Sez Who?

It isn’t rocket science. We all know it…or at least we SHOULD know it. There is bias in the media. Reread that sentence. It isn’t an example of the rampant paranoia of the partisan right and left. It doesn’t say that there is some sort of leftist cabal that distorts the world to the detriment of the right wing reactionaries who would remake it in the image of their own biblical interpretations. It doesn’t say there is a vast right wing conspiracy devoted to making it hard for Bill Clinton’s wife to be unaware of his philandering in the hallway off the Oval Office. It simply says there is bias, not that the media is biased. The bias might simply be shading and coloring of the message based on the perspective of the observer. Or not.

Regardless, it is important to keep in mind the source of one’s information. If you know, or can intuit, the perspective of the reporter or the publication you can glean the fact from the fiction and maybe have a better knowledge of what goes on in the world. At least that would be the goal.

What’s the home page on your browser? C’mon now, if you’re reading blogs you can’t tell me you still have the default page that your ISP gave you when you subscribed. When you launch each morning, what page displays to greet your day? Please tell me it isn’t Verizon.net or MSN.com or the ad-filled and inane home of fly-by-night-internet-R-us. And, no not AOL either. Is it? Whatever.

I’ve defaulted to a news source. It keeps me up to date on what is happening in the world and doesn’t overload me with a lot of useless People Magazine sort of trash. I really don’t care whether Brangelina is birthing another celebrity in Namibia or Madonna is or isn’t being really crucified in Rome. I want to know what’s shaking around the globe. Then, I can get on to email, Usenet and business for the day. Lately my home page has been news.google.com. But, I’m about to change.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Google. I, like most of the civilized world, have become dependent upon the incredible capability of Google to quickly get me the answer to almost any question I can think of asking. I google regularly and incessantly. It’s great. I like Gmail as well. I don’t use it often, but when I’m on the road and frustrated by the ability to receive my email through the ubiquitous hotel Internet connection but unable to respond because their server doesn’t recognize me, Gmail fills the void. I’m fascinated by Google’s Froogle shopping service, but I usually know what I want and where to find it without much help. And, although Google Earth was neat at first glance, the slow update to the data and the lack of detail resolution makes it still pretty much of a novelty to me. My dissatisfaction is with Google’s news.

The page looks a lot like my previous home page, Foxnews.net. It’s got sections for national, international, business, tech, sports, etc. Big stories are prominent with links to original sources as well as a “freshness” indicator of how long ago the story appeared. There are usually a number of alternate sources to check how different media covered the event. Seems reasonable, but recently I’ve begun to note a bit of a problem, a bias, if you will.

I see items of interest and click to find out more. Then I began to notice that interpretations of US national politics are coming to me from New-Bloody-Zealand or Indonesia. I see explanations of minimum wage debates and immigration proposals in Congress interpreted by some small town Canadian daily. I’m directed to get impressions of international events from, heaven forbid, some unknown blogger’s page.

While the views are interesting and even insightful, I’ve got to believe that putting a down-under spin on what’s going on in an Atlanta, Georgia congressional race isn’t going to be much help in determining facts. It might be nice to know what the folks in Hamilton, Ontario Canada think about our minimum wage but frankly, Scarlett…you know the rest. And, if it comes to defense policy for the US, I’m not sure that the French are the place to get data to form my opinions. Most of all, while I think blogs have a spot on the media spectrum; I’ve got to carefully examine the source and the credentials before I buy in to the opinions.

How can you tell which end of the spectrum a voice is coming from? Your criteria might be different than mine, but recently the best indicator to me has been a sort of disjointed comment somewhere around paragraph four in the article which, with total irrelevance to the subject at hand, brings up Abu Ghraib, Gitmo or lack of WMD in Iraq. Find a gratuitous comment about failed policy of this administration, and you’ll know to slow down your reading and start questioning the premise of the entire item in the news.

Long ago, the first lesson in Journalism 101 was the basics of how to write a “lead” for a story. The essential theory was that the first sentence should include all of the “W”s—the who, what, when and where. It might include the why, but that would likely be more appropriate later in the story or even on the editorial page. A good lead could be something like, “Joe Bagadonutz was beaten and robbed last night just before midnight in front of his house on Elm Street by a gang of four thugs who escaped in a red pickup truck.” The rest of the column, if the reader continued, would include embellishment of those basic facts. We might find out who Joe was, where he was coming from, what was stolen, who saw the red truck and maybe get a quote or two from players in the scenario.

We don’t seem to get that any more. It’s more likely that the story will read like some sort of Bulwer-Litton package of over-the-top fiction. “It was a dark and stormy night when Joe came home from the factory where he worked for minimum wage trying to make a life for his four children and their sick mother. He’d put in a long day and was tired. When he arrived at his front door in a lower-middle class neighborhood, he heard the TVs of his neighbors, still up watching the Letterman Show….continued on page B-14”

You won’t know that Joe got robbed until after “the jump.” What’s “above the fold” in your paper today? Probably something heart-wrenching about an unwed mother on welfare or a high school football player who might or might not sign with a big college for next year. You’ll have to look hard to find out what’s going on in Iraq or Lebanon and when you do, it’s liable to be filled with innuendo and partisan commentary rather than the facts.

What’s it all mean? To me, it means a bit more work to separate facts from fiction and a bit more reluctance to assume that I know what I think I know. For most of America, it means that they probably are sucking up the Kool-Aid and getting their perspectives shaped by those with ulterior motives. Maybe I’ll switch my home page to drudgereport.com.