 Ira Basen, a producer with the CBC and a friend of mine from Carleton University days, is writing a book on media spin, a term often used interchangeably with bias. But Ira says spin is actually subtler and more insidious. It is the shading of meaning or interpretation of events in favour of a particular point of view, and it is sometimes inadvertent or even unconscious. There are several ways spin will creep into a story, including:
- The use of emotional words: The use of terms like 'terrorist', 'freedom fighter', and 'resistance movement', for example. Did you know that Reuters' policy is not to use
these, or similar terms charged with emotional baggage, unless they are
used in quotation marks with the unambiguous source of the quotation
cited, even with pseudo-qualifiers like 'alleged' or 'so-called'. The
job of the media is to report the facts, and to avoid subjective
labels, even if they may be substantiated in the reporter's, or most
people's, minds. In some cased, this spin technique can be used in
reverse: the term 'abuse' instead of 'torture', or the use of
'casualties' or the infamous 'collateral damage' instead of 'dead
civilians'.
- Orwellian misuse of words: The Bush Administration is notorious for this, using words like patriot, freedom, and peace
to mean nearly the exact opposite, and attempting to entrench public
and media misuse by naming programs and laws with Orwellian terms
(Patriot Act, Operation Iraqi Freedom). Improper personification and
similar techniques (e.g. using the name of a country or the name of its
people instead of 'the government of', to confuse government policy or
actions with popular opinion: "Iran Building up Nuclear Arsenal",
"Syrians Refuse to Stop Funding Terrorists") can accomplish the same
end more subtly.
- Self-censorship -- What is not reported:
The choice of what not to report at all, and when (before or after the
public is focused on it) and where (front page or at the end of the
continuation of a story on page 32) to report, can have a greater
impact on viewers or listeners than what is actually, factually
reported. Recently, for example, the media had an abrupt about-face,
ceasing their self-censorship of showing flag-draped coffins and even
reading the names of American dead (oops, casualties)
in the Iraqi war, because they realized to what extent that
self-censorship impacts public perception. Likewise, the media have a
natural propensity to not report stories that they believe are complex (e.g. the violations of the Geneva Conventions by the US Government), long-term (e.g. environmental deterioration and biodegradation), distant (e.g. Third World genocides and wars unless US troops are involved) or intractable (e.g.
famine in East Africa and North Korea), because they are hard,
expensive stories to do well, and hence do not offer the ROI of, say, a
celebrity scandal or shaggy dog story. This is not especially political
-- it's the same phenomenon that has led to prime time TV being filled
with cheap 'Reality TV' programs instead of serious drama or
intelligent comedy. It's about lack of money, more than lack of
integrity.
- The way something is reported:
Being in a commercial business, the media have a natural temptation to
sensationalize, to create extraordinary buzz, because it's good for
ratings or circulation. If CBS had chosen merely to describe what it
had learned about Abu Ghraib, and not to show the photos, the impact of
the story would have been much different, and it is not surprising that
the Bush Regime (oops. some senior policy-makers in the US Government)
have since trotted out videos and photos of Saddam Hussein's brutality
and murder to counter the emotional impact of the Abu Ghraib photos.
- Oversimplification:
Although I have an optimistic view of most people and believe they are
capable of and interested in learning in detail about issues and
programs that affect their lives, the media have a more jaundiced view
that the public (oops, the majority of citizens)
either can't understand, or don't care about, such detail and subtlety.
Especially in political campaigns, there is therefore a tendency to try
to reduce the differences between the voter's choices to an absurd
degree of simplicity. The parties and candidates exploit this by
feeding the media sound bites and negative ads that exaggerate and
oversimplify (or outright misrepresent) their opponents' positions or
actions. So whether the public wants to be or not, the media are
complicit in the 'dumbing down' of issues to a dangerously
over-simplified degree. The only question, and one which I understand
Ira's book is going to address, is whether the media are pandering to
citizens' inability to understand complex and subtle issues, or to
politicians' desire to oversimplify these issues for political
advantage. Or perhaps both.
There are other 'spin' techniques, of course, such as Failure to present opposing interpretations of the facts, Giving credibility to unidentified and unsubstantiated sources ("One senior former official said", "Saddam was believed to have...") and Assuming facts without evidence
(e.g. most of what we read about WMD), but I think these are the most
common and most insidious. Let's take a look at a case study. Before
you read the following article, please note -- this is important -- It
is slamming the media's spin in handling the Clinton Administration for its bombing of Sudan, before 9/11 and before the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, please read this article. It's long, and a bit strident, but worth the read.
Finished? Did you shudder a bit when you read, in an article written about Clinton in 1998,
"Is bin Laden's new assignment perhaps to be a bogey-man of convenience
whom the U.S. government can link to any government it wishes to bomb?"
With the benefit of hindsight (and the opposing political party in power) it's easy to see the incredible spin in the venerable Times'
reporting in 1998, and to see that to some extent this ubiquitous media
spin contributed to the overwhelming bipartisan approval for the US to
launch a war against Afghanistan, against precisely the people we had
supported and financed earlier in their
war against the USSR, the enemy of that earlier day. I confess that I
had few misgivings about war with the Taliban, despite the fact that I
am a life-long pacifist. Why? Because nowhere (except the discredited
extreme conspiracy-theorist papers) were we presented with spin-free
reporting (or opposite-spin reporting, if you think spin-free reporting
is an oxymoron) on what exactly was, and had been, going on in
Afghanistan, and why things were the way they were. There is almost always a rational explanation for things that appear absurd or unreasonable in the absence of the facts. We
are just now beginning to realize the degree to which our money and
support made the Taliban both popular and tyrannical in Afghanistan.
And still we are missing most
of the facts about that country, and about Iraq. The facts, alas, are
not the same as the news. The media's job is to report the news, not to
dig up the facts. Investigative journalism is what we desperately need,
but there is no money in that, surprisingly little demand for it, and
precious few willing to take the enormous risks to pursue that
thankless career.
It's easy to take sides, especially when the current US administration
is so unapologetically propagandizing (i.e. deliberately and
systematically spinning) every issue it deals with, to a degree not
seen since the Vietnam War. But the reality is that the media, taken as
a whole, are neither liberal nor conservative. The political position
of each media outlet on any given issue is somewhere in the middle of
(a) the position of its editorial board, (b) its perception of the
position of the 'average' reader/viewer, (c) the position of the
reporters covering the story, and (d) the position of the people
presenting the story (usually the administration of the day). That
means that to right-wingnuts like this guy,
the media will always appear liberal, and to unabashed left-wingers
like me, the media will always appear conservative. But the truth is,
at least in their story
reporting (editorials and schlock talk radio aside), there is no vast
media 'conspiracy' at either end of the political spectrum. Most people
in the media are doing their best to do their jobs in a way that
balances the views of the above four 'interest groups'. They are
vulnerable to the spin techniques listed above -- if you've ever
interviewed someone, you'll appreciate that unless you're really
treated abusively there's an earnest desire to represent what they had
to say clearly, favourably, but above all objectively.
To the extent they get it right, they deserve a lot of credit -- it's a
difficult, thankless, often dangerous and tedious job. To the extent
they, and their editors, let spin creep into their stories, we
have a duty as readers and viewers and citizens to recognize it, and
discount it accordingly. The fact that so many of us are using the
Internet to learn more, to check out other interpretations of events,
and to get behind the stories so we can understand and talk about the
issues facing our world more knowledgeably, we are contributing to the
democratic process, and helping to reduce spin. At the same time, there
is a tendency in the blogosphere to frequent sites authored and
populated by like minds, and some of the hysterics of extremists of
every stripe are quite frightening. My blog wears its left-spinning,
overtly editorial stripes quite proudly and unapologetically, but I
make a point of reading a few of the more moderate conservative blogs
on each new issue, and occasionally some of the bizarre extreme leftist
blogs -- because the danger of exposing yourself to a lot of spin is
that, if you're not careful, you can find yourself permanently
off-balance.
And as we all know, "fair and balanced" is another term that's subject
to a lot of spin. George O. must be 'spinning' in his grave.
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