Journal of Free Speech Law: "Sober and Self-Guided Newsgathering," by Prof. Jane Bambauer

Just published as part of the symposium on Media and Society After Technological Disruption, edited by Profs. Justin "Gus" Hurwitz & Kyle Langvardt.

The article is here; here are the Introduction and Part I:

This chapter addresses an underappreciated source of epistemic dysfunction in today's media environment: true-but-unrepresentative information. Because media organizations are under tremendous competitive pressure to craft news that is in harmony with their audience's preexisting beliefs, they have an incentive to accurately report on events and incidents that are selected, consciously or not, to support an impression that is exaggerated or ideologically convenient. Moreover, these organizations have to engage in this practice in order to survive in a hypercompetitive news environment.

To help correct the problem, this chapter outlines new forms of newsgathering tools that leverage digital information to provide a sense of how representative (or not) any particular event may be. This contextualizes the news and leads to more sober—that is, less hyperbolic and reactive—interpretations of it. Newsgathering institutions can also become much more interactive so that a participant has the ability to easily find facts that they are confident will not be tainted from the strategic selection or cherry-picking of a news authority or intermediary. These tools will make newsgathering more self-guided.

[I.] The Proliferation of True-but-Misleading News

Many beliefs circulating through American discourse at any given time are in some sense corrosive—to society, to personal health and safety, or to some other part of life. The path to these corrosive beliefs is tiled with true-but-misleading information. Although the American news landscape is marred by some wholly made-up stories (that the COVID vaccine includes trackers, for example), these falsities make up a relatively small set of corrosive beliefs. Most corrosive beliefs have some factual corroboration—some true anecdotes that undergird the beliefs. But the factually true anecdotes imply something larger that is not supported by more representative data.

For example, vaccines are "dangerous" in the absolute sense. There are examples of side effects and even death caused by the COVID vaccines. But on a relative scale they are safe—that is, they are much less dangerous than the risks from not vaccinating (for most people). Thus, the distorted beliefs that tend to emerge on the political right are the result of exaggerating the likelihood of vaccine risk or undervaluing the likelihood of severe illness and death from COVID among the unvaccinated, or both. The same criticism can and should be levied on the political left, too, based on the perceived risk of COVID to children. Children can, of course, contract and even die from COVID, but these risks are lower than the risks from other viruses like RSV that we have implicitly chosen to tolerate as a background risk. An unvaccinated child is at much lower risk of contracting COVID than a fully vaccinated adult. When the news focuses on child mortality from COVID or on vaccine danger, it does damage to the full truth. Beliefs about terrorism and police violence tend to suffer from a similar lack of scale and proportionality.

This is not a new phenomenon. Ashutosh Bhagwat's chapter provides a reminder that the newspaper and broadcast gatekeepers in the 1990s were already shedding the journalism ethic of maintaining even the perception of a "view from nowhere." Yochai Benkler and his coauthors provide some empirical evidence that news organizations that cater to a more conservative audience began to drift further to the ideological right when talk radio provided alternative channels for news and discourse for an audience that was alienated by the mainstream news. 24-hour cable news provided even more opportunity for alternative content. Increased competition gave each news organization increased economic incentive to highlight facts that are consistent with, or at least not offensive to, their audience's worldview. Given that any audience is only human and susceptible to political tribalism, the problem of unrepresentative and cherry-picked facts is utterly unsurprising.

When there were only a few gatekeepers, there were fewer incentives to cater to political tribalism in this way. Even if the two newspapers in a town had traditionally catered to different political audiences, both papers had incentive to stay close to the median audience member so that they might win over readers from the other paper. Without serious competition on the far left or right that could outflank the paper, catering to the middle had no economic disadvantages. But when more news organizations compete for audience, the economic strategy changes. Facts will predictably be picked to match the interests and priors of more fractured, niche audiences.

Quite understandably, news organizations of longstanding status like the New York Times are defending their turf and claiming identity as a uniquely trustworthy source for truth without reckoning with the fact that their survival depends on supplying facts that cater to the short-term preferences of their readers. Breitbart is just as understandably trying to discredit the New York Times and establish itself as a better, more legitimate gatekeeper for facts. Breitbart's insurgency is carried out without acknowledging that its survival, too, depends on supplying facts that cater to its audience (which demands a desecration of established, elite gatekeepers). These two sources of news are not at all equivalent, but that says more about the beliefs and demands of the audiences that each has been able to attract than it does about an enduring commitment to delivering facts that accurately represent reality.

Modern journalism fails to meet a duty of proportionality. Proportionality would require that the decision to report about a threat and the manner in which it is reported are informed by how risky it is relative to other widely known and understood threats. Proportionality goes to subtext—whether a particular story is worthy of a reader's attention given other concerns that might deserve the reader's focus. The Elements of Journalism devotes a chapter to making the news "Comprehensive and Proportional," but this element is in direct tension with the economic viability of the modern newsroom.

The Society of Professional Journalist's Code of Ethics does not even require proportionality in its list of duties for seeking truth. Instead, the search for truth is described in narrow terms of factual accuracy as well as more abstract terms like being "vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable" and "boldly tell[ing] the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience." These objectives actually exacerbate the problem by pushing journalists to prioritize the unusual or anti-authority stories. They are in tension with the sort of corrective I will propose here—encouraging the use of tools that allow readers to understand in a statistical way whether an event is an aberration or not.

Comments

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Breitbart is just as understandably trying to discredit the New York Times and establish itself as a better, more legitimate gatekeeper for facts.

Any chance the author of that one is a clinger?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

DeeSantis is essentially a 9/11 Truther in that he believes wacky things like the vaccines are dangerous and ineffective and that masking did nothing. So we can see from the data that masks worked and that the vaccines mitigated severity through Delta…and yet DeeSantis promotes conspiracy theories about Fauci that Fauci was a little dictator drunk on power trying to tank the economy so Biden could win?? Whatever they believe it’s much worse than 9/11 Trutherism which didn’t have deadly consequences like Covid Trutherism.

[Frank Drackman]

You're essentially a fucking idiot with stupid Napoleon Dynamite Hair (Napoleon's looked better) and Chris Penn morbid obesity, (Chris Penn's looks better) go ahead and Robin Wiliams yourself already,

Frank

[Jazzizhep]

Fauci: "Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.

From an Email dated Feb 20, 2020 to Sylvia Burwell. Ok, ok it’s from the far-right publication Newsweek. You can discount it.

[Randal]

What even is your point?

[Jazzizhep]

Umm, what Fauci told Q public was not true and he knew it. It’s not conspiratorial to think other things he said we’re not true. Such as: vaccine prevents infection: vaccine prevents spread. Even if you want to give him an ignorance pass, he most certainly didn’t “follow the science.” He, at best, spoke before the science was done.

[Nige]

Well, yes, that's often how it goes when you're dealing with a novel virus that's spreading rapidly across the globe and you're trying to co-ordinate a response based on incomplete information. The fact that advice *changed* as better information became avaialable is either a lesson in how to better prepare for the next pandemic, or ammo for cynical opportunists to undermine the very concept of preparing for public emergencies at all.

[Frank Drackman]

In 1986 on my Surgery Rotation we were taught the masks were just tradition, like the "White Lab Coat" (when's the last time your Doctor took a Space-a-man to the Lab and looked at it under a Microscope, for me it was 1985)
There was even a Study (no I can't cite it) in the 80's where Surgeons wore regular "Street Clothes" instead of scrubs (of course covered by Surgical Gowns) with no increase in Post Operative Wound Infections, Tradition, why your Prescription has an "Rx", "Disp" and "Sig" instead of English.

Frank

[Jazzizhep]

I’ll trust your expertise, for now at least, and forego the need for a citation. But damn, what a dumb study—funded by taxpayers no doubt. So, no statistical difference between wearing street clothes under a sanitized surgical gown and wearing scrubs under a sanitized surgical gown? Shocked. Shocked, I tell ya.

I always thought scrubs were just a comfort garment when men all wore suits and ties, and the women wore dresses and skirts. I might be convinced inorganic scrubs have some slight anti-microbial property natural fibers don’t offer. Barring the fact the bacteria is there because you dropped brisket fat on it at lunch.

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, "Jerry" first post and you're already throwing the "Klingers" (Style points for waiting until your second sentence)
Breitbart bought it from an MI in 2012 (he was 43 and asymptomatic (OK, + for "Fat Slobiness") have you had your LAD checked recently, "Reverend"??? (you're in "Custody" shouldn't have to use your Co-pay)
OK, know you didn't coach baseball, but how the fuck does PENN get in the NCAA tournament and State doesn't?? I'd parole your Child Molesting Ass just on that basis so the Nittily Lions (HT Barry Hussein) can recruit some decent players.

Frank

[Stephen Lathrop]

This series would profit by authorial self-discipline to exclude the term, “gatekeeper.” Its frequent repetition suggests a too-earnest attempt to ingratiate the authors’ advocacy to identity-centric audiences, and too great a willingness to slight other audiences. The term is especially unfair to conscientious publishers.

However salient status anxiety among some news consumers may be, it is not a fact which justifies distortion of the activities of conscientious news publishers, or to impute self-interested status motives where they are not rightly implicated. For instance, a principal reason to practice so-called “gatekeeping,” is to exclude publication of defamation. Conscientious publishers do that whether or not the law requires it.

Likewise for non-defamatory falsehoods, including hoaxes for profit, election lies, public health lies, and deliberate, well-funded attempts to undermine scientific insights into the hazards of smoking, or the climate hazards of fossil fuel consumption, or ecological hazards, to name but a few among many such candidates.

Self-interested blocs (including corporations) scream, “gatekeeping,” if publishers decline to advance their interests, but instead prioritize public understanding, or guard against private damage. Do not forget that among today’s media critics there is even a considerable pro-libel bloc, which styles itself a principled champion of expressive freedom.

More generally, what this author calls, "gatekeeping," is indispensable to press freedom, for reasons too complicated to explain in this context. The right context will come if this series broadens its view to encompass publishing activities necessary to guard publishers from undue influence, and to keep them viable economically.