h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This has come up in a number of discussions recently, and I've been wondering whether it's time it had one of its own.....

Certain sections of the print media in the UK are, to my mind, guilty of deliberate misreporting and misleading. In terms of how they cover stories, how the headline and opening paragraph relate to the rest of the story, the emotive and often misleading language used to report the story, and the prominence given to the story in relation to its importance.

Newspapers (unlike broadcast media) in the UK are entitled to editorialise, and to have their own political outlook and agenda. To report the news, but also to feature columnists who write opinion pieces arguing for particular positions or viewpoints. All this is fair and reasonable.

But certain papers - and two in particular - go way beyond fair comment and fair editorialising, and report a diet of 'stories' and 'non-stories' which pander to the perceived worst prejudices of its readership with a diet of constant smear or scare stories about immigration, about asylum seekers and refugees, about multiculturalism, about 'political correctness', about health and safety culture, and about any other issues.

I know this isn't a UK-only problem. I've seen some clips of Fox News, and in particular Fox reports on UK news which were so wildly inaccurate as to be absolutely absurd.

Democracy relies upon an informed electorate. The wisest people that have ever lived are likely to make serious errors if they are reasoning from a false premise. And that's my concern - that the daily drip of distortions is giving people such a false view of the world that it threatens everyone's future.

I agree with every word you say, but lets be honest the Indy now does just the same but with a left wing bias. I tak the Grauniad, but on the understanding that it reports "Lies I Like".

The truth is Print Media is not in ther business of informing, it in the business of selling papers, with a hint of furthering the oligarch owners personal political agendas.

Perhaps those of us who are used to the BBC have a romantic notion of (nominally) impartiality from the media that is never going to be the case generally?



P.S. I hate the Daily Mail as much as they hate anyone not white, married chirstian and in Berkshire, but I think that this is a complicated and multi faceted issue.

"The truth is Print Media is not in ther business of informing, it in the business of selling papers."

That's it in a nutshell. People like to read 'exciting' things, and as most people view politics, economics and diplomacy (to pull thre, fairly random things out) as boring there goes information to make way for 'exciting' articles. Or, at least, dressed up versions of the above three in a ditch attempt to inform whilst exciting.

(It's also one of the best reasons for keeping the license fee).


No idea how to fix it though.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a threat to democracy per se. If anything, it's a symptom of a free democracy. There are so many things that distort the facts and at the root of them are surveys and statistics. The media rely on these "surveys" as ready made "facts" which strengthen their position points. Bias in the media has always been there since it's inception, what do you do? Any legislation will be seized upon as restriction of free speech.

The best way of tackling bias in the press is education. It shouldn't be too difficult to include a class in year 1/2 of Secondary Education that highlights this. I am sure they could be very popular classes too. For the boys, show how different papers report the same football match. For girls, show how different papers report Victoria Beckham's new dress. i.e one paper loves her dress, another hates it - but the fashion editor of the 2nd paper works for Versace and the dress is an Yves St Laurent. This kind of education is useful, relevant and practical.

With apologies for the crap grammar and several typos that about in the above post.

I wouldn't equate the left wing bent of the Guardian or (to a lesser extent) the Independent with the right wing bent of the likes of the Mail and the Express. Bearing in mind the distinction between 'news' and 'comment' I've never noticed either paper distort the truth in quite the same way. I've never seen a Guardian story that's dishonest. But I'm wiling to be proved wrong. Also, the Guardian isn't owned by a media mogul.

Similarly, I think the Times and the Telegraph have their biases, but I think their news reporting is generally honest, even though I may not always like the angle they take.

Got to disagree with you about the Indy.... It is going down the pan in regards to standards of journalism and seems to me it is clearly trying to be the left wing mail.

Bias in media reporting - Are we entitled to a free and honest press ?

Before the 1992 election - in its manifesto - Labour (as it was known then) declared "We will safeguard press freedom and establish an urgent inquirey by The Monopolies & Mergers Commision into the concentration of media ownership." Surely a prime candidate would have been Rupert Murdoch, who had already stopped the BBC World Service from broadcasting to China, on his Star sattelite, because their unbiased reporting was upsetting the local dicatators whose goodwill he needed to reach one billion consumers.

However, when Blair rose to the leadership that was dropped indeed he condemmed the Tory party for attempting to limit the ownership of TV stations by media moguls.

This week Murdoch has stepped in and increased his shareholding in ITV, to prevent Virgin Media and NTL buying it up. Thus a man who was Australian, but became American for tax purposes, and whose corporations don't pay tax in the UK, controls much of the media available in Britain.

Otto: >Democracy relies upon an informed electorate.<

Amen! And of late I've occasionally found myself becoming cynical, disillusioned, and most of all frustrated almost to the point of despair by the difficulty of getting factual information sans every imaginable sort of spin. Every time I read a bit of news I find myself asking "what ax is this author or news agency grinding?" Can I believe what I'm reading? I'm afraid this is such a huge turn-off that it discourages many people from voting.

Playing catch up again, so I suppose this has already been covered by others, but wanted to add my

Yes I think the level of bias and misrepresentation is as you describe, and it is a serious threat to democracy. Too tired to write much coherent now, so just a link to an entry on my blog about some of the pressures that news media are under (from advertisers and security services). Reading Herman & Chomsky "Manufacturing Consent" might also be interesting.

http://thesamovar.wordpress.com/2006/11/18/media-freedom/

A major problem with so-called "news" in the US is that many (most?) news media currently are owned by one part of the entertainment industry or another. Hence, more and more of what passes for news in the US these days is becoming little more than a Hollywood gossip column. Which actors and actresses are shagging whom, which actors/actresses just got married/divorced, which films are about to be released, who won the Oscars, Emmys, etc. I swear that not long ago I listened to a radio "news" presentation in which every single story, without exception, had some entertainment angle. Never mind of course that there's a war in Iraq, genocide in Darfur, and nuclear proliferation going on under every rock. It's quite discouraging. The BBC seems to be a beacon among the smouldering, smelly, smudge pots in this regard.

Good morning Otto

Otto,
Very well put sir.

In recent times I have stopped buying papers as a general rule, occaisionally picking up a Times to follow up on a BBC R4 news item.

I think that the early programmes ( with the exception of John Humphries) is about as unbiased as it can get, and if followed up with News Night perhaps gives the balanced view.

Even then bulletins have to revise their earlier statements as new evidence comes to light - witness my retraction on the "Veil & Cross Thread".

Perhaps I ought to wait for the news to 'solidify before I go into print myself!

Novo

I have thought for some time that democracy, in the UK at least, is seriously flawed for this very reason. You could go further and state that the media have been driving both election results and government policy for many years. You could pick any one of the recent publicised government policy decisions and argue that it was made in direct reponse to one media outcry or another. You can only hope that there is more rational and considered policy-making going on outside the media spotlight.

I worked in the defence industry during the first Gulf war, which was a real eye-opener. Every single one of the papers - including the broadsheets - would simply make stuff up where there were gaps in their knowledge. In some cases that knowledge was already in the public domain, so it had to be down to lazy journalism. I haven't bought a newspaper since.

I don't bother reading newspapers because they all have a slant, a result of them selling to consumers who want their prejudices re-inforced and not challenged. "The Times" is one of the better papers, but it's owned by Rupert Murdoch and therefore can't be trusted to give decent coverage of anything involving his enterprises (although its political position is largely independent of Murdoch's own Anglospherist-right mentality).

As for broadcast media, I think the BBC remains one of the best stations in the world for news if not the best. I don't claim it's completely free of bias - it has a mild leftist bias which is a result of the political affiliations of many who work for it. However, the corporation as a whole shows a general commitment to telling as much of the full story as it can (its reporting on Iraq, when so many other stations have chosen an angle to pursue has been largely commendable - it's notable that the BBC was attacked by the more demented elements of the pro and anti-invasion fringes for "bias" which proves that it's doing its job). In my experience, those who accuse the BBC of serious bias are upset at it broadcasting information which they would rather not hear and so choose to dismiss as the result of conspiracy.

Various assorted, probably incoherent, thoughts - nevertheless well meant:

- I agree; it's a disgrace
- Already in the 1970s, being a schoolkid, I distinctly remember an exercise in (Danish) school comparing the same story in 3-4 different newspapers and working out that "hey, newspapers don't write The Truth™ but What They Like To Be The Truth" I certainly hope they teach it still!
- The press is often named "The 4th power" (following the three (not sure of the proper English wording) legislative, executive, judging). But I think it's a stretch these day to claim that the press lives up to this, in my eyes, vast responsibility

*proud of not having ranted any more than this *

I've heard of it being called the '4th estate'. This is essentially derogatory: the 3 estates in order were nobility, clergy and peasantry in the French sort-of-Parliament that precipitated the first French Revolution.

The "4th Estate" is more a comment on the power of the media than an indication that they are lower than peasants. The third estate wasn't really the peasantry - lawyers, businessmen and so on were the main representatives.

As an example of what we dont hear about -

Sweden has proposed a world-wide ban on the use of Cluster bombs - these are indesciminately dropped and supposed to explode on landing - the official figure is that 6% fail to explode - these will later blow someone's leg off. 6% perhaps doesn't sound much, but if I say that Israel dropped 4,000,000 of them into Lebanon during its recent incursion, then you'll be able to work out that means there are 240,000 left lying about - and that would be if 5% were a true figure - 20% - 30% is a better figure.

Some countries are lobbying to prevent this resolution being presented. They are the USA, Russia, China and the UK. Strictly speaking these weapons are already illegal according to UN conventions, but unless they are specifically banned their use will continue.

I'm guessing most people will have missed this story, so here's a link - I'll tell you now the stories are horrific, but not a horrific as the political will behind them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1941077,00.html

Good to see that the item pointed out the inconsistency between attitudes toward land mines and cluster munitions, both of which have had devastating effects on civilians.

"Good to see that the item pointed out the inconsistency between attitudes toward land mines and cluster munitions, both of which have had devastating effects on civilians."

I think that would be more of a meme than anything else, ie people have been told repeatedly of the problems land mines cause but cluster bombs are less in the public concience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_bombs

Interesting information there, including UN estimates that one million unexploded "bomblets" might remain in Lebanon following the Israel-Lebanon war and that Hizbollah fired cluster bombs into Israel 113 times during the war, deliberately targeting the civilian population.