Media Dishonesty Is No Reason to Stop Trusting the Media - No Seriously, We Mean It
Earlier today we posted a kind-of-retraction of a post based on a potentially problematic YNet article. The original article had a series of quotes from international media figures that may (or may not) have been defending the journalism that came out of Lebanon II. The author was none too pleased with the idea that someone would defend that journalism, and used the quotes as a basis for a diatribe against anti-Israel media bias. The problem is that while the words that are quoted are accurate, at several points there may have been relevant context that didn't make the final article (where in at least one case "context" means "words that make the quote mean the exact opposite"). So now there may be dishonest anti-MSM journalism coming out of Israel about the incredible amount of dishonest MSM journalism that came out of Lebanon.
Which is why this is as good a time as any to remind everyone that despite all the excitement, it would be a really bad idea if people started thinking that most of their time should be spent figuring out ways that media coverage of this or that might be a hoax. Listen, all journalism is always biased, and the last month and a half has seen bias cross over into dishonesty on matters of global importance. The blogosphere has obviously been wall to wall with discovery and coverage of that dishonesty. This combination of outright dishonesty and extensive focus has not a few people acting as if (a) even the most straightforward reports of facts and figures shouldn't be trusted and (b) it's the blogosphere's job to prove why they shouldn't be trusted by exposing hoaxes. Now let's be clear - when there are media hoaxes, it's a very good thing when bloggers catch them. But those hoaxes don't happen nearly as often as their rate in the last month might indicate - and so turning the blogosphere into a brainstorming session about how each report might be a hoax ends up being a very bad thing.
It is quite simply the case that most reporting is accurate (although not necessarily fair) most of the time. Again, what's been coming out of Lebanon in the last month and a half is a marginal exception. No one has ever denied that journalists are biased to one extent or another, but the expectation has usually been that their bias ended and their professionalism began when it came to printing quotes and facts. It's not just that bloggers' lives would be easier if journalists didn't misreport facts (i.e. some of those exposes on Qana and Reuters took 10s of hours to assemble). It's that people forget that most the blogosphere couldn't function without a basic trust in the media. It's the media that serves as the conduit for the data that bloggers collect, evaluate, and comment on - with the value-added coming from providing the kind of analysis for the kinds of audience that journalists aren't interested in. But for that kind of blogging to happen, there has to be a basic acceptance on the part of the bloggers and their readers that the information that people are starting out with is sound - which, thankfully, it usually is.
The vast majority of what is reported as fact can be more or less relied on the vast majority of the time. Which is not to say that journalists don't promote political agendas by framing facts in particular ways. Of course they do: they use loaded words, they arrange the order of quotes to make one side look defensive, they balance probably true claims from doctors with highly doubtful claims from witnesses, they neglect to provide context, they attach trivial but true phrases like "according to Israeli officials" to outright facts - and when they're done with all that, their editors do it again. Which is a reason for bloggers to pull those facts out of the articles and present them in a new light, not for bloggers to stop believing that those facts are true. If an article states that a politician gave a quote, then almost always it will turn out that the politician gave that quote. If an article says that a there was a shooting in a particular neighborhood, then almost always it will turn out that there was a shooting in that neighborhood.
That's why over-exuberance about things like Reutersgate and Dowdification can sometimes even hurt the blogosphere. On one hand, you have the success of citizen journalists in debunking shameful dishonesty. But to focus too much on those episodes risks giving the impression that that's the norm in journalism - with the consequence being reflexive cynicism about the reliability of even the most basic reporting. Undermine that reliability too much and the media becomes useless as a source of information, meaning that all of the commentary on that information becomes useless too. Take that away, and most of what's left over after that - as Allahpundit has been finding out this week - is an embarrassing kind of conspiracy theorizing based on insignificant inconsistencies in stories and unlikely connections between events.
Dowdification... the out of context Wolfowitz oil quote... the Killian Memos... Green Helmet at Qaza... Reutersgate... the Red Cross ambulance... and all of the other hoaxes are shocking because they were exceptions. The tens of thousands of other things that are reported daily are more or less true, and can be more or less relied on. If the blogosphere becomes a hoax-detection factory, three things will happen. First, since all but a few of the facts will be accurate bloggers will end wasting a huge amount of time. Second, since most of the facts are accurate but a lot of bloggers are really smart, bloggers will find reasons to be suspicious anyway, and they will end up being wrong. And third, since bloggers will not want to think that they've spent all this time just to be wrong, they'll end up being self-righteously wrong.
All of this is to say that we started the day with a post about yet another instance of outright journalistic misreporting, and we're definitely going to doublecheck Lappin's suspiciously-good anti-media quotes the next time he decides to go meta on international journalism. But that kind of approach shouldn't be the default approach to journalism. There are enough of obvious lies without also looking for lies in things that seem relatively reliable. We know where that road ends up.
Which is why this is as good a time as any to remind everyone that despite all the excitement, it would be a really bad idea if people started thinking that most of their time should be spent figuring out ways that media coverage of this or that might be a hoax. Listen, all journalism is always biased, and the last month and a half has seen bias cross over into dishonesty on matters of global importance. The blogosphere has obviously been wall to wall with discovery and coverage of that dishonesty. This combination of outright dishonesty and extensive focus has not a few people acting as if (a) even the most straightforward reports of facts and figures shouldn't be trusted and (b) it's the blogosphere's job to prove why they shouldn't be trusted by exposing hoaxes. Now let's be clear - when there are media hoaxes, it's a very good thing when bloggers catch them. But those hoaxes don't happen nearly as often as their rate in the last month might indicate - and so turning the blogosphere into a brainstorming session about how each report might be a hoax ends up being a very bad thing.
It is quite simply the case that most reporting is accurate (although not necessarily fair) most of the time. Again, what's been coming out of Lebanon in the last month and a half is a marginal exception. No one has ever denied that journalists are biased to one extent or another, but the expectation has usually been that their bias ended and their professionalism began when it came to printing quotes and facts. It's not just that bloggers' lives would be easier if journalists didn't misreport facts (i.e. some of those exposes on Qana and Reuters took 10s of hours to assemble). It's that people forget that most the blogosphere couldn't function without a basic trust in the media. It's the media that serves as the conduit for the data that bloggers collect, evaluate, and comment on - with the value-added coming from providing the kind of analysis for the kinds of audience that journalists aren't interested in. But for that kind of blogging to happen, there has to be a basic acceptance on the part of the bloggers and their readers that the information that people are starting out with is sound - which, thankfully, it usually is.
The vast majority of what is reported as fact can be more or less relied on the vast majority of the time. Which is not to say that journalists don't promote political agendas by framing facts in particular ways. Of course they do: they use loaded words, they arrange the order of quotes to make one side look defensive, they balance probably true claims from doctors with highly doubtful claims from witnesses, they neglect to provide context, they attach trivial but true phrases like "according to Israeli officials" to outright facts - and when they're done with all that, their editors do it again. Which is a reason for bloggers to pull those facts out of the articles and present them in a new light, not for bloggers to stop believing that those facts are true. If an article states that a politician gave a quote, then almost always it will turn out that the politician gave that quote. If an article says that a there was a shooting in a particular neighborhood, then almost always it will turn out that there was a shooting in that neighborhood.
That's why over-exuberance about things like Reutersgate and Dowdification can sometimes even hurt the blogosphere. On one hand, you have the success of citizen journalists in debunking shameful dishonesty. But to focus too much on those episodes risks giving the impression that that's the norm in journalism - with the consequence being reflexive cynicism about the reliability of even the most basic reporting. Undermine that reliability too much and the media becomes useless as a source of information, meaning that all of the commentary on that information becomes useless too. Take that away, and most of what's left over after that - as Allahpundit has been finding out this week - is an embarrassing kind of conspiracy theorizing based on insignificant inconsistencies in stories and unlikely connections between events.
Dowdification... the out of context Wolfowitz oil quote... the Killian Memos... Green Helmet at Qaza... Reutersgate... the Red Cross ambulance... and all of the other hoaxes are shocking because they were exceptions. The tens of thousands of other things that are reported daily are more or less true, and can be more or less relied on. If the blogosphere becomes a hoax-detection factory, three things will happen. First, since all but a few of the facts will be accurate bloggers will end wasting a huge amount of time. Second, since most of the facts are accurate but a lot of bloggers are really smart, bloggers will find reasons to be suspicious anyway, and they will end up being wrong. And third, since bloggers will not want to think that they've spent all this time just to be wrong, they'll end up being self-righteously wrong.
All of this is to say that we started the day with a post about yet another instance of outright journalistic misreporting, and we're definitely going to doublecheck Lappin's suspiciously-good anti-media quotes the next time he decides to go meta on international journalism. But that kind of approach shouldn't be the default approach to journalism. There are enough of obvious lies without also looking for lies in things that seem relatively reliable. We know where that road ends up.
