Toxic Journalistic Pathologies

By John Ballard

Something I read two weeks ago has been nagging me ever since. Unpopular Science by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum appeared last August in The Nation. The thrust of their argument is that a variety of forces have intersected over the last few years resulting in what most of us would call "dumbing down" public perceptions. The focus of their paper is science and history, but a wider view of their points reaches beyond the laboratory and classroom to everyday society.

It's no secret the newspaper industry is hemorrhaging staff writers and slashing coverage as its business model collapses in the face of declining readership and advertising revenues. But less recognized is how this trend is killing off a breed of journalistic specialists that we need now more than ever--science writers like Russell, who are uniquely trained for the most difficult stories, those with a complex technical component that are nevertheless critical to politics and society.

We live in a time of pathbreaking advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, of private spaceflight and personalized medicine, amid a climate and energy crisis, in a world made more dangerous by biological and nuclear terror threats and global pandemics. Meanwhile, advances in neuroscience are calling into question who we are, whether our identities and thought processes can be reduced to purely physical phenomena, whether we actually have free will. The media ought to be bursting with this stuff. Yet precisely the opposite is happening: even in places where you'd expect it to hold out the longest, science journalism is declining.

Specific examples follow. Houston Chronicle cut a twenty-year veteran reporter whose beat was NASA's Johnson Space Center and the Boston Globe chopped up a health and science-focused Monday feature into body parts with the health portion tossed into arts and lifestyle, and science going to the business section, trimming support staff for economic reasons. 

[In the aftermath of the 1996 Telecommunications Act] a relatively small number of corporations began to pull together diverse media sectors--movies, television, book publishing, music, magazines, radio and many newspapers--and cram them into massive firms. Serious science journalism often fared poorly in this climate. Producing it required seasoned, highly trained journalists who expected to receive salaries commensurate with their experience and expertise. The conglomerates had a different plan--more revenue, less cost, rising stock prices.

Subjects which should have remained in the realm of science have morphed into inflammatory religious, social and political issues and a proliferation of public debates about climate change, evolution, family planning, vaccinations and food safety has poisoned and polarized what once might have been an open-minded quest for facts.

The writers identify two journalistic pathologies that have infected public debate, not only about their subject (science) but most topics in print or broadcast media. 

The problem with the decline of science journalism is not just that there is less attention overall to science; it's that the remaining science coverage is less illuminating. Instead, it indulges in a variety of journalistic pathologies that thwart an improved public understanding of science.

As a rule, journalists are always in search of the dramatic and the new. When it comes to science, however, this can lead them to pounce on each "hot" new result, even if that finding contradicts the last hot result or is soon overturned by a subsequent study. The resulting staccato coverage can leave the public hopelessly exasperated and confused. Should you drink more coffee or less? Does global warming increase the number and intensity of hurricanes or not? Are vaccines safe, or can they cause an autism epidemic? Experienced science journalists know how to cover such topics by contextualizing studies and deferring to the weight of the evidence. Inexperienced journalists, though, are likely to leave audiences with a severe case of media whiplash.

Then there's the problem of "balance"--the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different "sides" of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming "skeptics" and scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon's human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community's very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking "balance."

Go to the link and read their description of how the the climate change/global warming story has been "bungled" by poor reporting, giving rise to skeptics and deniers who, thanks to pathology #2, enjoy equal time and exposure in a misguided sense of "balanced reporting" which seems to have  become the norm. 

These two pathologies -- a quest for anything fresh and a (blindly) balanced approach -- have led us to a place where advocacy groups pop up like mushrooms after a rain and those in leadership pay more attention to number and types of advocates than issues behind which they are amassed.

Last night I watched a couple of talking heads on CNN argue about what should happen with a young woman here in metro-Atlanta where I live whose story has made the national news. This New York Times report is more than just a story. It is a case study in how these two pathologies have infested primary sources.

Jessica Colotl, a 21-year-old college student and illegal Mexican immigrant at the center of a contentious immigration case, surrendered to a Georgia sheriff on Friday but continued to deny wrongdoing.

Ms. Colotl was arrested in March for driving without a license and could face deportation next year. On Wednesday the sheriff filed a felony charge against her for providing a false address to the police.

The case has become a flash point in the national debate over whether federal immigration laws should be enforced by local and state officials. And like Arizona�s tough new immigration law, it has highlighted a rift between the federal government and local politicians over how illegal immigrants should be detected and prosecuted.

�I never thought that I�d be caught up in this messed-up system,� Ms. Colotl said Friday at a news conference after being released on $2,500 bail. �I was treated like a criminal, like a threat to the nation.�

Civil rights groups say Ms. Colotl should be spared deportation because she was brought to the United States without legal documents by her parents at age 11. They also note that she has excelled academically and was discovered to be here illegally only after a routine traffic violation.

Supporters of immigration laws and the sheriff�s office in Cobb County say she violated state law, misled the police about her address and should not receive special treatment for her age or education.

Ms. Colotl was pulled over March 29 by a campus officer at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta, where she is two semesters from graduation, for �impeding the flow of traffic.� After she presented the officer an expired Mexican passport instead of a valid driver�s license, she was arrested and taken to a county jail, where she acknowledged being an illegal immigrant.

On May 5, she was transferred to the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama to await deportation to Mexico.

But after protests by Latino groups, demonstrations at the Georgia Capitol by her sorority sisters and a letter of support from the university�s president, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency granted a one-year deferral on her deportation so she could finish college. The �deferred action� means she could still be deported, but will be allowed to apply for an extension next year.

Her ultimate goal, Ms. Colotl said at the news conference, is that proposed legislation called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act � known as the Dream Act � will become law, providing students without legal immigration status a path to become legal.

She and her lawyer declined to discuss the immigration status of her parents.

In Georgia, the case has become intensely political. Ms. Colotl received in-state tuition, substantially reducing her cost of attending Kennesaw State. The university will charge her out-of-state rates in the future, but Republican politicians are calling for new legislation to make attendance more expensive, or impossible, for illegal immigrants.

One Republican candidate for governor, Eric Johnson, has said that if elected he will mandate that all college applicants demonstrate their citizenship. The chancellor of the state university system says that would be prohibitively expensive, costing $1.5 million, for roughly 300,000 students.

Under a program by the Department of Homeland Security, known as 287(g), local sheriffs are permitted to handle federal immigration law enforcement. The Cobb County sheriff�s office was the first in Georgia and one of the first in the United States to apply for the program. Immigration is a hot topic in the largely conservative county, where Hispanics make up 11 percent of the population, census figures show.

Mary Bauer, the legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is assisting in Ms. Colotl�s defense, said Cobb County had a history of using federal laws designed to detect dangerous criminals for arresting illegal immigrants for minor offenses. A review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that from 2007 to 2009, the main crime for which immigration detainees were arrested in the county was traffic offenses.

�This is a civil rights disaster,� said Ms. Bauer, who called the county�s application of the law �mean-spirited and very probably illegal.�

�We call on the Obama administration to end 287(g),� she said.

Supporters of strict immigration legislation say Ms. Colotl�s case was handled legally.

The sheriff, Neil Warren, said Ms. Colotl provided a false address to the police, a felony charge. Her lawyers say that she provided the address of the residence where she used to live and to where her car insurance is registered, and that she also provided her current address.

No exception should be made, however admirable the offender, said Phil Kent, a spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control, a national group opposed to illegal immigration.

�Ironically, she says she wants to go on to law school, but she�s undermining the law,� Mr. Kent said. �What�s the point of educating an illegal immigrant in a system where she can�t hold a job legally or get a driver�s license?�

Several years ago the story would not likely appear as a news item in the Times, but if it had it might read something like this.

Jessica Colotl, a 21-year-old college student surrendered to a Georgia sheriff on Friday but continued to deny wrongdoing.

Ms. Colotl was arrested in March for driving without a license and could face deportation next year. On Wednesday the sheriff filed a felony charge against her for providing a false address to the police.

The case has become a flash point in the national debate over whether federal immigration laws should be enforced by local and state officials. 

Ms. Colotl was pulled over March 29 by a campus officer at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta, where she is two semesters from graduation, for �impeding the flow of traffic.� After she presented the officer an expired Mexican passport instead of a valid driver�s license, she was arrested and taken to a county jail, where she acknowledged being an illegal immigrant.

On May 5, she was transferred to the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama to await deportation to Mexico.

Her ultimate goal, Ms. Colotl said at the news conference, is that proposed legislation called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act � known as the Dream Act � will become law, providing students without legal immigration status a path to become legal.

She and her lawyer declined to discuss the immigration status of her parents.

Under a program by the Department of Homeland Security, known as 287(g), local sheriffs are permitted to handle federal immigration law enforcement. The Cobb County sheriff�s office was the first in Georgia and one of the first in the United States to apply for the program. 

The rest, and perhaps more, might appear elsewhere in the paper as editorial content. But that was then, this is now. Readers now expect and get editorial spin in their stories or they feel cheated. Broadcast and print sources are expected to serve up a little conflict with plain vanilla reporting. Readers expect blood, sex, politics, or drama to give them a reason to pay attention to what they call "news." What's the point of generic coffee when it seems better served with a dash of cinnamon in a brand-name cup? 

Why relegate opinion to a separate section of the paper when it can perk up any story, like liquid butter slathering popcorn at the movies. Besides, since it's all "fair and balanced" (where have we heard that before?) BOTH sides have been meticulously included so as not to inflame EITHER side. Never mind working for a neutral area from which conflict resolution might develop. Open conflict is so much more exciting.

Enter the Web.

...if the Internet is most directly responsible for the decline of newspapers, then can science blogs and science-infused websites fill the gap?

�

...The web atomizes us--and while it certainly empowers, it empowers good and bad alike. Accurate science and the most stunning misinformation thrive side by side--anti-vaccine advocates, anti-evolutionists and global warming deniers all have highly popular websites and blogs, and there is no reason to think good scientific information is somehow beating them back.

This problem was on full display in the 2008 Weblog Awards, a popularity contest that featured a tight race for Best Science Blog. The two leading contestants: PZ Myers's Pharyngula (scienceblogs.com/pharyngula), the online clearinghouse for confrontational atheism, and Watts Up With That (wattsupwiththat.com), written by former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts, a skeptic of the scientific conclusion that human activities have caused global warming. Both sites are polemical: one assaults religious faith; the other constantly attacks mainstream understanding of climate change.

In the end, Watts Up With That defeated Pharyngula, 14,150 votes to 12,238. The "science" contest came down to the religion-basher versus the misinformation-machine, and the misinformation-machine won. That speaks volumes about the form science commentary takes on the Internet.

All reporting is science reporting writ large. As this article fermented in my mind since I read it, it seems clear to me that the misinformation-machine is winning far too often. Not only in the realm of science, but history, politics, and social relationships of all kinds, especially regarding race, gender, faith and economic station in life. Urban myths become immortal in the cyber-cloud, putting out toxic fungus-like spores as viral emails and preachments from the lunatic fringe. 

�

The Tea Party is a symptom, not a disease. The images being reported are like Rorschach blots, evoking in readers, listeners and viewers whatever preconceived notions that are by now well developed either for or against the "message" they hear. Last week 3Quarks published an eight-thousand word screed by Evert Cilliers about the Tea Party filled with statistics and data revealing an unbelievable array of contradictions and irrational impulses. Consisting of weeds, onions and petunias all growing in the same garden the Tea Party has become a fearsome force in politics, with a populist anti-incumbency impulse being among the few common denominators.

What interested me was how many readers at that otherwise erudite and eclectic blog were moved to defend the Tea Party phenomenon in a comments thread numbering fifty-plus at a blog where most posts pass with no comments at all and a string of fifteen or so is unusual. Evert's screed clearly rang a few chimes other than the ones he was aiming at a defensive remarks came percolating in.

Occasionally you bump into something like the truth but get it exactly backwards. For example, the Tea Party is definitely concerned about the government subsidizing poverty but it's not because they hate the poor. It's because they believe that government subsidies increase and institutionalize poverty.... 
The Tea Party is not about race. The only significant residual racism in this country lies on the left, who rely on that bogeyman to keep blacks on the plantation.... 
I take issue with the comment that Wall Street is better at bankrupting the country than government. Corporatism is a double-headed beast. Big Government and Big Business happily walk hand in hand. Certainly, Big Business is the source of this corruption, but we can't ignore the enabling effect that concentrated government power has....
I'm a conservative, with libertarian tendencies. I read Q3 every day for its eclectic and interesting articles on science, the arts, and literature. I usually disagree with its political slant, but unlike so many leftists, conservatives do not usually believe that politics should be allowed to infect everything....

And so on.
I want to end this post by saying something wise but I haven't anything more to add.

I'm watching a drama unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico that is as important and may cast a much longer shadow than any earthquake or volcano. Everyone chooses sides as the story takes on the dimensions of a political campaign, regional military conflict or world-class sporting event like the Summer Olympics. This final paragraph from the first link sums up what I see as the central challenge we all face: how best to interpret the images we are being fed by journalism crippled by the two toxic pathologies named in the headline.

A never-ending quest for newness and an overweening dedication to balance is luring us to believe that what has been around for a long time is really "new", and what we are being fed as "balance" is just an attempt to capture market share. 

That's the media reality we live with, and facing it head-on is necessary not only for scientists but for everyone who cares about the impact of science and good information on public policy. We must stop assuming today's media will dutifully carry the best and most reliable knowledge to policy-makers and the American public. Rather, it falls to us to shift gears and carry that knowledge to the entirety of the remaining media, and well beyond. In the latter endeavor, we may have to create media of our own.