Then there’s the opposite problem—the sources shoved at us by think tanks, foundations, and all kinds of advocacy groups eager to make journalists’ lives easier and further their agendas by steering us to pre-screened sources that won’t stray too far off whatever reservation these organizations live on. That means being wary of those anecdotes which come from story banks maintained by various advocacy groups. This is why man-on-the street interviews are so refreshing. Pre-screening people for man-on-the-street interviews, though, is a journalistic no-no. I speak to the first five, six, or seven people who agree to chat. The interviews are what they are—no pre-screening, no searching for a point of view, no political litmus test, no he said-she said balance.
Their comments inject ordinary voices into the mix of PR-molded news and advocacy spin and push back against the reportage du jour, described by the late Columbia University journalism professor James Carey as “a journalism that reports the continuing stream of expert opinion, but because there is no agreement among experts, it is more like observing talk-show gossip and petty manipulation than bearing witness to the truth.”
The questions that Mike H. and others had about the Dan Korman interview illustrate a larger point. Reporters do need to get out and talk to ordinary people—and they need to make sure that those people aren’t pre-selected. They can’t take the easy way out and talk to their friends, family, or colleagues and pass them off as men and women on the street. We hope that’s not what NPR did.
The best defense possible, in this case, but I'd still argue that journalists going to the 'streets' literally mean the streets of urban America, and urban America is a disproportionately liberal and Democratic terrain. Trudy and Andrea Seabrook avoid the question of whether Mr. Korman, with his eco-friendly business and pro-taxation ideology, is really representative of small business owners, or of small business owners who are interested in expanding, growing - and hiring.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 14 Dec 2011 at 04:57 PM
Good piece by Trudy. In her original NPR piece, Seabrook made it crystal clear that the reason she headed out for person-on-the-street interviews was because Republicans and business groups opposed to higher taxes on "job creators" couldn't or wouldn't produce any such business owners for her to talk to. So Mike H.'s criticism was pretty far-fetched. I also posted a comment, quite different, about Seabrook's piece, and here it is:
Harris Meyer (HarrisMeyer) wrote:
This NPR report gives the misimpression, in line with Republican talking points, that a small business owner like Danny Korman is going to pay higher taxes under what the Democrats have proposed. But does Korman, who owns a store with eight employees, really make more than $250K a year? Only a tiny percentage of true small business owners make that kind of money. So if he makes $300K, ending the Bush tax cuts for income over $250K would cost Korman about $1500 more a year. And many Democrats want to limit the higher marginal rate to income over $1 million. I hope NPR will be present this issue more accurately in future reports. See page 10 of this Joint Committee on Taxation report.
http://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=3691
Monday, December 05, 2011 2:08:30 PM
#2 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Wed 14 Dec 2011 at 07:09 PM
Kudos for the follow-up, Trudy. NPR stonewalled you and got off the hook on this one, but at least you acknowledged the problem. For you guys that's a big step.
#3 Posted by JLD, CJR on Wed 14 Dec 2011 at 09:32 PM
Good of you to follow up on it, kudos.
#4 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 15 Dec 2011 at 02:49 PM
This is a non-problem, journalistically speaking.
Pick a section of any commercial highway in any town in America and knock on the first ten doors of the small businesses you find, and then interview the owners. Handled.
Do this and you're not going to see any broad support for larger government and steeper taxation. You are going to find that the people who make wealth and drive the economy want the government out of the picture.
"Professional journalists" know this to be true - this is why they would rather chew nails than actually interview business owners in any fair systematic way. Instead we get the opinion of an eco-friendly store owner presented as a random "man on the street".
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 15 Dec 2011 at 06:51 PM
The follow up was nice, but let's be clear - a problem is when a reporter doesn't disclose his partisan ties while inserting them into his campaign coverage. A problem is when a secretary of state in charge of the election also assumes the role of a campaign chief, as Ken Blackwell and Katherine Harris did during highly controversial elections. A problem is when the news media stands by and watches while the republicans repeatedly screw with the political process because saying the republicans are being lousy, cynical, country tanking, bastards will get you accused of bias even when it's 'plain to the eye' true.
A problem is not "this one time, an NPR reporter asked a vegan his opinion, and he was the same guy that was asked a question by moveon.org. It's a conspiracy dude."
Let me trade you. I'll let you have reporters avoiding vegans during their man on the street issue if you'll let me have reporters use the words "republican", "filibuster", "obstruction", in stories about the gridlock in government during the worst financial crisis in our recent history. Deal?
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 15 Dec 2011 at 09:43 PM
Time to toll the Reality Bell:
Every single academic study ever conducted has found a pervasive leftist bias among journalists... PERIOD.
And we don't need to run off to Harvard for evidence - according to a recent Pew survey, "professional journalists" identified themselves as "liberal" more than four times as often as they identified themselves as "conservative".
So what is the media doing to foster "diversity"? HUH?
#7 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 16 Dec 2011 at 07:55 AM
"Every single academic study ever conducted has found a pervasive leftist bias among journalists... PERIOD."
Left on issues of social freedom vs traditional values.
Center left to far right on economic issues.
Right in their reporting because any reporting from left of Jack Welsh gets treated as 'black helicopter mumbo jumbo' by the economics professors and reporters usually consulted on these matters (which was why reporting on the lead up to the greatest financial crisis in history was largely skeptical of the existence of a housing bubble) while Boswell's flying monkeys at newsbusters attack the reporting as being Maoist while the corporate executives at the parent company talk to the reporter's editors about how his tone reflects badly on their culture.
Which is why people like Trudy have to constantly correct the record on matters of health care and social security. Reporting from the left is bad for your career, whereas reporting from the perspective "poor people are lazy because of generous unemployment insurance" will get you a gig at the nytimes.
You want to know a problem? This is a problem:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/so_thats_why_the_press_wont_co_1.php
"The view that the American family, that you hold very powerfully, is fully under assault and that there is — and we can get into that — that is not accepted broad wisdom. I talk to a lot a lot a lot of left, right, center, neutral economists [and] you are the only person I’ve talked to in a year of covering this crisis who has a view that we have two equally acute crises: a financial crisis and a household debt crisis that is equally acute in the same kind of way. I literally don’t know who else I can talk to support that view."
Thanks Mr. 'left leaning' NPR reporter man!
I'm sorry if I don't think a vegan getting asked a question by NPR once doesn't rank in the category of problem. Coincedence != bias. You want to see bias? Look at the examples I posted above.
And a Merry Christmas to you.
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Dec 2011 at 11:50 AM
Let's do a thought experiment. All the Democrats in the MSM turn into their opposite numbers, politically, with the story selection, vocabulary, and framing devices that result. All the Republicans in the MSM do the same. Would anyone out there notice the difference? If so, how?
#9 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 16 Dec 2011 at 12:35 PM
If it was a coincidence that the same vegan, eco-store owner randomly ended up in two "man on the street" interviews... It was an entirely avoidable coincidence.
Nothing (except bias) is stopping any self-described "professional journalists" from fairly and systematically sampling the opinions of small business owners.
#10 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 16 Dec 2011 at 12:53 PM
Mark, if that meant that the conservative reporters were demanding we listen to the concerns of the OWS movement while the liberals kept harping on the republicans for their failure to compromise with radical democrats after the republicans put multiple offers on the table,
http://www.democracyjournal.org/23/the-myth-of-the-middle.php
I'd take that deal.
I'd be happy if just for once the parties responsible for hostage takingand gridlock paid some sort of price, were assigned some sort of responsibility.
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Dec 2011 at 04:05 PM
Speaking of hostage taking, looks like the Republicans are willing to do whatever it takes to extort that Keystone XL pipeline their oil lobbyist buddies are so obsessed with.... even if that means threatening a payroll tax hike.
Boehner sez: "Real nice middle class you got here. Be a real shame if somethin' were to happen to it, eh? Real shame.
Maybe you play ball and let my bosses have that pipeline, maybe we forget about this whole payroll tax thing. How's that sound?"
When people say the only thing Republicans care about is tax cuts, that's not entirely accurate; the tax cuts for billionaires are the only ones they actually fight for.
#12 Posted by Hardrada, CJR on Sat 17 Dec 2011 at 12:33 AM
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/government-shutdown-6617632
"It cannot be emphasized enough. Of the three issues under discussion, the polling data on two of them simply could not be clearer. The American people want taxes raised on the very wealthiest among us, and the American people do not want Paul Ryan's clammy hands anywhere near the Medicare program. Public opinion is (distressingly) ambivalent on the detainee provisions, but it's not overly popular with the people who have to implement it, and it has retired Marine generals throwing bricks at it, and, dammit, the president taught constitutional law, or so we are told repeatedly.
None of these "compromises" will solve a single one of the country's critical problems. None of these "compromises" will create a single job. All they will do is toss away almost every one of the major political advantages the Democratic party has going into the 2012 elections. My god, six months ago, Paul Ryan was a squawking albatross around his party's neck. (Remember how he said he'd "given up fear for Lent," and then proceeded to start charging people a fee to come to his town meetings, and setting the cops on constituents who showed up at his office while he was on vacation? Ah, thim was the days.) The "Ryan Plan" was well on its way to being an anchor. Now, thanks to the Democrats, and to a preposterously compliant elite political press, Ryan's rehabilitation is nearly complete. Nice work, fellas.
Here's a tip, gang: The American people are not angry at government because people yell at each other and nothing ever gets done. The American people are angry because people yell at each other and nothing the American people really want ever gets done. They want higher taxes on billionnaires. They want Medicare kept out of the hands of the vandals. If they think about it a little, they even like their jurisprudence with a little habeas corpus sprinkled on top. Instead, they get endless platitudes, and the steady, futile placating of an insatiable political opposition.
Jesus wept."
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 17 Dec 2011 at 01:48 AM
Fair enough, Thimbles. We have elections to decide these issues. Part of the reason for my own skepticism of the MSM is that all my life, and I'm not young, I've been hearing about how the voters support Democratic causes decisively. But they said in polls that they wanted a 'balanced budget' even as they were electing FDR during the Depression. I'm fairly sure Esquire magazine is far from having its finger on the pulse of the nation. As we've discussed, things like school levies are a good measure of the desire for higher taxes in exchange for more public services, not some generally-worded poll. I expect you will get majorities of voters in favor of voting themselves a share of some billionaire's income - voters are rational that way - while at the same time opposing taxes on themselves for services like local schools beyond what billionaires can pay. I expect voters support Medicare - absent any other alternative - in no small part because they have been paying Medicare taxes while working, and want their share back.
On national issues, voters have apparently been more receptive to Republican themes, not by a large margin, but clearly, since the 1960s. GOP presidential candidates have won 7 of 11 contests since 1968, for example, and they have been more conservative on the stump than in practice. The GOP has controlled the Senate for 18 of the last 32 years, and are a good bet to recapture it again in 2012, given the mathematics of who is up for re-election. When, after decades of skillful gerry-mandering, the Republicans won the House in 1994. They held it for 12 years. By instructive contrast, after winning the House back in 2006, the Dems could hold it for only four years, and most professionals don't see them taking it back in 2012. My point is that the dominant discourse of electoral politics has been framed as 'the Republicans are in real trouble unless they change their ways' because of their unpopular stands on 'the issues', yet they still keep winniing elections. H.L. Mencken used to begin responses to letters with 'Dear -----: You may be right'. You may be right, who knows. But there is something about the way our political journalism is framed and interpreted that misses something, and the above episode may be a minor case in point. I seriously doubt that the owner of an urban vegan, eco-friendly store is the best representative of small business owners (and workers) in the country, and I think Andrea Seabrook ought to know this. (We have federations of small business owners, if NPR needs some leads, and Chambers of Commerce.) The question I usually have after such NPR reports is - who are these people who are invisible between elections, but on Election Day seem to turn out in large numbers to vote Republican? NPR apparently doesn't know them. They don't live in DC or Manhattan, for one thing.
Peace.;
#14 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 17 Dec 2011 at 06:07 PM
Shorter Mark Richard
"Anything that contradicts my Right Wing distorted view of reality it bias."
Thanks for the input.
#15 Posted by Grumpy Demo, CJR on Mon 19 Dec 2011 at 10:30 AM
Hmm, I was talking to Thimbles - whose posts have been known to be (1) very partisan, and (2) run to some length. Some of us, left and right, need more than a bumper-sticker to make our arguments.
Learn to have the patience to read, and you may learn to write wittier put-downs, there, champ.
#16 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 19 Dec 2011 at 12:45 PM
Yeah, I'm kind of busy this close to Christmas so I thought I could outsource my commenting duties. Oh well, better luck next year.
#17 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 19 Dec 2011 at 01:50 PM
Anyone who's ever tried to do a rigorous probability-sample survey of "small businesses" in any particular city knows how hard it is to:
* get a reasonably complete and unbiased sample frame,
* make contact with any or all of the proprietors of any particular business, and
* solicit their cooperation and participation in a survey
without introducing or accepting a hundred different subtle biases, even when the investigator is trying very hard to avoid such biases.
A journalist simply choosing to do "man-on-the-street" interviews at a particular outdoor market (or strip mall) at a particular time of day or night is immediately introducing significant biases.
That's why casual, "man-on-the-street" interviews are best suited for adding colorful detail to an artificially-balanced "he said, she said" story. They do not add much--if any--value to a serious effort to gauge the actual prevalence of opinions, beliefs, or even self-reported behaviors.
#18 Posted by Ted Coltman, CJR on Mon 19 Dec 2011 at 06:09 PM