Angry attacks on the “mainstream” media are flooding social media feeds in the previously peaceful oasis of Aotearoa.
Why, demanded tweeters, are the biased media picking on the mayor of Wellington while ignoring other political misbehaviour?
Why was there so much coverage of billionaires on a mini-sub and not drowning migrants in the Mediterranean?
Why all the Ukraine coverage while ignoring other wars? What about the Palestinians?
Some critics are echoing the tactics of the Trumps and Putins of this world or are conspiracy theorists who are deep down the rabbit hole. But many are Kiwis who appear genuinely mystified about why some stories get more prominence than others.
Why does any of this matter? Because a successful society is built on trust. Distrust of the media, studies show, leads to divisiveness, which can quickly turn to violence.
Journalists have consistently failed to explain what we do. So for conspiracy theorists, media haters and the confused, here is a simple guide to media decision-making.
Gruesome numbers game
Students on my courses in London, Sydney, Melbourne and Dunedin were introduced to a mysterious concept called the news cycle. They had to follow a story across a day and a night and see how it was covered by the media.
I told them when I worked the midnight to 8am shift at the BBC in London, many of the stories were from Australia and New Zealand, but these stories did not make the day-shift bulletins.
It’s hard to find people to interview in the middle of the night. Timing influences what stories get told and how – journalists’ ability to obtain information dictates whether you see, hear or read the story.
Stories change when facts change; if another mass shooting in the US has two people reported dead and it turns out to be 20, that becomes a more prominent story.
Yes, it is often a gruesome numbers game. (People say they want good news, but media that have tried running only positive stories have gone bust.)
A video or photographs can lift the prominence of a story because images have a power all of their own.
But journalists also make a series of judgments about what they think their readers, viewers and listeners are interested in. And contrary to the ravings of critics, we get most of those right.
Take the Titan mini-sub disaster. It received huge coverage because we are and always have been interested in the lives of the obscenely rich, but mostly because of its unusualness. The idea of being trapped in a tin can at the bottom of the ocean is the stuff of nightmares.
Similar stories (unusual, scary) have always attracted worldwide media attention – Thai teenagers trapped in a cave, Chilean miners down a pit.
The drowning horror in the Med got major coverage, too. But, yes, guilty plea here, it was in the news less when another big story came along. (The BBC and others have continued to investigate what really happened.)
We do tend to go on to the next thing, new stories replace old (hence the term “news”). We know you are interested in things that happen locally, and you are interested in celebrities.
My students get a quick thought experiment: would you be more interested in a crime that happened in your street or one that took place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia?
Would your level of interest change if the person killed locally was a stranger and the one who died in Ulaanbaatar was a favourite pop star or footballer?
A key judgment is how a story affects the lives of readers, viewers and listeners.
So the Russian invasion of Ukraine is justifiably one of the biggest stories of the decade because of its geopolitical consequences, such as the threat of nuclear war and because it drove up energy and food prices all over the world. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is still tragic, but involves fewer people and gone are the days when it led to Opec boycotts and worldwide economic damage.
You are the problem
Here is the really bad news for the media critics out there.
You are the problem.
You don’t pay close enough attention. Your bias affects your judgment of news coverage. It makes you pay attention to some stories and ignore others.
You will complain about the coverage of the Wellington mayor’s night out knowing full well you would celebrate a similar story about a politician you did not like.
You will ask why the media has not covered something when they have, or cherry-pick bits of a story that reinforce your prejudices and ignore the rest.
A study by the Knight Foundation showed the bias consumers bring with them distorts their rating of news content. Those who are most distrustful of the news media tend to be the most biased readers.
You are careless about sources, often making no distinction between a carefully reported story by a BBC reporter with decades of experience and an amateur video that the Instagram algorithm decided you would like.
You are interested in celebrities and trivia and, with some honourable exceptions, less prepared to consume information about more complicated issues – the cost of Taylor Swift tickets rather than the Prime Minister’s trip to China.
And you are reluctant to pay for good journalism, which takes time and money, preferring the disinformation and misinformation machine that is social media.
I am, of course, exempting the wise people who buy this magazine or subscribe to the digital edition.
The difficulties of danger and distance
The war in Yemen is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. More than 377,000 deaths, famine and cholera outbreaks. Why isn’t it one of the world’s biggest stories?
Some people have suggested a racial motive, the prejudices of the Anglo-Saxon media. But other conflicts involving Arab nations (Syria) and other famines (Ethiopia, many others) have been very well covered.
Sadly, in the ghastly hierarchy of war coverage, the Yemen conflict has fewer consequences for the rest of us. It is not going to cause a worldwide recession or a global war.
It’s also a difficult place to report on. Danger and distance are two other things most critics don’t think about when they look at news value judgments.
In my book Truthteller: An Investigative Reporter’s Journey Through the World of Truth Prevention, Fake News and Conspiracy Theories, I wrote about the myth of the death of distance.
“Distance still counts in journalism. The further you are from easy access for television crews, the more likely you are to be able to hide your crimes. Any smart dictator knows that if you are going to commit a massacre, you need to keep the cameras away. Otherwise, we might start paying attention.”
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), one of the most brutal conflicts of the century has not received the coverage it deserved: millions dead, mass rapes, starvation, cannibalism. But it is difficult and dangerous to travel there. The DRC is bigger than Spain, France, Germany, Sweden and Norway combined, and lacks connections to the outside world.
Reporters risk their lives every day to bring you the news from conflict zones, but the DRC is exceptionally dangerous.
