Stardate 20040529.1929

(On Screen via long range sensors): This is an experimental medium, and I'm going to try an experiment today. I was inspired by an article about press bias, written by Jay Rosen, and I started making notes, and filling in some parts while leaving others more sketchy. Five hours later just the notes were 4000 words long, so I decided not to expand it any further, and decided to post as-is:

—The geeky description of the problem refers to concepts from information theory and basic communications technology. There are problems related to bandwidth, addressing and distribution, authentication, channel integrity, aliasing, distortion, and signal/noise ratio.

Re bandwidth versus S/N: more data isn't necessarily better data. You can drown in data.

Better voice quality on a telephone doesn't affect the likelihood that someone is lying to you over the phone.

—What is the mission of the press?

• Inform citizens so they can vote wisely?
• Make money? (business)
• Ratings? (Business)
• Persuade citizens, because they are not wise?
• Bring fame and recognition to individual reporters?

Unfortunately, it's probably several of those at once, and those missions conflict on a basic level. There's also no overall consensus (though there are myths). The deepest reality, however, is that all news organizations are businesses, and their first priority is to be viable businesses. All other considerations are secondary.

—Sources of bias:

• Reporter ideology
• Compromises for access (CNN confession about Iraq)
• Deliberate disinformation
• sampling error (see below)
• "Bad news is news. Good news is not news."
• TV: pictures are news, words are not news
• Inherent characteristics of different news media
• Human psychology and inherent inductive bias. (see below)
• "deep narrative"
• Reporter psychology: reporters are driven to "make a difference", to shape the world.
• Selective restrictions on access to information for reasons of security. "Open" sources versus "classified" information. [Also problem of abuse of the classification process: information buried because it is embarrassing]
• Reality of press agencies: decreasing reliance on local reporters. Stories covered by sending their own people.

—Power without accountability. Abuse of unfettered power of the press? Authority without responsibility? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? What consequences are there for biased reporting? There are consequences, sometimes, but they are greatly delayed and far from certain.

—Who's actually in charge here? Populism versus elitism. Does the press see itself as serving "the people" or as guiding them? Is it their job to inform the electorate so they can make good decisions when voting, or is it their job to lead the masses ideologically so that they make "the right" decision when voting? Does the press see itself as a secular priest class?

—Reporters or news services may lie, or distort the news, in service of "deeper truth". (e.g. Andrew Gilligan and the BBC reporting that the British case for war in Iraq was "sexed up"; it wasn't really, and Gilligan's reports to that effect were later repudiated. He later resigned, but has never indicated that he thought what he did was actually wrong. I think he still feels it was right because it served the "deeper truth" that the war was wrong.)

—The problem of disinformation: self-interested sources willing to lie in order to advance their own positions.

There are other forms of disinformation. Some interviewees will tell a reporter what they think the reporter wants to hear. In some situations interviewees will tell a reporter what the interviewee knows he must in order to not be punished later by the secret police. And some interviewees will bullshit a reporter, out of contempt or annoyance or perversity.

—Urban legends; the spread and mutation of memes. (Spiders eggs in bubblegum.) Faster communication and more broad access to information improves the "ecosystem" for formation, spread, and mutation of urban legends. This has always been with us; there has always been gossip; there have always been rumor mills and grapevines. But it has always been limited by the speed and efficiency with which information could move, which has gotten faster and more broad as the technology of communication has improved.

Gossips talked "over the back fence", but on the Internet the "backfence" can cross oceans. The Internet inherently promotes formation of echo chambers as people seek out the like-minded. They can become deceived -- Dean campaign implosion, for instance.

—The problem of sampling error

• Big story, small press
• Big search space, small number of reporters
• Reporters tend to report what other reporters are reporting for fear of being "left out"
• What you find depends on how you look and what you expect to find. (the search for extraterrestrial planets has found big planets in fast orbits because of the tools being used, which are not able to detect systems like ours)
• aliasing (in techn