The objectivity bias

Fairness and even-handedness are important. But a reflex in fact-based media to look impartial is an existential problem that sometimes gets in the way of accurately describing reality.

Those of us who work in the media business are usually pretty head down: there is news to chase, sources to hit up, social media to scan, and, always, a deadline around the corner. Suffice it to say that the industry is, perhaps to an extreme degree, focused on the moment.

But I was having a chat with a journalist friend a few days ago when he asked me a Bigger Question that opened the floor for us to step back and consider things in a deeper way. He wanted to know what I thought of the news business as a whole, now that I no longer work for a big media shop. Did I believe in its power ? Was I still enchanted by its potential — or disillusioned by its politics?

Someday, I’ll write something longer on this topic. And it would be simplistic to dismiss the industry as a whole, as convenient as it is these days to bash “the media” as if it were a single, poorly written article. But I told my friend about something that catches me just about every day, when I’m reading or listening to the news. Something that causes me to close the page, put down my phone, turn off the radio, and say, I just can’t right now.

It’s the reflexive grasping for objectivity, a sort of phantom limb syndrome that afflicts a media system whose business model was built for simpler and saner times, with a functioning government and two political parties that may have disagreed, but also both tried, at least some of the time, to do the right thing.

These days, this objectivity signaling manifests as turns of phrase that sound true — and feel like, in a better world, they would be true — but aren’t. Journalism that’s deployed out of habit, not thought. But this writing has an agenda of its own: it’s meant to underscore a reporter or institution’s impartiality and fairness. Which is an issue when it isn’t actually fair or accurate. It’s why you see very smart people across the media spectrum say things that seem at odds with reality, like Ezra Klein’s now infamous characterization of Charlie Kirk in the emotional moments after his death.

The example that came to me that day was this. I had put on an episode of The Daily during my morning commute, about the Trump administration’s idea to expand home mortgage terms from 30 to 50 years. While this may help entice more people into an increasingly challenging housing market short-term, its larger effect on prices and the economy are far from clear.

What such a policy would do is add exponentially to the amount of interest homebuyers would have to pay over the loan’s lifetime, raising costs long-term while lowering monthly payouts. Here is an estimate of what this would look like from The Washington Post, for a buyer taking out a $500,000 loan: their monthly payments would drop from about $3,000 on a 30-year loan to $2,600 over 50 years. But the amount of interest they’d have to pay off would balloon — from $590,000 to $1.1 million, drastically increasing their total costs. The policy, which would require regulatory changes to go into effect, is drawing criticism from across the political spectrum.

But this is how Daily host Michael Barbaro opened his segment on the issue.

A few days ago, when President Trump proposed the introduction of a 50-year mortgage, he challenged a bedrock of the American housing market and financial system. But above all, he revealed just how desperate he is to lower prices for consumers and how willing he is to embrace radical solutions to do so. It’s Monday, November 17.

Does that sound like the reality you know? The President, pacing around the White House in his desperation to make life easier for working class Americans. Kept up late by nightmares of the affordability crisis. Yelling at the TV because he can’t bear the thought of another family struggling to buy a home. Is that what motivates the President?

This trusty typewriter tells it like it is. Or does it?

To me, this framing is a peak example of an objectivity bias in media. It’s misleading to describe a political figure who has not been reported to act this way, for these reasons, in this manner. We have years of evidence. Trump is one of the most scrutinized, recorded, videotaped, streamed, watched, and reported on figures on the planet. So why such a strange statement?

As the media industry suffers through the stormy seas of technological upheaval, a collapsing business model, and a political paradigm that challenges its unspoken assumptions about decency, progress and patriotism, it seems to cling to the idea of “objectivity” like a life raft — as if it could save it.

The desperation means that reporters, editors, and the general media hive mind sometimes lean on phrases that make them look even-handed and fair, when they are the opposite. Part of this is informed by a business imperative to appeal to as wide a group of readers, listeners, subscribers and advertisers as possible.

But the life raft doesn’t hold in gales such as these. The rest of the podcast episode, which featured housing reporter Conor Dougherty, was solid and informative. But I wonder how many other folks like me reached to shut it off after the intro.

Here’s what else we’re reading this week:

• Strong piece in The American Prospect — a true lefty outlet in the best way — looking at the “mountain of sketchy financial engineering” underpinning the AI boom.

• Big week for media gossip thanks to fallen — and then resurrected — and now maybe fallen again media darling Olivia Nuzzi! The indiscretions are popcorn-worthy. But who are we to judge? On the eve of her book launch about a maybe only digital affair with RFK Jr., the only crime I see is the caliber of the writing in her book excerpt. I think Nuzzi’s story points to some inherent contradictions in the news biz: how the ability to get in the room — and draw attention — rules all. It’s too easy to dismiss this as a parable of the internet age, as some have tried. Surely, there’s a bit of that. But this scandal feels timeless too.

• Well-reasoned editorial in the NYT about Trump’s meeting with Saudi Arabia’s MBS, in which Trump undermined a reporter who asked the Crown Prince about journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder, and appeared to suggest he had it coming.

  Traditionally, foreign leaders who visit the White House understand that they will not be able to avoid hard questions, as authoritarian leaders can at home….The role of the news media in our democracy is not to flatter foreign leaders or, for that matter, American ones. It is to pose important and sometimes challenging questions and publish the facts.

• Protests at Microsoft Conference Target Tech Giant’s Ties With Israeli Military (KQED)

• Gil Duran called an ex-Palantir — and Obama admin — alum’s op-ed urging Democrats to do more to accommodate the tech industry an “extortion letter:”

What could possibly make anyone distrust Silicon Valley? Was it the massive expansion of the surveillance state? The promotion of algorithms that divide society and harm children? Or the expansion of AI technologies that, in the openly embraced fantasies of tech moguls, will kill most jobs? The rush to get contracts from a fascist administration that has unleashed masked men with guns to terrorize the populace?

• And a small development, to follow up on last week’s note about the AI industry’s angling for federal backing: the feds are providing a $1 billion backstop for the rehabilitation of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, which will be used exclusively to generate power for Microsoft’s data centers. (The Washington Post)

See you next week.