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In September, Jay Rosen woke to NPR's Morning Edition, which was reporting on regulations affecting abortion clinics in Kansas. One side argued that the regulations, involving things like the size of operating rooms and their temperature, are common sense and need to be in place to ensure patient safety, while the opposition said that the regulations, which would result in the closing of two of Kansas' three abortion clinics, are a form of harassment. Rosen waited for a conclusion. There was none.
Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, has a name for this type of reporting, he calls it "he-said-she-said" journalism. He-said-she-said breaks down like this: a public debate surrounds an issue and an outlet reports on it -- but it makes no attempt to assess the validity of either claim.
As a result of this form of "unbiased" journalism, the reader is left with an idea of the problem, but no further information with which to make an educated opinion. Yes, the reader's job is to decide what they believe, but how can they decide with no information and no access to expert sources that most outlets have? Is it not a media outlet's responsibility to find credible sources to provide background and information about topics that capture the public interest?
"Opponents of abortion in Kansas say the regulations are just common sense," writes Rosen in his PressThink blog. "NPR could compare the proposed regulations for abortion to other procedures that are performed at clinics in that state: do the regulations for, say, colonoscopies specify that storage areas for 'janitorial supplies and equipment' must be at least 50 square feet per procedure room? Or is that kind of requirement unique to the state's proposed rules for abortion? I don't know the answer, but NPR could try to find out. And if it's not NPR's job to find out, whose job is it?"
Photo by Nic.
I agree with Rosen: this story would greatly benefit from more information, the gathering of which is not beyond the scope of a newsroom. But where do bloggers fit into all of this? Living in a world where everyone can share their knowledge has been an incredible blessing, but it is not without liability. As bloggers, we link back a lot more than traditional media outlets, enabling readers to read the original sources for themselves, but we don't enjoy the same access to fact checkers and sources that conventional newsrooms do. For bloggers who write for a living, there is the added pressure to churn out "clicky" content fast -- two things that conspire against good, reliable coverage.
The result has been a startling amount of churnalism, the lazy paraphrasing and snarkifying of press materials to give a story the tone readers have come to expect from a blog -- without asking or answering any questions about accuracy or validity.
Case in point: the giant, super-intelligent squid that took over the web last week. In case you missed it, according to a paleontologist who has not yet published a paper in any sort of peer-reviewed journal, there is evidence that a creature bigger than ichthyosaurs ruled the seas during the Triassic. Yes, the mythical kraken! But it wasn't just a giant squid: it was a super-intelligent, artistic squid that arranged the carcasses of its prey to form the first ever self-portrait in the history of this planet! (And afterward, it uploaded an image to Etsy, so please click here to purchase! Just kidding, that's a link to the report on ScienceDaily. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)
This story is clicky as all get out, but even a cursory look over the "evidence" would suggest that the story is a little far-fetched. Yet in the impulse to publish, tons of big blogs ran with it, thrilled at the finding.
Of course, there was no "finding." As Brian Switek, author of Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature commented on Wired's Laelaps blog (one of the handful of well-known online destinations that didn't just run with the press release):
There is no direct evidence for the existence of the animal [Mark McMenamin and Dianna Schulte-McMenamin of Mount Holyoke College] call "the kraken." No exceptionally preserved body, no fossilized tentacle hooks, no beak -- nothing. The McMenamins' entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the [fossil] site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone's
