A Media Experiment
Take two similar stories and try to figure out how the media will cover each. With a hat tip to Newsbusters, here are the two stories:
1. A former Catholic priest comes forward Monday (4/20/09) to claim that another priest abused him as a teenager nearly 30 years ago. (The accused priest has no other similar public complaints and denies the allegations against him.)
2. A former school teacher was sentenced Wednesday (4/22/09) after pleading no contest to eight felony counts, including having sex with two girls under the age of 16. The man "admitted to having intercourse with the girls, performing oral sex with the teens and taking extremely explicit nude photographs of his victims — including pictures of him with one of the girls – before sending the images over the Internet."
OK, they’re not entirely equivalent. The priest story is from 3 decades ago and the teacher story is from this month. OK, and the priest denies the allegations while the teacher is being sentenced. So given that, what was the disparity in coverage?
NewsBusters answers:
Now it’s quiz time! To which story did the Los Angeles Times devote two generous color photos and a 640-word article? Which story did the Times totally ignore?
If you’ve been a close follower of this issue here at NewsBusters, you already know the answer. The Times loudly trumpeted the case of the Catholic priests, even though the original story was reported three years ago (!). Meanwhile, it totally ignored the story of the teacher (Contra Costa Times, 4/23/09; Long Beach Press-Telegram, 11/5/08).
In addition, at Google news, the story of the priests returns "about 128" results. The story of the teacher? One.
We’ll say it again: It seems the most important element to the Times when reporting the awful abuse of children is whether the words "priest," "bishop," or "Cardinal" is in someone’s job title.
Given the Google results, it’s not just the Times that has this ailment. It’s almost journalists have some blind spot when covering negative stories on government schools and / or a hot spot when it comes to negative stories regarding religion in general and Christianity in particular.
I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.
Filed under: Catholicism • Christianity • Doug • Education • Media • Religion
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Both are horrible allegations/stories. However, the “logical explanation” is that, even though we rightly have high standards for what we expect from our teachers, we have much higher expectations of our clergy.
And when one of them commits this sort of action, it’s even more “newsy” than when a teacher behaves thusly.
Both stories ought to be reported and I’m not in a position to evaluate whether there was some measure of equity in how the stories were covered, but we ought not be surprised when those who act as our moral and spiritual leaders misbehave, that their downfall is great. Is it fair? I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. But it’s not surprising.
That’s a very good point, but our kids spend far, far more time with their teachers than their pastors which to me, makes it more newsworthy. Add to that the fact that the clergy story is an incident allegedly 30 years old which was already reported on previously, whereas the teacher story is much more current and it looks more suspicious.
I do want to know when clergy are violating our trust, but given how much time our kids are in government-mandated schooling, that sort of trust violating has to be nearly as newsworthy.
Certainly, teacher abuse of any sort ought to be in the news. In my experience, it always is a big story when caretakers of any sort take advantage of children in their care.
Few Points:
#1
“It’s almost journalists have some blind spot when covering negative stories on government schools ”
To make this argument you have to search on how many articles about teacher misconduct made the paper in question. Not just harp on whether or not one particular case made it in.
#2 I’ve noticed living in NJ that the major paper, The New York Times, will cover either big national stories or ones that are local to New York City but inbetween the coverage becomes kind of sparse. I suppose it isn’t hard to see how this would happen. I’m sure their reporters want to write about big CNN type headline stories or want to cover things happening immediately near their job like the subway system in NYC. They don’t really want to drive 4 hours to cover Trenton NJ or 2 hours to cover, say, the bear hunting debate in northern NJ. If that is covered it tends to get left to the local papers whose niche is to compete with the big boys by covering everything that happens local. Looking at Google maps and noting that Long Beach seems to be close but still outside of LA…I wonder if the same effect is at play.
#3 Your beginning with some type of assumption of infinite knowledge on the part of the media. As if they have all the stories in the world from 1 to 10 billion and they figure out the 35 or so most important ones to put in the paper each morning. I think the reality is most stories are missed by the media. The ones that are covered get covered for two main reasons:
a. A reporter was there either out of dumb luck or because he has covered that subject before (which could be the case given that the priest scandals have created a group of reporters who are familiar with the topic and can quickly churn out a story whenever something new happens in it).
b. Herd mentality. If a bunch of other papers cover a story the remaining papers will want to as well. No editor wants the paper to appear like it doesn’t have the resources to cover ‘all the news’ or that the competition is scooping them. There is a bias at work here but not anti-Catholic bias. If papers A, B and C do stories on the priest and you noticed paper D didn’t you’d feel like paper D was letting you down somehow. Maybe they don’t have the reporters to cover the news? You know that the priest story exists from A,B and C so you ask why a story is missing from D. But since there’s a lot of stories that are missed you are treating D unfairly. A, B, and C have missed just as many…you just don’t feel like they did because you don’t know what they are.
Regarding #1, the fact that many, many news outlets did manage to find out about the stale priest allegations while only 1 found out about the teacher story, kinda shows that most weren’t either looking for it or passed over it. They chose the old news over the new news, or they saw the word “priest” and their antenna went up.
I got this tip from NewsBusters, and they make a living pointing this sort of disparity out. It’s not a lone case.
Regarding #3, it’s not that I’m claiming one news agency needs to be omniscient, it’s that virtually all of them missed this. Law of averages ain’t working. There have been plenty of stories on both fronts — church and school — but when there’s a choice, look where the writers go. I understand the herd mentality, but the herd seems to often lurch in a particular direction.
Again, NewsBusters should be in your RSS feed. Sometimes overly-sensitive, I will say, but more often chronicling the bias.
“Regarding #1, the fact that many, many news outlets did manage to find out about the stale priest allegations while only 1 found out about the teacher story, kinda shows that most weren’t either looking for it or passed over it. They chose the old news over the new news, or they saw the word “priest” and their antenna went up. ”
Well first the story isn’t stale, the alleged victim has filed a lawsuit.
(And no doubt he is trying to get media attention, something the teacher probably isn’t trying to get and his victim and her family is probably not too keen on either)
Second, I don’t think ‘look for’ is the best way to think about it. It’s more like they sit in a place and wait for news to happen there. If that place is the ‘Church sex abuse scandal’ they, having already covered it in detail, will quickly pick up on any new developments. But the criminal courthouse right outside of the main metro area? If CA is like NJ the only reporters lurking there are at the 2nd rate local outlets. While I’m sure reporters do sometimes decide to go out looking for stories in the sense you’re thinking (“HMmmmm I’d like to report about teacher misconduct, let me troll the archives and see how much of it went on in the entire system last year”), it’s not the typical story.
“I got this tip from NewsBusters, and they make a living pointing this sort of disparity out. It’s not a lone case.”
And the supply of such disparities will be endless because the stories published are more a random function than a rational one. Some child kidnappings make national headlines, others just get a small headline. Why is one big and the other small? In the ‘rational model’ where the newspaper editor carefully arranges all 10 billion potential stories and selects the 40 most important, pointing out disparities like this would be helpful. In the real world, though, it isn’t.
“There have been plenty of stories on both fronts — church and school — but when there’s a choice, look where the writers go. I understand the herd mentality, but the herd seems to often lurch in a particular direction. ”
You say you’re not claiming the news agency needs to be omniscient but you are assuming they are. Where is there a choice here? A reporter or editor needs to be aware of both stories at the same time and make a call to publish one and not the other. But they usually aren’t aware all the time and there’s reason to think they weren’t. When something isn’t reported (or only reported very locally) it is invisible.
Well somebody decided to report on a story that the others followed. Except that one outlet did report on the teacher story and nobody followed.
How do you fish in a lake? One way would be to scan the entire lake, determine the area with the highest fish concentration and set your pole up there.
But that is not how people fish. For one thing they don’t have a way to scan an entire lake. So they tend to do what worked for them in the past. Their trusty fishing spot may or may not be the best on the lake but it usually turns up a fish or two when they use it.
I would imagine reporting is very similiar. Something is always happening at the local courthouse that’s a slight bit more than a hop away from the Big City(tm). OK maybe you’re getting mostly stories about drunk drivers, wife beaters and other fair and once in a blue moon a larger case comes along. But day in day out you’re able to produce some copy which is what keeps your paycheck going. Sure if all the other papers start screaming about something you’re editor may tell you write about it, but you still got your trusty fishing spot. Likewise if your at your trusty spot, you’re going to take the fish you catch. You’re not going to throw one back simply because on other days you’ve caught better fish. Likewise the reporter(s) for whom priest sex scandals have yielded good stories in the past aren’t going to toss back a new one simply because it is not as big.
I’ve noticed this. Less than a year ago we had to drive about two hours into PA to get a puppy (an Irish Setter, the greatest dogs ever created). We are in this nothing town that looked like the set for a cheap western filled with nothing but farmers and trucks that were coming through carrying garbage (probably a landfill was somewhere nearby). So stopping in a little place to grab lunch I pick up a discarded little paper that covers the this quiet place and what do I read…murder, rape and mayham.
Flash forward again to another PA trip. This time just over the Del. Water Gap. Local paper is screaming about some lunatic who snapped, got a gun and kidnapped a teenage girl. He holed up at some motel and the police swat team had to rescue the girl. The headline was huge. If anything like this happened in my area it would be all over. But at home I didn’t see anything even though it was only about 45 minutes or an hour away.
The lesson here, I think, is that it isn’t sensible to expect consistency in press coverage. It’s probably not possible in real time. So you’re going to see things like the media screaming about some 5 yr old girl killed by her mom but gloss over some 4 yr old boy killed by his dad. It would be quite easy to manufacture outrage and victimization (did the coverage of the mom happen because the media is biased against women? did they gloss over the dad because men are expected to act angry? Did the PA lunatic not get covered because the NRA doesn’t want to see stories that could be used to argue for gun control? )
The manufacture of victimization is something Newsbusters does well, but they are hardly the first kids on the block. Noam Chomsky has made a nice living from it decades before anyone even had a personal computer.
I think if you’re going to evaluate the way the media treats a subject, you’re going have to toss out consistency in coverage. You should evaluate either the specific story (was the article itself biased or did it fairly and accurately give both sides?) or evaluate the set of coverage that a paper or reporter does (do the articles by this reporter always seem to go to a particular angle or does the paper as a whole do so?). This is not so easy because it requires actually knowing a paper or reporter rather than a series of quick google searches.
You speak of reporters, but there are also editors and such that are supposed to aid in bias removal. At least, that’s what bloggers were criticized for not having with the old “bloggers in pajamas” comment was first spoken. (Wish I could find a link.) The media pride themselves on their objectivity and coverage. At least, that’s the image they like to project, and get upset when you call them on it.
And yet here you are telling me that, like the herd we keep mentioning, they’re lazy and mindless. Two things; one, I would tend to agree with you. And two, the point of this is to note that, indeed, the image doesn’t match the substance. But here’s the thing; since the writers and editors in the media are overwhelmingly liberal (80-90%), the fishing spots they go to, and the fish they keep or throw away, are colored by that.
Patterico has been chronicling this problem with the LA Times specifically for years. So I think he fulfills your requirements in the last paragraph, and this fits a pattern that he’s been observing.
I think we are getting closer to the same page here. To keep with the fishing analogy, you normally wouldn’t deviate from your fishing spot unless you saw a number of people catching a lot of fish *over there*. If, though, someone happens to land a big fish over there once or twice you’ll probably let it go by. So should the LAT reporter start hanging out at the courthouse an hour away? Probably not, even though a local paper got a big story there last week. What if the next OJ trial is going on there? Well that’s different!
Editors aren’t really the solution to this problem. They likewise don’t usually have access to *all* the stories. They have access to the ones that land on their desk which they can accept or reject or demand modifications BUT at the same time meet their quota for generating so many column inches of text.
Of course this simple model doesn’t account for all behavior. There will be mavericks (maybe younger ambitious) reporters who will try to make a name for themselves by seeking out a really big story. You might set you pole up in a new spot just because you’re bored and want to try something kind of new
But the new idea I’d like to point out here is that we should keep in mind that news is produced in real time while analysis of the news happens after the fact. It is quite easy after the fact to sit with the luxury of knowing what happened in the future and with the luxury of comparing everyone else with google and produce an endless amount of criticism. If your business is the manufacture of victimization (from either the left or right POV), the land will always produce a good crop and Google has made life a lot easier….poor Chomsky probably had to shift through papers on microfilm!
But let’s assume that criticism of the media is actually serious. Not just fodder for the right to chew on whenever things don’t go their way but serious criticism that a reporter or editor would want to study in order to improve the quality of reporting. If that’s the purpose of media criticism then I suggest the first idea critics should ditch is the ‘omniscient comparison’ that this story is based on. Unfortunately, though, that is probably the easiest tool media critics have and it is human nature that we tend to use the tools that are easiest to use rather than the ones that produce the best results.
Fair enough, but if this sort of things happens with enough frequency, there is clearly something fishy going on, even if it’s not conspiratorial (which I don’t think it is; I allude back to my 80-90% liberal stat). And Patterico is a great resource to point out the trend over time with the LA Times.
Or this other NewsBusters story comparing the same magazine, TIME in this case, cover the same type of event, in this case the first 100 days of the new president, and you have yet another data point. It’s comparing TIME to itself, seeing how it chose to fish differently when a Democrat vs Republican is in the White House. No omniscience needed; just some nod to the objectivity and fairness that they claim to have.
Again, it’s claims vs reality. They claim they are one thing, but don’t manage to live anywhere near to that claim in case after case, and they get offended when it’s pointed out. Indeed, you can manufacture this sort of outrage, and I’ve said before that I think the MRC can be overly sensitive. But there are times they hit it out of the park, and these are some of them.
And apparently most folks who watch the news agree.
Re: the Time/NewsBusters story…
To be fair to Time, what HAD Bush done in his first 100 days? I don’t know the answer to that, I’m just not recalling much happening. So, it may be that they’ve covered Obama more because he’s done more, or at least that would be one explanation. And yet another explanation is that Obama has been faced with multiple crises that Bush did not face, since Bush inherited the relatively peaceful and economic sound results of the Clinton administration whereas Obama has inherited two wars and occupations (questionably just or wise), HUGE deficits, HUGE economic problems and, of all things, a pirate problem! And now, a possible (overblown?) health epidemic?
Add to the fact that Obama’s administration IS a vast change from the way things have been done and his historic “first african american” status and other firsts, and there has just been an AWFUL lot of stories to cover. If Time had NOT covered all these stories and angles, they would not be doing their job.
In short, I would also note that it would be a tremendously fair thing to point out that it is possible that NewsBusters itself may have an objectivity problem, yes?
First of all, Newsbusters has a bias, and they admit it and don’t hide behind facades of “fairness”. TIME does.
I recall that candidate Bush was excoriated by the Dems and the media for “talking down” the economy which was, indeed, heading downward when he took office. He inherited what might be termed “relative peace” because the terrorists didn’t have their plans complete until his watch.
There was the initial standoff with China with the reconnaissance plane. Here’s another list of foreign policy issues he had to deal with early on. Here’s a list of initiatives he acted on in his first 100 days.
Few if any of which were worth a TIME cover.
As an aside, how long does the “first african american” status wear off, and he becomes a President just like any other? Does his color mean he gets this fawning for the next 4 years?
It is no small thing in a 225+ year old nation when a member of a minority becomes president for the first time. Just ask your African American/Latino/Women, etc friends. And it is not fawning to celebrate that great event.
100 days after women or minorities won the right to vote, would you have been asking, “how long are we going to fawn over this new right?”
Some events ARE big deals, historic in nature.
It is comments like that which – while I’m honestly sure you have not a racist bone in your body – make people feel a bit of distaste when around their ever-shrinking number of GOP friends.
He’s had this sort of coverage for about a year and a half now, never mind the last 100 days. But record deficits are colorblind. Nationalizing industries is colorblind. Concern over foreign policy decisions is colorblind.
But the press, stars still in their eyes over an admittedly historic election, have stopped being the folks that hold government accountable. The kind of deficit spending that made the Great Depression great gets a complete pass. CNN reporters argue with protesters, suggesting they shouldn’t be mad if they’re state is getting record pork barrel spending. Chris Matthews says that it’s his job to make the President succeed.
There is almost no one in the mainstream media holding this government accountable, and almost everyone gleeful at this hijacking of the economy. At some point, the whole idea that all these issues get glossed over in the midst of all these firsts has to wear off. By that time, however, it’ll be too late to do anything about them. That’s the source of my question of when does this all wear off and we all become colorblind.
(That some might find racist the thought that we shouldn’t care about the President’s race sounds like misplaced oversensitivity, by the way.)
You asked on your blog, why all the early criticism of Obama, especially by the previous administration. I’d say that’s because precious few in the media are doing it, and the mistakes he’s making are going to affect generations. So yeah, I think someone needs to bring this stuff up. The media won’t.
Well, unless the President is a Republican, and they’ll ignore his accomplishments thus far and will spend their time criticizing him. That’s the issue here.
Fair enough, but if this sort of things happens with enough frequency, there is clearly something fishy going on,
Well yea because its manufactured. It will always ‘happen’. It’s a cheap trick. Want to say women are put upon? Well how many mothers killing children make big headlines while fathers killing children don’t. The smart feminist could even add a cherry by pointing out there are probably more cases in the courts of a father killing a child than women yet somehow Nancy Grace has made every show about that woman in Florida. Since coverage will never be consistent, all it takes to quickly produce a cheap media bias post is:
1. Find article about someone in your favored group doing something bad.
2. Find article about someone in less favored group doing something worse but getting less hits/font size/copy etc.
TIME in this case, cover the same type of event, in this case the first 100 days of the new president, and you have yet another data point.
Good point, so why not actually pull their ‘Obama 100 days’, ‘Bush 100’, ‘Clinton 100 and ‘Bush 100′ to compare and contrast. But what are you saying? Are Obama’s first 100 days exactly like Bush or Clinton? Should Time treat them the same? If so why bother at all, can’t they just keep reprinting the “Eisenhower’s 100 days’ article every time there’s a new Pres. and change the name?
To be fair to Time, what HAD Bush done in his first 100 days? I don’t know the answer to that, I’m just not recalling much happening.
I do recall an incident with China and some captured Air Force pilots….don’t know if thats 100 days though. Perhaps that’s roughly analogous to the pirate issue Obama had.
I have seen, though, numerous charts comparing popularity figures for the last 4 or 5 presidents at this point.
One point, though, we now lurched from news stories to coverage. Kind of a different animal because you never have to fish for news. There will always be an economy and critics of the economic policies. There will always be foreign policy and critics. There will always be social issues, concerns about appointments and so on. This is an easier beat in some ways because the local courthouse won’t always have interesting cases.
The Air Force jet in China was indeed in Bush’s 100 days. Check out some of my link in comment 15.
Actually, what the media covers and how they cover it are two sides of the same coin. I’m not saying that TIME should cover similar events exactly the same way, but there is a noticeable disparity in these two. Admittedly, the 100 day thing is so very artificial, and it appeared that during the Bush administration TIME also realized it. Well, until the Obama administration; then it’s front-page news again.
It would be interesting to see how TIME handled Clinton’s first 100 days. I can’t find a web page.
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts. I’ll say that a lot of what your saying is speculation that we’ll just have to see about.
I had a conversation about this very topic on Facebook with a college buddy of mine who (I believe) is liberal and who has worked in journalism all his life. He’ll say that reporters are diligent and strive for balance and fairness all the time, at least every journalist he’s ever known. You say they’re creatures of habit, taking the path of least resistance. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Organizations like the Media Research Center (from the right) and Media Matters (from the left) are trying to convince folks where the journalists really are. In my mind, MM has the harder job.
Well here’s a final test. In order for this original criticism to work, the media must normally be consistent. So, like, a mother who kills three children should get more attention than a mother who kills just one. Your thesis is that they are consistent like this *except* when dealing with a group they supposedly don’t like because of their liberal bias (priests, cops, troops, Dick Cheney etc.).
OK so prove the consistency. Show that when the they are talking about people they have no particular bias about (say East Coast rappers versus West Coast rappers) there’s consistent coverage (Rapper A is caught in a club with a gun, gets as much attention as Rapper B who is the same but Rapper C who shoots someone in the foot gets even more attention).
Mathematically your argument is:
A = B = C = D = E ….= Z != CT
Where A through Z is the coverage ‘normal’ people receive for bad deeds of equal ‘badness’ and CT is the coverage a ‘conservative target’ receives for equal badness.
You have a case for bias if all those equal signs are true but if coverage is inconsistent accross the board then every Newsbusters story of this type is a waste of time.
Well, in one sense, that’s what the original article was trying to show.
If you’re suggesting that since some deviation in coverage proves no bias, I don’t agree with that. We both know there’s going to be some differences. Noting in life is that consistent. But it’s the trend that matters, and that’s what groups like the MRC try to demonstrate; the trend, especially regarding similar stories.
True but it doesn’t tell me anything if Z != CT. That could be consistent with your media biased model A=B=C=…Z != CT or it could be consistent with an erratic media world A != B != C…