Outfoxed

[jere7my]

In September, I happened to be watching Fox News, since I have this feeling I should keep my eye on them. Polls on the battleground states had just come in, and according to the infographik Bush was well ahead in one; he was ahead by one point in PA; and Kerry was ahead by five or six points in another state (let's say OH, though I forget). The poll margin of error was +/- 4%. This is how the anchor reported it:

"Bush is ahead by one point in Pennsylvania; we think that's significant enough to call it for him. Kerry is holding on to his lead in Ohio for now."

You can probably see the problems here. A 1% lead for Bush, lost in the statistical noise, translates to a solid victory. Kerry's more significant lead in Ohio is tenuous, ephemeral.

This was one example of bias that jumped out at me. Turns out that there are enough to make a whole durn documentary out of: Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. Through a numbing barrage of Fox News clips and damning interviews with ex-reporters and -producers, the bias is laid out irrefutably. Yes, of course, we all know FNC is biased, but this arms us with data: the "daily memos" that lay out the day's journalistic tone, the blurring of the line between commentary and reporting (I usually can't tell which is which on FNC), the repeated use of "people say" phrasing to pass off conservative opinion as news...Outfoxed does a fine job of documenting what we all know already. It's a little scattershot, and its production values could charitably be described as "quaint," but when it grabs hold of a topic—for instance, the Bill O'Reilly "interview" of Jeremy Glick, the anti-war son of a 9/11 victim—it's compelling. (This interview was really an extended browbeating by O'Reilly, who used Glick's dead father and grieving mother in the course of berating the kid. Keep this in mind when he accuses Kerry of dirty politics for mentioning that there's a lesbian in the Cheney house.)

FNC is the worst, but, honestly, it ties my belly up in knots when I see what passes for "reporting" on any of the news networks. The domino effect on election night 2000, as all the networks lined up after FNC to pronounce Bush the presumptive winner before the data could be tallied, had a serious effect on everyone in America. Their total willingness to embrace obvious smokescreens, even as they comment on their smokescreenosity, amazes me: "Will this trumped-up story, which I will now devote three lurid minutes to, work for the Republicans?" I'm bemused by the fact that more people aren't outraged by this.

K. and I nearly cheered when Jon Stewart appeared for a few moments on-screen, in the midst of Hannity and O'Reilly and Murdoch et al. At first, I thought it was weird that a fake news show on a comedy channel is doing a better job of reporting and interviewing than the "real" news...but, really, it's not that surprising. The court jesters and the satirical libels have always been able to get away with things the established media have not.

[I've been thinking about Stewart a fair bit today, since he appeared on Crossfire. Read the transcript if you'd like to see fake news confront "real" news—and win: "I didn't realize that—and maybe this explains quite a bit—that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity."]

Since this is sort of a scattershot entry anyway (blame my headache), I might as well mention my continued annoyance with unscientific polling. All the major nets do it—they put up web polls, "Who won the debate?" or "Who is stronger on defense?" then post the results in big block graphics on their news shows. Yes, they are careful to say that these are unscientific polls, but those caveats are getting briefer and briefer, almost vestigial, and by comparison to the pretty red and blue numbers they're seeming pretty weak. I have to assume the average viewer just sees the numbers and assumes they mean something, because why else would a reputable news network be showing them?

Gimme something to kick.

Comments

[foxfour.livejournal.com]

seconded.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

It's the continuous problem with running a news organization whose job is to package things as "news" and sell them to people and convince them they're important. You have a constant demand for "product" -- news stories -- that you have to fill. And you have a consistent format for your product that you put your product in, and you have to sell the product *as* product -- you have to convince your viewers your story is interesting, even if the story *is* that something is uninteresting. You inevitably end up taking a silly trumped-up charge and legitimizing it first by feeling obligated to cover it in order to fill the news of the day, then putting it in the same format that you use for stories that really happened, then getting people really interested in the story being false by talking about all the ways it might be (but isn't) true. It's a fairly basic structural problem with the media, and I'm not sure how you can solve it. If anything "alternative" media is more vulnerable to it than traditional media -- the blogosphere strains at the seams with the pressure to post on and comment on every little pissant rumor and explodes tiny issues into huge debates on a regular basis.