Bias to thee, but not to me

Chris Evans, my journalism professor before I came to UCF, wrote a letter to the editor of the Sentinel criticizing the word choice in several pieces regarding Terri Schiavo. The professor and I have different sensibilities regarding bias, its genesis, cause, and its role in descriptive reporting, which we’ve about argued in the past, and this letter suggests his views are still the same.

At issue is the choice of the word “parched” to describe Schiavo’s tongue and the phrases “went through” and “endured…food or water”. I agree with Evans that the use of the terms and phrases is improper in strict reporting, but I don’t detect bias in their use. Rather, I think this is more indicative of lazy reporting and failing to delve beyond the way this issue, or any, is framed by the loudest and most persistent advocates or opponents.

The professor and I first differed over bias when he criticized an early article I wrote about a libertarian economics professor as being overly biased. In my view, the piece was fair to his views but contained strong counterarguments to his theses, some of which were colorful. Since it was my first real piece, I over indulged myself and was a little too punchy with my segues, but it wasn’t biased. We never agreed over the appropriateness of the piece. The second time our views clashed was when he admitted that in his own reporting he overcompensated for his liberal views and as a result his pieces were slightly slanted to the right. To me this is demonstrative of a larger journalistic culture that failed to maintain the belief in their own judgment and to literally call them like they saw them, free from fears of accusations of bias. In my view, honest and accurate reporting is better than scared and unintentionally slanted reporting which results too often in an “on the one-handism” style of reporting. This too was an argument where we agreed to disagree.

In his letter he seems more concerned with preserving the precepts of neutral reporting, and chides the reporters for relying on assertions of fact from either indirect knowledge or non-authorotative pundits. To me that’s not biased but lazy. It reflects both a lack of greater understanding about the issue and the inability to further resolve the issue, instead relying on either dueling opinions of fact (an odd sentiment to say the least) or reporting so neutral that one is left with less of an understanding about the issue(s) or event than the reporter. In addition, reporters too often fail to pierce the way an issue or even is framed (or spun, or lied about, take your pick) by opponents or advocates, and allow their own reporting to reflect it.

By adopting the language of Schindler supporters regarding their daughter’s condition, using phrases that connote cognitive ability or actions beyond her reflex-motor capabilities, reporters substitute their own judgment and understanding of the issue to partisans. Coupled with a propensity for “group-think” reporting, this results in a far more dangerous mode of reporting than mere bias, neutral ignorance, e.g. the reporter knows nothing and its purpose is to provide a forum for dueling quotes prefaced with an engaging lede. This mode of reporting serves no one but the partisans who seek to introduce their opinions, however divorced from reality they may be, into the “public debate.”