Nick Mamatas (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nihilistic_kid) wrote,@ 2005-09-02 22:30:00 |
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Day 1 then Day 2, or, How to Get The Most Out Of the News
In areas with little in the way of communication, many less-than-100%-reliable witnesses (which is every witness), and with a 24 hour news cycle, what happens is this.
Journalists say things that aren't true.
For example, on Tuesday, Children's Hospital was on the verge of being overrun by looters, and the cops and the National Guard were refusing to or unable to come to the aid of 100 child patients and their frightened doctors. This was stated by a governor's aide. On Wednesday, one of the biggest issues the hospital faced was trying to dispel that rumor. It never happened.
Here's another rumor: the looters are shooting at the rescue helicopters!!!
Well, here's the original report: New Orleans evacuation suspended as shots fired.
But look at the story. Who is the source? It's not the military, not the pilot, it's not based on footage or a recording of the event, it's the head of an ambulance corp. He says a shot was fired. Before daybreak. So, how does he know the copter was the target? How does he know a civilian was the person who fired the gun? How does he know it was a gun, and not some other noise -- a vehicle backfiring, something falling, a small explosion far off, etc.?
Well, he doesn't know.
This report not only became "Oh my God, someone shot at a rescue copter!" it became, via telecasters's need to fill space and audience credulity, "The looters are shooting at the copters!" And there were other such reports too, mostly as poorly sourced, and full of misused terminology like "sniper". (Sniping actually takes a fair amount of skill; some schmuck in a white shirt on a street corner firing a whatever and missing everything is, at best, engaging in an ambush, not sniping. That Washington DC area "sniper" from a couple years ago was equally misnamed). And these street-level shots (if they were even aimed at the hospital personnel or the military escort) also transmuted into "They're shooting at the rescue copters!!!" despite the fact that this second story says no such thing. "They're shooting in earshot of a convoy of amphibious vehicles, according to the civilian doctor that was in a poor position to see anything!" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I guess.
But, yesterday, Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report [about the Superdome shooting].
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," [emphasis mine] she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
So, what's up? Well, what's up is the same thing that was up when early reports on 9/11 stated that the Capitol Building was under attack by car bombs and that there were 25,000 fatalities at the World Trade Center. (Ultimately, there were fewer than 3000.) It's the same thing that occurred when the WMDs were found by American troops any number of times -- the "dozen shells"; the "half-buried tents of chemical drums"; the "remnants of a mobile biological weapons lab." Or how about when the US forces finally captured alive that leading Iraqi "Chemical Ali" in August 2003, whom they had "killed" to great fanfare in April 2003.
There's no conspiratorial evil at work, it's just that things are reported as reports, and because every second of the day has to be filled with news thanks to the demands of advertisers and the political economies of cable and network televsion, the reports of reports are repeated until the word "report" is dropped. Reports become facts and then through ever more reputation become patterns. From this, a narrative emerges. Someone hears something that sounds like a gunshot near a helicopter becomes "They're shooting at the rescue copters!!!" and this becomes "The looters want to claim the city for their own; they have the power now!!" That such a narrative dovetails nicely with the good ol' fashioned nigger-hate that informs the lives of a significant fraction of the viewers (and certainly newspeople aren't going to necessarily be immune either) gives the story extra power.
Even when race isn't a factor, other things are. 25,000 is a decent-enough guess for the number of people who might be in WTCs 1 and 2 throughout the course of a September day. The US military really did pick up signs of WMDs all those times; field equipment is designed to be very sensitive, and lots of false positives are the end result. Better a dozen false positives than a single false negative when it comes to force protection.
So news people hear things that aren't true and things that are true, and say them all. They're supposed to say that their reports are only possibly true, or that the truth they are reporting is contingent on a better understanding, more information, and increased perspective, but often they just say any ol' shit that comes to mind, especially if it keeps you watching and they have great gaps of time -- usually there are only about two hours of news spread over a 24 hour day -- to fill.
So what shall an eager news consumer do? I have a couple of suggestions.
1. Get most of your news from text sources, not tv, and especially not 24 hour news channels. People on news channels can't just say "Well, we have nothing new, and no confirmations, and we're certainly not going to deny what we said to a bunch of people who probably weren't even watching four hours ago, so Wolf and I are going to take up these puppets, duck behind our desks, and do a few Punch and Judy sketches for you." They'll go on and on. Half the impetus behind the personality-based format of Fox News is that 30 minute and hour-long shows with guests fill time more efficiently than EFP crews and an anchor.
Even with that format, folks will ramble. CNN runs an editorial/commentary show with Jack Cafferty and Wolf Blitzer called The Situation Room. I made the error of tuning in the other day when they were talking about this Jack Shafer's Slate magazine commentary on the relative failure of the media to discuss race in the New Orleans evacuation. Cafferty, who does a Jacob Javits act to Bill O'Reiley's Trent Lott schtick, was gonna be all tough and play is straight and yes, take up the challenge and talk about race. But he had nothing to say, and his sideman, Wolf Blitzer, could only say "Yes, we've seen the images. These people are soooo poor and soooo black." I half-expected Joanne Whorley to pop out of a cabinet and say "How black are they?" Disappointed, I turned off the tv.
Now text-based news can be problematic, but there isn't a need to ramble. The news reportage cycle on news channels is necessarily continuous, but ENG by definition cannot be. Cameras have to move places, legwork has to be done, reporters have to wait for press conferences, sleep, recharge their batteries, etc. The Web allows for an infinite number of column inches, but doesn't necessitate that they all be filled. Repeated material is generally copied and pasted; you recognize it more easily as the same anecdote or quote and not a new one. You can also more easily save texts; google has caches, most websites have archives, you can copy and paste them into your own Word or Notepad file. You can follow the story more easily; note how narratives emerge, check out the sources, etc.
Text reporters also don't chase images quite so much either; they're more likely to stick with a story, to follow-up the next day with a source or try to find a corroborating source. The tv depends on the truth of the unblinking eye, except that a single eye that doesn't blink is still half-blind.
2. Don't believe anything said on Day 1 until it it confirmed on Day 2. Not repeated. Confirmed. And even then, you might want to give it a few months, checking back occasionally.
There, now with these tips, please feel free to go back to biting your nails over the same images and the same news that you first came across before dinner this afternoon.
In areas with little in the way of communication, many less-than-100%-reliable witnesses (which is every witness), and with a 24 hour news cycle, what happens is this.
Journalists say things that aren't true.
For example, on Tuesday, Children's Hospital was on the verge of being overrun by looters, and the cops and the National Guard were refusing to or unable to come to the aid of 100 child patients and their frightened doctors. This was stated by a governor's aide. On Wednesday, one of the biggest issues the hospital faced was trying to dispel that rumor. It never happened.
Here's another rumor: the looters are shooting at the rescue helicopters!!!
Well, here's the original report: New Orleans evacuation suspended as shots fired.
But look at the story. Who is the source? It's not the military, not the pilot, it's not based on footage or a recording of the event, it's the head of an ambulance corp. He says a shot was fired. Before daybreak. So, how does he know the copter was the target? How does he know a civilian was the person who fired the gun? How does he know it was a gun, and not some other noise -- a vehicle backfiring, something falling, a small explosion far off, etc.?
Well, he doesn't know.
This report not only became "Oh my God, someone shot at a rescue copter!" it became, via telecasters's need to fill space and audience credulity, "The looters are shooting at the copters!" And there were other such reports too, mostly as poorly sourced, and full of misused terminology like "sniper". (Sniping actually takes a fair amount of skill; some schmuck in a white shirt on a street corner firing a whatever and missing everything is, at best, engaging in an ambush, not sniping. That Washington DC area "sniper" from a couple years ago was equally misnamed). And these street-level shots (if they were even aimed at the hospital personnel or the military escort) also transmuted into "They're shooting at the rescue copters!!!" despite the fact that this second story says no such thing. "They're shooting in earshot of a convoy of amphibious vehicles, according to the civilian doctor that was in a poor position to see anything!" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I guess.
But, yesterday, Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report [about the Superdome shooting].
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," [emphasis mine] she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
So, what's up? Well, what's up is the same thing that was up when early reports on 9/11 stated that the Capitol Building was under attack by car bombs and that there were 25,000 fatalities at the World Trade Center. (Ultimately, there were fewer than 3000.) It's the same thing that occurred when the WMDs were found by American troops any number of times -- the "dozen shells"; the "half-buried tents of chemical drums"; the "remnants of a mobile biological weapons lab." Or how about when the US forces finally captured alive that leading Iraqi "Chemical Ali" in August 2003, whom they had "killed" to great fanfare in April 2003.
There's no conspiratorial evil at work, it's just that things are reported as reports, and because every second of the day has to be filled with news thanks to the demands of advertisers and the political economies of cable and network televsion, the reports of reports are repeated until the word "report" is dropped. Reports become facts and then through ever more reputation become patterns. From this, a narrative emerges. Someone hears something that sounds like a gunshot near a helicopter becomes "They're shooting at the rescue copters!!!" and this becomes "The looters want to claim the city for their own; they have the power now!!" That such a narrative dovetails nicely with the good ol' fashioned nigger-hate that informs the lives of a significant fraction of the viewers (and certainly newspeople aren't going to necessarily be immune either) gives the story extra power.
Even when race isn't a factor, other things are. 25,000 is a decent-enough guess for the number of people who might be in WTCs 1 and 2 throughout the course of a September day. The US military really did pick up signs of WMDs all those times; field equipment is designed to be very sensitive, and lots of false positives are the end result. Better a dozen false positives than a single false negative when it comes to force protection.
So news people hear things that aren't true and things that are true, and say them all. They're supposed to say that their reports are only possibly true, or that the truth they are reporting is contingent on a better understanding, more information, and increased perspective, but often they just say any ol' shit that comes to mind, especially if it keeps you watching and they have great gaps of time -- usually there are only about two hours of news spread over a 24 hour day -- to fill.
So what shall an eager news consumer do? I have a couple of suggestions.
1. Get most of your news from text sources, not tv, and especially not 24 hour news channels. People on news channels can't just say "Well, we have nothing new, and no confirmations, and we're certainly not going to deny what we said to a bunch of people who probably weren't even watching four hours ago, so Wolf and I are going to take up these puppets, duck behind our desks, and do a few Punch and Judy sketches for you." They'll go on and on. Half the impetus behind the personality-based format of Fox News is that 30 minute and hour-long shows with guests fill time more efficiently than EFP crews and an anchor.
Even with that format, folks will ramble. CNN runs an editorial/commentary show with Jack Cafferty and Wolf Blitzer called The Situation Room. I made the error of tuning in the other day when they were talking about this Jack Shafer's Slate magazine commentary on the relative failure of the media to discuss race in the New Orleans evacuation. Cafferty, who does a Jacob Javits act to Bill O'Reiley's Trent Lott schtick, was gonna be all tough and play is straight and yes, take up the challenge and talk about race. But he had nothing to say, and his sideman, Wolf Blitzer, could only say "Yes, we've seen the images. These people are soooo poor and soooo black." I half-expected Joanne Whorley to pop out of a cabinet and say "How black are they?" Disappointed, I turned off the tv.
Now text-based news can be problematic, but there isn't a need to ramble. The news reportage cycle on news channels is necessarily continuous, but ENG by definition cannot be. Cameras have to move places, legwork has to be done, reporters have to wait for press conferences, sleep, recharge their batteries, etc. The Web allows for an infinite number of column inches, but doesn't necessitate that they all be filled. Repeated material is generally copied and pasted; you recognize it more easily as the same anecdote or quote and not a new one. You can also more easily save texts; google has caches, most websites have archives, you can copy and paste them into your own Word or Notepad file. You can follow the story more easily; note how narratives emerge, check out the sources, etc.
Text reporters also don't chase images quite so much either; they're more likely to stick with a story, to follow-up the next day with a source or try to find a corroborating source. The tv depends on the truth of the unblinking eye, except that a single eye that doesn't blink is still half-blind.
2. Don't believe anything said on Day 1 until it it confirmed on Day 2. Not repeated. Confirmed. And even then, you might want to give it a few months, checking back occasionally.
There, now with these tips, please feel free to go back to biting your nails over the same images and the same news that you first came across before dinner this afternoon.
