Hard News

Hard at work in the newsroom circa 1942.


People who study and report on how news media construct news stories will often say that news outlets do not influence what consumers think but are more or less reflecting what is in the zeitgeist at any given time. Until I see otherwise, I would refute that. Why? Because of how many times we find out, often years later, just how wrong they were and what damage those mistakes have done.

I’ve heard this suggestion before, but this podcast from Radiolab about Stockholm Syndrome debunks the idea that hostages become empathetic and form a bond with their captors. The notion is so ingrained in the public consciousness that it seems it must be very well established by authorities in science and psychology. Turns out, it is not. Not only was it never verified by anyone who has ever actually studied the victims of kidnapping, but no one from the original event, a bank robbery and hostage-taking in 1970s Stockholm, was rarely ever interviewed. Instead, references to the original hostage-taking were either assumptions, hearsay, or entirely invented. There are probably many different reasons why some people stay in cults, abusive relationships, or form an affinity with their captors, but it isn’t a thing called Stockholm Syndrome. The fact that “Stockholm Syndrome” is not really a thing, but became a kind of shorthand to describe everything from hostage negotiations to the behaviour of cult survivors and victims of domestic violence and abuse, is not only surprising but also maddening. What is stated in this episode, but not much discussed, is that the general description and definition of Stockholm Syndrome largely came from news media. From there, it weirdly entered academic papers and back into popular culture through references, mostly conjecture, to events that felt similar to the description and definition largely invented in either news reporting or popular media.

Putting aside Stockholm Syndrome for a moment, let’s recall two other popular ideas that, while propagated in news reporting, were never verified by any rigorous research. First, that dark chocolate is good for you because it contains cancer-fighting antioxidants. Second, moderate red wine consumption has some health benefits. Chocolate was first reported as healthy in a paper funded by the Mars Institute. That would be a foundation funded by one of the world’s foremost producers of candy, Mars (as in the Mars Bar and others). The original research found that an indigenous group on a remote island had unusually low rates of cancer (which was true) and that these people also harvested cacao fruit (which was also true). The researcher, who worked alone, hypothesized that as harvesters of cacao, these people probably consumed a lot of chocolate or other products of cacao (they didn’t) and that the flavonoids in the cacao fruit (again, largely true) contributed to their low rates of cancer. The report never said that consumption of chocolate prevented cancer (though it was suggested). Now, let’s be clear, chocolate, which is candy, does not contain cancer-fighting flavonoids because cacao goes through a lot of processing before it becomes chocolate. The Mars Institute never promoted the idea of chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, having cancer-fighting properties (though once popularized, they didn’t explicitly dispute it). I’m not sure who read the research abstract and reported or created this idea of the cancer-fighting properties of chocolate, but someone did, and once the idea took off, it took hold and was repeated over and over. That idea was fabricated and popularized by news organizations and health reporters working with little knowledge of such research while on a deadline. Similarly, it has been reported widely that red wine has some positive influence on heart health. The reason to conclude this was that French people enjoy a lot of red wine, and despite a diet heavy in animal fats and butter, they have lower incidences of heart disease. Many researchers have tried to make the connection and failed, but that didn’t stop news organizations from creating and promoting the connection. Now, after years of the idea that a couple of glasses of red wine might contribute to heart health, authorities have gone out of their way to say there is no healthy amount of alcohol consumption and that alcohol is a carcinogen to be avoided.

I do not think “mainstream media” is an agenda-driven cabal of leftists, but there is plenty of evidence to show how flawed news media can be. There have been several pranksters who have manipulated reporters and their editors and the time and commercial pressures they face to plant false stories to demonstrate this (famously, an article about portable toilets on the White House lawn comes to mind). We’re also very aware of news corporations having an explicit political agenda. Think of Rupert Murdoch and the amount of influence his media empire has exerted in Australia, the UK, and the USA (particularly Murdoch’s anti-union stance). More benignly, think of how often editors casually opine on which political candidates they think people should vote for, such as when the Globe and Mail told Canadians that Justin Trudeau “wasn’t ready” to be Prime Minister (a phrase already in use at the time by the Conservative Party), or when Postmedia’s editorial board helped form the Ontario Conservatives' election campaign messaging, or when the New York Times implored Americans to vote against Donald Trump. News organizations need a better way to correct reporting than putting a line at the end of an article stating they misspelled a source’s name or some other ludicrously minor correction. Also, news readers should learn to discern conjecture and speculation from fact. Only The Guardian has done anything like this as they now post the age of an article in a yellow banner on the top of the page. As news readers, we should learn that there will always be articles about health studies that really only apply to mice or rats and not people. We should also remember that any story about science needs to be heard from experts and not a journalist with little or no science background trying and often failing to explain technical or complex concepts.

Saying all of this makes it very clear how easy it is to spread disinformation (disinformation meaning there is intent to give the wrong information as opposed to misinformation being information that is incorrect). I've neglected to add about how this intractable problem is only getting worse and may not get better because, as the adage goes, a lie can travel around the world before the truth can put on its pants. The way that search engines prioritize links that are shared more often only contribute to that. A link that is shared more often is seen more often and can be shared more often, leading to an exponential increase in the number of times a link, an article or a collection of key words and phrases are seen and then referenced. Which leads to a lie said more often, is much more likely to be repeated than a truth that fewer people have seen or read. It doesn't help that this is exactly the kind of interaction that fuels the revenue models of companies like Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook), so it's in their interest to their shareholders to promote that behaviour. Now that Meta has dumped their fact-checkers, we’re headed for an even more dangerous time for the spread of incorrect information.

In one way, I’m not trying to blame journalists for mistakes or misinformation, but, in another way, I am entirely blaming news organizations and the search engines that point to certain content for being so absolutely crap at their one job: telling us what you know. Do not tell us what you believe, think, surmise, or invent. I can do that all on my own.