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Bias and the future of journalism

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islander:

Bias resides in routinized conceptions of what is “newsworthy” (crime, scandals, the doings of the powerful and popular). The German cultural critic Hans Magnus Enzensberger rightly calls media the “consciousness industry,” since what newspapers, television, radio and others, create or shape is our consciousness of the society we inhabit. When newspapers select or privilege certain topics over others, what consciousness of the world (and blindnesses) do they create?

Less recognized is the bias in favor of “events.” Journalism is extremely weak in covering or explaining matters of social “process” and “structure.” Newspapers find “events” congenial because they are current, dramatic and easily communicable, while changes in the structure are long-term and less apparent.

The bias for events is such that those who want to get into the news stage “events.” A good example was the event staged by Serging Osmeña in 1953. Anxious about his prospects for reelection as governor, having lost political ground due to controversies surrounding his tenure, he announced on radio that he was thinking of retiring from politics because of the sacrifices it has entailed (including, he said, “the heartbreaking pain of loneliness for the affection of my wife and children of whose company I have been deprived”). He then left Cebu for Manila, fueling speculation about his plans. When he returned a few days after, a crowd met him at the airport and brought him to a huge rally at Fuente Osmeña where the crowd and a battery of speakers “pleaded” that Serging continue as governor. Faced with such “public clamor,” Serging declared—against the call of “paternal feelings and obligations ever haunting me day and night… and the sad voices of my lonely children ever beseeching me to be at their side always”—that he will not abandon the Cebuanos but continue to serve them as governor.


POST-WAR NEWSPAPERS. The Daily News (March 24, 1953 issue) and The Republic Daily (May 9, 1952 issue) showed their political color.

It was an event made for the press, and Serging was not the first or the last politician to exploit the “soap opera” values of Philippine politics. (A more recent though less grandiose example took place in 1992-95 when Gov. Vicente de la Serna publicly announced that he was retiring from politics and would not seek reelection, and then changed his mind as the election approached when his office was “besieged” by supporters pleading with him to run.) Media is a sucker for such events because they have dramatic value and they fill up newspaper space. The problem is that the press often gives manufactured events the weight and space of real events, reporting them at face value instead of focusing on the “back story.”

The bias for events, for what happens on the surface instead of in the structure, can create ephemeral excitement, and yet in the end also the weariness that comes from the sense that while “many things are happening,” news is essentially repetitive and nothing much has really changed. Thus, many remark that they have stopped reading the news because “it’s all the same story.” As one cynic puts it, “There is no news, only olds."

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islander:

Redefining roles

This does not mean that we should not continue to put more effort into promoting good journalism, working toward accurate, factual and balanced reporting, sound editorial judgment, trained media practitioners (versed in social knowledge and not just the technical matters that are the focus of mass media education) and ethical professionalism.

But looking beyond, particularly in the context of a technologically driven, burgeoning world of media, journalism can begin to renew itself by acknowledging the built-in limitations and bias in its form and practice. It has, to begin with, abandon or avoid simplistic or inflated claims of “objectivity” and “independence,” or of “reporting all the news all the time.”

The phenomenal advance of electronic and digital media is not only a threat to the survival of print journalism; it presents an opportunity for redefining the place and role of print journalism. (While newspapers have turned to the Net as a platform for widening their reach, it does not seem to me that this shift has radically changed its orientation and content.)

The time will come (some say it is already here) when the printed newspaper will no longer be the preferred purveyor of news, information and opinion since the new media technologies will be, for this purpose, faster, cheaper, more convenient and user friendly, and will offer abundantly more. That the newspaper is the source of news, information and opinion will no longer be enough to justify its existence. What will justify its existence is that it presents all these in a form more compact, better-organized, more discriminating, intelligent and credible.

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islander:

To survive, the newspaper (like such related forms as the book) must turn to its advantage what are considered to be its limitations: slowness, limited space and circulation (as against the boundless Web), selectivity and, yes, bias. That it is slow, compared to the new media, means that it can offer more in terms of reflexivity and depth (we have put such a premium on speed, we need to relearn the virtues of slowing things down). That it is limited and selective means that it can be more discriminate in choosing and organizing what it considers significant for the specific audience or “public” that it has chosen to address. That it is biased means, assuming that it is self-aware, that it is honest about the position from which it speaks. Bias is not a problem; it is a problem only when it is ill-informed, disguised as “objective,” imposed on others as “the Truth,” and serves purposes that are socially irresponsible and inimical.

Though print journalism must be grounded in “facts,” it should not be just about the facts. As the author Alain de Botton writes: “The problem with facts is that there is nowadays no shortage of sound examples. The issue is not that we need more of them but that we don’t know what to do with the ones we have.”

There are facts however that we still lack, and we need a reliable source for them. (How well, for instance, has Philippine journalism gone beyond the “he-said/she-said” kind of journalism in the coverage of the corruption charges against Vice President Jejomar Binay, to inform us about what the true facts are?) In a world inundated with gossip, innuendo, useless facts, unbridled opinions and political lies, surely there is a place for good journalism still.

Slowness, selectivity, bias: these are values that journalism must consciously and critically cultivate.

https://www.cebujournalism.org/

24 September 2015

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