to make the existing bias clear to readers. However, this appears to be largely a acceptance of the rise of overly subjective journalism that bills itself as objective (CNN and Fox News are prime examples of entities that allow respective corporate philosophies to not only affect what they cover but how they cover it).
As a reporter I always attempted to give every side a say in the story. It wasn’t about being objective, it was about a) trying to be fair and b) letting the reader decide which position made the most sense. When covering a teacher strike I had to admit to myself that I couldn’t be completely objective because my parents are both school teachers.
However, to me it seems there is a larger problem than my personal bias. It appears that American societal (or ethnocentristic) prejudice has a significant affect on both the subjects and the slants of many stories done by major western media sources. I like to listen to BBC and CBC reports because they have stories that are a) never told by American media and b) come from a perspective other than how it (whatever it is) will affect American interests. American media, probably largely as a reflection of American people and society, seem obsessed with an American bias (we only want to hear stories about ourselves, so that is largely what they tell us). It is a peculiar form of narcissism.
As for John’s citation of the old adage, I have to dispute that newspapers or other media outlets focus on bad news because it sells. The primary focus of major information sources in a Democracy should be to inform citizens so that a free society can continue to function. As such, the day-to-day instances of things going the way they should will go unreported because a) they are boring and b) they should be working this way. A lot of attention will be focused on political problems, plane crashes and other societal failures because they may indicate that something needs to be done and the only way citizens can make such a determination on what (if anything) needs to be done is if they are informed. Let’s face it, is it more important to know that 10,000 airplanes landed as expected or that one did not? Perhaps it is especially important if that one didn’t land as expected because of corruption, mismanagement or some other avoidable reason.
However, even with that in mind, most studies of daily newspapers and other media sources indicate that there is a balance to the ratio of good news and bad news. However, when polled, the vast majority of people remember the bad news stories more than those that are not.
You can find one perspective on the good news/ bad news issue here.
But I do agree that it is important to test everything. Now if I can just figure out how to make my test unbiased.
Comment by: Helen
6David, I’ve also noticed how different BBC and US news is. As you say it certainly drives home the point that the US is obsessed with itself when I compare the main news from the BBC and US sources.
It’s also a good point that practically speaking, the bad news is what requires exposure and action more than the good news. As you point out, a faulty aircraft requires more investigation and action than all the ones which work fine.
I think complete objectivity is impossible - that’s why I like your approach of using sources whose biases are likely to vary. When compared with one another the biases come to light in a way they might never do if we didn’t make that comparison.
CS Lewis wrote about this principle (I think it was him) an a foreword about reading old books. Paraphrasing based on my memory, he said that doing so is very valuable because a) we see their biases now we have moved away from them and that helps us evaluate them b) since they don’t have ours, their writing can help bring ours to light.
I wonder how it would change Christianity if more people read Christian writing from other time periods and saw what their ‘issues of the day’ were. I think it would be helpfully enlightening.
Comment by: Laura M.
7David, thank you for that link.
I like to watch the news on various Spanish stations.
I’m always surprised to see how much more is going on out there in the larger world which our American media never reports on. At the same time I notice that the vast, vast majority of the news from these sources is about hispanic people.
Not all of these stations are American based. So on the one hand I know that some of these stations are responding to our American media’s neglect to report on events which have a greater affect on hispanics.
But on the other hand I know that it is not just American media which seems to be ’self obsessed’.
Comment by: Helen
8Laura wrote:
I’m not surprised.
I think it’s understandable if people care most about local news - I’d expect that. So I’d expect the news of any country to have more about them than other countries. However, I do think the US news is overly focused on the US to the point where you barely hear anything at all about other countries.
The UK news seems a little better at remembering there is a world out there, even if we care most about what’s happening right where we live.
Comment by: David H
9What a lot of people forget when they are decrying media is that those entities are largely a reflection of the people they serve. In the past there were many newspapers and other media outlets that were family owned and very local or regional. That allowed them to espouse positions that might even be out of step with the communities they served (although that really doesn’t make good business sense). These days the vast majority of media in the US are corporately owned. That means they are very intent on making a profit. As a result, they are much more interested (probably more than ever in the history of this country) in telling people only what those people want to hear. Some of the lack of fairness and larger perspective is because media entities are very focused on finding an audience and then serving that audience rabidly because that will ensure audience maintenance and thus advertising (advertising is seriously eroding for most of the major mass media in the US as they struggle to understand and adapt to changes forced by the internet). When I came into journalism a good newspaper would show you pictures and tell you stories that you didn’t want to see/hear because they were important. Now many won’t fulfill that role because they are afraid you won’t like them if they do. That doesn’t serve the purposes of democracy, truth, fairness or helping Americans pull their heads out of whatever sand-hole they now occupy.
Comment by: Helen
10Thanks for your comment, David.
So you see a big decline in willingness of the media to present what’s important rather than what people want to hear since you went into journalism - and you attribute that to the demise of local and regional media outlets?
Comment by: David H
11In the past year we have seen the sale of one major newspaper company and another sale is in the works. Both sales are the result of investors attempting to maintain nearly 30 percent profit margins in these publicly held companies. The result of this has been cuts in newsrooms (fewer reporters does mean less varied perspective) and the outright flushing of newspapers deemed to be a drag on the bottom line. I know people at the San Jose Mercury and San Francisco Chronicle. Both newspapers are about to lose one-third of their newsroom workforce and both papers were profitable — just not profitable enough. The Philadelphia Inquirer has become a shell of the newspaper that was my ideal in the early 80s when I was at Temple University. It was dumped when McClatchy took over Knight-Ridder Tribune because the Inky had a measly 14 percent profit per year.
Newspapers have only themselves to blame for much of the situation they are in. But local TV and radio are largely in the same boat. A big part of the problem for newspapers was that their profit margins have always outstripped virtually every other kind of industry in the US. That lured investors and newspaper owners and managers made all kinds of excuses for why they should take that money. Now nearly 70 percent of the newspaper circulation in the US is controlled by 11 public corporations. Those corporations, based on their staffing tendencies, are not particularly interested in unique points of view. They are interested in profit.
A year or so ago I read a study where controversial Pulitzer Prize winning photos from the past 20 years were shown to current newspaper editors and publishers. Pictures such as the photo of the napalm-burned girl in Vietnam and Eddie Adams iconic image of the S. Vietnamese officer shooting a VC spy in the head. In most of the cases the editors and publishers said they would not run such a photo today. At my newspaper I have become all too familiar with the phrase: “Do our readers want to see that picture over their breakfast cereal.”
While I think corporate ownership of newspapers is a bad thing, I should add that the situation with newspapers and other mass media in the US is not just because of that. The problems are complicated and the jury is still out on whether viable solutions will be found for the majority of mass media news entities in the US today.
Comment by: Laura M.
12Actually Helen, I didn’t mean these media sources simply report more about what is happening in their own country.
I meant they report more on what is happening among their own ethnicity. They do report more than U.S. media do about events in other countries, so long as they are reporting about Latin American countries.
Events happening in places like Africa and the Middle East, however, receive short shrift. Virtually no mention at all.