Update: copy editors write headlines, reporters don't. however in these examples the headlines do seem to accurately reflect content of articles.
April 19 Letter from Mike Pasner to Union making the claim that the reporting is biased (1 example among several given: "The headline March 25 should have read: "Supervisor Bedwell Breaks Law for 8 Years...")
but I shall leap to the paper's defense here, sort of, wielding Occam's razor and claiming that we need not invoke reporter's bias as an explanation.
The "somebody thinks Bedwell screwed up" article is here ("Foe's complaint bedevils Bedwell"); I recall the article as basically being "Bedwell's enemy is trying to get him in trouble".
The "somebody thinks Conklin screwed up" article is here ("Conklin's new job raises eyebrows"), the article primarily sticking to the issues involved and barely mentioning that the eyebrows reported as being raised are those of "foes".
When a journalist is deciding how to frame a story, it's easy to cue off of whatever the protagonist views as the story and issues. And the protagonist's view, aka mindset, (once again) is a function of projection. So the current supervisor sees his problem as "I'm being attacked by an enemy", and presents it as such and it's written up as such, where the former supervisor sees his problem as "there are concerns about ethics and here's how I address those concerns", and presents it as such and it's written up as such.
so by merely following of the path of least resistance, the unbiased reporter can write an article that appears slanted.
(For a fascinating account of projection and the professional media's acceptance of it in the last presidential campaign, see this article on the use of fuzzy math in the Bush-Gore debates.)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome, and thanks for caring enough to donate your time and thoughts toward greater collective wisdom...
Terms of engagement:
* Please be civil.
* * * * Please do not post anonymously * * * (I'd remove this choice if I could, and I may remove your comment if you do) - instead, do this:
Click on the 'Name/URL' radiobutton, then enter your real name (if you're brave) or a pseudonym (if you're not). (You can leave the "URL" field blank.)
Or go ahead and click "Anonymous", but put your name in your comment.
* The Management reserves the right to delete comments (Moderation Certificate can be found here). You can always post it on a blog of your own.
If you run into technical difficulties, please a) accept my apologies, then b) email your comment to aherror2011 at gmail.com with "Comment for [name of this blog]" in the Subject line.
New policy re climate contrarianism comments as of 11/11/2009:
Comments questioning the climate science community's understanding of climate change (97% of active climatologists now believe that the earth is currently warming and that it's human-caused - link) will be deleted unless the commenter:
a) is local
b) uses his real name
c) provides link(s) to substantiate his claim(s)/inference(s)
d) is willing to collaborate on constructing an argument tree, to get us past the usual sterile point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint.
(For people who can't read the above, a summary:
1) Be civil;
2) Don't post w/o giving at least a pseudonym;
3) Don't espouse climate-denial crankery unless you're local and willing to stand behind it.)
Caveats:
1. Comments could be delayed: they are being moderated, and I'm sometimes away from the computer for a day or more.
2. : Perfectly legitimate comments are sometimes miscategorized (by the blogging platform) as spam, & not published. If this happens to yours, please notify me, else I might not notice for a day or two.