Separate Fact From Prejudice And Where The Media Really Gets It Wrong

I think this piece from the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts Jr. hit the spot many in an earlier posts were arguing:

Separate Fact From Prejudice

On a similar but different note, the news that the millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf Coast are being eaten by bacteria and are dissolving much quicker than many had anticipated, illustrates another point about media and our responses to it:

Just as Pitts argues that we all have pre-conceived narratives running around our heads, too often the media at large does as well, which is why for months on end we were told this huge ecological disaster may destroy the Gulf Coast or render it useless for the next few decades. The hyperventilating was incessant and overbearing. Anyone who suggested that maybe there are natural forces which know how to clean up crude oil -- a natural substance -- was quickly deemed a heretic. What will seem like irony for some, and confirmation to others, none other than Rush Limbaugh tried to make that point weeks ago, even if he took it too far. (Of course he made many outrageous claims about the oil spill as well.) 

I believe the media, in the aggregate, too often feels compelled to treat scientific forecasts as though they are God-ordained prophecies. But science is about probability, not prophecy, which means we always need to be careful and qualify claims, even when they come from the best scientists, about what might happen weeks, months or years from now. They know a lot, but they don't know everything. It's the same warning I've been giving about the potential affects of global warming. While most scientists seem to believe the globe is warming faster than it otherwise would because of human actions, the science is far less certain about what that will mean years or decades for now. And even if the worst global climate predictions come true -- that there will be many more deaths caused because of the heat -- it could also mean that far fewer people will die from extreme cold weather. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if we call it bias or bad journalism. What matters is that professional journalists do it better, and that readers -- who also bring pre-conceived notions to what they read -- check multiple sources to get a rounded view of what's going on in the world.

Just as Pitts argues that we all have pre-conceived narratives running around our heads, too often the media at large does as well, which is why for months on end we were told this huge ecological disaster may destroy the Gulf Coast or render it useless for the next few decades. The hyperventilating was incessant and overbearing. Anyone who suggested that maybe there are natural forces which know how to clean up crude oil -- a natural substance -- was quickly deemed a heretic. What will seem like irony for some, and confirmation to others, none other than Rush Limbaugh tried to make that point weeks ago, even if he took it too far. (Of course he made many outrageous claims about the oil spill as well.) 

I believe the media, in the aggregate, too often feels compelled to treat scientific forecasts as though they are God-ordained prophecies. But science is about probability, not prophecy, which means we always need to be careful and qualify claims, even when they come from the best scientists, about what might happen weeks, months or years from now. They know a lot, but they don't know everything. It's the same warning I've been giving about the potential affects of global warming. While most scientists seem to believe the globe is warming faster than it otherwise would because of human actions, the science is far less certain about what that will mean years or decades for now. And even if the worst global climate predictions come true -- that there will be many more deaths caused because of the heat -- it could also mean that far fewer people will die from extreme cold weather. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if we call it bias or bad journalism. What matters is that professional journalists do it better, and that readers -- who also bring pre-conceived notions to what they read -- check multiple sources to get a rounded view of what's going on in the world.