Using Context and Proportion to Protect Democracy

Elisabeth Warner

ew758821@ohio.edu   

Context and Proportion as Tools for Journalists 

    The authors of The Elements of Journalism assert that the "purpose of journalism is to provide people with the information they need to be free and self governing", a sentiment broad enough that most people can agree with. The present a sensible roadmap for journalists to follow they believe will allow for the survival of journalism as an institution and, ultimately, for democracy. One of the most important directives in the roadmap comes near the end of the list, which urges journalists and producers to "present news in a way that's comprehensive and proportional". To do that, news must be delivered through methods that contain not just the facts immediately relevant to the story but also the context that surrounds them, using appropriate emphasis and attention.

Comprehensive News is News with Context

    Presenting news that is comprehensive means including the circumstances, environment, actors and their potential motives, comparisons to documented norms, and any other factors that paint an accurate picture. To be comprehensive is to give an audience context to connect current events to historical ones, supplying a through line to follow for deeper cognition, and helps the consumer weight the importance of discrete data points in any given story. Context, says media and technology scholar Jasmine McNealy, is simply data placed in context. Without it, audiences cannot develop an informed position, making them vulnerable to dis- and misinformation and ripe for exploitation by unethical political figures. 

Image credit: creator unknown, via Medium

   Proportion ≠ Balance 

     Reporting that provides context dovetails with proportional reporting. The weighting afforded to the audience through the conveyance of contextual information must also be expressed through coverage and dialogue that assigns value in a way that corresponds with the significance of what's being described. Proportion is the much-needed antidote to the overused trope of balance, a practice that has undermined journalism's credibility and given unearned status to people and ideas that have at best muddied our collective understanding of truth and at worst fanned the flames of violence and division. The authors correctly argue that balance has been misunderstood to mean the institution is obliged to give equal credence and time to all perspectives under the mistaken belief that this represented fair treatment of their subject matter. Rather than creating a relationship of trust between the reporter and the audience, however, the evident absurdity of trying to make parallel issues that are frankly not delegitimizes journalism. The insistence of journalistic balance would frame a jaywalker and a murderer only in terms of two people breaking the law– this strikes most people as false, lazy, and dishonest, not qualities that inspire confidence in the reporter or, by extension, the institution they represent.

Image credit: National Park Guy, via The Atlantic

The Consequences of Flooding a Democracy with Garbage 

    Content disseminated as news that does not connect its audience to a greater meaning or presents uneven scenarios as equal erodes not only our faith in that institution but our common ability to make decisions that shape our lives on the personal, community, and national level. People are exhausted from the effort of trying to discern meaningful and accurate information from the sea of garbage they are flooded with on a daily and often hourly basis. Add to that news that puffs up one event or neglects another, or fails to communicate the history and relative comparisons, and it's no wonder people are confused by what they hear and mistrustful of who they hear it from. 

    A few years ago, political operative Steve Bannon shared his strategy to lecture the elections of politicians advocating extremist right-wing ideologies. Rather than concentrating on specific opponents, he recognized the true barrier for his candidates was the media, and proceeded to say the quiet part out loud when he declared his intention to "flood the zone with sh*t". Bannon's bet was that the relentless dis- and misinformation, bad faith narratives, and vapid content masquerading as news would undermine the public's confidence in journalism as an institution by putting legitimate news stories at the same level as the... content flooding the zone. This has surely contributed to the declining faith Americans have in national news organizations, as just 58% of us in 2021 have trust in the information we get from them, down from 65% just two years earlier. Bannon's bet appears to have paid off. 

    This matters because without reliable information, people can't effectively make decisions that keep them "free and governing", which is foundational to a functioning democracy. When lies and inflated truths compete with actual truths, democracy is perverted. Voters making decisions based on false information risk electing authoritarian leaders. Citizens who are told day after day that there is no real difference in political parties don't vote at all, further empowering authoritarians. But it's not just the bad faith content producers who threaten democracy; conventional journalism supports authoritarianism, too. When news organizations allocate resources in a way that discourages comprehensive and contextual coverage pairs with an unwillingness to call out lies and bad behavior for fear of being accused of partisanship, our capacity as citizens to make well-informed choices in diminished.  

It's Not Over Yet

    Democracy is proving to be more frail that we ever thought possible, giving journalism the opportunity to protect it by committing to practices that insist on news that is "comprehensive and proportional". If, however, the institution and the organizations that practice it continue to operate with outdated standards, we can expect the zone to get a lot more wet.