This has been touched on before, but I love the way this guy tells it.
One whole paragraph was great, and contained a sentence that nearly sprayed the coffee,
". . . Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers."
http://www.nydailynews.com/today/News_and_Views/Opinion/a-63373.asp
Bad News -- The distorting of reporting
by John Leo
Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers?
The American Society of Newspaper Editors, which met last week in Washington, is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deep into a long self-analysis known as the Journalism Credibility Project.
Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level dithering about factual errors and spelling and grammatical mistakes, combined with lots of puzzlement about what in the world those darned readers want.
For a better focus, the society might want to listen to columnist Michael Kelly and Peter Brown, an editor at the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.
Kelly writes that "most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates into which they plug each day's events." In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.
With the help of a professional pollster, Brown sent questionnaires to reporters in five middle-size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area, Dallas-Fort Worth. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.
Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedes and trade stocks, and less likely to go to church, do volunteer work or put down roots in a community.
Journalists are overrepresented in zip codes where residents are twice as likely as others to rent foreign movies, drink Chablis, own an espresso maker and read magazines such as Architectural Digest and Food & Wine.
Brown found that the disconnect carries over to social attitudes: Journalists are far more likely than others to approve of abortion, to express disdainful attitudes toward suburbs and rural areas and to identify strongly with people who see themselves as victims of society.
The astonishing distrust of the news media isn't rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills, but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.
This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers.
The values of accountants and plumbers don't matter much to customers, but those of reporters are crucial. They determine which stories are selected and omitted, and how important the stories will feel to readers.
The brutal torture-murder of Mathew Shepard was a big story, and deserved to be. But shortly after, two homosexuals were charged with committing a crime just as horrendous — kidnapping, torturing and murdering a young Arkansas boy — with almost no national media coverage at all.
Probable explanation: This was another "standard template" in action — in the newsroom culture, important and newsworthy violence is the kind conducted by the powerful (whites, straights, males, the West) against members of groups considered weak. Since the boy's murder didn't fit the template, it had no symbolic value and went unreported.
The same filter applies to good news. After racial preferences were ended at state universities in California and Texas, the numbers of blacks and Hispanics attending these colleges dipped briefly, then rebounded to the old levels. But this didn't fit the relevant newsroom story line — that racial justice absolutely requires preference programs — so the story was widely delayed, omitted or stuffed way back in the paper.
These are the distortions to expect when the newsroom comes to look like a monoculture. It's time to try some diversity.
Original Publication Date: 04/15/2000
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
One whole paragraph was great, and contained a sentence that nearly sprayed the coffee,
". . . Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers."
http://www.nydailynews.com/today/News_and_Views/Opinion/a-63373.asp
Bad News -- The distorting of reporting
by John Leo
Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers?
The American Society of Newspaper Editors, which met last week in Washington, is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deep into a long self-analysis known as the Journalism Credibility Project.
Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level dithering about factual errors and spelling and grammatical mistakes, combined with lots of puzzlement about what in the world those darned readers want.
For a better focus, the society might want to listen to columnist Michael Kelly and Peter Brown, an editor at the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.
Kelly writes that "most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates into which they plug each day's events." In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.
With the help of a professional pollster, Brown sent questionnaires to reporters in five middle-size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area, Dallas-Fort Worth. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.
Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedes and trade stocks, and less likely to go to church, do volunteer work or put down roots in a community.
Journalists are overrepresented in zip codes where residents are twice as likely as others to rent foreign movies, drink Chablis, own an espresso maker and read magazines such as Architectural Digest and Food & Wine.
Brown found that the disconnect carries over to social attitudes: Journalists are far more likely than others to approve of abortion, to express disdainful attitudes toward suburbs and rural areas and to identify strongly with people who see themselves as victims of society.
The astonishing distrust of the news media isn't rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills, but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.
This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers.
The values of accountants and plumbers don't matter much to customers, but those of reporters are crucial. They determine which stories are selected and omitted, and how important the stories will feel to readers.
The brutal torture-murder of Mathew Shepard was a big story, and deserved to be. But shortly after, two homosexuals were charged with committing a crime just as horrendous — kidnapping, torturing and murdering a young Arkansas boy — with almost no national media coverage at all.
Probable explanation: This was another "standard template" in action — in the newsroom culture, important and newsworthy violence is the kind conducted by the powerful (whites, straights, males, the West) against members of groups considered weak. Since the boy's murder didn't fit the template, it had no symbolic value and went unreported.
The same filter applies to good news. After racial preferences were ended at state universities in California and Texas, the numbers of blacks and Hispanics attending these colleges dipped briefly, then rebounded to the old levels. But this didn't fit the relevant newsroom story line — that racial justice absolutely requires preference programs — so the story was widely delayed, omitted or stuffed way back in the paper.
These are the distortions to expect when the newsroom comes to look like a monoculture. It's time to try some diversity.
Original Publication Date: 04/15/2000
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.