“Sometimes, but not always, I get the feeling that reporters have only one of two approaches: They appear to overlook faults of those with whom they agree or attribute faults to those with whom they disagree. I suppose their enthusiasm for someone or against another is just a normal addiction to confirmation bias. It’s virtually impossible to eliminate any sense of bias for any writer who includes an adjective or adverb in a report. All modifiers are subjective.”
“All?” you ask. “Surely, there are degrees of subjective reporting, and so there are also degrees of objectivity.”
“Maybe. I guess one could argue that scientific reporting is ‘objective.’ Such reports rarely include first person references. There’s a tendency for scientific reports to be written in the passive voice, such as ‘The results were obtained by such-n-such an experiment.’ I see the obsession with writing passive predicates as silly. Did such an experiment run itself? Someone had to choose the materials, the apparatus, and the method of any experiment. Someone had to decide to experiment. Someone had to believe an experiment was worth his or her effort, and some reporter had to choose the subject for listeners or readers. I find no sound reason that a ‘scientific account’ can’t contain ‘I found through experimentation that….’ There’s a someone behind every scientific experiment and conclusion.”
“I’ll concede that point,” you say. “But in the course of human events, certain people and processes stand out against a background of the ordinary, the normal, and the repetitive. Reporters have to find something of interest, or they risk writing in a vacuum. Writing a diary isn’t the goal. Writing for others is what separates a journalist from a diarist. And as finite creatures, all reporters have limitations on what they know. Their knowledge and experience frame their reporting. Yet, surely,” you continue, “someone out there in Newsland has an objective view.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that some reporting seems to be objective, but only insofar as it does not contain a modifier. Look, this isn’t a new problem. Thomas Jefferson complained about the Press, and we could look at examples of obsequious sycophancy and outright slander in the more distant past.
“Take accounts of 1066 and the famous battles between the English and the Normans and their French allies. One particular account of the battle is the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (‘The Song of the Battle of Hastings’), written by Guy, Bishop of Amiens. Another account is the Gesta Guillielmi (‘The Deeds of William’), written by William of Poitiers, a chaplain. A third account is the Bayeux tapestry, a time-capsule history of the Norman invasion that includes a panel on the death of the Saxon King Harold. All three accounts reveal a bias of some sort. The Normans didn’t like their portrayal in the Carmen, because, at one point, the story suggests that a planned strategic retreat by the Normans was an act of cowardice; in the Gesta, the chaplain reveals his idolization of the Norman conqueror. According to David Howarth in 1066: The Year of the Conquest, the chaplain took the story in Carmen and ‘altered it to the greater glory of his hero. His whole thesis was that Duke William was a man who never sinned, never fought unjustly and never suffered any human weakness. His praise is often so absurdly obsequious that its effect on the modern reader is the opposite of what he intended.’ (143).* In the 70-meter-long Bayeux tapestry, the embroidered images capture the history of the invasion in a series of panels that depict the Normans as conquerors. Supposedly, the tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo, William of Normandy’s half-brother, so you can guess the bias for William and against Harold.
“What’s the point I’m trying to make? Well, in matters past, can we see through the bias of the reporters of the time only when they portray with obvious sycophancy like the chaplain's? Take today, for instance. Do you see the world differently from the reporters you listen to or read? If you answer affirmatively, have you written your own account to counter the biased reporting for posterity? You realize that without your account, only one side will control future perceptions?”
Now you ask, “What do you want me to do? I’m not in the business of writing a contemporary account; I’m too busy to reveal the biases I observe so that the next generation has a balanced perspective. Am I supposed to spend my evenings embroidering 230-foot-long sheets of linen with scenes of my time? You know we have video nowadays.”
“But we all know that videos themselves don’t necessarily tell more than one side of a story, dependent, of course, on the viewpoint, the resolution, and the time they begin or end. And video recordings like all electronic records have a lifespan, first because of technological advances—you would have a hard time finding either an 8-track player or a floppy disk player today—and second because of magnetic erasure or breakage. You know, I think embroidering scenes of your times on linen might be a good idea. The Bayeux tapestry is a thousand years old. That’s not as old as hieroglyphic accounts carved in stone by Egyptians, but it certainly is as long as any newspaper, magazine, or DVD will last.
“You want the record of your times to reflect your sense of the truth? Start embroidering a linen sheet or etching some durable Rosetta stone. One alternative, of course, is to somehow convince others that your perspective is the correct one in the hope that by sheer word-of-mouth your story will pass onto the next generations unaltered—though you know that in the game of passing a story around a table, people confuse the details. Another alternative lies in complacency. Why bother yourself with defending the truth you perceive? You can’t control what the next generation will believe? Or can you?”**
*New York, Barnes and Noble, 1993.
**I see online that one company is offering 120 cones of polyester embroidery thread for about $133. Just sayin’.
“All?” you ask. “Surely, there are degrees of subjective reporting, and so there are also degrees of objectivity.”
“Maybe. I guess one could argue that scientific reporting is ‘objective.’ Such reports rarely include first person references. There’s a tendency for scientific reports to be written in the passive voice, such as ‘The results were obtained by such-n-such an experiment.’ I see the obsession with writing passive predicates as silly. Did such an experiment run itself? Someone had to choose the materials, the apparatus, and the method of any experiment. Someone had to decide to experiment. Someone had to believe an experiment was worth his or her effort, and some reporter had to choose the subject for listeners or readers. I find no sound reason that a ‘scientific account’ can’t contain ‘I found through experimentation that….’ There’s a someone behind every scientific experiment and conclusion.”
“I’ll concede that point,” you say. “But in the course of human events, certain people and processes stand out against a background of the ordinary, the normal, and the repetitive. Reporters have to find something of interest, or they risk writing in a vacuum. Writing a diary isn’t the goal. Writing for others is what separates a journalist from a diarist. And as finite creatures, all reporters have limitations on what they know. Their knowledge and experience frame their reporting. Yet, surely,” you continue, “someone out there in Newsland has an objective view.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that some reporting seems to be objective, but only insofar as it does not contain a modifier. Look, this isn’t a new problem. Thomas Jefferson complained about the Press, and we could look at examples of obsequious sycophancy and outright slander in the more distant past.
“Take accounts of 1066 and the famous battles between the English and the Normans and their French allies. One particular account of the battle is the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (‘The Song of the Battle of Hastings’), written by Guy, Bishop of Amiens. Another account is the Gesta Guillielmi (‘The Deeds of William’), written by William of Poitiers, a chaplain. A third account is the Bayeux tapestry, a time-capsule history of the Norman invasion that includes a panel on the death of the Saxon King Harold. All three accounts reveal a bias of some sort. The Normans didn’t like their portrayal in the Carmen, because, at one point, the story suggests that a planned strategic retreat by the Normans was an act of cowardice; in the Gesta, the chaplain reveals his idolization of the Norman conqueror. According to David Howarth in 1066: The Year of the Conquest, the chaplain took the story in Carmen and ‘altered it to the greater glory of his hero. His whole thesis was that Duke William was a man who never sinned, never fought unjustly and never suffered any human weakness. His praise is often so absurdly obsequious that its effect on the modern reader is the opposite of what he intended.’ (143).* In the 70-meter-long Bayeux tapestry, the embroidered images capture the history of the invasion in a series of panels that depict the Normans as conquerors. Supposedly, the tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo, William of Normandy’s half-brother, so you can guess the bias for William and against Harold.
“What’s the point I’m trying to make? Well, in matters past, can we see through the bias of the reporters of the time only when they portray with obvious sycophancy like the chaplain's? Take today, for instance. Do you see the world differently from the reporters you listen to or read? If you answer affirmatively, have you written your own account to counter the biased reporting for posterity? You realize that without your account, only one side will control future perceptions?”
Now you ask, “What do you want me to do? I’m not in the business of writing a contemporary account; I’m too busy to reveal the biases I observe so that the next generation has a balanced perspective. Am I supposed to spend my evenings embroidering 230-foot-long sheets of linen with scenes of my time? You know we have video nowadays.”
“But we all know that videos themselves don’t necessarily tell more than one side of a story, dependent, of course, on the viewpoint, the resolution, and the time they begin or end. And video recordings like all electronic records have a lifespan, first because of technological advances—you would have a hard time finding either an 8-track player or a floppy disk player today—and second because of magnetic erasure or breakage. You know, I think embroidering scenes of your times on linen might be a good idea. The Bayeux tapestry is a thousand years old. That’s not as old as hieroglyphic accounts carved in stone by Egyptians, but it certainly is as long as any newspaper, magazine, or DVD will last.
“You want the record of your times to reflect your sense of the truth? Start embroidering a linen sheet or etching some durable Rosetta stone. One alternative, of course, is to somehow convince others that your perspective is the correct one in the hope that by sheer word-of-mouth your story will pass onto the next generations unaltered—though you know that in the game of passing a story around a table, people confuse the details. Another alternative lies in complacency. Why bother yourself with defending the truth you perceive? You can’t control what the next generation will believe? Or can you?”**
*New York, Barnes and Noble, 1993.
**I see online that one company is offering 120 cones of polyester embroidery thread for about $133. Just sayin’.
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