Bad habits

Two recent stories illustrate how some of journalism's conventions can result in distorting the truth.

1. Two Sides to Every Fact.

This story by USA Today's Peronet Despeignes offers an example of how the two-sides-to-every-story notion of balance can end up twisting fact into opinion:

The federal budget deficit will reach $477 billion this year, the biggest shortfall ever in dollar terms, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

Over the next 10 years, cumulative deficits are likely to add almost $2.4 trillion to the national debt, the CBO estimate said.

The forecast comes as Democrats campaigning to run against President Bush charge that he has turned a surplus into a deficit.

The key here is "Democrats ... charge." After the first two sentences, this is a rather strange attribution. During President Bush's tenure, the surplus has, in fact, been turned into a deficit. Despeignes seems uncomfortable simply stating fiscal statistics relating to the incumbent administration when those facts may seem unflattering. So, to avoid any appearance of bias, the reporter attributes any unflattering facts to the "charges" of the president's political opponents.

The effect of this practice is not to produce a more balanced report, but rather to inject the notion that all facts are simply matters of opinion. It's weirdly deconstructionist -- there is no truth, only competing claims for power.

The editors at The Seattle Times seem to have been concerned about this Derrida-da approach to the facts, changing the wording of the Gannett News Service article to read: "The forecast comes as Democrats campaigning to run against President Bush point out that he has turned a surplus into a deficit."

This corrects the distorting syntax of the original GNS piece, but it also masks the fact that there is a charge being leveled here by the Democratic challengers. A more "fair and balanced" phrasing might be something like "Democrats point out that during the Bush administration surpluses have turned into deficits, and they lay the blame for this change on the president." (That's a bit cumbersome, but you get the idea.)

It's interesting that USA Today actually ran a different version of this story than the one released via GNS:

The federal budget deficit will reach $477 billion this year, the biggest ever in dollar terms, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

The forecast comes as Democrats running against President Bush, and disgruntled conservatives, complain that the deficit and spending are out of control.

"In just three short years, President Bush's reckless tax cuts for the wealthy have turned record surpluses into record deficits," Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark said Monday.

2. Being "fair and balanced" to the imbalanced.

The paper I work for has been running a series of page A1 candidate profile articles in the run-up to the Delaware primary election on Feb. 3. To ensure that this series is impartial and balanced, the paper has decided to profile -- in alphabetical order -- each of the candidates who will appear on the state's ballot.

And therein lies the problem.

Here is the list of candidates profiled: Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Lyndon LaRouche, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton.

Due to a commendable but misapplied notion of journalistic fairness, the paper has chosen to ignore the rather salient fact of the matter here: Lyndon LaRouche is a fringe lunatic and not a serious candidate. Including him in this list insults the legitimate candidates, the paper's readership and Delaware voters.

Here again the concern for balance devolves into a hypersensitivity to avoid accusations of bias, which in turn produces journalism that is incapable of reporting certain true things. The newspaper is no longer able to call a quack a quack.

Reporter Patrick Jackson gamely tries to provide an accurate picture of the perennial fringe candidate, but the "balanced" format does not allow for accuracy or truth-telling -- only the strained pretense that LaRouche is somehow just as legitimate as the seven actual Democrats seeking the Democratic nomination. The overall impression of the piece is of someone desperately trying to change the subject after someone has loudly broken wind at a polite dinner party.

Comments

[Effern]

Prostitutes and Old Buildings, re: Larouche.

[AngryElephant]

Is the USA Today article really playing the "balance" game, or alluding to the ongoing newsstory that is the primary campaign?

Also, to play the devil's advocate, one could argue that the popping of the dot-com bubble also popped the surplus by eliminating the capital-gains tax revenue from the late '90s, though that would just indicate that Bush's tax cut plan was structurally unsound to begin with.

[Stuart Buck]

Do you really mean to classify Al Sharpton as a "serious candidate"?

[Jeremy Osner]

Did the paper really run "Lyndon LaRouche: Maverick with a Mission" on their front page? Bizarre.

[Remy Porter]

Yeah, I have to agree with Stuart. Everytime Sharpton speaks, someone kills a kitten and I lose a dozen IQ points.

[Brian Carnell]

"Due to a commendable but misapplied notion of journalistic fairness, the paper has chosen to ignore the rather salient fact of the matter here: Lyndon LaRouche is a fringe lunatic and not a serious candidate. Including him in this list insults the legitimate candidates, the paper's readership and Delaware voters.

Here again the concern for balance devolves into a hypersensitivity to avoid accusations of bias, which in turn produces journalism that is incapable of reporting certain true things. The newspaper is no longer able to call a quack a quack."

Interesting. There are other Democrats running for president whom you didn't list, and it's odd your paper would profile LaRouche but not other minor fringe candidates.

I find it interesting that a lot of Kucinich supporters are angry that he doesn't get more press coverage, but I've never heard any of them complain about the virtual blackout of LaRouche's campaign (with your paper being the apparent exception).

[Charles2]

"Fair and Balanced" run amok.

I wonder if there were more than one Republican candidate they'd be lumped all together as equals among equals? By framing the slate of candidates this way, your paper is saying, whether purposely or not, that they are all the same.

It wouldn't have taken too much effort or too many column inches to lay out the race as it stood at the start of the series. But it's more effort than they are apparently ready to make.

[eyelessgame]

Yes yes yes -- I have been shouting about this, particularly point #1, for over a decade.

The realization came, for me, back when for a few days in the mid-80s it looked like we were going to get cold fusion. The LA Times ran a story explaining that cold fusion, if it turned out to be real and not a hoax, could potentially provide us with cheap, safe, limitless, nonpolluting energy.

Attached to the story was a graphic chart: Cold Fusion: Pros and Cons.

Yes, that's right: a nicely balanced chart listing three major pros and three major cons of cheap, safe, limitless, nonpolluting energy.

[Erik]

Why not just report the news? The story is (supposedly) about the deficit, not the president. Get me rewrite...

-----------
Washington — The federal budget deficit will reach $477 billion this year, the biggest shortfall ever in dollar terms, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

Over the next 10 years, cumulative deficits are likely to add almost $2.4 trillion to the national debt, the CBO estimate said.

The 10-year forecast contains a cumulative deficit nearly $1 trillion larger than the CBO projected less than six months ago. The increase is due mostly to the passage of a prescription-drug benefit for people on Medicare and a catchall spending bill.

Although budget deficits can help the economy in the short run by financing job-creation projects and stimulating consumer spending, economists warn they're dangerous if allowed to fester.
-----------

Why not stop there? It's not the world's most interesting article, but it means the facts are reported and we are spared the unconvincing interpretations and "context." Of course, more explanation from economists as to why festering deficits are dangerous would be welcome. Trouble is, that would require homework on the part of journalists. Yapping about what one party "charges" about another is much easier.

[Anna]

You probably already know about these but in case not -

Jay Rosen's PressThink at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/

and the CJR Campaign Desk, covering the coverage, at
http://cjr.campaigndesk.org

[Bill]

The couching of fact as opinion is totally appropriate in case #1. Data supplied by the CBO, IRS, and GAO all show one fact. There was NO surplus during the 1990's. All sources agree that the last time that outstanding debt by the government decreased was in 1969. This means that it's only an opinion that there was a surplus to begin with.

[chsa]

There is nothing wrong with a regional paper running a profile of LaRouche. This has less to do with some kind of hyper-fairness, than with the fact that the LaRouchians have been feverishly organizing for the 2004 campaign since Bush was (s)elected. Suppose that the paper said nothing about Larouche, but then in the polls he garnered 10% of the primary vote, more than say Kucinich, Sharpton and Lieberman. How then is one to define fringe?

Second, the fact that Larouche is considered a loon by the media establishment and the mainstream party apparatus means that he is probably more likely to utter truths which they would rather not admit outright.

When was the last time you read an in depth article which lays out Larouche's various positions, picks them apart and levels a clearheaded criticism of them? Instead of refuting his ideas the mainstream has ignored them, at its peril. Potential Kerry, Dean or Clark supporters are handing out flyers for Lyndon Larouche!