Journalistic Mediation

I just happened to be home on a Saturday night flipping channels when I caught the beginning of a political debate between Washington State Gubernatorial candidates Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi. If I hadn't watched the debate for myself I don't think I would have received very useful information from the front page newspaper story above. What occurred over the course of an hour was distilled into five minutes of reading.

I have often noted that when I view an event in person, the story told in the newspaper is often a very different experience from my own. The media mediates, it selects what to present, serving as a gatekeeper of information. What happened in a day is often whittled down on television broadcasts as the top 10 stories in 10 minutes! I guess today I was particularly surprised in the way the newspaper transmitted a story about this debate.

First of all I was taken back by the photograph that accompanied the text. Photos are so realistic and yet can be manipulated so cunningly. In this case the effect is subtle in that the incumbent, Governor Christine Gregoire is presented in profile and slightly out of focus while the challenger, Dino Rossi is presented in sharp focus with both eyes visible. The tone of the debate I watched was very agonistic and yet the candidates are frozen in time with a smile.

The image, as it turns out, is identical in message as the text. Dino Rossi is brought into sharp focus, while Gregoire is presented vaguely. Statistically I think you can see from the text presented on the front page that almost two-thirds of the text are quotes by Rossi. The article reads like the description of a prize fight with the challenger Rossi being the aggressor and Gregoire up against the ropes trying to cover. In this case the quotes are limited to mostly Rossi's promises of "I will balance the budget and not raise taxes." This is such a great quote because it gives the audience exactly what it wants to hear! It's very inclusive and yet divorced from the reality of our entire country's economic condition which appears to have a lot in common with the great depression.

In effect the newspaper is publishing campaign rhetoric for Rossi while choosing to leave out significant statements I heard during the debate which included Governor Gregoire citing her recent record of investing in early childhood education as a long term strategy for economic growth within the state. Through my wife's work as a researcher I have learned that statistically, for every dollar spent on early child care and education, a community receives $20 in economic benefit including savings through a reduction in subscription to social services programs and the criminal justice system. Gregoire had stressed a prioritization system for budget based upon values and principles but that didn't make it into the article. What made it instead was sound bytes about business climate and entrepreneurship which is the ideology of heritage and patriotism that resonates with the conservative American West values of my home town.

Ted Koppel justifies the editorializing of news information by saying, "All too often, we delude ourselves into believing that by simply focusing a live camera on an event, and dropping in the occasional ad lib, we are committing journalism. We're not. Journalism requires context and prioritizing. It entails separating the wheat from the chaff. What is deliberately left out of a news story is every bit as important as what is left in. Events don't happen in a vacuum. That's why we provide context."

I can accept the idea of mediation of raw information for purposes of telling the story, but I find myself concerned that the mainstream press is doing a disservice by not doing more investigative reporting and fact checking. The paper could have filled its column with information that could substantiate or refute the claims made by the candidates during the debate. The photograph selected could have limited the bias a little through selection of a symmetrical composition with greater depth of field. Another option would have been to publish two separate head shots, cropped tight in a manner that would stress the candidates intelligence rather than beauty. I'm reminded of how much wrangling goes into negotiated the terms for a political debate, right down to fighting over which side of the stage a candidate stands or sits on.

In terms of the text, if the newspaper wanted to offer a balanced approach they could have separated this article into two separate columns that analyzed what each candidate said during the debate issue by issue. This would have visually and literally given the appearance of impartial reporting. After all, aren't editorial columns supposed to be found on the Op-Ed page instead of the front?

What is omitted in this article is more important that what we was left for us to read, which is the same sound bytes that we are bombarded with daily in one of the most expensive and controversial Governor races in the country.

As consumers, we only see what we are looking for, and we only hear what we are open to. We filter out unnecessary data or anything that might cause cognitive dissonance. It is a biological survival instinct. Reporters are no different it seems. Media literacy is so important in order to even be aware of the bias in every message we are exposed to.