Everyone reading this knows that there are presently some raging media hullabaloos that in a month no one will talk about or remember. It’s just the latest round in a fight that should have been called long ago. I’m conflicted about these things because on one hand the specifics of the outrage du jour are almost always pointless and arbitrary, but on the other hand they are symptomatic of a failed press core in general. To me the greatest sin of the press is currently he said/she said stenography, with the refusal to provide any ideological context or critical thinking to any claims. A close second is the failure (and general ignorance in many cases) of history, to the point that all past events are talked about in the most dull passive voice possible in order to impart the notion that everyone agrees about it and it’s time to move on. The last main sin is hidden bias. All of these combined tend to interact to defend the status quo, create pointless bickering and reward laziness and timidity.
Often the call against this is for the news to be “more objective” and “factual” and all other sorts of paeans to the mythos of the Just Arbiter of Truth. However, as someone that reads primarily British news sources for world events, I couldn’t agree less: we need to adopt their model of outlets with explicit bias.
First of all, I’m critical of the concept of objective Truth in general, let alone in anything that has political shading. The commonly held idea that facts are analogous to Truth does much to destroy debate because inevitably facts then become synonymous with ideology. If someone walked up to you and said “did you know that the United States currently has the greatest wealth ineuality in its history” then you would immediately make assumptions about their political stance and beliefs about what should be done. On the other hand, complaining about government policy and specific regulations has caused people to assume I must be a dyed in the wool Republican. If only.
It is impossible to live without bias, as a collection of facts and data provides no guidance. Something that I wage a constant battle against is the idea that Science is the field of objectively looking at facts and then figuring out Reality. This notion is not only how it’s commonly presented in school, but also by many scientists themselves. In practice Science is a collection of hypotheses and experiments are done and interpreted in context of the hypothesis. Many experiments yield data that supports or rejects competing hypotheses that scientists vigorously take sides on. Some experiments by necessity are designed to only address one framework and their results have absolutely no bearing for a competing hypothesis. Research is not about calm analysis, it is about taking a position and then (honestly) defending that position by running experiments to collect data that supports it and carefully putting the context in which it is applicable. In general most fields have different camps that are often at war with each other trying to make their world view win out and become accepted, and in many cases they never do actually convince the other side: whomever wins wins because they can convince the young scientists that don’t yet have a stake. In day to day work there is emphasis on getting the facts (i.e. data) properly analyzed, but most of the emphasis is actually about the strength of the ideological arguments based on the data presented. As such the work is not about what is True, as honesty is implied, but about what is consistent and generalizable across many different states.
British newspapers tend to be much more reflective of this debating mentality than our press and they are better served for it. When you read the Telegraph or the Guardian you know what their general stance will be and that stance is used to select the topics of articles, the way they are written and the commentary. Even though it is rarely expressed, it is implicit that the newspaper edition as a whole is yet another piece in a never ending debate, trying not to say what is True, but argue what is Better. This bias allows them to use metaphors, historical context and shorthand that they know the audience will understand, enabling them to focus much more sharply on how recent events fit within the larger narrative. The he said/she said is no longer primarily present within an article that takes no side, but between papers that often take the same events and have different interpretations that they argue about within their framework. To me reading the different papers makes it much easier to try to get a grip on what I believe is most accurate, as the ease or strain to explain something often comes out and weak arguments are excised. It also forces the commentators to make explicit arguments about what they see going forward and provides a record to compare. For someone like myself, I often turn to different papers for information on different topics based on whether I am unsure about something and want to test it by looking for a counterargument, or whether I want to confirm my bias by having more supporting evidence. The British setup allows for that. Oh, and I’ve noticed that when someone distorts facts they get hammered by all sides, friend and foe alike.
I’m not going to pretend that this setup will be the savior of our politics, for as far as I can tell British politics are as insipid as ours; they certainly are competing step for step in country dysfunction. I have the generally pessimistic point of view (and the psychological references to back it up) that tribalism, active ignorance and tortured rationalization is the general state of Man, not the product of any failed system. However, I do think the group of people that are naturally skeptical and attempt to listen to others as judiciously as possible would be much better served if there was more bias and fight in the media. At the end of the day, TMV does that way better than any other place I can think of.
Update: For a great example of what I’m talking about, please read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on an economic index.