Last week I had the honor to appear as a guest on Lake County Magazine.
For me, the chance to sit down and chat was pure fun. Conversation with hosts Terri Larsen and Pete the Tax Guy was as comfortable as a living room full of friends after a few casual drinks. I probably dragged down the ratings of the show, however. It was billed as a year in review program and I count less than six months in Lake County.
At one point, we touched upon the matter of bias and media. It’s an interesting topic, in that one group assumes without doubt that stories are tilted, another blithely dismisses the very idea, some insiders consider themselves above reproach despite evidence to the contrary, a few understand the difficult passage to fair reporting and none of the sides involved lend much credence to the others.
After all, if one choice is absolutely right …
Everyone feels a tug from things they like or don’t like, appreciate or dismiss. But most true reporting I’ve read or heard suffers (if it suffers at all) from yanks unrelated to personal bias — and this is so even from coverage on Fox News or MSNBC.
Yeah, yeah — no one out there in the land of bitter shouting (otherwise known as televised or tweeted political commentary) agrees with me on this. Then again, few understand the distinctions critical to my point of view.
Years ago, when teaching freshman American History, I noticed student after student referring to their reading assignment one particular week as a “novel.” The work in question was “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” — considered a memoir rather than a work of fiction. Chuckle if you must over the vagaries of the undergraduate mind, but a few years into my newspaper career and I began to shrug every time a reader upset over biased “news” coverage pointed to an opinion column or editorial or even a paid advertisement, rather than an actual news story.
Semantics? Hardly. Just as a novel is a work of fiction and a memoir a personal account (perhaps flawed) of one’s life, different rules govern news writing and opinion pieces. As a reporter for Fox News working in Israel once told me, his coverage was spot-on accurate although he could not help what “talking heads” on the morning shows with an angle to sell did with the information.
Flawed coverage is something that occurs every day, certainly. Yet for the most part this results from factors less dramatic than an individual hoping to sweep facts under the carpet. Sometimes it is inexperience. Economics comes into play, as staff cutbacks at television or print operations create holes in coverage. Silence from one side or another also affects what is presented to the public, particularly when deadlines and empty slots demand at least a partial story, the rest to come when the reticent source decides to talk. Oh, and there are the random acts of laziness.
On the other hand, many listeners or readers simply decide a report that conflicts with their own view is, and must be, the result of some nefarious scheme by those (fill in the attribute here) “liberals” or “conservatives.” Fanned by those with a stake on either side, they are encouraged that slanted reporting is responsible for the, say, failure to focus on this or the “pointless” focus on that.
Add your own Benghazi or Whitewater or whatever.
So politicians can dismiss something by demeaning the “mainstream media,” the “liberal media” or lineup of pundits on Fox News. Followers nod their consent without examining the matter, either way.
Yeah, there are individuals in the media who succumb to personal likes or dislikes. How many film critics and Academy Awards voters derided the great Clint Eastwood for decades before crowning him for “Unforgiven,” a movie no more intriguing than “The Outlaw Josey Wales” or “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” It is rather difficult to hammer human nature out of everyone who covers news.
I know the struggle to achieve whatever amounts to fairness firsthand. To become a restaurant critic I had to learn to ignore my own likes and dislikes and judge a kitchen on the quality of their achievement (or lack thereof). Despite my natural gag reflex at the very mention of sea urchin, I’ve ordered and downed hundreds of urchin-based dishes, most of which involved deservedly kind words. I used to tell people that if my mother ran the kitchen, I must be prepared to give it a scathing or rave review, depending on what was served.
People might disagree with my assessment of a place, of course. But I could only write about my experience from a neutral viewpoint based upon my understanding of food service (which involved quite a bit of study), not the result of their own night out. If they sent a perfect steak to my table and a blackened slab of shoe leather to another, both my approving commentary and another person’s “I’ll never eat there again” rebuke would be equally valid.
All of this made me a poor guest for the good folks in Lower Lake. Imagine a radio or television program in which “yeah, but,” “on the other hand” or “I don’t know” are constant refrains. Refusal to pass judgment hardly boosts the ratings.
It was fun for me, though.
