Number 73: October 13, 2004

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This week in Katydid:

• War of Words
• Clean Up Your Language
• Subscription Information

War of Words
As marketers, we rely on the subtleties of language. We craft our survey questions carefully. We learn the words that awaken something in our target audience in order to influence their behavior and predispose them to like our products and services. At its worse, marketing is lying, but at its best, it's manipulation. That is, if you assume that the audience is completely passive.

In an election season, language comes to the fore. Accusations of lying and manipulation fly from all political parties. After all, electioneering is the marketing of ideas and prejudice is the low-hanging fruit.

Journalists are often accused of bias, which they all deny strongly. Journalism specifically strives to eliminate bias from its language by presenting facts without interpretation or analysis.

However, people generally believe that the press is biased because of their general understanding of the word. Most people think bias means a preference or an inclination. Everyone has an opinion (as the saying goes), and journalists are people, so journalism always will be biased. However, bias and opinion are not synonyms. The meaning of bias includes a caveat: a preference or inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.

So it's only bias if it clouds one's judgment. Journalism requires that we become aware of our inclinations and use discipline with our language to leave no room for bias. Journalists choose their verbs carefully so that they don't characterize or interpret the facts. Unfortunately, that discipline seems to be a rare quality presently. If you listen attentively, you'll find news is laden with bias.

The greatest bias seems to be for the sale of more advertising. The Fourth Estate once served as a final check on the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government. Newsprint costs money and, sadly, integrity can diminish the bottom line. However, as long as consumers value truth over entertainment, impartiality can hold.

Journalists often complain that the 24-hour news cycle puts pressure on them to put out information more quickly. Competition forces them to report faster than they can check facts. However, you can see for yourself that is just an excuse; because all they do is repeat the same story every hour. It's easier and cheaper to spend less time investigating and more time analyzing the story. Pundits are great filler; you just wind them up and let them go. If the news networks were a newspaper, you'd have the news on the front page, and the rest of the paper would be editorial.

Additionally, the news networks need to develop consumer loyalty. Integrity is tough to demonstrate, and since long ago we filtered out all the physically less attractive hosts, it's easier to rely on the personality of the newsreaders. We like certain hosts because we think they're like us. That is, we identify with their biases. But if the host needs to maintain the illusion of impartiality, how do they reveal their biases? The answer is through their language.

Listen to any cable news network and the first thing you'll notice is the use of many sports metaphors. This is the primary bias: get viewers to tune in so they'll watch commercials. The news networks advertise coverage of the Iraq war like a football game. They promote the presidential debates as a boxing match. Tonight's debate in Tempe, Arizona is billed as "The Duel in the Desert" and "The Tempest in Tempe."

Sports clichés provide easy phrases that news writers (let's not call them journalists for now) can use to add variety to their reporting. Sports writers don't last long who write that a team won a game; they have to say thrashed, whipped, destroyed, beat, etc. A journalist might say that a presidential candidate made a statement in response. A news writer says the candidate "hit back."

Indeed, each debate is commonly referred to as a round where the two opponents square off. On all the networks, you could easily hear the following analysis: In round one, John Kerry had George W. Bush on the ropes. In round two, Bush came out swinging wildly while John Kerry focused on his footwork, picking his shots. In the final round, both candidates are looking to score a knockout.

In fact, this morning a reporter, after using a constant stream of phrases borrowed from sports ("have a lot riding," "stakes are high," etc.) then prefaced her final comments, "If you'll forgive the sports metaphor… both candidates hope to hit one out of the park." She was not aware of the irony of her own statement.

With the pressure to keep viewers, it's easy for both political parties to find bias for their opponent largely because if the news were to call a leader, there would be less reason to tune into the pundits tomorrow. We want to back the winner. Those that say they are undecided may be waiting to see which horse is going to cross the finish line first, so they can jump on it and ride to victory. The closeness of the polls may be the result of reporting that prefers to have the race go to the wire. You can see this reflected in how the news tends to favor whoever is down in the polls.

Whether the result of laziness or intent, with newsreaders allowing more descriptive language in their reporting, you also hear biases revealed in the transitions. For example, you might hear of one candidate "taking on" his opponent, which carries a positive connotation. Then you'll hear the other candidate "flatly denying" an assertion, which has a negative connotation. One candidate spends the day, "preparing" while the other candidate is "holed up," which makes them sound criminal.

In the same way that editors of reality programming exaggerate or invent characters from hundreds of hours of tape, news writers characterize candidates by changing the context of quotes and by using language to add drama to the story. For example, after one candidate was described as "getting in a few shots" they prefaced his opponent's response with "not to be outdone." Of course, without an actual quote from the candidate expressing this emotion, the news writer has no way of knowing the candidate's intent.

Today, I watched newscasters from CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News interview various pundits. The spinners were all expert at staying on message and hammering away at their opponent's positions. The interviewers, however, revealed bias in how they posed their questions. Two of the networks interviewed the opposing sides separately, allowing them to state their positions unchecked. The one network that interviewed the pundits standing together revealed the least amount of bias. The fact that the pundits stood next to each other tempered their extremism and acrimony. In short, they were forced to play nice. Additionally, the interviewer asked them each to respond to the same question.

By contrast, the other two networks asked their questions individually and framed their questions differently for each candidate. This meant that the opposition did not get the opportunity to challenge their information. It also revealed more biased language as the interviewers set a different context for each candidate. Their question had an underlying premise that supported the opposing candidate.

Most of the bias seemed to stem from a lack of discipline or a need to create more drama; however, on one of the networks, the bias seemed to be conscious spin on the part of the interviewer.

For example, in their interview they prefaced their question to the pundit from the Kerry camp with a long characterization of his policy on homeland security, followed with the question, "Does that mean more spending?" This word evokes language that Kerry is a tax and spend liberal. Later the interviewer hit on this point again asking, "What does Kerry say to being a tax and spend Liberal?" The interviewer's setup for the Bush pundit referenced a claim from the Kerry camp, and then asked the open-ended question, "Is that true?" which allowed the pundit to go on at length. In another question, the interviewer asked, "Kerry is known as a closer doing whatever it takes to win. Will he not go negative?" Earlier, the interviewer had referred to Bush as confident going into the debate and Kerry as "cocky." One would expect this kind of repartee while watching editorial programming such as "The O'Reilly Factor," "Hardball," or "Crossfire," but it doesn't belong in what purports to be journalism. Even when we agree with the characterizations, if we allow news to devolve into propaganda for our side, that same machine can be used against us when the power shifts.

Unconscious connotations are bias. Deliberate connotations are spin. The dissemination of spin is propaganda. Does this mean that we can't trust journalism? No, it means that we have to look for journalism. We have to listen actively for the language of bias. We have to become aware of our own inclinations and use our judgment to consume journalism and forego infotainment that tells us only what we want to hear. In other words, the market will decide collectively only if we opt for truth individually.

Clean Up Your Language
Does your writing reveal more about your personality than you intend? You might be peppering your own writing with unconscious bias. You can improve your own writing along with the rest of your staff. Look into our writing workshop, "Putting It into Words: Business Communications for the Non-writer."

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Kevin Troy Darling

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