Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Science journalism is hard to get right. There is the constant struggle to clearly explain one’s topic without over-simplifying or misrepresenting by dumbing-down the details in hopes of communicating better and on the opposite side, explaining the topic in far too great an esoteric technical detail and far above the general understanding of one’s readers. There have been very few really effective science journalists — and most of them have erred a bit to one side or other of the line between correct science and a “popular science” version of reality.
In the last century or so, there has developed a new problem in science communications and science journalism. It is the Editorial Narrative — the overriding mandated “story” (an uber-story or story-line) set by the editor or editors of a newspaper, magazine, news outlet or scientific journal.
One might be tempted to think that in Science Journalism, this just means that the Editors are naturally biased towards the consensus view of various topics — biased towards the most commonly accepted scientific hypotheses or explanations. And this is trivially true of almost all publications in science — they tend to steer a wide berth around what they view as crackpot hypotheses and what seem to them to be just-plain-nutty ideas. Of course, there are some science news outlets that specialize in popularizing these sticky-edge ideas — and some of them are just fun to read — like the original early Popular Science Magazine which was, and still is, a mix of serious reporting about new breakthroughs and coverage of neat but very unlikely ideas [I am still waiting for delivery of my freezer-sized home atomic energy generator supplying unlimited-electricity].
But that is not what I mean here as “Editorial Narratives”. I’ll make a first brush attempt a working definition:
Editorial Narrative: A mandated set of guidelines for the overriding storyline for any news item concerning a specified topic, including required statements, conclusions and intentional slanting towards a particular preferred viewpoint. A statement from the Editors of “How this topic is to be presented.”
One ex-New York Times journalist wrote in November 2016:
“It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse [of that at the LA Times]. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “We set the agenda for the country in that room.”
What he is talking about is editorial mandates — rough outlines — of how journalists were to spin stories — about race, about police killings, about immigrants, about gender politics, about the new federal administration… well, about most everything. The result in some cases is what at first appears as “bias” but it is more than that. [If you are unsure of what political bias looks like, see the front page of the NY Times or the Washington Post any day of the week.]
I would like to be able to say that this couldn’t possibly be true of the Science section — or could it? Many readers here and others skeptical of the IPCC-version-consensus on Climate think that it could.
But surely, you ask — not in general, not in other science topics? I’m afraid that it is true — the Science section, the Health Section, the Medical News section — all of these news desks have editors in charge of them and — at least reportedly at the NY Times — they set pre-determined agendas — editorially mandated narratives — for science topics.
Here’s the latest example — intentionally selected because it is not about Climate Science:
“The New York Times has tapped Celia Dugger to oversee its health care coverage.
Dugger has been with the Times since 1991. She most recently served as science editor, a role she’ll continue to hold.
In a note to staffers, Times executive editor Dean Baquet and managing editor Joe Kahn laid out the details of Dugger’s role:
Health reporters from Business Day, National and Science will join together to form a team reporting to Celia. She will also work with reporters covering health issues and their editors in the Washington bureau, The Upshot and across the newsroom. She will be expanding her team in the coming months. Well will also report to Celia, but will remain a self-contained operation that has been a model for the kinds of coverage we want to encourage across the Times.”
Celia Dugger is the Science Editor of the NY Times, and, as of January 2017, also will oversee “health care coverage” — all health reports, from several desks including Business Day, National, and Science, plus the special health section “Well” will report to Ms. Dugger. She is one powerful editor with oversight for all of Science and Health reporting, even those in the Upshot section (Upshot combines innovative Graphics and narrative reporting styles to tell stories).
This September, she and her team of health journalists published As Global Obesity Rises, Teasing Apart Its Causes Grows Harder in which they declare:
Today’s article is the first in a series being produced by the paper’s health and science desk. The project examines how the processed food, soda and fast food industries’ increasing focus on markets in the developing world — and the accompanying rise in obesity rates and weight-related illnesses — is playing out around the globe.
The idea had long been on the mind of Celia Dugger, The Times’s health and science editor. For several years, she had been filing away news stories and journal articles that touched on what seemed to be a growing trend. “It just seemed stunning to me,” Ms. Dugger said. “It was a huge problem and a fascinating one to try and understand.” Her hunch was confirmed in June, when a new study showed that 10 percent of the world’s population now has a body mass index, or B.M.I., of 30 or higher, the threshold many public health experts say qualifies as obesity.
But it was clear that a story of this scale, driven largely by an economic and cultural transformation of the global food system, couldn’t be understood solely through a scientific lens.
Brazil was a good place to start. Companies there have been persuading local farmers to cultivate the soybeans and sugar cane that form the basis of much processed food. Conglomerates like Nestlé have aggressively marketed those products, and over the past decade the percentage of people with obesity has nearly doubled.
….taken as a whole these narratives are meant to illuminate what amounts to no less than a new global food order, and a new health crisis.
[emphasis mine – kh ]
Celia Dugger thus establishes an Editorial Narrative for the series, and for all health-related journalism at the NY Times, along the lines of;
“The processed food, soda and fast food industries’ increasing focus on markets in the developing world is causing the rise in obesity rates and weight-related illnesses.”
This is not a rare opinion — it is one of the mainstay talking points of anti-corporatists of all stripes. It just doesn’t happen to be supported by any Science — a point which even Dugger at the NY Times admits. It is just an opinion and it is based on simplistic time-coincident correlation.
The NY Times series “Planet Fat” has the url that ends “series/obesity-epidemic” and is a series that is written entirely in the quasi-journalistic style called “narrative journalism” (an unfortunate coincidence of terms) — which is basically instead of the journalist reporting Who What When Where Why — the journalists tells the story of their often emotional investigation, reports conversations, and feelings and personal anecdotes and “is defined as creative non-fiction that contains accurate, well-researched information.”
Narrative Journalism, creative non-fiction, unfortunately lends itself quite readily to the blending of factual information with the desired spin of the mandated Editorial Narrative.
The NY Times’ Planet Fat series is a wonderful illustrative example of how an editorial mandated narrative — the over-story required by the editors of a news outlet — leads to what in today’s media parlance can rightfully called “fake news” — not because the individual facts are faked or not true, but because the news item taken as a whole presents a false representation of reality — because it has been written to support and repeat the Editor’s Narrative regardless of the full range of available facts.
The series has covered stories in India, Malaysia, Columbia, Senegal, Ghana, Mexico and Australia. All of these countries (with the exception of Australia) are rapidly advancing countries in which there is a rising middle class able to now afford to eat what and as much as they chose.
The very same countries are still very high on the UN’s list of severely malnourished countries. The most current UN data on India states “In India 44% of children under the age of 5 are underweight. 72% of infants and 52% of married women have anaemia. Research has conclusively shown that malnutrition during pregnancy causes the child to have increased risk of future diseases, physical retardation, and reduced cognitive abilities.“ but the Planet Fat article portrays their biggest problem as obesity. In Malaysia, UNICEF reports: “Overcoming childhood obesity and malnutrition in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, 7 April 2016 – Malaysia is one of several ASEAN countries facing simultaneous crises of over and under-nutrition, with some children overweight while their peers suffer from stunting and wasting.” The Times’ report on Senegal blamed obesity there on the arrival of the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain, which only arrived six years ago, after relative affluence had begun increasing the weight of the middle classes, doubling obesity rates, since 1980 — while the World Food Program reports: “Senegal suffers from persistently high poverty rates, sitting at 46.7 percent. Overall, 17 percent of people are food insecure, and in some – mostly rural – parts of the country, the prevalence of global acute malnutrition is critical.” From the Times’ editorial-narrative-influenced reports, the reader comes away thinking that these poor developing countries are overrun with fat, overfed people — while just the opposite is true — they are hotbeds of the under-nourished and poverty-stricken.
[Australia is a different case — maybe I’ll write about their weight problem at another time — but their problem is not sugar as implied by the Times.]
Here is the harm of Editorial Narratives, in graphic form:
Readers here will recognize the symptoms of Editorial Narratives in the biased reporting of Climate Science by nearly all MSM outlets — and most scientific journals. Clearly the NY Times has a mandated Editorial Narrative for Climate Reporting — the link is it — which is also under Celia Dugger, by the way.
What about journals? In 2001 we had the The Science of Climate Change: Joint Statement from Royal and National Academies from all over the world, written by all of 63 academics. These academies control their journals and their editors — who control what gets published. The American Physical Society issued a statement STATEMENT ON EARTH’S CHANGING CLIMATE (Adopted by Council on November 14, 2015) not as a scientific statement, but a statement of policy. The American Meteorological Society also issued An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society (Adopted by AMS Council 20 August 2012). [Notice that the APS and AMS statements are “adopted by Council” not the membership at large — and thus become guiding principles for the editors of their journals — either as expressed or implied Editorial Narratives.)
When a story — a bit of news, a new journal paper — doesn’t fit the narrative required or desired by the Editors — then there is a problem. If the news is truly Big News and Important — then the journalist has to do his/her best to report it and somehow slip in enough of his/her editor’s narrative to get it accepted and published. We see this a lot in climate stories where the article goes along well enough, reporting some new findings, and then, out of nowhere, comes a line like “Of course, this new study does nothing to cast any doubt about the overwhelming evidence for human-induced climate change which is currently threatening the very existence of our planet.”
We saw this in the recently issued EPA finding on glyphosate (Monsanto’s Round-Up) which declared it not to be a human carcinogen. The news was so far from most MSM’s Editorial Narratives on Monsanto, Round-Up and glyphosate that most MSM journalist simply passed and reported nothing at all! They just couldn’t modify the reality to fit their Editor’s Narrative — some things can’t be spun that far.
My recent ongoing series on Modern Scientific Controversies exposed a good deal of this behavior in the US press — different news outlets ‘taking sides’ in the controversies — evidence of Editorial Narratives driving the reports.
I do not maintain that all newspapers, news agencies, magazines, journals — all MSM outlets — have expressed, written, Editorial Narratives on the topics of our time. Michael Cieply reported that the New York Times does and that the LA Times doesn’t. However, I know from my own work experience that superiors can have strong opinions and expect their workers to reflect those opinions in their work. I have not been a newspaper journalist, but I have been a radio news journalist — and Editors and News Directors have the responsibility to help plan coverage and to read and edit stories before publication or going on-air — and in this process, impose their viewpoint on what the story is and how it is to be told.
We see in the example of the NY Times’ Planet Fat series that the “story” was determined before the journalists were even sent out to find a story — they were sent out to specifically find a story matching the Editorial Narrative. Facts contrary or counter to the narrative are played down or explained away in the series. The series is a fascinating example of how Editorial Narratives play out in the real world, when the ink hits the paper [digital ink hits the display screen?]. If you have the time and inclination, or are interested in the Obesity Epidemic controversy, read the entire series, with the Editorial Narrative as laid by Celia Dugger in the premier article (quoted early in this essay) firmly in mind.
In today’s media environment, a major factor in the application of your Critical Thinking skills will be the awareness of the influence of Editorial Narratives on the news that arrives in your newspaper, on your TV, comes out of your radio or shows up in your In-box. The concept itself promotes seeking out diversified sources of trusted information — even your trusted information sources can be subject to their own editorial narratives, even if they are manifested only in the choice of which articles, stories or essays appear. Readers [viewers and listeners] should be aware that they are often seeing only one side of an issue, a result of their own choice of what outlet to read — here, at WUWT, you will not find essays promoting CAGW panic or alarm — that’s not what gets published here. I think that’s a good thing — but I am aware of it, not fooling myself with the idea that reading here keeps me fully informed on the topic.
I’d like to hear [read in comments] your personal views on this topic — and your experience with it. It is a specific and oft-times hidden type of media bias — it is intentional and cannot [usually] be laid solely on the shoulders of the individual journalist — it is one of his/her burdens, a requirement of continued employment.
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Late Addition: Just as I signed on to the web to upload this essay, this NY Times’ piece appeared on the National section (U.S.): Even Sharks Are Freezing to Death: Winter Rages and the Nation Reels. About three-fourths of the way through the article giving anecdotes of people stuck in their homes due to excessive snow, emergency rooms opening up to offer “warm-up rooms” for the homeless and frozen fire trucks, we find this little paragraph just “stuck in”:
“While scientists routinely find themselves explaining that day-to-day weather patterns are not the same as long-term climate trends, they also widely agree that human-caused climate change is exacerbating extreme weather.”
Editorial Narrative?
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[Personal Aside: In the interest of disclosure, I will admit that I had to quit one job, in what can euphemistically be called “corporate intelligence”, when my immediate superior informed me that her superiors insisted that I change the conclusions of an important investigative report I had written. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t and I left several weeks later. There had been a “required narrative” in place that I hadn’t been aware of. Five years later, my immediate superior searched me out, telephoned me, and said “You were right.” — nothing else, just that. ]
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Author’s Comment Policy:
If we have journalists reading here, I’d like to hear your personal experiences on the topic of Editorial Narratives and their equivalents in your field. You can count on the anonymity of the Web to obscure your identity.
What do you think? Share your views and opinions — Do news organizations have Editorial Narratives? Do they enforce them? Does it affect the news and views they publish or broadcast? Have you noticed any obvious examples recently?
Remember, if you want me to respond specifically to a question or comment, address it to “Kip…” so I am sure to see it.
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There are a handful of “science” reporters that everyone else just copies, e.g. Justin Worland, Doyle Rice, Seth Boring-stein, et. al. etc.
there was a rather famous fellow who said that if you could not explain something simply then you do not understand it well enough.
Yes, but if you explain something simply then you don’t get to use all kinds of technobabble in order to demonstrate how smrt you are. Missed opportunity for status signalling.
“There is always an easy solution to every human problem–neat,
plausible, and wrong.”
H.L. Mencken
I’d imagine that quote was from before quantum physics.
OWG ==> I taught Science and Maths to my boys when they were coming up through Home School….a very difficult job.
It is almost impossible to explain most science topics to adults who are missing the very basics of the sciences and who have had no training in how to think.
Science propaganda is based almost entirely on two techniques: 1) Vast over-simplification that makes the propaganda point seem obvious and uniquely correct (excludes all other possible explanations, including the truth) 2) Techno-BS — over-complication to the point where the readers are overwhelmed with their own “stupidity” and forced to accept the propagandists viewpoint out of self-defense.
“Science journalism is hard to get right. “
Every Journalist needs to read the following article. The problem with the Journalists is that they have been given a confirming story so they don’t both to look into the other side. They were given the story they wanted and they run with it. Post the following article on every News Media and journalist facebook page and Twitter account you can find. Force them to understand the other side.
How to Discuss Global Warming with a “Climate Alarmist.” Scientific Talking Points to Win the Debate.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-climate-alarmist-scientific-talking-points-to-win-the-debate/
co2 ==> Thanks CO2, now we have the counter-balancing Editorial Narrative to the NY Times version on the same topic.
Thanks, My Pleasure. Be sure to post that article on their site. That will “trigger” some journalists…LOL.
‘New Scientist’ and the BBC ‘Focus’ magazine are prime examples of what used to be science magazines, but which nowadays predominantly concentrate on propaganda on climate change. You wouldn’t get an article or letter published in them if you were in the slightest way sceptical of man-made global warming caused by burning of fossil fuels, and the urgent necessity to do something about it and saving the planet.
Phillip ==> WUWT has several correspondents that keep us up to date on the BBC’s views on CliSci. One of our friewnds across the pond takes the BBC to task with the government oversight people and makes the BBC issue corrections. They do very definitely have an apparently extremely strict Editorial Narrative for climate (CAGW) issues.
I believe what you write about is a reflection of where we are as a society. I am an Engineer and have been working on studies and reports for over 30 years. In the old days you were trying to be unbiased in your analyses and went where the data took you. Of course there were factors that could be changed to adjust the outcomes, but we tried to use our judgement on the factors that were the most likely to occur. You usually reached one conclusion.
Fast forward to today and the reports have gotten longer and longer, more complicated, various scenarios presented, what if analyses, Monte Carlo analyses etc. Instead of a conclusion you have conclusions that can be picked from. If there was a preconceived result it can be easily be reached.
Just thinking out loud. The late 70s and early 80s was a turbulent time and the factors used in analyses at that time were completely wrong. Any evaluation and recommendation based on data before early 80s failed miserably. The runaway inflation and interest rates that occurred in the the early 80s was not anticipated and made recommendations suspect and sometimes wrong. I remember we awarded some contracts to purchase major equipment as fixed price without escalation or inflation factors. Those suppliers begged for relief. In most cases we had to allow for the inflation or the company may have gone out of business.
Maybe we have over complicated things so much that we as humans cannot properly manage things. How is that for a brilliant philosophical statement?
Use of software makes complicated things easier to do, so you inevitably end up with unqualified people in positions of decision-making and authority. So the end result is often an emphasis on sales and promises and then PR/spin to put the lipstick on the pig after the eff-ups happen. This can go one for quite some time, given the advanced communications now available.
“If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.”
-Pierre Gallois
I actually used this whole effect. When (many years ago) I presented aircraft mass properties predictions that the sales department did not like, they tended to ignore them, with deleterious effects on the resulting aircraft. But – when I wrote a computer program that performed the same calculations, and presented the print-out saying “The COMPUTER doesn’t agree”, then the sales people would listen and possibly alter their pitch to the client.
Russ and Piper ==> Many fields of Science today are failing because of this very point….they are fooling themselves with computer outputs that are created with maths that the users themselves don’t understand.
In CliSci, the immensely complex (and downright weird) BEST method of determining GAST (anomalies), NOAA satellite sea level computations, almost all the metrics in the field.
Epidemiology is far worse (if that were possible), its practitioners actually believing that their computer programs can eliminated the effects of ten or more confounders whose magnitudes have not even been tested.
..and then Facebook tries their “disputed” tag…..and it backfires on them big time…more people tend to believe it’s true, if Facebook says it’s not……..”f a k e news”
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/12/21/facebook-scraps-disputed-fake-news-tag-as-it-has-opposite-effect-to-what-we-intended/
I am reading the biography of Benjamin Franklin and he uses what he calls decision arithmetic. He would use two columns one pro and one con. You would list the pros and cons and whichever column was longest was chosen. Can you imagine decision arithmetic for today’s world. 🙂
Gary ==> Ol’ Ben was an absolute genius — but the described “method” of decision making — “whichever column was longest was chosen” — is silly. It gives preference to numerical strength of pluses and minuses — and ignores their magnitude or importance — not really something that a genius would do.
In sales that is known as the Ben Franklin close. You get them to acknowledge what a smart man Ben Franklin was and suggest you use the same method to make decisions that he did. Next you have the prospect make the lists of the positives and negatives of the purchase, of course as you presented them, and then lead them to make their decision by which one is longer (it will always be the positive).
I think that anyone who has been in sales knows this but in a different nomenclature. It is called the “pitch”. The company has product to sell and devises the best way to convince the prospective buyer to make the purchase by highlighting the positives and ignoring the negatives. As a salesperson you learn the company pitch and are required to present it in the prescribed manner. Do it well and you keep you job. In the end you either buy into the company line or, if you cannot, you simply leave and look for another job. I would suspect that in a more closed industry such as “reporting”, that may be more difficult as your reputation is probably better known by others in position to hire.
Tom ==> Interesting point — different field viewpoint. For me personally, that’s precisely why I never went into sales even though I can be very persuasive — I’d have to be selling a product that I really, really believed was better than the others and worth the price….never found such an animal.
Yes. I left several sales positions when I found out the product wasn’t as it was presented to be. It was a tough thing to do sometimes, we all need money, but my wife always understood and I never got disgusted with the man I saw in the mirror every morning.
Tom, big mistake. Always say good things about a competitor’s successful product. You can then explain that yours is an improvement over it, having resolved some of the issues that the other had, it’s at a discounted price or has superior warranty, or….
After a while, in the graphic above, journalist becomes boy who cried wolf and misinformed reader becomes jaded town folk. Eventually, liars aren’t believed even when they tell the truth.
…and if you’re lucky….you get a president that makes it acceptable to call it f a k e news
something that wasn’t allowed before
I wish this essay could be part of the High School curricula, maybe expanded to a course on critical thinking. How does one form an informed opinion without knowing how to filter out the slant, consider the source, follow the money, find alternate sources to verify?
It is not possible and that is why in the most informed electorate in history we get the most ignorant decisions. There is more data and less truth today than at any point in man’s history.
Former President Obama said this last Wed
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/12/27/obama-warns-of-social-media-echo-chamber-in-a-prince-harry-interview/
It is telling that the former President longs for the days when the New York Times could set an “Editorial Narrative”, have it echoed by Edward R Murrow on TV and everyone would have to toe the line. If it were not for these “balkanized” (another word for “dissenting” in effect) sources of information, we would all have to bow down to one source of “Pravda”.
Thank God for the internet, but like fire and any other tool it can be used for evil. If it takes down the “Grey Lady”, the New York Times, and saves a few trees from being pulped to spread the far left agenda then thank you Al Gore for inventing it. Wouldn’t be the first time a Frankenstein got loose to ravage its inventor.
Bruce ==> The good old days when all of America got their views on the national and international news from one source — people in a town read one newspaper, in cities they read two newspapers and there were all of two viewpoints (better than one, but, eGads!).
“Social Media” is just “The Rumor Mill” gone mad — the “Inside Skinny Line” slashing and trashing any semblance of triuth and accuracy to shreds — “Celebrity Opinion” sinking common-sense in a morass of idiocy — I could go on for days….
I do not use SM at all — would rather have an open sewer emptying into my home than a Twitter feed ….. [not that I have strong opinions about it…..]
“Social Media is just The Rumor Mill gone mad”
+97
And so much “news” is now just speculation designed to fill time in order to sell ads for kitchen gadgets and meds for aging baby boomers.
Same here, Kip, I don’t participate in social media at all except the occasional blog comment. It is amazing to watch it in reports though. There are actually adults who can name all the Kardashians and tell you what Justin Bieber thinks about anything but can’t name the three branches of government.
PP ==> Worse yet, what is “trending” on SM is now “news” itself.
Bruce ==> Worse yet, those people actually think they have their priorities right!
Kip,
“I do not use SM at all …”
Aren’t we using “social media” right now? . . (Which reminds me; How are you fairing with the transition back to a cold climate, so far? ; )
To my mind, social media (in the broader sense, not what I think of more as socializing media) has effectively forestalled the societal domination of a relative few wealthy/powerful “elites” who could buy up the mass media (and who of course then could hire the editors who enforce “Editorial Narratives” as you discuss here) because they want to control “us” thereby . . you know, same old same old ; )
John ==> Not according to my understanding. WUWT is a “blog” which publishes essays, opinions, and some new aggregation on a limited number of topics, and is more like an online magazine. There is limited opportunity to “talk back” to the authors and engage in conversation with other readers, but there is no push or follow mechanism. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, and their clones are what I consider “social media”.
Well, I can’t find any source (Wiki, Webster’s, etc) that agrees with you about this site/blogs not being a form of social media . . and since comments are typically far more voluminous than the posts, I’m gonna have to go with the crowd on this one ; )
“Kip: “I do not use SM at all …”
John: “Aren’t we using “social media” right now?”
I would consider WUWT to be social media. Anyone can read it and anyone, well, just about anyone, can comment.
I personally don’t use Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, et al, because I don’t like supporting people who censor what other people say. And in the case of Twitter, I couldn’t even get started using only 140 characters. 🙂 I do have a facebook account but have not logged into it in three or four years. Facebook is much too intrusive for me.
Places like WUWT are where it’s at. You can get both sides of the story, on just about any topic, here, and at other similar websites.
And if all else fails, Usenet is still a free-for-all where anyone can say anything.
I bet Usenet would concern Barrack Obama. He would feel the leftwing urge to slap some controls on it.
TA: “(on WUWT) you can get both sides of the story, on just about any topic…”
Regularely, the other side is Griff… LOL.
All on “What is SM?” ==> I think that to include “blogs” and “online news sources” as “Social Media” just because they allow comments is casting far too wide a net. The most common aspect of SM is that it includes PUSH technology — Tweets are sent to ones device by Twitter — Facebook pages accumulate stuff you don’t intend them to have — an individual has very little control over who gets to see what.
I am not really hip on this stuff, because I truly don’t use any of it. I have dead-end accounts on Facebook and Twitter for obscure reasons of my own — but nothing appears there. (My photo and my wife as my only friend).
Disclosue: I have been an internet professional — hold a (recently expired) patent to a multi-million dollar internet technology (from which I profited nothing – IBM owned my brain).
I need an expert (a 16 year old?) to weigh in here and tells us old folks what it is about SM that makes is “sm-ish” and why simple blogs with comment sections do not qualify.
“It is telling that the former President”…used to brag about how much he used SM
“It is not possible and that is why in the most informed electorate in history we get the most ignorant decisions.”
Actually, we have the most MISinformed electorate in history. That’s why we get ignorant decisions, because the misinformed electorate are fooled by the Leftwing MSM into electing fools like Obama and Hillary.
The Leftwing MSM is dangerous to our freedoms because they create false realities which cause too many people to make the wrong decisions.
Fortunately, Trump is taking this dangerous leftwing propaganda organization head on and if we are lucky, he will destroy these liars reputations in the eyes of the public. This may be the most important war Trump prosecutes during his time as president.
The people of the USA, or any other country, cannot govern themselves properly if all they get from the MSM are lies and more lies. And that’s all we get from the MSM today.
It must really suck to graduate with a degree in journalism and then have to resort to presstitution to pay the bills.
icisil ==> The whole field is in trouble — the kids coming our of journalism schools all want to be “investigative reporters” and win a Pulitzer — almost none strictly follow the Professional Journalists Code of Ethics — they just want to write a “great story” that attracts a lot of attention and fame.
There are few good reporters today — those willing to do the reporters job — get and report the facts, and just the facts, m’am — in a steady, accurate Joe Friday manner. Even for the simplest stories, one has to dig and dig through a half-dozen sources just to find out what really happened.
The second thing I had to do on my job 40 years ago was work with a reporter for an article on a project we were running. They got everything wrong in the front page article that ran. From that week until after I retired I worked with some level of the news media (i.e., national, local, print, broadcast, cable) every week on a variety of scientific topics. Even though more than several called themselves scientific reporters, and several were award winning, few had even a basic understanding of science. All were looking for the “big story.” The younger reporters want to be Woodward or Bernstein. All were extremely liberal. Few had taken any science course since they were freshman. Yet All would argue scientific points based on some rumor they had heard. Some claiming when you did not agree with them that you were lying or were told to say whatever. I was asked by our state’s governor to explain to a newspaper reporter pesticides. I spent six hours talking with the reporter. He asked who invented all the various pesticides. I mentioned, literally in one sentence, that some like organophosphates were developed in German during the 1930s. The next day the headline in his paper was that the state had approved the use of Nazi developed nerve toxins to control mosquitoes. Where he got the rest of the information in his article I never found out. The governor’s office was not happy. However, the reporter did admit when the governor’s office called the newspaper that all I had said was some pesticides were invented in Germany during the 1930s. I then helped write a correction article to run on Sunday morning.
Edwin ==> Thanks for the great story…..
I am afraid many of the “younger reporters want to be Woodward or Bernstein.” and that is resulting is lousy reporting and a lot of fake news.
It must not bother them one bit.
I think you’re right about a lot of them
Excellent commentary. The “Editorial Narrative” has been in operation quite a long time. When I clerked in military intelligence decades ago, I learned not to trust the newspapers or anything the federal government stated, unless it was confirmed by a reasonable source. It was fairly disheartening to know the “enemy” was telling the truth, and our government and our newspapers were just issuing patently false information to the public.
crackpot hypotheses
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97% of all scientific discoveries that were later found to be true were initially called crackpot.
ferd ==> Not to be argumentative, but I think I’ve seen that convenient number — 97% — somewhere else recently…..
something like 25% of the people on the planet have an aptitude for math. to the other 75% it remains a foreign language.
at least in accounting they recognized this and created 2 classes of accountants. normal accountants that only need master adding and subtracting and quantity. accountants that need master the daunting task of multiplication and (shudder) division.
I thought the numbers were more like 3% and 97%, but 3.6437% and 96.3563% sounds more believable.
PP: No, numbers that total 100% are not credible. The correct numbers would look more like 10% of the population are numerate; the other half are not.
Robert A. Heinlein felt very strongly about math: “Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
And also: “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. “
James ==> “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.” That’s certainly a very odd bias — and the basis of the modern numbers-based scientism.
The “quote” is not necessarily expressing Heinlein’s view of science or the world. It is a line spoken by one of his fictional characters….Lazarus Long in Heinlein’s work Time Enough for Love(1973), a series of novella-length stories and a short novel all published eventually in one volume.
It is a questionable practice to attribute a quote as if it were the viewpoint of an author when he has only had a fictional character make the statement. What havoc that would cause if generally accepted — authors could be painted with all the expressed opinions of their worst fictional villains.
Read much Heinlein, Kip? I have, for nearly 50 years now and pretty much everything he’s written. All of Heinlein’s strong male protagonists are mouthpieces for his personal viewpoints. His villains don’t get good lines. They’re cardboard characters that have the worst characteristics of Nazis and fascists — never honorable people just with different opinions about how things should be run.
Lazarus long is the lead character in several of Heinlein’s works: “Methuselah’s Chidren,” “The Number of the Beast,” “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls,” and “To Sail Beyond the Sunset.”
Heinlein is one author you can pretty much bet that if his protagonist says it, it’s Heinlein’s opinion as well.
James Schrumpf ==> I have actually, I believe, read very major Heinlein novel and the vast majority of his short stories if they appeared in print before 1975 — before his illness and period of seclusion. Wasn’t interested in his later stuff.
It is an unjustified belief, though not impossible, that he actually held the opinions that he had some of his characters express. Impossible that he held all of them — far too many contradictions. Heinlein is often suspected of writing semi-autobiographically, but which parts of which tirades from his protagonists represent his actual personal beliefs are unknown.
As usual, opinions may vary.
James Schrumpf – December 30, 2017 at 5:00 pm
James, FYI, ….. a ”villain” is defined as being …..
“a character (in a film, novel, or play) whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.”
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
Michael ==> That, sir, is a very geeky joke! (a good one, at that!)
That joke wouldn’t work so well were it spoken!
It’s not about being a Math crack. I’m not. It’s about being curious and to use the means (like Math) to find out something. Recently I calculated that if you want to quick charge 1000 Teslas (In a future city or region) you have to fire up a modern Coal power plant (500MW).
The most Jornalists are even too lazy to grab a calculator and to do simple math. The same for politicians.
Johannes Herbst ==> Quite right, sir — on the detail and the concept. Most homes would have to have their electrical drop feed and main panel box upgraded to accommodate fast charging of a Tesla — if many people in a suburban neighborhood had Tesla, the loca street grid would have to be upgraded.
You have to admit that “creative non-fiction” sounds way better than “fake but accurate”.
What’s wrong with just calling it bullshit?
Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
I do. Leftists don’t.
Leghorn and Case ==> You both have a point.
Kip – Great article. Really something we all more or less know, all you have to do is apply the Duck Test – What does it look like? And what it looks like is top down politics.
Thank you for using the “Obesity Crisis” as an example. I know people who buy into it hook line and sinker. When I was a kid there weren’t any neighborhood gyms with people working out before they went to work, no bike paths loaded with bikers and runners. And every grade school class had a fat kid or two. We are being led to believe that there are more fat people today – not to put too fine a point on it, that’s total B.S.
SC, beg to differ. CDC maps two US categories, overweight and obese, by state by year using BMI (flawed index since muscle weighs 4x fat, but most common). Thirty years ago no state had over 20 % obese. Now, no state has under 20% obese. Highly recommend you review the CDC website on obesity, as the condition is a root cause of much medical cost. Direct medical costs of overweight/obese (T2 diabetes, CVD, …) now exceed those of all cancer by a factor of almost 2.
Steve ==> Visit your local WalMart, just to look at the customers and employees. There are actually more very heavy people.
We just don’t really know why nor do we know how to “fix” it, short of butchering people’s stomachs and intestines (a very radical and unhealthy solution — but less unhealthy than forcing someone to maintain their 350-400 pound weight).
Ristvan points out that the CDC tracks obesity — but fails to point out that the goal posts have been moved down as well — what was normal weight 20 years ago is now overweight, what was overweight is now obese.
There are, however, many more seriously obese people than 20 years ago, mostly older people….but today’s the so-called overweight are perfectly normal and their numbers are used as a scare tactic by public health officials — who believe in the precautionary principle and think that anyone who is anything by model-thin is going to blow up like a balloon any day now.
“…so-called overweight are perfectly normal and their numbers are used as a scare tactic by public health officials…”
…who are then compelled to use the powers of the state to “fix” the “problem”. Convenient.
I don’t remember many fat kids when I was growing up. We biked and walked everywhere, were always outside doing something, and even had mandatory daily gym period. I rode a bicycle nearly every day until I was about 23. Now fat kids are everywhere and walk/bicycle nowhere, it seems. Mom waits in the car at the bus stop so little Johnny doesn’t have to walk 100′ to the house. I did see a neat thing, though, while passing through a military town when school let out. All of the kids, all grades, were walking en masse home.
icisil ==> in the 50s, every class had a fat kid or two, and quite a few chunky kids — huge differences in growth rates, short kids ( me ), tall kids ( my 6 foot body guard who I taught arithmetic to keep him from being left behind), girls that were plump in 4th grade and knockouts in 8th grade.
In my neighborhood, mothers sent their kids “out to play” (with the reminder “and don’t come back in til supper time!”) we tore up the neighborhood, terrorized the tame, and occasionally ducked into alleyways to avoid irate neighbors. But we were [mostly] skinny!
There may be something in the idea that parents today are afraid to let their kids play outside unsupervised….but we had no fatalities, many broken bones (among kids in the neighborhood) [my father was a pediatrician so all injuries reported to our house for free treatment]. None of my friends were arrested for anything serious, although we all got “a talkin’ too” once in a while. Great fun, we didn’t care if you were fat, chunky, or thin as long as you could keep up.
“…we tore up the neighborhood, terrorized the tame, and occasionally ducked into alleyways to avoid irate neighbors. But we were [mostly] skinny! ”
LOL memories… We’d probably have been shot if then was like today.
icisil ==> Neighborhood Mom’s were known to tell their children: “Don’t let me catch you playing with those Hansen boys!”
The silly “bleeding-heart” liberal do-gooders have shut down the school playgrounds, eliminated recess activities, made it illegal for parents to expect or force their children to perform chores or do work around the home, made it illegal for neighbors, friends or strangers to hire adolescents to perform any type of work …… and thus most adolescents don’t have anything to do except sit around, eat, get fat, play video games, converse on social media and become proficient at engaging in Politically Correct protests, demonstrations, riots, etc.
Oh you hit so much in the nerve of our zeitgeist. Yes! We have here long had a term for the academic person who’s being called to say the soundbite. It is the pet ‘adjunct professor on shift’. God those people get on the nerves of the public.
Kip, I’ve been a sceptic for a very long time and frankly, to a considerable degree, it sucks. Of course, like any true sceptic, I didn’t choose to be one. I, with wife, newborn and toddler got caught up in a string of military coups that led to a civil war in Nigeria in the middle 1960s. I was on the staff of the Geological Survey.
In this case, the top echelons of military rank were Christians and 2/3 of the population of the country were Muslim, living in the north where I worked and lived. One night a commando unit assassinated the Sultan of Sokoto (Amadu Bello), an act equivalent in transborder Hausaland of killing the Pope. Also, this was only a year after the assassination of the Prime Minister Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Bulaywa and his entire cabinet. This led to the war.
One of my indulgences was to have Time Magazine sent to me and when I got the first issue covering the war, I was shocked to read that the “ignorant, uneducated, savage” Hausa had taken up arms against the educated, Clever Ibos in the south. The entire affair was created by a largely Christian Officers’ corps. And in passing, I should mention that the ignorant folks in Hausaland had an embassy in Constantinople in the Eleventh Century and ran trade in slaves, gold from the Gold Coast, and other goods across the Sahara to the Mediterranean. Im one who regrets what has become of the most hospitable, friendly, patient, tolerant people I have ever known and the existence of the ugly biases even back so far.
Gary P ==> Time Magazine’s journalists have traditionally been bound by their editors to portray certain stories certain ways….look at their coverage of the VN war. Their narrative changed with the changing tides of American public opinion, and the rise of the my generation to voting (and buying) age.
I recall an interview with retired Walter Cronkite where he stated that what he missed the most was “setting the agenda”.
And retired Peter Jennings stated he reported what “HE thought the people needed to know”.
In the last century or so, there has developed a new problem in science communications and science journalism.
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this is not a new problem nor is it unique to science. “the news” was never about the facts because facts are rarely newsworthy.
“dog bites man” is a fact but you rarely see it in the news. rather expect to see a story about the evil dog owner with a dangerous breed.
the news doesn’t want to tell you what happened. it is not a public service. the news wants to tell you how to think about what happened. they want to be the moral authority. deciding right and wrong.
in effect the press is the village busybody with all that entails. facts are way down the list of priorities. most of all the busybody is all about how right they are and how wrong everyone else is.
For several years, I worked in a small industry that got a lot of press. Most of it was trade press, but we also got a lot of “Popular Science” type of reporting. Frequently, the writers would submit drafts for factual comment. The article that was the least factual, and just plain wrong in some respects, was done by National Geographic. We called the writer and complained and his answer was that his editor decided to make the story “more interesting”
Dan (and I can’t blame you for no longer being in California) ==> Fine example — though it may be an example of the Editor “sexing up” an otherwise dull-as-dirt story. My News Director at the radio station often asked that we add things to “make it more interesting”….not necessarily factual things….
Editorial Narrative are more along the lines of changing a story to fit a pre-mandated viewpoint on the topic.
National Geographic has morphed into a Politically Correct “junk science” reporting magazine publisher and documentary producer for the lefty liberal lemming community.
it’s now headed by the former head of NPR.
Roger ==> Really? From bad to worse….
And that’s why I let my subscription lapse several years ago… the bias just got too odious.
How can one discern the truth? Whoever you are, scientist, professional, tradesperson, or layperson, use your education, training and life experience to conduct your own research and analysis, digging deeper and not taking popular “truisms” at face value. Ask:
– Does It Fit Reality? – The key test of truth is correspondence to reality, except that it is often difficult to reliably discern what reality is.
– Could the Current or Popular Science Be Wrong? – Remember, “science” does not equal “reality,” with many past examples where “common scientific knowledge” was proven wrong.
– Am I Being Psychologically Manipulated Using Fear and Conformity? – To break the barriers, be patient, become comfortable with failure, test assumptions, and act to counteract fear.
– Is This Science or Science-Fiction? – In the age of virtual reality, the lines between art and real life are blurred. Examples include sensationalist weather reporting and, recently, NASA coverage of the Jupiter probe, where more computer animations were presented than actual photos.
– Is the Author or Speaker Using Misdirection and Sleight of Hand? – Any single piece of research seldom yields breakthrough findings. Ask what the work really says and does not say. Carefully observe the uncertainties and limitations, being especially wary of flashy headlines like “new clues to the origin of ___,” “unlocking the mystery of ____,” “global warming linked to ____,” or a “new study shows ____?”
– Should I Doubt the Hyperbole? – The use of extreme descriptors like unprecedented, unmitigated, permanent, catastrophic, crisis, destruction, never before, highest, lowest is often a sign that the information being presented is flawed or overstated.
– Are the False Prophets Moving the Goalposts? – Scientists, economists, politicians and others who dare to predict the future are almost never right. A common ploy of the environmental false prophet is to change the subject, ignore failed predictions, or “move the goalposts” (e.g., 5 years become 10, then 20, then 50 or 100). In Old Testament times, false prophets were not tolerated, to put it mildly.
– Do I Detect Logical Fallacies? – Promoters/advocates/activists often employ logical fallacies, singly or as multiple fallacies, to influence debate. Learn the art of logic and how to spot logical fallacies.
– Is This a Broad Brush Statement? – Statements are often generalized to the point that they lose nuance and have little practical meaning, a flaw of so-called “consensus science.” Most such statements have a skin of truth, but they hide an effort to deceive, a common ploy of activists, environmental NGOs, politicians, governmental agencies, and major scientific or trade organizations.
– Is There the Charge of Being “Anti-Science?” – The label “anti-science” (or anti-intellectual) is a pejorative. One making such assertions usually means that science is only to be accepted when it aligns with that person’s geopolitical views and is to be rejected when it doesn’t. A person can even be labeled pro-science and anti-science simultaneously.
– Is the Source Spin-Doctoring the Information Being Presented? – On almost any topic, Internet searches yield lists of advocacy websites, pro or con. Unless well-conceived and moderated, they are seldom reliable and should be largely avoided. Advocacy and activism are big business with an agenda of selling, not products, but ideas. You can learn a lot by examining the “ABOUT” pages, including the organization’s boards of directors, advisors, and funding sources.
– Is This an Abusive Blog? – The “blogosphere” is rife with baseless opinion, rants, vulgarity, character attacks, and trolls whose goal is to detract or distract from the discussion. Except for well-moderated sites, try to avoid blogs and comments sections altogether.
– Has a Position Statement Been Tainted? – Because of the politicization of science and the activist strategy of going to the top to infiltrate or target the leadership of universities, professional societies and trade organizations, be very skeptical of organizational position statements. These are often contrary to the views of the organizations’ rank and file members.
– Is the Law of Unintended Consequences at Work? – “Systems thinking” (the pride of the sustainability movement) is based on flawed science and can lead to unintended consequences. Pummel every grand idea/plan with tough questions. Ask what might go wrong.
– Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? – Ask what is good about an allegedly detrimental condition or change, not just what is bad about it. Activists love to list a parade of horribles. Beware of anyone who takes this half-empty (or all empty) approach. For each supposed negative effect (presuming that something bad is even occurring), recognize that some benefits will often also accrue, maybe even outweighing the supposed negatives. In climate, warm is good, and CO2 is plant food.
– Who is Speaking, the Activists or the Professionals? – Finally, be patient. Even in the information age, change or improvement is a long, slow road. Public noisemakers rarely represent the views of the seasoned professionals who quietly persevere to do the real work at hand.
I was for part of my career a very senior exec at a ‘famous’ fortune 50 tech company with about 120,000 employees. We had to establish a PR department at both corporate and sector levels to deal with business and popular media. Precisely because there were obvious editorial narratives that twisted what we were actually trying to accomplish, and we needed a coherent pushback. While a sector exec and then while at corporate, had those departments reporting to me. Interestingly, editorial narratives differed by organisaztion. WSJ different than Business Week different than Fortune.
ristvan ==> Great real world example — and, one should expect : ” editorial narratives differed by organization.” That’s really how you know that you are dealing with Editorial Narratives and not just a pervasive societal bias.
It is the Editorial Narrative that makes editors so powerful — the higher on the editorial ladder he/she is, the more power to shape the news. Owners are the top of the heap and influence editors (even if only by who they hire or appoint).
Kip, hadn’t thought about it until you pointed it out. Yup. Different organizational news spins are proof positive of editorial narratives rather than some general worldview.
One of my favorite things about Steve Goddard’s site is when posts articles from news outlets that are the exact opposite of each other on a subject just separated by decades.
A narrative is the witch doctor’s tool. If you disbelieve the narrative explanation then you haven’t heard it all or haven’t attended to what you did hear closely enough. See homeopathy.
Fundamental education is the only convincing explanation and that requires a dialogue.
News was once an effort to report the facts as they had occurred.
Back in some imaginary time in the distant (fictional) past, that is.
Who, what, when, where, why, and how?
I doubt that there has ever been a time when “news” was strictly a factual reporting on what has happened. See the essays of Oliver Sacks for how story-making creeps into our memories, even when we are unaware of our re-framing of what we “remember.”
See the historians who have stated that winners get to write the stories of wars.
News has become the end product of a pre-written narrative. As Anthony Watts has chronicled in these pages, Global Temperature has see-sawed back and forth between Global Freeze and Global Heat Death.
The information which is “reported” is the information which fits the desired paradigm. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t print. I made that up myself. So POTUS tweeted that we need some Global Warming on New Year’s Eve, and all the pundits have house-sized cows! As I write, Erie, PA is under five FEET of snow, and even DC (where I live) is under an inch or so.
It is not an arguable datum: the radiation from the Sun is decreasing, especially in the non-visual spectrum That means colder weather, as it did in 1650. Remember: back then one could skate from Denmark to Sweden. Seriously. And the Thames froze over. Facts are such stubborn things. Facts do not fit narratives. Facts simply are. And trimming the facts to fit a narrative requires a lot of creativity!
mathman2 ==> Certsainly agree with this bit: “Facts are such stubborn things. Facts do not fit narratives. Facts simply are. And trimming the facts to fit a narrative requires a lot of creativity!”
This is the utility of “narrative journalism” — it is story telling, and story telling allows a lot of latitude for trimming and spinning and tweaking the facts to fit one’s Editor’s required Narrative.
Kip,
Thank you(?)
It’s even worse than I thought (and I already knew it was bad).