Cozy Corner

SoccerDad gives us an assignment:

Critique "Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases." I wrote a little about this yesterday and hope to write some more.

In one especially telling experiment, researchers showed 144 observers six television news segments about Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon.

Pro-Arab viewers heard 42 references that painted Israel in a positive light and 26 references that painted Israel unfavorably.

Pro-Israeli viewers, who watched the very same clips, spotted 16 references that painted Israel positively and 57 references that painted Israel negatively.

The meat therefore seems to be: As long as partisans think we're biased against them from both sides, we're unbiased.

Let's look at that. Assume, if you will, a world in Cartesian space, where "reality" is the origin point (0,0). Everyone views reality through various filters, of course; applying their beliefs about how politics and economics work, who is evil, and who isn't, etc. Now assume two partisan observers. The first, we'll call Yitzhak. In Yitzhak's world, he is surrounded by enemies. These enemies will sacrifice their children to injure or kill Yitzhak's children. They've been at each other's throats for all of Yitzhak's life, and Yitzhak does not really believe that his opponents really want peace (sound familiar?). We're going to place Yitzhak's belief about reality at (-5,0).

Now, we posit a second observer, Ishmael. Ishmael believes that Yitzhak has no right to exist; that Yitzhak's grandfather displaced Ishmael's grandfather. Ishmael believes that the only peaceful solution requires a grace for Yitzhak, preferably on someone else's land far away. (Gee, can you see where my own bias is?). Ishmael's worldview thinks reality is somewhere around (45,0).

Along comes happy-fun-mainstream-media-reporter. HFMSMR is employed by mainstream-media-conglomerate, and MSMC wants a "balanced" view. After looking at both Yitzhak at (-5,0) and Ishmael at (45,0), HFMSMR decided that balance requires an article written at (25,0). After all, this is equidistant from the two partisans, right? To make this work, HFMSMR employs two tactics. First, he dehumanizes and decontextualizes anything in support of Yitzhak. For instance, attacks against Yitzhak's people might be called ineffective. Counterstrikes might only show collateral civilian damage, and not military targets hit. Second, he humanizes and sanitizes Ishmael's actions. The wounded and dead are used to lead into news stories. The war crimes are not discussed.

Now, we have a balanced article - if journalism were about finding common ground, and advocating that both sides have an equivalent viewpoint. And Ishmael comes along, and says, "What? You left out the part where Yitzhak's children shoot little puppies? How dare you!" And Yitzhak comes along and says, "What? How could you not point out that our killing of Ishmael's uncle last week was because he had a missile launcher pointed at us!" And HFMSMR says, "I must be unbiased, because both of them are upset!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we are. And because extremists understand this arithmetic, they take ever more extreme positions, knowing that will drive fair and balanced coverage in their direction.

Message to the Washington Post: Your job is not to be fair, or balanced. Your job is to be true and honest.