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Transparency and Trust in News Media

When I teach critical thinking, I often suggest that students pay a good deal of attention to the news. When news stories develop, what details do journalists choose to focus on? What details are they ignoring? Why choose to focus on certain details and not others? When new details are added or the story is updated, how does this change the narrative? As someone who regularly monitors the news for ethical analysis, this is a phenomenon I see all the time. A news item gets updated, and suddenly the focus of the piece dramatically changes. This is something that one can’t do in print media, but online media can revise and change the narrative of news after it is published.

Given the rapidly declining public trust in media, is it time for journalists and news groups to be more transparent and accountable about the narratives they choose to focus on (some may even say create) when they present a new story?

One morning last week I began to read an opinion article which is part of a series of articles written by former national NDP leader (and Prime Ministerial candidate) Tom Mulcair for CTV News. The article is about the on-going national Conservative leadership convention taking place, and mostly focuses on one candidate, Pierre Poilievre, and his attempts to appeal to voters in contrast with some of his rivals. I didn’t finish the article that morning, but when I returned to it later that afternoon, I noticed it had a new title.

What was entitled “Tom Mulcair: The Conservative leadership debates will be crucial” that morning was now titled “Tom Mulcair: The Trump side to Poilievre.” This change was surprising, but if one looks carefully, they will note that the article was “updated” an hour after being first published.

Luckily, I had the original article in my browser, and I was able to make comparisons between the updated version and the original. Does the update contain some new information that would prompt the change in title? No. The two articles are nearly identical, except for a minor typo correction. This means that with no meaningful difference, the article’s title was changed from a more neutral one to a far more politically charged title. It is no secret that Donald Trump is not popular in Canada, and so connecting one politician’s rhetoric to Trump’s is going to send a far different message and tone than “leadership debates will be crucial.” The important question, then, is why this change was made?

Is this a case of a news organization attempting to create and sell a political narrative for political purposes? To be fair, the original article always contained a final section entitled “The Trump Side to Poilievre,” but most of the article doesn’t focus on this topic. The more prominent section in the article focuses on issues of housing affordability, so why wasn’t the article changed to “Tom Mulcair: Conservatives address affordability as a theme?”

Is this a case of merely using clickbait-y headlines in the hopes of driving more attention? The point is that we don’t know, and most people would never even be aware of this change, let alone why it was made.

A recent survey of Canadians found that 49% of Canadians believe that journalists are purposely trying to mislead people by saying false or exaggerated claims, 52% believe that news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology than informing the public, and 52% believe that the media is not doing well at being objective and non-partisan. Similar sentiments can be found about American media as well. Amusingly, the very article that reports on this Canadian poll seeks to answer who is to blame for this. Apparently, it’s because of the end of the fairness doctrine in the U.S. (something that would have no effect on Canada), the growth of punditry (who gives them airtime?), polarization, and Donald Trump. Missing, of course, is the media pointing the blame at themselves; the sloppy collection of facts, the lazy analyses, the narrow focus on sensational topics. Surely, the loss of confidence in the media has nothing to do with their own lack of accountability and transparency.

News organizations always present a perspective when they report. We do not care about literally everything that happens, so the choice to cover a story and what parts of the story to cover are always going to be a reflection of values.

This is true in news, just as it is true in science. As philosopher of science Philip Kitcher notes, “The aim of science is not to discover any old truth but to discover significant truths.” Indeed, many philosophers of science argue that the notion of objectivity in science as a case of “value freedom” is nonsense. They argue that science will always be infused with values in some form or another in order to derive what it takes to be significant truths, so the intention should be to be as transparent about these matters as possible.

Recently, in response to concerns about bias in AI, there have been calls within the field of machine learning to use data sheets for data sets that would document the motivation, collection process, and recommended uses of a data set. Again, the aim is not necessarily to eliminate all bias and values, but to be more transparent about them to increase accountability. Should the news media consider something similar? Imagine if CTV communicated, not only that there had been an update to their story, but what was included in that update and why, not unlike Wikipedia. This would increase the transparency of the media and make them more accountable for how they choose to package and communicate news.

A 2019 report by the Knight Foundation reports that transparency is a key factor in trust in media. They note that this should not only include things like notifications of conflicts of interest, but also “additional reporting material made available to readers,” that could take the form of editorial disclosure, or a story-behind-the-story, that would explain why an editor thought a story was newsworthy. Organizational scholars Andrew Schnackenberg and Edward Tomlinson suggest that greater transparency can help with public trust in news by improving their perception of competence, integrity, and benevolence.

This also suggests why the news media’s attempt to improve their image have had limited success. Much of the debate about news media, particularly when framed by the news media themselves, focuses on the obligation to “fact check.” The CBC, for example, brags that its efforts to “rebuild trust in journalism” have focused on confirming the authenticity of videos against deep fakes, a corrections and clarifications page (which contains very vague accounts of such corrections), or their efforts to fight disinformation. They say that pundits can opine on the news but not the reporters.

But what they conveniently leave out is that the degradation in trust in news is not just about getting the facts right, it’s about how facts are being organized, packaged, and delivered.

Why include these pundits? Why cover this story? Why cover it in this way? If the media truly wants to improve the public trust, they will need to begin honestly taking responsibility for their own failure to be transparent about editorial decisions, they need to take steps to be held accountable, and they need to focus on how they can be more transparent in their coverage.

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On Anxiety and Activism

"The End Is Nigh" poster featuring a COVID spore and gasmask

The Plough Quarterly recently released a new essay collection called Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year. In a contribution by Joseph Keegin, “Be Not Afraid,” he details some of his memories of his father’s final days, and the looming role that “outrage media” played in their interactions. He writes,

My dad had neither a firearm to his name, nor a college degree. What he did have, however, was a deep, foundation-rattling anxiety about the world ubiquitous among boomers that made him—and countless others like him—easily exploitable by media conglomerates whose business model relies on sowing hysteria and reaping the reward of advertising revenue.

Keegin’s essay is aimed at a predominantly religious audience. He ends his essay by arguing that Christians bear a specifically religious obligation to fight off the fear and anxiety that makes humans easy prey to outrage media and other forms of news-centered absorption. He argues this partly on Christian theological grounds — namely, that God’s historical communications with humans is almost always preceded by the command to “be not afraid,” as a lack of anxiety is necessary for recognizing and following truth.

But if Keegin is right about the effects of this “deep, foundation-rattling anxiety” on our epistemic agency, then it is not unreasonable to wonder if everyone has, and should recognize, some kind of obligation to avoid such anxiety, and to avoid causing it in others. And it seems as though he is right. Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between feeling dangerously out-of-control and the tendency to believe conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to COVID-19 conspiracies (here, here, here). The more frightening media we consume, the more anxious we become. The more anxious we become, the more media we consume. And as this cycle repeats, the media we are consuming tends to become more frightening, and less veridical.

Of course, nobody wants to be the proverbial “sucker,” lining the pocket books of every website owner who knows how to write a sensational headline. We are all aware of the technological tactics used to manipulate our personal insecurities for the sake of selling products and, for the most part, I would imagine we strive to avoid this kind of vulnerability. But there is a tension here. While avoiding this kind of epistemically-damaging anxiety sounds important in the abstract, this idea does not line up neatly with the ways we often talk about, and seek to advance, social change.

Each era has been beset by its own set of deep anxieties: the Great Depression, the Red Scare, the Satanic Panic, and election fears (on both sides of the aisle) are all examples of relatively recent social anxieties that lead to identifiable epistemic vulnerabilities. Conspiracies about Russian spies, gripping terror over nuclear war, and unending grassroots ballot recount movements are just a few of the signs of the epistemic vulnerability that resulted from these anxieties. The solution may at first seem obvious: be clear-headed and resist getting caught up in baseless media-driven fear-mongering. But, importantly, not all of these anxieties are baseless or the result of purposeless fear-mongering.

People who grew up during the depression often worked hard to instill an attitude of rationing in their own children, prompted by their concern for their kids’ well-being; if another economic downturn hit, they wanted their offspring to be prepared. Likewise, the very real threat of nuclear war loomed large throughout the 1950s-1980s, and many people understandably feared that the Cold War would soon turn hot. Even elementary schools held atom bomb drills, for any potential benefit to the students in the case of an attack. One can be sure that journalists took advantage of this anxiety as a way to increase readership, but concerned citizens and social activists also tried to drum up worry because worry motivates. If we think something merits concern, we often try to make others feel this same concern, both for their own sake and for the sake of those they may have influence over. But if such deep-seated cultural anxieties make it easier for others to take advantage of us through outrage media, conspiracy theories, and other forms of anxiety-confirming narratives, is such an approach to social activism worth the future consequences?

To take a more contemporary example, let’s look at the issue of climate change. According to a recent study, out of 10,000 “young people” (between the ages of 16 and 25) surveyed, almost 60% claimed to be “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change affected their daily life and functioning in negative ways. If these findings are representative, surely this counts as the Generation Z version of the kind of “foundation-rattling anxiety” that Keegin observed in his late father.

There is little doubt where this anxiety comes from: news stories and articles routinely point out record-breaking temperatures, numbers of species that go extinct year to year, and the climate-based causes of extreme weather patterns. Pop culture has embraced the theme, with movies like “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Snowpiercer,” and “Reminiscent,” among many others, painting a bleak picture of what human life might look like once we pass the point of no return. Unlike any other time in U.S. history, politicians are proposing extremely radical, lifestyle-altering policies in order to combat the growing climate disaster. If such anxieties leave people epistemically vulnerable to the kinds of outrage media and conspiracy theory rabbit holes that Keegin worries about, are these fear-inducing tactics to combat climate change worth it?

On the surface, it seems very plausible that the answer here is “yes!” After all, if the planet is not habitable for human life-forms, it makes very little difference whether or not the humans that would have inhabited the planet would have been more prone to being consumed by the mid-day news. If inducing public anxiety over the climate crisis (or any other high stakes social challenge or danger) is effective, then likely the good would outweigh the bad. And surely genuine fear does cause such behavioral effects. Right?

But again, the data is unclear. While people are more likely to change their behavior or engage in activism when they believe some issue is actually a concern, too much concern, anxiety, or dread seems to soon produce the opposite (sometimes tragic) effect. For example, while public belief in, and concern over, climate change is higher than ever, actual climate change legislation has not been adapted in decades, and more and more elected officials deny or downplay the issue. Additionally, the latest surge of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has renewed the social phenomenon of pandemic fatigue, the condition of giving up on health and safety measures due to exhaustion and hopelessness regarding their efficacy.

In an essay discussing the pandemic, climate change, and the threat of the end of humanity, the philosopher Agnes Callard analyzes this phenomenon as follows:

Just as the thought that other people might be about to stockpile food leads to food shortages, so too the prospect of a depressed, disaffected and de-energized distant future deprives that future of its capacity to give meaning to the less distant future, and so on, in a kind of reverse-snowball effect, until we arrive at a depressed, disaffected and de-energized present.

So, if cultural anxieties increase epistemic vulnerability, in addition to, very plausibly, leading to a kind of hopelessness-induced apathy toward the urgent issues, should we abandon the culture of panic? Should we learn how to rally interest for social change while simultaneously urging others to “be not afraid”? It seems so. But doing this well will involve a significant shift from our current strategies and an openness to adopting entirely new ones. What might these new strategies look like? I have no idea.

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AstraZeneca, Blood Clots, and Media Reporting

photograph of patients waiting in gym to be vaccinated

In some ways, it seems like most respectable news media have begun to take science more seriously and to take greater care in making sure that claims about COVID are fact-checked and that misinformation is debunked. But there is more to scientific communication than getting the facts right. Often it is the selection, arrangement, and emphasis of facts that matter most and holds the greatest sway over the average person’s comprehension of scientific matters. This can have very serious consequences such as the coverage of the AstraZeneca vaccine and its potential to cause vaccine hesitancy. Does the media have a responsibility to be more careful in how they cover scientific issues?

Not long after the AstraZeneca vaccine was approved in many nations, reports in March indicated that some who took the vaccine developed blood clots. Since then, over thirteen nations have either halted the rollout of the vaccine or limited its usage. While such clots can be lethal, they are treatable. However, the more important consideration is the lack of evidence that the vaccine causes clots and the limited number of cases. There is no direct evidence of a connection between the vaccine and the development of a blood clot. Despite this, the European Medicines Agency in its review of  over 80 cases has concluded that unusual blood clots should be listed as a rare side effect. However, it is the rarity of the symptoms which is even more important. Less than one hundred people out of 20 million people who have received the vaccine have developed blood clots.

This is actually lower than what you’d normally see from unvaccinated people, and in the meantime COVID itself can lead to clots showing up in “almost every organ.” All of this leaves regulators with an inductive risk scenario: if they say that the vaccine is safe, and it isn’t many people could develop clots and potentially die; if they that the vaccine isn’t safe, and it is then it will slow down the rollout of the vaccine and many more people could die. In fact, the experts have been pretty clear that in terms of risk management, the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine still outweigh the risks. In other words, even if the vaccine does cause blood clots, the rates are so low that the risk of people dying is far higher if you don’t use the vaccine than if you do. This is why experts have been critical about the suspensions as a “stupid, harmful decision” that will likely lead to more avoidable deaths and will make people more hesitant to get vaccinated. As Dr. Paul Offit of the Vaccine Education Center has said, “While it’s easy to scare people, it’s very hard to unscare them.”

Yet, despite the risk being small and possibly treatable, and the fact that experts have determined that it is still better to use the vaccine anyways, the news media hasn’t been helpful in covering this issue. For example, the Canadian media has chosen to cover (apparently) every case of a blood clot developing despite the messaging ultimately being the same. One story notes, ‘“While this case is unfortunate, it does not change the risk assessment that I have previously communicated to Albertans,’ Dr. Deena Hinshaw said during a teleconference,” while the other reports, “‘We have been very transparent that there could be one case per 100,000,’ he said. ‘We knew this could happen.’” In other words, this is a situation where statistically the formation of a blood clot is expected in limited numbers but is considered acceptable because it is still such a limited risk compared to the much larger benefits. So, it is simply unhelpful to report each confirmed case of something that is expected anyways. After all, we are told that the contraceptive pill carries a greater risk of developing a blood clot, so why cherry-pick cases?

As statistician David Spiegelhalter has suggested, the scare over blood clots has demonstrated our “basic and often creative urge to find patterns even where none exist.” Unsurprisingly, a majority of unvaccinated Canadians now report being uncomfortable with potentially receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. All of this relates to the moral responsibilities of the media in covering scientific topics where it isn’t merely a matter of reporting facts but reporting them in context. While the media has been “on a crusade against COVID vaccine skepticism” and promoting science-based medicine, to some the selective skepticism of the media has led to charges of hypocrisy as “the press has made a habit of giving finger-wagging lectures about ‘following the science,’ they need to consistently practice what they preach.” Afterall, the media doesn’t choose to report every case of someone who gets a blood clot from a contraceptive.

In fairness, while no one is suggesting that the risk of clots should be ignored, there may be good reason to raise alarm. As The Atlantic reports,

“The risk of a dangerous vaccine reaction could be very real, if also very rare—and major European vaccine authorities have not, in fact, been overcautious, political, or innumerate in responding to this possibility…regulators must address the possibility (still unproved) that perhaps one in every 1 million vaccinated people could have a potentially fatal drug reaction—as more than 1 million vaccine doses are being injected each day in Europe alone.”

In other words, there is a real risk (even if small) and morally speaking it is important to have a public conversation about risks and how to manage them. The public should be aware of the risk and how those risks are appraised. However, the issue has become confused owing to a lack of scientific literacy as well as the media choosing to focus on individual and personal cases. Instead, a more constructive topic of focus could have been on the larger moral issue of managing risk in the face of uncertainty such as when and how to use the precautionary principle.

This isn’t the only case recently where cherry-picking media coverage has proven problematic. Recently a study found that media coverage of COVID-19 in the US has been excessively negative compared to international media. A separate study has found that a significant number of Americans (mostly those who lean Democratic) were likely to overexaggerate the risks of COVID. Further, it is becoming increasingly evident that developing scientific literacy is more difficult than thought, and presenting novel scientific findings in news is problematic anyways. So, if those in the news media wish to present a scientifically-informed picture of public affairs, it is morally imperative that greater attention be paid to the context in which scientific findings are reported.

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Is the Future of News a Moral Question?

closeup photograph of stack of old newspapers

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

In the face of increasing calls to regulate social media over monopolization, privacy concerns, and the spread of misinformation, the Australian government might be the world’s first country to force companies like Google and Facebook to pay to license Australian news articles featured in those site’s news feeds. The move comes after years of declining revenue for newspapers around the world as people increasingly got their news online instead of in print. But, is there a moral imperative to make sure that local journalism is sustainable and if so, what means of achieving this are appropriate?

At a time when misinformation and conspiracy theories have reached a fever pitch, the state of news publication is in dire straits. From 2004 to 2014, revenue for U.S. newspapers declined by over 40 billion dollars. Because of this, several local newspapers have closed and news staff have been cut. In 2019 it was reported that 1 in 5 papers had closed in the United States. COVID has not helped with the situation. In 2020 ad revenue was down 42% from the previous year. Despite this drop, the revenue raised from digital advertising has grown exponentially and estimates suggest that as much as 80% of online news is derived from newspapers. Unfortunately, most of that ad revenue goes to companies like Facebook and Google rather than news publishers themselves.

This situation is not unique to the United States. Newspapers have been in decline in places like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, certain European nations, and more. Canadian newspapers recently published a blank front page to highlight the disappearance of news. In Australia, for example, circulation has fallen by over two-thirds since 2003. Last year over 100 newspapers closed down. This is part of the reason Australia has become the first nation to pursue legislation requiring companies like Google and Facebook to pay for the news that they use in their feeds. Currently for every $100 spent on advertising, Google takes $53 and Facebook receives $28. Under the proposed legislation, such companies would be forced to negotiate commercial deals to license the use of their news material. If they refuse to negotiate, they face stiff penalties of potentially 10 million dollars or more.

The legislation has been strongly opposed by Google and Facebook who have employed tactics like lobbying legislators and starting campaigns on YouTube to get content creators to oppose the bill. They have also threatened to block Australians from Google services telling the public, “The way Aussies search everyday on Google is at risk from new government regulation.” (Meanwhile, they have recently been taking some steps to pay for news.) Facebook has also suggested that they will pull out of Australia, however the government has stated that they will not “respond to threats” and have said that paying for news will be “inevitable.” Australia is not the only jurisdiction that is moving against Google and Facebook to protect local news. Just recently, several newspapers in West Virginia filed a lawsuit against Google and Facebook for anti-competitive practices relating to advertising, claiming that they “have monopolized the digital advertising market, thereby strangling a primary source of revenue for newspapers.”

This issue takes on a moral salience when we consider the relative importance of local journalism. For example, people who live in areas where the local news has disappeared have reported only hearing about big things like murders, while stories on local government, business, and communities issues go unheard. For example, “As newsrooms cut their statehouse bureaus, they also reduced coverage of complex issues like utility and insurance regulation, giving them intermittent and superficial attention.” Without such news it becomes more difficult to deal with corruption and there is less accountability. Empirical research suggests that local journalism can help reduce corruption, increase responsiveness of elected officials, and encourage political participation. The importance of local journalism has been sufficient to label the decline of newspapers a threat to democracy. Indeed, studies show that when people rely more on national news and social media for information, they are more vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation.

Other nations, such as Canada, have taken a different approach by having the federal government subsidize local news across the country with over half a billion dollars in funding. Critics, however, argue that declining newspapers are a matter of old models failing to adapt to new market forces. While many newspapers have tried to embrace the digital age, these steps can create problems. For example, some news outlets have tried to entice readers with a larger social media presence and by making the news more personalized. But if journalists are more focused on getting clicks, they may be less likely to cover important news that doesn’t already demand attention. Personalizing news also plays to our biases, making it less likely that we will encounter different perspectives, and more likely that we will create a filter bubble that will echo our own beliefs back to us. This can make political polarization worse. Indeed, a good example of this can be found in the current shift amongst the political right in the U.S. away from Fox News to organizations like NewsMax and One America News because they reflect a narrower and narrower set of perspectives.

Google and Facebook – and others opposed to legislation like that proposed in Australia – argue that both sides benefit from the status quo. They argue that their platforms bring readers to newspapers. Google, for example, claims that they facilitated 3.44 billion visits to Australian news in 2018. And both Google and Facebook emphasize that news provides limited economic value to the platforms. However, this seems like a strange argument to make; if the news doesn’t matter much for your business, why not simply remove the news feeds from Google rather than wage a costly legal and PR battle?

Professor of Media Studies Amanda Lotz argues that the primary business of commercial news media has been to attract an audience for advertisers. This worked so long as newspapers were one of the only means to access information. With the internet this is no longer the case; “digital platforms are just more effective vehicles for advertisers seeing to buy consumer’s attention.” She argues that the news needs to get out of the advertising business; save journalism rather than the publishers. One way to do this would be by strengthening independent public broadcasters or by providing incentives to non-profit journalism organizations. This raises an important moral question for society: has news simply become a necessary public good like firefighting and policing; one that is not subject to the free market? If so, then the future of local news may be a moral question of whether news has any business in business.

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Should News Sites Have Paywalls?

photograph of partial newspaper headlines arranged in a stack

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

If you’ve read any online article produced by a reputable newspaper in the last ten years, you’ve inevitably bumped into a paywall. Even if you’ve managed to slip through the cracks, you’ve seen a glaring yellow box in the corner, reminding you that this is your last free article for the month. Maybe this gets you thinking about the ethics of pay-to-read journalism, so you seek out articles like Alex Pareene’s piece for The New Republic, only to find that an article about the dangers of paywalls is hidden behind yet another paywall.

If you do manage to read Pareene’s piece, you’ll find that he makes some good points about what he calls “the media wars,” the uphill battle between costly but fact-based journalism (like The New York Times, which erected its paywall back in 2011) and the endless stream of accessible, but factually untrue, stories churned out by the conservative media machine.

How has reputable journalism become so unprofitable? First off, big tech companies like Google and Facebook receive the majority of ad revenue from online content, as Alex C. Madrigal explains. Local newspapers get lost in the bottomless sea of content, and are ultimately unable to compete. As a 2020 report from the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media showed, small news sources are disappearing at an alarming rate, creating “news deserts” in online spaces. Conservative propaganda machines, backed by a seemingly endless supply of money, swiftly filled that void, resulting in an increasingly homogeneous and right-leaning landscape of digital journalism.

As Pareene points out, putting up a paywall is “the only model that seems to work, in this environment, for funding particular kinds of journalism and commentary.” But if you do this, sites like Stormfront “will set up shop outside the walls, to entertain everyone unwilling to pay the toll.” Furthermore, “subscription models by definition self-select for an audience seeking high-quality news and exclude people who would still benefit from high-quality news but can’t or don’t want to pay for it. ” In other words, paywalls only perpetuate the divide between fact-based journalism and free propaganda.

But at the same time, paywalls are necessary for papers that value honest reporting. Solid journalism requires training, time, and money, and those who dedicate their life to the pursuit of the truth must be compensated for their labor. Free content is so easy to produce because it doesn’t require much time or effort to disseminate a lie.

It’s a problem without an easy fix. We might just encourage everyone to buy a newspaper subscription, but as the post-pandemic economy worsens, that solution appears less and less viable. A 2019 report released by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that a measly sixteen percent of people in the United States (the majority of whom tended to be wealthy and well-educated to begin with) pay for their news online. When only the well-off can afford quality journalism, fake news inevitably flourishes.

As Pareene says, this situation is not just a failure on the part of media outlets, but “a democratic problem, in need of a democratic solution.” This sentiment is echoed by Victor Pickard, who argues in his 2019 book Democracy without Journalism? that “Without a viable news media system, democracy is reduced to an unattainable ideal.” As the coronavirus pandemic continues to alter the fabric of everyday life, and conspiracy theories play an increasingly important role in national politics, reliable journalism is more important than ever, and new models for generating profit will have to emerge if anything is to change.

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Bad Science, Bad Science Reporting

3d image of human face with severalpoints of interest circled

It tends to be that only the juiciest of developments in the sciences become newsworthy: while important scientific advances are made on a daily basis, the general public hear about only a small fraction of them, and the ones we do hear about do not necessarily reflect the best science. Case in point: a recent study that made headlines for having developed an algorithm that could detect perceived trustworthiness in faces. The algorithm used as inputs a series of portraits from the 16th to the 19th centuries, along with participant’s judgments of how trustworthy they found the depicted faces. The authors then claimed that there was a significant increase in trustworthiness over the period of time they investigated, which they attributed to lower levels of societal violence and greater economic development. With an algorithm thus developed, they then applied it to some modern-day faces, comparing Donald Trump to Joe Biden, and Meghan Markle to Queen Elizabeth II, among others.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that once the media got wind of the study that articles with names like “Meghan Markle looks more trustworthy than the Queen” and “Trust us, it’s the changing face of Britain” began popping up online. Many of these articles read the same: they describe the experiment, show some science-y looking pictures of faces with dots and lines on them, and then marvel at how the paper has been published in Nature Communications, a top journal in the sciences.

However, many have expressed serious worries with the study. For instance, some have noted how the paper’s treatment of their subject matter – in this case, portraits from hundreds of years ago – is uninformed by any kind of art history, and that the belief that there was a marked decrease in violence over that time is uniformed by any history at all. Others note how the inputs into the algorithm are exclusively portraits of white faces, leading some to make the charge that the authors were producing a racist algorithm. Finally, many have noted the very striking similarity between what the authors are doing and the long-debunked studies of phrenology and physiognomy, which purported to show that the face of one’s skull and nature of one’s facial features were indicative of their personality traits, respectively.

There are many ethical concerns that this study raises. As some have noted already, developing an algorithm in this manner could be used as a basis for making racist policy decisions, and would seem to lend credence to a form of “scientific racism.” While these problems are all worth discussing, here I want to focus on a different issue, namely how a study lambasted by so many, with so many glaring flaws, made its way to the public eye (of course, there is also the question of how the paper got accepted in such a reputable journal in the first, but that’s a whole other issue).

Part of the problem comes down to how the results of scientific studies are communicated, with the potential for miscommunications and misinterpretations along the way. Consider again how those numerous websites clamoring for clicks with tales of the trustworthiness of political figures got their information in the first place, which was likely from a newswire service. Here is how ScienceDaily summarized the study:

“Scientists revealed an increase in facial displays of trustworthiness in European painting between the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries. The findings were obtained by applying face-processing software to two groups of portraits, suggesting an increase in trustworthiness in society that closely follows rising living standards over the course of this period.”

Even this brief summary is misleading. First, to say that scientists “revealed” something implies a level of certainty and definitiveness in their results. Of course, all results of scientific studies are qualified: there is never an experiment that will say that it is 100% certain of its results, or that, when measuring different variables, that there is a definitive cause and effect relationship between them. The summary does qualify this a little bit – in saying that the study “suggests” an increase in trustworthiness. But this is misleading for another reason, namely that the study does not purport to measure actual trustworthiness, but perceptions of trustworthiness.

Of course, a study about an algorithm measuring what people think trustworthiness looks like is not nearly as exciting as a trustworthiness detection machine. And perhaps because the difference can be easily overlooked, or because the latter is likely to garner much more attention than the former, the mistake shows up in several of the outlets reporting it. For example:

“Meghan was one and a half times more trustworthy than the Queen, according to researchers.”

“Consultants from PSL Analysis College created an algorithm that scans faces in painted portraits and pictures to find out the trustworthiness of the individual.”

“Meghan Markle has a more “trustworthy” face than the Queen, a new study claims.”

“From Boris Johnson to Meghan Markle – the algorithm that rates trustworthiness.”

Again, the problem here is that the study never made the claim that certain individuals were, in fact, more trustworthy than others. But that news outlets and other sites report it as such compound worries that one might employ the results of the study to reach unfounded conclusions about who is trustworthy and who isn’t.

So there are problems here at three different levels: first, with the nature and design of the study itself; second, with the way that newswire services summarized the results, making them seem more certain than they really were; and third, with the way that sites that used those summaries presented the results in order to make it look more interesting and legitimate than it really was, without raising any of the many concerns expressed by other scientists. All of these problems compound to produce the worries that the results of the study could be misinterpreted and misused.

While there are well-founded ethical concerns about how the study itself was conducted, it is important not to ignore what happens after the studies are finished and their results disseminated to the public. The moral onus is not only on the scientists themselves, but also on those reporting on the results of scientific studies.

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

photograph of bar graph made of various colored blocks

I want to draw your attention to a truly awful misuse of statistics. Published on the Markets section of the CNBC website, it looks like this:

For context, the preamble to the introduction of the chart states that,

“The US economy added a record number of jobs in May as it appeared to bounce off the bottom of the coronavirus recession, and now the chart of jobs gains and losses is starting to look like a ‘V’.”

“V-shaped recovery,” the article explains, is “a sharp fall in economic activity followed by a dramatic rise.” And while it would be great if that’s what this chart showed, it does not. Forget for a moment that it does not say what kinds of jobs have been lost and which have been gained. What’s far more misleading is that even if the change to the number of jobs in America was an increase of 2.5 million from the previous month, that would still mean that the total number of jobs lost since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic was approximately 18.2 million. That does not sound like a dramatic rise in economic activity and, when plotted properly, looks nothing close to a “V”.

The saying “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” comes most directly from Mark Twain (although its origin is unclear). Statistics can be a powerful and informative tool if used correctly, but they are also subject to misinterpretation and manipulation. It is unclear whether the above case was the former or the latter; perhaps most charitably we can chalk the misrepresentation of data up to an overeager hopefulness about the economy. Other recent events, however, have seemed to fall much more clearly into the third variety of Twain’s category of lies, representing cases in which statistics have been intentionally manipulated in order to promote a particular agenda.

Consider, for instance, a recent op-ed by Heather MacDonald. In response to the ongoing protests of police violence against black Americans, MacDonald argues that the apparent problem is overblown, and that, in fact, “there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias” by police officers. In making her case she provides plenty of statistical support, making reference to The Washington Post’s police shootings database. Her reasoning goes as follows: there are an enormous number of incidents of police encounters with individuals every year, and only a minuscule percentage of them result in someone being killed. Therefore, the recent killings that have been the impetus for the protests are not “representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians.”

Several news outlets have pointed out that this is bad reasoning. For one, the statistics from The Washington Post database clearly show that Black Americans are being killed by police officers at rates that are massively disproportionate, a fact that, far from debunking the view that there is widespread racial bias by police, reinforces it. Fox News opinion-stater Tucker Carlson similarly massages the data in a recent op-ed. In it, he attempts to show that the protests are overblown by appealing to the statistic that since 2015, “of the 802 shootings in which the race of the police officer and the suspect was noted, 371 of those killed were white, 236 were black.” Again, what Carlson fails to mention is that, given how many more white Americans there are, the rate in which Black Americans are killed by police is still double that of whites.

While these op-eds exemplify poor statistical reasoning, it is also difficult to interpret them charitably as honest mistakes. Carlson in particular has vocally opposed the protests, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement in general. But while it is perhaps not surprising that someone like Carlson would take the line that he takes, there is a reason why misusing statistics can be seen as one of the worst categories of lies.

There are different reasons for thinking that lies are morally wrong, but many involve a kind of disrespect of the autonomy of the person being lied to; in other words, by lying to you I impede your ability to make well-informed decisions, and in turn your ability to achieve your goals. Of course, some kinds of lies seem worse than others. Perhaps we can think of our three categories of lies in the following way. Take “lies” to be those straightforward cases in which I tell you something I take to be false, and in doing so attempt to deceive you. What Twain refers to as “damned lies” might be thought of as what some have called “bald-faced lies,” namely lies that are so obvious that they are not even intended to be deceptive. For instance, say that I have lost my favorite mug, but then catch you drinking from it in the break room. If I ask you whether you, in fact, took my mug, you may respond with a bald-faced lie, saying that you have no idea what I’m talking about while taking a sip. Here it seems that, at the very least, you have no preconceptions about getting away with lying; at worst, your lie is so transparent that you can’t be said to even be trying to deceive me.

Finally, misusing statistics seems to be a particularly egregious method of lying as one is not merely intending to deceive one’s audience, but is doing so in such a way that they purport to be expressing views that are supported by independent, objective evidence. By lying with statistics I thus attempt to shift responsibility for my claims from myself to the numbers. We can see this kind of behavior in those op-eds from Carlson: instead of taking ownership over claims that he is making, he takes himself to merely be a conduit for statistical truths, and thus if one has issues with those truths, he cannot be held accountable for them.

What is the best way to combat statistical lies? Perhaps most straightforwardly by paying attention to the context in which statistics are presented, and to take care not to mistake numbers for objectivity. Misusing statistics may be a particularly effective way of spreading misinformation because it may seem that numbers are incapable of lying. Of course, even if this is true, people who generate and present those numbers are more than capable of lying with them.

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Coronavirus Briefings: Virtue in Ignorance?

photograph of Trump answering questions at press briefing with Vice President Pence and Dr. Fauci one either side

Last week, KUOW, an NPR Member station in Seattle, said that it would no longer air the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings live. On Wednesday, CNN and MSNBC both cut away from the president’s briefing when Trump kicked off the report by talking about a new counter-narcotics operation and progress on the border wall. CNN’s John King called Trump’s manipulation of Americans’ fear-driven attention “shameless” and “political.” But these networks’ actions have also been criticized for political bias in refusing to relay the news of the day. The decision to cease coverage of the president’s special briefings represents another chapter in the ongoing debate about how the media should cover Trump, and, more generally, where news agencies’ obligation to the public lies.

As of the time of this writing, over 200,000 people have signed a petition asking media outlets to stop covering the president’s coronavirus briefings live. Many of those individuals are no doubt motivated by party identification, but there are a number of moral reasons that are being offered as justification. Chief among these are appeals to decency and presidential decorum. Many have objected to the way that Trump has transformed (or perhaps weaponized) these fireside chats into political rallies. National emergency briefings aren’t the time for partisan politics, and they certainly aren’t the time for campaigning. These daily television spots are not legitimate policy briefings genuinely attempting to inform the public, but spectacles put on for political purposes. Flanked by muzzled science experts and a carousel of business leaders, Trump projects power while lacking substance. He bad-mouths reporters, fields planted questions, and is self-congratulatory when his guests aren’t too busy singing his praises. Critics argue that such displays are beneath the dignity of the office.

Second, there is a very real fear concerning the amount of misinformation that Trump has been circulating when talking off the cuff. That kind of ad libbing is deadly. While we are confronted by a disease that threatens to kill as many as 240,000 of us (in the U.S. alone), our current leader can’t be bothered to get his facts straight or fall in line with the recommendations of experts. At the very least, news outlets have an obligation not to give a platform to epistemic trespassers or snake oil salesmen. All the after-the-fact commentary and correction in the world can’t undo the damage being done on live TV as Trump undermines and contradicts public health experts.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that everything the president does or says is, in a fundamental way, noteworthy. As Jack Shafer of Poltico writes,

He speaks and economic markets move. He speaks and political markets shudder. Even when he holds his tongue—a rare occurrence for our current president, I’ll admit—the world shifts. Like it or not, his lies move markets, too.

As such, we must consider whether these daily briefings represent important news items even if the content may be actively causing harm. Even the president’s most vocal critics can see the benefit of having a daily public record of the president’s words for the sake of transparency and accountability.

Further, these daily briefings also serve as a window into the brain and soul of our commander-and-chief. Rarely are our political leaders called upon day after day to give live updates on an ongoing emergency and to do so in a way that is suitable for consumption by the general public. What the president says, how he decides to frame it, and how he comports himself while doing it, all convey important information that transcends what fits on the page or can be communicated by an amended account. In these productions, believers hear hope and self-assurance; and critics hear braggadocio and incoherence. Even if it’s true that there is nothing more on offer than spin and self-promotion, aren’t even those performances worth relaying to the public?

The answer to that question may all come down to our pessimism regarding the public’s  competence. Those in favor of stopping coverage are inclined to play the role of guardian. As Shafer argues,

[Their] greatest fear isn’t that Trump will lie or that Trump’s lies will somehow deceive them. What they worry about the most is that the average viewer will be sucked in by Trump’s lies. This paternalistic mindset holds that the same individual who can be trusted to vote in elections can’t be trusted on his own to listen to long, unbroken statements from the president. He must be guided and protected by volunteer censors.

But we can’t have it both ways; a truly informed voter can’t be spoon-fed. It may be that those who are willing to tune in should decide for themselves the value of the information being shared.

Finding a middle ground in this disagreement on the media’s role in relaying the president’s message is not easy (nor is it a new problem). National Public Radio, for example, has made the decision to stop airing the briefings live. Instead it offers commentary and analysis, while including a link to the full briefing should its users care to see it. In defense of this move, Elizabeth Jensen, public editor for NPR, explains the newsroom’s mission to “serve the public and democracy,” writing,

I take that to mean that it should provide facts to help listeners make decisions in their lives, not spin, particularly at a time when public health is at stake. That means having its reporters listen to the briefing and immediately share important updates in the newscasts and newsmagazines, without giving a platform for falsehoods, or speculative comments on as-yet-untested treatments or campaign rally-style rants.

Perhaps this is a suitable compromise between the values of transparency and journalistic integrity. Or perhaps this again privileges opinion over facts and editorializing over reporting, or objectionably puts “knowers” in a position to protect the rest of us.

Other White House correspondents have proposed alternative solutions: “I don’t think trying to keep him from people because he lies is necessarily the right answer. Cover him aggressively, but let people see what he’s saying.” To that end, “networks could adapt, and carry them live, but fact-check in real time.” Whether such a strategy is feasible or effective remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, it may be that, regardless of the stance news outlets take, their consumers will always simply hear what they want to hear.

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Fighting Fire with Smoke: On CPAC’s “Anti-Greta”

photograph of climate protest signs ("Not Cool")

This week it was announced that Naomi Seibt, dubbed the “Anti-Greta Thunberg,” will be speaking at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Seibt, 19, preaches to her ~50,000 YouTube followers the dangers of “climate alarmism,” and reveals the “despicably anti-human ideology” at the foundation of our climate change discourse and fearful prognostications. In contrast, Seibt says “I don’t want you to panic,” and assures her flock that “These days, climate change science isn’t a science at all.”

The Washington Post’s front-page profile of Seibt Monday following the announcement was met with criticism. “Why,” asks one reader, “would The Post print a profile of the efforts of a European teenager to dismiss, distort, distract and show dismay at the climate movement?” The paper’s choice to dedicate so much time and space to Seibt, they argue, threatens to normalize fringe beliefs, further derail the climate conversation, and promote obvious propaganda.

Propaganda? While the German YouTube influencer has claimed to be “without an agenda, without an ideology,” Seibt is currently under the employ of the Heartland Institute, a conservative “think tank” once dedicated to discrediting the science behind secondhand smoke, and now devoted to climate change denial. The Institute remains committed to protecting the interests of big business and seeks to reverse the “negative impacts of overreaching environmental regulations.”

It’s not hard to read the playbook and see the strategy at play. As Graham Brookie, director of the Digital Forensics Research Lab, explains,

“The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.”

This is not merely misinformation; it is not the product of unintentional error. This is a disinformation campaign intentionally and strategically designed to muddy the waters.

While these kinds of campaigns have proven incapable of moving the needle on public opinion when it comes to partisan politics–given the strength of our preexisting political beliefs–they can be extremely effective on swaying opinion on medical and scientific questions–given our lack of knowledge and weaker starting points. You won’t sway a Trump supporter to vote for Bernie, but you might be able to convince a parent who vaccinates to consider your anti-vaxx pamphlet. By continuing to promote voices like Seibt who say, “I don’t want to get people to stop believing in man-made climate change,” but also argue, “Are man-made CO2 emissions having that much impact on the climate? I think that’s ridiculous to believe,” entities like the Heartland Institute hope to erode public support and stifle legislative action. Given these modest goals, recruiting true believers would be great, but simply encouraging agnosticism will do just fine.

So with the terms of success so low and the stakes so high, should The Washington Post be condemned for playing into climate change deniers’ hands? Has the news organization acted against public interest by giving climate change denial a platform? Is it accountable for normalizing fringe beliefs?

Some argue that The Washington Post is in the wrong for lending credibility to the notion of “climate skeptics”–“a euphemism coined by climate-change deniers to disguise their rejection of massive volumes of peer-reviewed science as reasonable skepticism.” By adopting the language of Seibt and Heartland, the paper legitimizes an unsound and dishonest position. As such, the piece represents an obvious failure to uphold professional ethics. “At the very least, journalists have a responsibility to avoid amplifying bad faith nonsense spread by corporations looking to pollute the public discourse.”

Others see The Washington Post’s piece as an exploration of Seibt’s claim to expert testimony (a concept Ken Boyd wrote about Wednesday). It evaluates the reasons on offer for considering Seibt a credible and reliable source of information about how to respond to climate change (from her affiliation with Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the story of her recruitment and marketing by Heartland). It’s damning without needing to tell us so, and lets its subject speak for itself.

In the end, our diverging opinions on whether The Washington Post’s coverage represents uncritical acceptance or the relaying of fact free of judgment likely depends on our confidence in the reasoning abilities of The Post’s readership. It’s true that public attention is a finite resource. To pick from a crowded field any particular subject and direct readers to it rather than some other subject is to exercise an enormous amount of discretion. And there are clear cases of media outlets violating this trust. But the elevation of Seibt by CPAC makes The Post’s profile relevant, even if it’s for no other reason than to know thy enemy.

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Trust in News Media Won’t Be Easily Restored

This post originally appeared in The Indy Star on November 2, 2015.

Anybody who has ever been lied to or betrayed by a friend or coworker knows just how difficult it is to re-establish trust in the offending party. Sometimes, credibility that is destroyed can never be fully restored. So it is with America’s news media, which recently got yet another dismal report on public perception of the journalism industry. The media face a stiff climb in order to get back in the citizenry’s good graces.

The annual Gallup survey of media trust shows only 40 percent of Americans have a great deal, or even a fair amount, of confidence that media report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” That matches the historic low marks recorded in election years 2012 and 2014. Over the years of the Gallup research, the lowest citizen confidence in media has come during election years. This year, of course, is not a general election year. Almost a fourth of all Americans now say they have no trust in media reporting at all.

Respondents who report they are politically independent are turning against the media in big numbers. Only 33 percent of such citizens trust the journalism industry to be fair, down a staggering 22 points in just 16 years. Independents now view the media at about the same low level as Republicans, long considered the most distrustful of media.

The most disturbing component of the study is that younger adults, ages 18 to 49, have less media trust than adults over 50. Only 36 percent of younger adults have confidence in the media, down 17 points in the last 12 years. Young adults who already have a dim view of media fairness won’t be easily won back.

The decline of younger adults trusting the media is likely a factor in the dwindling number of people who seek careers as journalists. Enrollment in college journalism programs has dropped in recent years. The highly regarded Columbia University School of Journalism is cutting staff.

Of those students in college journalism and mass media programs, approximately 70 percent are studying advertising or public relations. There was a time when PR and advertising tracks were in the less prestigious hallways of j-schools. It is hard to blame college students, however, when public relations and advertising executives are viewed as more reputable than reporters. Beyond that, reporter salaries now average only two thirds of what a public relations specialist makes, and that gap is widening. The public thinks the journalism industry is weak now, and things will only get worse given that the best and brightest in colleges aren’t seeking news careers.

Beating up on the media is now a favorite sport of most political figures, and that sustained bludgeoning is surely a factor in sinking media trust assessments. President Obama, in spite of generally beneficial news coverage during his presidential campaigns, has fought the press on several fronts during his two terms, taking particular shots at Fox News.

The presidential candidates currently getting the most traction are all ripping into the media. Donald Trump and Ben Carson on the Republican side and Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have all trashed the news media in recent weeks. Politicians’ complaining about bad press is nothing new, but the intensity and constancy of the animosity is noteworthy. It’s resonating with voters because it reinforces current public sentiment.

The American people no longer view reporters as the public surrogates they should be. Trust can’t be restored until news audiences look at reporters and sense that the journalists represent the public’s interests. Trust can’t be restored as long as the nation’s news agenda is saturated with sensational, yet low impact, stories about pop culture figures, such as Cecil the lion and a county clerk in Kentucky.

Trust can’t be restored as long as the public senses that the news media are driven more by bottom-line profit and ratings motivations than by a sense of public service, even though those two objectives are not mutually exclusive.

The trust gap between the public and media industry can be closed only when news organizations get the courage to change the vision and prevailing culture of their newsrooms. The news industry, and the nation, can’t afford another 10-point trust decline in the next 10 years. If that happens, there will no longer be a news industry. Whatever is left over will be merely part of the creative writing industry.