Media sell drama over facts
Seth Godin dissects the language in just one piece of coverage of the campaign and reminds us all that what news media are really selling is drama:
. . . [A]s William Randolph Hearst taught us a long time ago, the goal is to sell newspapers, not to report the news.There isn’t media bias in favor of Hillary (my friend Jeff is the first to point that out). Nor is there media bias in favor of floods. There’s media bias in favor of drama.
Most of us are inclined to believe that government officials, doctors and the media are making an effort to tell us the truth. Actually, just like all marketers, they tell us a story.
But, of course, they don’t control the story — the narrative — anymore, at least not as much as they used to. They are part of a larger narrative. And, no, I won’t say that gets us closer to the facts faster. It gets us more narratives, more memes, more drama. But at least the contrast is helpful: In this corner is most media saying that Hillary blew it on Tuesday (Time Magazine just couldn’t wait to declare the winner) but over here are Jeralyn Merritt saying that Obama did far worse in North Carolina than Virginia and he blew it.
They blather, we decide. It’s the war of the memes.
Tags: journalism
May 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Reminded of Chris Matthews’ recent admission of the limitations of mainstream media outlets. Without assigning any kind of moral assessment it is clear that media outlets are forced to provide news is ways that are appealing to the public.
The great thing is that developments in social media applications are allowing us to dive deeper into the story behind the story - seems like a perfect counter balance.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:36 am
It’s interesting that you don’t think that a multiplicity of perspectives won’t get us to the “facts” faster. This “justification from truth” is one of the primary argument for the protections of freedom of speech and of the press. (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084967)
But you may be right. While a consolidated media’s (or town square’s) convergence upon a “wrong” fact or narrative certainly inhibits alternative views, the chaos of an environment where the opinions of a large populace that has easy and instant dissemination available certainly has its own obstacles for forming any consensus at all, much less the “true” one.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Dont’t have to wonder anymore about the sound of a tree falling when nobody’s around in the forest… could probably find 100+ first hand online reports right away. But seriously, we get ready for the nights out and we brush our teeth in the morning – we really should not according to the new transparency-narrative standards.
I disagree that massive floods of information don’t affect our decision making – we disperse our concentration over minutia and we tend to lose most consideration for a bigger picture, be it ethical concerns, policies vs gaffes in politics or even intellectual effort to analyze the facts ourselves rather than lazily look for some pundit/blogger/what’s his name who already did it in a complaisant way. That’s why we amazingly emerge (after hours of online browsing) somewhat fatigued and ever so subtly brain-washed albeit in good faith of having found scores of similarly thinking (idiots) who had successfully put behind them the simplest of notions that “lying is not goodâ€â€¦ or other ethical constraints. How else would you explain why there is buyers to Clinton’s Bosnia stories, or the stories of how an “incest dad feels about himself†(apart from psychiatry interns).
Or that Hanna Montana (who’s that in all honesty?! do we really expect teenagers to read risqué coverage?) hinted at exposing her goodies come her sweet sixteen or something like that. Who cares, a normal person would think. How very interesting and controversial the same person would yield at the end of the day (after hours of browsing that is). Here we see how an esthetical concept (a beautiful photograph) was and quite intentionally twisted beyond repair into a perverse dispute of who gets to goggle at whose kids and in what state. Thanks media!
I just don’t want to pretend that online narrative is good. It useful? maybe it’s evil… for sure and it is here to stay. It is a test of our principles and self-discipline.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Nor is there media bias in favor of floods. There’s media bias in favor of drama.
This is basically right. But that bias is modified by another: a bias in favor of advertising the political innocence of the news tellers themselves. My argument:
May 8th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Jay — the search for the authentic character of the candidate, only revealed in the scalding heat of the contest — heat that burns through the veneer of talking points and the pabulum of prepared soundbites — appears to be just as innocent of ideology. The media’s bias in favor of savviness manifests itself as Horse Race Journalism; their bias in favor of ritual human drama manifests itself as Reality Gameshow Journalism. This too is experienced as pleasure by a lot of mainstream journalists.
Of course, nowhere can we be more certain that we are in the presence of ideology than when we assured of its absence.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
The continual need for drama is what annoys me most about old-fashioned media. Every commercial paper, everywhere in the world, has at least one story every day which has been pushed into looking more interesting than it actually is, much to the detriment of the facts in it.
When people say newspapers are accurate because of editing, I keep wanting to shove a bunch of clippings of overdramatized stories in their face.
Though, I’m increasingly seeing the same thing in blogs, too. But at least, in blogs, it’s alot easier to find alternative versions, which helps, since different people oversell different stories, and the different telling also tells me alot.
Anatole. those “massive floods” (especially Iraqi bloggers) was and remains the only way of understanding what’s happening in Iraq on the ground. No single paper comes close. Give me the chaos any day. And, of course, just like with newspapers, 90% of everything is junk. Except, since we have more choice, it’s easier to find the other 10%.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Andrew: I agree there are multiple routes to the advertising of press innocence. He said, she said journalism, the cult of technique in politics, the parading of polls. The search for the moment when “character” is revealed can certainly be one. A strange thing about the advertising-our-innocence bias is that it rarely concerns bias critics because if there’s one thing they know it’s that the press is guilty of political bias.
One of the all time great examples is Deborah Howell’s famous column trying to frame the Jack Ambramoff scandal as a bi-partisan, “he gave money to both” thing. She was completely dumbfounded that her attempt to grab a little truthtelling cred and innocence points for the Post was met with such fury.