He said - She said - Part Two
Posted by Nicholas Gruen on Thursday, May 10, 2007
Crikey ran a piece of mine today heavily reworked from my earlier Troppo post on ‘he said - she said’ journalism. In it I tried to further articulate - with the help of my friend George Orwell - how serious this issue is. For me it’s the difference between reason and unreason, sanity and its opposite. Anyway, Troppodillians, and those who’ve wandered over from Crikey, the Crikey post is below the fold, and I welcome any discussion it generates.
‘He said – she said’ journalism: New York Times shows the way
George Orwell said that respectability being given to the proposition that two plus two equals five “frightens me much more than bombs”.
But there’s one place where our sanity is challenged like this – every day. Our media.
The essence of ‘he said – she said’ journalism is the wide eyed reporting of opposing sides of an argument as if their very being in opposition confers on each some inherent claim for equal respect.
As Paul Krugman puts it, if a presidential candidate said the earth was flat, the headline would be “Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.” After all, the earth isn’t perfectly spherical.
Like reality TV, the equally ubiquitous ‘he said – she said’ journalism generates cheap content. The latest scrap is reported by a journalist with minimal knowledge of the area and the reader ends up none the wiser.
Here’s an innocent example.
In yesterday’s Age (it took a while for Crikey to publish this piece) Josh Gordon reported on a scrap about the Victorian Government’s debt.
With consistent operating surpluses forecast to continue, Victorian Government borrowing will rise to less than three per cent of state product to fund infrastructure investment. If you think that’s wrong or scary you’re ignorant of the simplest household economics.
But Gordon’s story was that Victorian Treasurer John Brumby was on the ‘defensive’ about state debt. Why? Because his opponent attacked him. But that’s not news is it?
But maybe something is stirring. The New York Times recently reported some statistical analysis showing that white umpires fouled black players disproportionately and (to a lesser degree) vice versa. NBA spinmeisters had commissioned their own study which said the opposite (surprise, surprise!).
He said - she said.
But the Times did what journalists should always attempt – even if they’ve only got time for a phone call. It sought and reported on independent advice confirming the original study’s superiority. Times readers had the information to form an informed opinion rather than the usual cynical shrug of the shoulders.
A whole lot more of that and we might, slowly, dig our way out of the morass all around us.
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12 Responses to “He said - She said - Part Two”
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Nick
Even worse is when “he said, she said” journalists call a public official, senior adviser etc etc with a prepackaged “he said” sort of comment that they want the person to say. Rather than asking a penetrating question displaying knowledge of the subject matter、the journalist sets up a sentence along the lines of “senior government officials say X in relation to Y”.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 3:59 pm | PermalinkFrom Paul Krugman:
Responsible journalism requires at least a cursory effort to determine the facts of the matter.
Here Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne discuss how this he said-she said practice has been exploited by evolution denialists. They say, “evolution is wrong”. Then when scientists say, “no, it isn’t”, they say, “see, there’s a controversy. You must teach (and report) both sides.”
Of course this couldn’t happen in other contexts… could it?
Posted on 10-May-07 at 8:27 pm | PermalinkMike M,
Thx for the reference to Krugman. It’s the one I remembered but couldn’t find it so I ended up quoting a somewhat less succinct version that I could source. Now I’ve got the quote I want.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 8:33 pm | PermalinkOh, look this isn’t an argument. It’s just contradiction!
Posted on 10-May-07 at 11:03 pm | PermalinkNo it’s not. It’s an argument.
Posted on 11-May-07 at 12:27 am | PermalinkThere are white players in the NBA?
Posted on 11-May-07 at 10:32 am | PermalinkAn argument isn’t just contradiction, Nick.
NOTE: my tolerance for where this is going may be higher than that of CT readers generally.
Posted on 11-May-07 at 1:17 pm | PermalinkYes it is.
Posted on 11-May-07 at 1:27 pm | PermalinkNo it isn’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition. It’s not just contradiction.
Posted on 12-May-07 at 5:07 pm | Permalink[...] bemoaning the Bush Govt’s lack of accountability. As Ric said it is all of a piece with my bemoaning ‘he said - she said’ journalism. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s admission that [...]
Posted on 12-May-07 at 6:28 pm | PermalinkLook - this is an argument.
Posted on 12-May-07 at 6:29 pm | PermalinkArgument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
Posted on 12-May-07 at 7:15 pm | Permalink