How to Read the News
Dear Friends -
The season is changing here. Green shoots are out, and it’s warming up. And when the seasons change, so do the birds on offer at the local parks. Out of curiosity more than anything, I checked eBird - a wonderful resource - the other day before heading out for my Interrupted Walk. I couldn’t remember if I was still likely to see an eagle or not. eBird has these great histograms, super simple diagrams that depict the prevalence of given species week-by-week. It’s of course possible that on any given day the birds you do/don’t see will be different, but the data is a good guide.
I got out to the park. Nothing. I mean like nothing. It wasn’t just that the expected species weren’t there in the numbers I anticipated, I mean the lake was flat-out empty. Fields too. I saw at most a handful of birds when typically I’d encounter at least a thousand individuals. I could hardly believe it. In all the days I’ve been going out to this park, this was entirely unprecedented. And the data of others’ trips, which is what eBird reports, confirmed as well that a day like mine was entirely uncharacteristic.
Fortunately I’d received some photos recently; click here to take a look.
I milled around for an hour or so, noodling on the situation. Basically I was curious about eBird. How could it be so wrong? Could I trust it going forward? Was I using the data incorrectly? On and on. And as I reflected more, I realized how this morning’s episode was microcosmic of larger issues, of the challenges people face when trying to make sense of global events by reading the papers. As a guy who reads way too much news and used to be in the news business, let me share a few thoughts to help guide your reading. Some are simple and obvious; a few might be more subtle.
Read Widely
If you agree with all the news you’re reading, you’re doing it wrong. Read sources whose editorial opinion, implied and explicit, you don’t accept. At the worst, you’ll be aware of “the enemy’s” plans; at best you might just learn something about your own thinking.
What’s Missing
Every day for the foreseeable future, there will be headlines about the war in Gaza. You will see no news coming out of Myanmar. Or North Korea. Or Democratic Republic of Congo. Ad nauseum. Reasons for this vary, but the one reason that absolutely 100% doesn’t explain the situation is “there’s no news.” Find out why some countries/topics get massive coverage and others get none.
Editorial vs. Reportorial Bias
Most of us can easily distinguish reportorial bias. This kind of bias takes a slanted position on the topic at hand. Editorial bias, what topics to cover/not cover, is much harder to detect. A news source could offer perfectly straight coverage of the corruption of Political Party A but never cover similar shenanigans by Party B. That would be editorial bias. Unless you’re attuned to look for it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that one party is corrupt and the other is virtuous. This editorial judgment happens ALL the time.
Math is Hard
News folks are taught to use data to make their point. But many journos are entirely incapable of vetting those numbers. Too, they don’t want to too-overtly use potentially biased figures. So here’s what happens. For example, the Gaza Health Ministry, run by Hamas, publishes data on deaths. Citing those figures directly would look fishy, so instead journalists ask respected officials from the UN or the US about to comment on the numbers. The idea here is that the data gets “washed.” Now when the news stories cite the figures, they cite the respected 3rd-party officials referencing the numbers rather than the original, self-serving source. Here’s a devastating debunking of Hamas’ casualty figures, but once a narrative is well-established….
Slow Down
Nearly anything from a war zone that comes after, “BREAKING!” is going to be wrong. Today’s reporting is often simply repeating other professional and amateur journalists’ tweets, social media posts, and notoriously inaccurate first-person anecdotes. And the business incentive for papers is to be first, not right. So guess what you end up with? Remember the “Israel bombs hospital” story? Did you just see the “US kills Palestinians with food drops?” First reports are almost always worth discounting heavily.
Going Native
Journalists like to portray themselves as rigorously independent, but they’re human beings subject to all the foibles of the rest of us. President Obama famously chided the Washington Press Corps for the way they fawned over him. Did they love Obama? Sure, but just as much, no individual reporter wanted to be socially ostracized from the in-crowd for being anti-Obama. When a stringer for the NYT reports from Gaza, does he mention that his neighbor, two cousins, brother, and three nephews are on the Hamas payroll for civil service positions? Might that impact his reporting just a hair???
For today that’s enough, but it’s entirely possible that I’ll remain sufficiently agitated by this topic that I’m going to write about it next week too. That’s when we’ll get into the Oscars!
In the meantime, as you read more critically, see which of these logical fallacies you detect in your sources. They’re there. Often.
Be Grounded. Fly High.
The Avian Rebbe