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ERIC BLACK INK

The increased difficulty of seeing past our biases

By Eric Black | Published Thu, Mar 19 2009 10:41 am

In his column today, NYTimesman Nicholas Kristof uses the demise of newspaperdom to remind us of the importance of exposing our eyes and our brains to views with which we disagree.

According to a fashionable bit of conventional wisdom that Kristof recycles, without naming it, the so-called objectivity model on which 20th century newspaper reporting was based helped readers confront neutral information that challenged their beliefs. I'm not saying this is utter rubbish (how's that for a left-handed compliment), but I am convinced that the so-called objectivity, nothing-but-the-facts model really doesn't do the trick, especially when the facts are being chosen, ordered and told by reporters, 80 to 90 percent of whom are liberals.

But the problem of closed-mindedness is rooted more deeply in our nature than in the sources we read for news and views. I concur with Kristof that the Web makes it easier to compile a personal list of news sources that we know will mostly assure us that what we already believe is correct.

On the other hand, the Web also makes it easier to read the best facts and arguments with which we are likely to disagree.
It's a matter of personal choice but it seems clear (Kristof cites some of the research on this) that human nature comes with strong doses of selective perception and confirmation bias.

I feel fortunate to have some friends who are conservative (or libertarian), smart, knoweldgeable, fair-minded, fact-oriented, intellectually honest and willing to share their views with me. I learn more talking with them than I do discussing issues with friends whose ideological orientation is closer to my own (basically, because they confront me with facts from which I have been averting my eyes and interpret them through baises different from my own). I hope they feel the same about me. Just knowing, liking and respecting them makes it harder to reduce the partisan/political/ideological "other side" to a group of intellectual and/or moral midgets.

| Thu, Mar 19 2009 10:41 am | 29 Comments

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29 Comments: Hide/Show Comments

(#1) On March 19, 2009, Peder DeFor says:

Having close friends on the other side of the political spectrum is wonderful. If you don't know someone who votes the other way, then you don't really understand your political opponents. It helps with the temptation to make them into cartoonish villains.
I don't know how you fix the mix in journalistic circles. If reporters are 80-90% liberal then there is going to be a huge amount of group-think. At the very least they'll miss important angles. And make a sizeable amount of the paying public feel like they're being ill served.

(#2) On March 19, 2009, Britt Robson says:

So Eric,

What internet sites are you frequenting to reinforce your cockamamie notion that 80-90 percent of reporters are liberals?

And since you're blithely throwing around labels, can you please tell me whether the following positions on some of the salient topics of our day are "liberal" or "conservative":

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is a duplicitous sack of seaweed.

Torture and extraordinary rendition are abhorrent under any circumstances.

It is worth cutting education spending to achieve a structurally balanced budget in Minnesota's general fund in the coming biennium.

(#3) On March 19, 2009, Margie Fletcher says:

I keep seeing these claims that 90% of journalists/media are liberals.

Why is it I never see any proof of this? How about you post names and what party they belong to instead of making claims that are totally unproven and likely, from what I see, untrue?

A few KNOWN conservative names come to mind:

Rush Limbaugh
Bill O'Reilly
Hannity
Scarborough
Blitzer
Dobbs
Ann Coulter
Brian Williams is a conservative
Michael Savage
Brit Hume
Fred Barnes
Kondrake
John Gibson
David Horowitz
Bob Novak
Kate O'Beirne
Pat Buchanan

And this doesn't even address the myraid of online news outlets like the weekly standard, Washington times, the NY post, NYD news, OR the dozens of conservative think tanks [which I believe outnumber liberal ones at last check].

Yet, I can think of only two cable talking heads who are KNOWN liberal: Olbermann and Maddow

Most are difficult to place but are certainly NOT considered liberals BY liberals. This is a lie that has been perpetrated on us by conservatives who have realized they need no proof.....only accusations.

Most of those journalists who ARE liberal are print journalists who have been so marginalized by those at FOX and other right wing outlets that they can no longer even be included as legitimate by conservative voters, so successful the conservatives marginalization of them over the past 10 years.

It's the conservatives who are on my TV most of the time, not the marginalized liberals who are seldom, IF EVER, invited on TV. This is not because they aren't respectable OR CORRECT, but because conservatives create sheep who believe them when they say someone is not credible. Faith is what keeps conservatives in the spot light. Faith by their sheep that only THEY are above lying. Funny how to most of us that is so patently obviously false......ah well.

The largest single holder of BOTH newspapers and stations is Murdoch, BTW - so he is "liberal"?

This myth needs to end.

(#4) On March 19, 2009, Stephan Flister says:

"...group of intellectual and/or moral midgets....'

Just as paranoids can have enemies, there is no shortage of intellectual and/or moral lightweights.

If all I know about a person is that he or she willingly associates with or follows one of said lightweights, then I am not very interested in their arguments, at least in the domain shared with the lightweight.

See also the he said/she said version of balance which so often seems to have replaced truth and accuracy.

(#5) On March 20, 2009, Eric Black says:

Britt and Margie,
Eighty to ninety percent of reporters as liberals is my estimate after a lifetime in newsrooms. But if you want some data, there are several studies. The most famous was a 1996 Freedom Forum survey in which Washington journalists told how they had voted in the 1992 presidential. 89 percent said they had voted for Bill Clinton, seven percent for George H.W. Bush, two percent for Ross Perot.
The conservative Media Research Center cites data frmo other surveys involving other elections. Here: http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp
cheers,

(#6) On March 20, 2009, Rob Levine says:

So what if reporters are liberal? The owners and controllers are conservative Republicans. Who controls the message? The owners. As I have told you over the years, the more likely result of this situation is reporters bending over backwards to not appear liberal to assuage their bosses. Eric, this stuff is hogwash. Even more ridiculous is your citing the Scaife-controlled Media Research Center as an authority on anything.

(#7) On March 20, 2009, Paul Udstrand says:

This whole bias vs. non-bias - liberal vs. conservative discussion is a bankrupt context.

To begin with, there is no such thing as truly unbias journalism, what we have and practice is a "style" of journalism pretends to be unbiased. That style is a new style that emerged around the 1950s with television. I personally don't care if a journalist is biased as long as they're accurate. I think the unbiased style leads to mediocrity. Is Seymour Hersh unbiased? Don't tell me that journalists who covered the run up to the war without covering the anti war movement, or journalists who cover health care without talking national health care systems are unbiased.

Talking about liberals and conservatives is equally nonsensical. First, labeling some a "liberal" simply because the vote for Democrats is ridiculous especially when the Democratic Party has in many ways become a moderate wing of the Republican Party. What was it Wellstone used to say? "I'm from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party". Beyond that trying to locate journalism on a political spectrum simply misses the point. Journalist are biased, but not politically. The bias is towards the status quo, it's not left or right. The US media didn't jump on board the WMD bandwagon because they're Republicans, they did it because they decided the status quo belief was that WMDs existed, then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, unless it's wrong.

This is why I refer to "mainstream" media as status quo media, I think it's a more precise description.

Of course how these status quo notions come to exists and why is another story, suffice it to say I've rarely seen a truly impressive piece of journalism from a status quo journalist. It's the journalists who challenge the status quo that make history.

(#8) On March 20, 2009, Rob Levine says:

Well said Paul. The epithet thrown at journalists as being "liberals" is meant to be an insult, but its true aim is their decertification. The same has been aimed at school teachers and university professors. The subtext is, "you're a liberal, so 1) you are not to be trusted, and 2) you place your political affiliation above all other values, such as professionalism, integrity, and intellectual honesty. IMHO it is projection of the clearest kind by right wing critics.

(#9) On March 20, 2009, Eric Black says:

I would amend Paul's comment to say that the objectivity model is a bankrupt concept. I think he and I agree that journalists should be intellectually honest. But the objectivity model interferes with that goal by requiring reporters to devote too much effort and space in their stories to concealing their own thoughts, for fear of being accused of bias.
Concealment and fear and the activities of the bias police are not a recipe for intellectual honesty.
Rob, the Media Research Center didn't do the survey. Freedom Forum did.
MRC cites the data for their purposes, which probably is, as you say, to decertify the mainstream media (but that only works, to the degree it does, because the reporters are trying to prop up the bankrupt model).
I don't see "liberal" as an insult, an indictment, or grounds for decertification. But the fact that most reporters are liberals is an inconvenient fact for those who seek to prop up the objectivity model.
By the way, the main point of my post was not the aside about liberal journalists, but the suggestion that liberals, conservatives and otherists should try to read and listen to opposing points of view respectfully, when they are offered respectfully, to try to learn from them and to look for common ground on which to move forward.

(#10) On March 21, 2009, Beryl John-Knudson says:

News views...liberal leaning? Now there's a simple pimple.

Whatever way the reader prefers to chew it, he's left consuming/swallowing the collaborative, corporate, cop-cat storyline...there lies the rub; which is essentially, 'news' dependant on which side main-stream journalism's bread is buttered on; burnt or milk toast.

Here's the "bias" but where's the truth?

(#11) On March 21, 2009, Paul Udstrand says:

Eric black:
"By the way, the main point of my post was not the aside about liberal journalists, but the suggestion that liberals, conservatives and otherists should try to read and listen to opposing points of view respectfully, when they are offered respectfully, to try to learn from them and to look for common ground on which to move forward."

O.K. dad.

I like to say we need to stop shouting at each other abut what we believe and start talking to each other about what we know.

(#12) On March 21, 2009, Paul Udstrand says:

Actually, getting back to the notion that we need to get past our bias... I don't think the polarization we've seen over the last 20 years or so is about bias. I think this polarization is part of a "Third Great Awakening". In other words, what we've seen is a wave of anti-rationalism/intellectualism.

I think the bias take misses the mark because our inability to have any kind of rational discourse on public policy isn't about bias, it's about irrationalism. The benefits of having polite discourse with irrational people are quite dubious IMHO.

(#13) On March 21, 2009, Rob Levine says:

That's what I was thinking Paul, even though it sounds arrogant to Eric, I guess. This country has listened to right wing voices for 30 years now, and look where it's got us. I don't need to iterate through the disasters that Republicanism has brought us. When a Republican opens his mouth, you know what he or she is going to say: free market, low taxes, market better than government, immigrants are bad, etc. We don't need to listen to them anymore to know what they're going to say, and to know, quite frankly, that they are 180 degrees wrong. If this country is going to get anywhere it is going to be in the face of the right. The guy who wrote "Whistling past Dixie" got it right - we need to get beyond the remains of the Republican party that is focused in the deep south where they are still fighting the civil war. Democrats will have to do it alone since the Republicans want only more of the same.

(#14) On March 21, 2009, Bill Inhofer says:

While I disagree with your politics, Eric, I read your columns frequently because you give me information I don't find elsewhere. You publish information for the sake of the information - because it relates to a topic of interest. And you do so even if it doesn't always back your politics.

While I enjoy philosophical debate, I more often want information I can trust than an impassioned argument for an ideology (mine or another's).

(#15) On March 22, 2009, Paul Brandon says:

'Objectivity' means basing conclusions on data.
It does NOT mean that both sides of any given controversy have an equal chance of being correct.
It is quite possible that most journalists are 'liberal' simply because that's where the facts take them -- no violation of objectivity here.

(#16) On March 23, 2009, Steve Sill says:

Take a look at what Rob just wrote. It's the clearest evidence that what Eric wrote is true. It could be a textbook example of how the unconscious acceptance and "onward verbalizations" modern liberalism -as a social philosophy- perpetuates, are displayed and promulgated.
"We don't need to listen to them anymore to know what they're going to say, and to know, quite frankly, that they are 180 degrees wrong."
Ahhhh, classic.

If reporting was merely the recitation of facts, and if objectivity was simply the formation of a conclusion on those facts, that would be an easier problem to solve. The problem is that a personal bias is overlaid on those facts, and so inferences are drawn on the basis of the interpretation of those facts, shaped by the biases that the interpreter holds. Sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious.

Thus it is that Margie, above, can list a whole string of "conservative journalists" , yet recall only two liberal ones. (Hint, Margie: there are hundreds!)

Congratulations to Eric for thinking about a complex problem in a clear way. One can't ask for more than that as a first step.

(#17) On March 23, 2009, Rob Levine says:

Steve says:

//If reporting was merely the recitation of facts, and if objectivity was simply the formation of a conclusion on those facts, that would be an easier problem to solve. The problem is that a personal bias is overlaid on those facts, and so inferences are drawn on the basis of the interpretation of those facts, shaped by the biases that the interpreter holds. Sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious.

How many things are wrong with this statement? First - conservatives dispute "facts" that the rest of the world accepts - global warming? Second - reporters like Eric believe it is not always necessary for them to apply their noggins to a report - ask him about covering Center of the America Experiment speakers who uttered nonsense that he then transcribed into the Strib without any rebutting statements - even though those statements spoken at the CAE were easily demonstrably false.

Notice how Steve doesn't say that reporters bring professionalism, accuracy and intelligence to a story; he's only concerned with some perceived "bias" of the writer.

While I agree that there is no such thing as objectivity - it is a useful myth - I don't believe that prevents professional journalists from doing fair, thorough and accurate work. Bias only become a problem when it is systemic, inaccurate, and distorts what we all know is true, such as Fox news demonstrates. BTW - Fox is a right wing Republican network, yet calls itself "fair and balance." Orwellian to the core.

(#18) On March 23, 2009, Rob Levine says:

I might add that there are other times when Eric has gone into great length on issues that he covers, seeking alternative sources, trying to get to the heart of things. The problem is that the decision on how "deep" to go on a story is many times entirely subjective. So to claim that reporters should just pass on information with no comment is nonsense. Sure, reporters have biases - they have to - they are human beings. Even the decision to cover a story represents some kind of bias. The trick is that the professional reporter relies on his or her professionalism, honesty, thoroughness and fairness. He could even admit his biases at one point or another to his readers. He or she doesn't have to pass on baloney said by "one side" of a story just to claim he or she isn't biased.

(#19) On March 23, 2009, Steve Sill says:

Rob-

You illustrate my point perfectly. Several more of the currently popular canards somehow forced themselves into your response - Conservative intransigence about climate change, and alleged network political affiliation, neither of which address the issue of what is the right way for a news journalist to do his or her job. To force a journalist to devote part of a story to a "rebuttal" of a "demonstrably false" statement on the part of a speaker makes a presumption that the public is owed some sort of "pre-decided" verdict on the story, rather than being given the opportunity to be informed about events that occurred. This is what sticks in my craw about a lot of these arguments. "Everybody Knows that...." argument is just an attempt to enforce your POV on everyone else.

Frankly, I would rather form my own conclusions. I may agree with Eric on some subjects and disagree on others, but he at least addresses the issue of bias. You could fairly argue that CNN is just as biased toward the Left as Fox is biased toward the right. The advice to go places where alternative points of view are heard is a useful educational exercise.

There's an old saying that, to Conservatives, all who disagree with them are wrong. But to Liberals, all who disagree with them are evil. There's a big difference.
respectfully,

S

(#20) On March 23, 2009, Steve Sill says:

And so I'm clear, what does Fox News have to do with Orwell? Cite a specific example.

(#21) On March 23, 2009, Rob Levine says:

Steve - Look at my writing - all my writing - I have NEVER used the word evil.

(#22) On March 23, 2009, Rob Levine says:

Orwell from Wikipedia:

The adjective Orwellian describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past...

Sounds like a description of Fox news to me...

(#23) On March 23, 2009, Steve Sill says:

(smile) "Steve - Look at my writing - all my writing - I have NEVER used the word evil. "
Factually correct. Nor did I use any language to indicate you did. Heaping scorn on an old saying is probably a waste of scorn, anway. The key point is that there are a variety of points of view out there on any conceivable subject. Some opinions are arrant nonsense, but they are strongly held. Some are more cautiously advanced because, while they may SEEM logical, there is a chance they could be wrong. Some opinions are grounded in FACTS, and therefore worthy of consideration, even as you are free to disagree with the conclusion. The teachable person learns that there's a difference between FACTS and strongly held opinions, and lets that guiding principle govern his words and actions.
Journalists walk a fine line in seeking out the truth and presenting it in a compelling way in competition with oceans of less-informed commentary- not just falsehood - but the tsunami of the banal.

Your writings indicate the assumption that someone of a more conservative persuasion could not possibly be right. You paint all conservatives with the same brush, and imply either outright bad faith or deceit. And you use untruth to try to make your point. You indicated in an earlier post that the owners of the media are Republican conservatives. Are you sure? I don't think Ted Turner would be happy being described that way, or Pinch Sulzburger, for that matter.

Finally, you keep bringing up Orwell. The definition leaves a lot to be desired, but the term is utterly inapplicable, because so far as I know, the government doesn't _control_ any of the media. Especially Fox! Read some Orwell. If Fox were the only news outlet, THAT would be a little closer to orwellian! :)

(#24) On March 23, 2009, Rob Levine says:

Ted Turner? He runs CNN? I don't think so - he's been out for years, and doesn't like the way the network has gone. Pinch Sulzburger? Does he still own the Times? Sulzburger is establishment to the hilt. Didn't he allow CIA agents to pose as Times reporters? It is a foregone conclusion among true media scholars that the critical school is correct - the most important aspect of mass media is the use of the medium for the advancement of the elite classes - and by elite I mean those who have the money and power. In our culture that means the rich and corporate.

(#25) On March 24, 2009, Beryl John-Knudson says:

"Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than one who is never in doubt" Eric Sevareid.... a plainsman/journalist whose words would/could never be compromised by the marketplace nor his corporate employers.

(#26) On March 24, 2009, Steve Sill says:

A fitting end to the discussion.
Thanks for the reminder.
S

(#27) On March 25, 2009, Michael O'Connor says:

Eric Black continues to maintain his record as being a liberal who is more interested in truth and dialogue than in sectarian, ideological stances. He continues to engage all readers and for that I extend my congratulations.

(#28) On March 25, 2009, Paul Udstrand says:

//"Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than one who is never in doubt"

I'm sorry but common sense dictates that neither man in this scenario is trustworthy. It sounds good, but it's really very silly.

(#29) On March 26, 2009, Beryl John-Knudson says:

When a generic term like "common sense" dictates one's conclusions, those conclusions in their silliness are not trustworthy.

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Eric Black is a former reporter for the Star Tribune and Twin Cities blogger. He writes about politics and government of Minnesota and the United States, the historical background of topics and other issues. Click here to view Eric's previous postings at former blog, Eric Black Ink. He can be reached at eblack [at] minnpost [dot] com.

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The increased difficulty of seeing past our biases

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