I am coming to the conclusion that I will never understand reporters. Specifically, I will never understand their desperate fixation on "he said, she said" clashes of opinion. (1) When they find a story in which pretty much everybody agrees, they still tend to turn it into "he said, she said." (2) And when they find a story in which one side is clearly lying, they still tend to turn it into "he said, she said." Paul Krugman has a joke about this: if the Bush Administration were to announce that it thought the earth was flat, the next day's headlines would read: "Opinions Differ About Shape of Earth."
This article does trick (1) to me and Greg Mankiw. (This is an example of trick (2).) Greg and I agree on a huge amount of stuff. I think that the 3.5%-4.0% growth we are likely to have over the next couple of years will produce employment growth (an average of perhaps 120,000 a month) but will do little if anything to reduce the unemployment rate. He thinks that the 3.5%-4.0% growth we are likely to have over the next couple of years will produce employment growth (an average of perhaps 140,000 a month) but will do little if anything to reduce the unemployment rate.
So what does the reporter write?
There's one problem: There's no White House official disputing the prognosis. The White House official and I agree pretty much completely. In an earlier part of the interview not quoted, I said that I expected to see employment picking up--just not enough to significantly reduce the unemployment rate. In his interview with the reporter, Greg says that we will probably see employment picking up--but is careful not to say a word forecasting a significantly falling unemployment rate. He can't do so because his projections of the distribution of outcomes over the next year are the same as mine: a 20% chance of rapidly-rising unemployment and a significantly-falling unemployment rate, a 60% chance of rising unemployment and a roughly stable or slightly rising unemployment rate, and a 20% chance of falling employment and a relatively rapidly-rising unemployment rate.The reason for the bleak [unemployment rate] outlook... boils down to basic math. The number of new workers is climbing about 1 percent a year. If productivity increases by an annual rate of 3 percent -- and the rate has been above 5 percent both this year and last -- economic growth, as measured by gross domestic product, needs to be significantly more than 4 percent next year before there is drastic improvement in the unemployment rate. "I don't see where the demand is going to come from to produce a falling unemployment rate," said J. Bradford DeLong, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "Very few people are predicting real G.D.P. growth of more than 4 percent."
White House officials dispute that prognosis. If productivity and growth are rising, they contend, then new jobs will follow. "There is a very strong correlation between real G.D.P. growth and developments in the labor market," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "We will see employment picking up by the end of the year, and we will see very strong advances in employment in 2004."
Yet somehow the "White House officials dispute that prognosis" has to get into the story. Somehow the story is not complete if it says that White House and Democratic economists all agree that employment is likely to grow but the unemployment rate not likely to fall over the next year or so. Somehow the story must include an "Administration critic says X, Administration rebuts part."
Posted by DeLong at September 16, 2003 06:07 PM | TrackBack
My model is that reporters have a test. If the article can't trigger an argument between: husband and wife, coworkers over the water cooler, or the parties gathers around the lunch table then it the article doesn't have legs. Clearly an article that triggers discussion is more likely to get propogated.
I've wondered a bit if the 'mail this article to a friend' (what with it's associated voting) might not tip that things a bit so that articles the are 'interesting' as v.s. argumentative might gain some points on the newspaper editor's score board.
I assume they teach this kind of Memitic Engineering at the trade schools.
It's an attempt to maintain the myth of their impartiality, which is of course a different concept than honesty.
Posted by: P6 on September 16, 2003 07:45 PMOne part of it is that reporters have to write a lot in a hurry, and he-said/she-said is a formula that makes writing easy. It's like they have templates where they just have to slot in a little data and the story is written. Same with scandals, cute little kids in various circumstances, Rocky making it against the odds, etc.
But the neutrality / objectivity is the killer. Reporters are forbidden to "take sides" or care about anything. Everything anyone says is assumed to be a point of view, and there always has to be another point of view. If you write it up any other way, you're biassed.
The right wing has learned to game this system expertly. A lot of the non-credible spokesmen you slam from the NRO, Heritage Society, etc. make their livings standing up and saying nonsense to provide the other "point of view". The "last man standing" attitude of a lot of conservative commenters here and elsewhere comes from the same place, IMNAAHO. As long as you can keep a straight face while you're saying something, it's a "point of view". (And the automatic rejoinder to what I just said is "The Democrats are just as bad", followed by Clinton's penis.)
And last, in a big part of the press there's Clever Hans careerism. Many in media think of their job as figuring out what they're supposed to say rather than digging out the facts, much less understanding them. Someone who suffers for telling the truth (e.g. Seymour Hersh) is regarded as purely and simply a sucker, rather than as a hero. "He should have known he couldn't say that".
Large chunks of the media ownership are either conservative or at least strongly non-liberal (with exceptions on lifestyle issues). So the Clever Hanses tend center-left.
A completely cynical system.
Posted by: zizka on September 16, 2003 08:09 PMdaily journalists are poepple who write fluently, thus are self-selected/market selected. they are not likely to overlap with those who think clearly ofr deeply. ( i once read a short book on foucault which was written in unusually clear and fluent prose for an academic. supposedly foucault's core theme was "asocial freedom", but he never bothered to inquire whether there was any such thing as "asocial freedom" anymore than thereis such a thing as dry rain.) for the rest the lack of diversity in media may have something to do with the lack of diversity in media (i.e. the concentration of ownership) combined with the facticious/authoritarian nature of media (to give a reductive account of heidegger's concept of being- it is, therefore it is a commandment.)
Posted by: john c. halasz on September 16, 2003 09:09 PMTwo sides to every story. And only two sides to every story.
NY Times, science section, 5/20/97:
"Virtually everyone agrees that without the natural world, the human economy, and indeed human life, could not exist."
Virtually?
(Someone tell Krugman this is universal behavior on the part of the press, not a political partisan thing. They pay equal respect to Democrats who say the world is banana-shaped.)
"Somehow the story must include an 'Administration critic says X, Administration rebuts part.'"
The operative word is "story". If everyone agrees about something, what's the story?
All the high-sounding principles notwithstanding, the goal of the press is to grab the audience's attention to be able to make money selling papers and advertising -- the Times with its audience just like Fox and the Enquirer with theirs, no less.
To hold attention there has to be a story line. If no conflict, what's the story line?
Isn't it Blinder's Law? The more economists agree about something the more they are ignored?
Brad, I'm not normally very picky about grammer and spelling mistakes, but you really need to go through and get the ups and downs and un's right in that post cause as it stands it is pretty much hopeless.
"employment is likely to grow but the unemployment rate likely to fall over the next year or so" you meant the unemployment rate is UNlikely to fall, (I mean thats the point of the whole post).
Or in the previous paragraph where you have "a 20% chance of rapidly-rising UNemployment and a significantly-falling unemployment rate," Probably the "un" you lost in the final paragraph.
Dave
Posted by: Dave Richardson on September 16, 2003 10:35 PMIt is the "fair and balanced" reporting syndrome. They should rename it "fair, balanced and worthless" reporting.
Posted by: Mike Rifkin on September 17, 2003 12:36 AMYour second-last para in this post needs editing:
"He can't do so because his projections of the distribution of outcomes over the next year are the same as mine: a 20% chance of rapidly-rising EMPLOYMENT and a significantly-falling unemployment rate, a 60% chance of rising EMPLOYMENT and a roughly stable or slightly rising unemployment rate, and a 20% chance of falling employment and a relatively rapidly-rising unemployment rate."
Posted by: terry on September 17, 2003 01:24 AMgrammar
Posted by: big al on September 17, 2003 03:35 AMThis is why I read The Economist. Hardly ever a quote, just clear analysis and ´- most importantly - an opinion.
I worked in journalism myself (quit last year)and I have always wondered why my colleges are so afraid to write something down without somebody else saying it. Oftentimes they first write their analysis, and then they start calling the so-called experts and ask the famous (stupid) question: " Don’t you agree that... " After finding someone who agrees, they simply cut and paste that name into their story.
"Someone tell Krugman this is universal behavior on the part of the press, not a political partisan thing. They pay equal respect to Democrats who say the world is banana-shaped."
I can imagine a world in which this were true. In that world, every time Brad, for example, was quoted on free trade or wage inflation, a union leader would be called, automatically, every time, to say that there's no such thing as wage inflation and that free trade is stealing American jobs. But that doesn't happen. Union representatives, left-liberals, etc., have very little voice in the media, and often enough when a leftish voice is cited it's a freak-show guy meant to scare children. There is no leftist equivalent of Ann Coulter or the AEI flaks getting that amount of attention.
Posted by: zizka on September 17, 2003 06:06 AMA nice little ditty (not new, possibly by the pre-WWII humorist A.P. Herbert):
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no ocasion to."
Tu quoque, Brad? The academic culture is surely also prone to exaggerate and personalise minor differences. This is not just a matter of the public and the press misunderstanding the scientific process, of dispute at the wild frontier of an expanding consensus, though they do. Look at the bitterness of the disputes in evolutionary biology between say Richard Lewontin and the late Stephen Jay Gould on the one side, and Steven Pinker and Edward O. Wilson on the other, over what seem to me to be matters of nuance and presentation. The alpha male thinker gets the prettiest female graduate students and the ripest bananas/consultancies, right?
Posted by: James Wimberley on September 17, 2003 07:11 AMWimberley, do you realize that you just provided the "other point of view" to DeLong's rather banal truism?
Posted by: zizka on September 17, 2003 08:42 AM