Inconvenient Facts

As a footnote to Matt's excellent column of last Thursday, here's some more complications to the simplistic narrative of "media bias."

Comments

[wellfellow]

"media" is plural.

[Gilbert Martin]

The media's continued hysterics about Abu Gharib contrasted with the short shrift they've given to the atrocities perpetrated against American soldiers and civilian contractors and their almost complete lack of reporting on any of the good things being done to restore power, water service, etc to places in Iraq does indeed show a pattern of bias in reporting.

I read a column by John Leo a while back wherein he said that the media is much more inclined to show images of abuse by Americans than images of abuse of Americans. I think that's exactly right.

Also contrast all the hsysterics about the prison abuse with what happened in the WW2 era.
I wasn't around then, but I've yet to see any documentaries on WW2 that showed any contemporary news reports hand wringing over our treatment of the Japanese or Germans.

I saw a documentary called "Hell in the Pacific" once where soldiers talked about things that were done there. One Marine said his company never took prisoners and they once gunned down about 50 or so Japanese soldiers who were trying to surrender. It was clear from the way he said it that it had never bothered him in the least. Another one talked about how they used the skull of a Japanese soldier as a candy dish. Soldiers would routinely use their bayonets to pry gold teeth and fillings out of the mouths of dead Japanese soldiers. And of course we had a deliberate stategy of targeting German and Japanese civilians for destruction from the air with fire bombing at Tokyo, Dresden, etc.

I don't recall seeing any widesread reports of hand wringing from the press over any of that back then.

[Jesse Walker]

The media's continued hysterics about Abu Gharib contrasted with the short shrift they've given to the atrocities perpetrated against American soldiers and civilian contractors

Actually, the latter atrocities have gotten plenty of coverage. The charred bodies of those five contractors, for example, were on the front page of my local liberal newspaper; and despite the claims to the contrary that you'll sometimes see in the blogosphere, Nick Berg did not want for media attention.

At any rate, if you'd bother to read the article I linked, you'll see that it's filled with examples of footage of American troops doing things that look bad: footage that was available to US television but didn't get picked up.

But why am I even arguing about this? As far as I can tell, the belief that the press is arrayed against US operations in Iraq is mostly a mixture of faith and projection, and thus is largely immune to evidence. (Besides, when someone complains about "media bias" -- whatever his ideology -- he usually means that the media are insufficiently biased in his camp's direction.)

[joe]

"I don't recall seeing any widesread reports of hand wringing from the press over any of that back then.'

So back when the press would ignore atrocities by Americans, no matter how terrible, they were less biased?

[Gilbert Martin]

"Actually, the latter atrocities have gotten plenty of coverage. The charred bodies of those five contractors, for example, were on the front page of my local liberal newspaper;"

"Plenty" is a matter of opinion. If someone were to add up the newspaper column inches and/or network news airtime minutes of coverage of the prison scandal vs the atrocites perpetrated against Americans over there, I have no doubt the prison scandal story would win hands down.

"At any rate, if you'd bother to read the article I linked, you'll see that it's filled with examples of footage of American troops doing things that look bad: footage that was available to US television but didn't get picked up."

Just because they didn't use everything bad they could have used doesn't prove they don't have a bias.

There also remains the fact that any non-sensational good thing that happens over there such as getting some power supply back on line or providing medical treatment to Iraqis hardly gets mentioned at all. There are doubtless pelnty of examples of stories/footage of things that make us look good that they press didn't use either.

"As far as I can tell, the belief that the press is arrayed against US operations in Iraq is mostly a mixture of faith and projection, and thus is largely immune to evidence."

The stuff in the article you linked doesn't constitute "evidence" that they aren't biased.

[Matt Welch]

Gilbert, et al -- I think the talking-past-each-other argument goes like this: One side frequently claims that not only does the media have "bias," but that it has a specific and even monolithic agenda, and that it is actively pursuing that agenda in the news pages. The other side says: there's an important difference between bias and agenda, and those who don't make the distinction are undercutting their own valid points about bias.

[Gilbert Martin]

"I don't recall seeing any widesread reports of hand wringing from the press over any of that back then.'

"So back when the press would ignore atrocities by Americans, no matter how terrible, they were less biased?"

I didn't say those things were "atrocities" - you did. That was all just a part of war (particularly the concept of "total" war as it was practiced) then just as this is now. The press is squealing about it as if it's something unprecedented and totally beyond the pale when it's historically nothing of the sort.

Making a few prisoners get into sexually humiliating positions is not quite on a scale with deliberatly incenerating hundreds of thousands of civilians in B-29 fire bombing raids.

[Neil Lindsey]

The ironic thing about the argument that short shrift has been given to the atrocities committed against American soldiers and contractors is that the same people argued that previous mentions of these atrocities were being done to embarass the Bush administration and undermine the war effort. Anyone remember the outcry over Ted Koppel's merely reading the names of soldiers killed in action?

Secondly, say you're a reporter looking for a story to break: what do imagine will get more attention, the one about the new water service or the one about soldiers being attacked and killed? If you choose the latter, does that make you biased against the war?

[joe]

"That was all just a part of war (particularly the concept of "total" war as it was practiced) then just as this is now."

Bullshit, Gil. When Germans and Japanese committed acts like that, the American press loudly (and rightly) denounced them as atrocities and war crimes. Does Malmedy ring any bells?

[Jesse Walker]

Gil: I attempted to post a reply to you here a while ago, but it seems to have disappeared into cyberspace. Matt has done a better job of making my point than I did, though, so I won't try to reconstruct it.

I will suggest, though, that you reread the first comment I posted to this thread. It explicitly disavowed the idea that the media have no biases. Given that, your comments that "Just because they didn't use everything bad they could have used doesn't prove they don't have a bias" and "The stuff in the article you linked doesn't constitute 'evidence' that they aren't biased" are, at the very least, beside the point.

Also: As long as the press is printing all those stories about Abu Ghraib, do you think you might take the trouble to read some of them? The issue became somewhat more disturbing than "making a few prisoners get into sexually humiliating positions" a long time ago.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Bullshit, Gil. When Germans and Japanese committed acts like that, the American press loudly (and rightly) denounced them as atrocities and war crimes. Does Malmedy ring any bells?"

Bullshit yourself. I was talking about things we did to them that our press didn't made a big deal out of - not things they did to us.

[Walter Wallis]

If you work in a bank, you have to keep in mind that the money is not yours. If you forget, you are no longer a banker. When the reporter no longer reports he is no longer a reporter.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Gil: I attempted to post a reply to you here a while ago, but it seems to have disappeared into cyberspace. Matt has done a better job of making my point than I did, though, so I won't try to reconstruct it."

I tried posting a reply to Matt awhile back as well but it didn't take, either so I'll do it
again.

Matt said:

"The other side says: there's an important difference between bias and agenda, and those who don't make the distinction are undercutting their own valid points about bias."

I say that when the bias consistently tends to serve the agenda of one side vs the other, it's a distinction without a difference.

"Also: As long as the press is printing all those stories about Abu Ghraib, do you think you might take the trouble to read some of them? The issue became somewhat more disturbing than "making a few prisoners get into sexually humiliating positions" a long time ago."

Disturbing to who? I judge everything by the all-out total war concept that ruled in WW2.

[s.a.m.]

Disturbing to who? I judge everything by the all-out total war concept that ruled in WW2.

Then you are biased Gil. This isn't all about total war, this is a regime change that had many reasons for its cause come and go over the past couple of years. We settled on the reason being Saddam is evil and tortures and kills his own people. Well guess what, we took him out, but apparently his people are still getting tortured and killed. So excuse the fuck out of the media for focusing on that instead of some of the good things we have done. By the way, there have been some small and hard to find reports that Saddam actually did some kind things for his people (mainly Baathists of course). IMO, what ever kindness Saddam did show doesn't overshadow that fact that he was brutal and had to go. So in return, the water service we may have turned on for Iraqi's and the schools we have opened don't overshadow the fact that some of our troops decided to pull a Saddam themselves in Abu Ghraib.

But back to the issue, the media bias. There is really only one agenda they push in their biasness, RATINGS. High ratings means more people come to you for their news and more commercial ad space is sold at a better profit. I sure see a lot of boner medicine being peddled on the nightly news airwaves. Could it be a lot of old farts are tuning in to see just how great this generation is in a time of conflict? Sensationalism is their game and if it works best into a liberal or conservative idealogy, great, more people will tune in, in order to be pissed about it or stoked about it.

If you want to talk about more biasness, then how about the info that is actually fed to the media. Why did it take a month to really find out about Pat Tillman? We had a month to celebrate the heroic efforts of this man to draw fire away from his fellow troops by charging up a hill with guns ablazed. Now we just learn he was took out by friendly fire. Do all the kids who was so inspired by the original story of Pat Tillman and went and enlisted in the army to be just like him get a chance to reverse that enlistment now that the truth is revealed?

[Gary Gunnels]

Gilbert Martin is ignoring evidence which is contrary to his argument; that's a sure sign his argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

"'Plenty' is a matter of opinion. If someone were to add up the newspaper column inches and/or network news airtime minutes of coverage of the prison scandal vs the atrocites perpetrated against Americans over there, I have no doubt the prison scandal story would win hands down."

We'll be awaiting your analysis.

[stereotypical leftist]

I think it's obvious to anybody with a 2-digit IQ that the corporate media has a right-wing bias, mostly manifested in what it doesn't cover.

[stereotypical right winger]

I think it's obvious to anybody with a 2-digit IQ that the media has a left-wing bias, mostly manifested in the stories that it chooses to hyperventilate over.

[Mike]

So that's my problem: I don't have a 2-digit IQ.

[fyodor]

It works both ways (though "both" doesn't really accurately acknowledge how many infinitely different ways it could "work"), depending on the circumstances. The problem lies, as Frank Zappa might grouse, with the "human factor." I know, we need to program a computer for perfectly "objective" reporting? Hmmm, but who's going to program the computer? I know, another computer! Uh, ad nauseum...

[aix42]

What strikes me is the statement that there is too much for News organizations to sift through. 24 hour AP news feeds? I'd like that feed. Everybody and every organization has an agenda of some sort, maybe less time arguing about the agendas and more time spent on the raw footage/pictures/reporting might yield more of the truth.

This is the second time I have seen mention of pamphlets that make promises no one keeps. I read an retired general in that lefty-rag Salon that mentioned the pamphlets urging the Iraqi army not to fight and we'd take care of them. Then the army was disbanded.

[Fred]

This helps demonstrate the media isn't biased only if you think that Al Gore's frothing represents a mainstream critique of the war.

[Jesse Walker]

Fyodor is quite right: The media contain multiple, contradictory biases -- as well as other factors that can shape and distort coverage, such as the information overload that aix42 alludes to.

There's a big difference, of course, between noting such complications and claiming, in Fred's words, that "the media isn't biased." What does "the media isn't biased" even mean?

[Gary Gunnels]

Jesse Walker,

The media is like any other human institution, that it has biases isn't surprising - that many of these are not political in nature, or not what we think of as "political" at least, is also not surprising. However, simplisitic explanations are far more appealing for some than nuance; and therefore, you get comments like those of Fred - which to be blunt are not wholly wrong, or rather, have enough truth to them that they hold some legitimacy. Nevertheless, they ignore important aspects of reality so much that as a model they ultimately hold little explanatory value.

[Jim Walsh]

Polemics about "media bias" generally ignore the underlying premise: that the boobous American public is easily led by the pronouncements of the on-high media. This, true or not, is the real issue.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Its your choice to duck the issue."

No it's my choice not to accept YOU as any kind of authority/judge of what is or isn't "evidence" - or of anything else for that matter.

"As far as I'm concerned, ALL war is about total war."

"If that's the case, then you certainly are rather ignorant of the history of warfare. It has been reconized for quite some time (by this I mean several thousand years) that all warfare is not total warfare. Indeed, early American case law on the subject also recognized the difference between "perfect war" and "imperfect war" which was itself inspired by the likes of scholars like Grotius. Indeed, any half-way competent military leader realizes that all war is not total war; which is of course why the U.S. military is not daily firebombing Iraqi cities. "

Well that's real interesting but irrelevant to what I said. I never said all wars had been fought on a total basis or that everyone else thinks they should be. I said AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED, all war is total war.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Gilbert Martin is ignoring evidence which is contrary to his argument; that's a sure sign his argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny."

The only response neccessary to that is -

sez you.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Then you are biased Gil."

There isn't ANYONE on this earth who isn't.

"This isn't all about total war, this is a regime change that had many reasons for its cause come and go over the past couple of years. We settled on the reason being Saddam is evil and tortures and kills his own people."

As far as I'm concerned, ALL war is about total war. This one happens to be a war on terrorists.
If we can help those non-terrorist Iraqi's along the way - fine and dandy, but if not, too bad.

"Well guess what, we took him out, but apparently his people are still getting tortured and killed. So excuse the fuck out of the media for focusing on that instead of some of the good things we have done."

I never excuse the media for anything - there's no reason why I should. Most of the native Iraqis being killed in Iraq are dying at the hands of other Iraqi terrorist types or outside terrorists from Syria or whereever else they came in from. The US troops who were engaged in the abuse were small in number and nothing they've done is in any way comparable to the wholesale torture and murder engaged in by Saddam's regime - or comparable to what's been done to some US soldiers and civilians at the hands of the terrorists in Iraq. The percentage of attention devoted to the prison abuse stories relative to the other things going on there does indeed indcate bias on the part of the media.

They may not have an official, coordinated agenda where they all sit down together and map out who is going to do what to advance it, but their biases nevertheless slant the news in concert with their personal beliefs - just as it does on every other issue the press reports on (like gun control, etc.)

[Gary Gunnels]

Gilbert Martin,

"The only response neccessary to that is - sez you."

Its your choice to duck the issue.

"As far as I'm concerned, ALL war is about total war."

If that's the case, then you certainly are rather ignorant of the history of warfare. It has been reconized for quite some time (by this I mean several thousand years) that all warfare is not total warfare. Indeed, early American case law on the subject also recognized the difference between "perfect war" and "imperfect war" which was itself inspired by the likes of scholars like Grotius. Indeed, any half-way competent military leader realizes that all war is not total war; which is of course why the U.S. military is not daily firebombing Iraqi cities.

"The US troops who were engaged in the abuse were small in number and nothing they've done is in any way comparable to the wholesale torture and murder engaged in by Saddam's regime - or comparable to what's been done to some US soldiers and civilians at the hands of the terrorists in Iraq."

I take this as an attempt to shift the standard towards your bias; at best you are merely doing what you accuse others of. In other words, there is either "one standard," or there isn't. In the case of media bias you appear to argue for "one standard," but in the case of your biases you don't.

"The percentage of attention devoted to the prison abuse stories relative to the other things going on there does indeed indcate bias on the part of the media."

You've yet to actually demonstrate that this is the case; you continue to make claims that you cannot substantiate. Again, we await such.