Seeing the World Through a Pinhole

If you follow politics, or the media, or both, you know that there is a long-standing debate about whether the media is politically biased or not. Both Left and Right like to sport bumper stickers and spout made-up epithets, from "lame-stream media" (one of Sarah Palin's favorites) to "corporate media" (a favorite of the Left). A lot of this argument, of course, is to feed martyr complexes on both sides that make each feel paradoxically disadvantaged and empowered by their victimhood at the hands of the supposedly evil media outlets.

The reality, in my view, is much more prosaic. We shouldn't be worried so much about the bias in the media as we should about our reliance on it to understand the world. The problem isn't that the media is slanting the news (they are, though not always in the directions we think), but that we fail to understand the severe limitations of news media at all.

When we talk about the media as a "lens" through which we view the world, we are either using the wrong metaphor or misunderstanding it. Yes, that lens has distortions. Specific outlets may distort based on ideological lines, but there are also distortions based on business decisions - what sells? Fear and anxiety, of course, sell much better than other things, and so we get a steady diet of stories about what's wrong with the world.

This past Sunday my local newspaper ran a story on the front page about an "increase" in "school threats" (incidents of threats made to schools, often as pranks by students). The headline was about how Ohio had more such incidents than any other state in the 2014-15 school year, which of course would make local news. The source of this data? A Cleveland-based consulting company called "National School Safety and Security Services", a company that provides training and consulting to school districts on security issues. How many such "studies" get put into headlines every day, based on bogus or uncorroborated data promulgated by people who have an interest in telling a particular story?

Beyond the specific stories and how they're reported is the question of setting the agenda. This is where the media is truly powerful, but only because we allow them to be. We assume that whatever is on the front page of the paper and what is being talked about on CNN is "what's going on". Transgender bathroom usage in high schools? This was a complete non-issue until somebody grabbed the media bullhorn and decided to make a big deal about it. Yes, schools should treat everybody fairly and bullying stinks. But why is this particular dimension of that problem driving the national conversation? Because somebody with an interest wanted it there.

Some have tried to argue recently that, despite the general national gloom, we're really pretty well off and things are going pretty well. These arguments, though they are likely true, won't go very far because the stories we see - the stories we assume tell us "what's going on in the world" are all bad. It's like looking at the world through a pinhole, or a telephoto lens. Consider this fellow:



He's in the midst of a beautiful location, surrounded by mountains, lakes, forests, and wildlife. How much of that will he capture in the picture he takes? He will no doubt bring back some really beautiful photos - but how much of what he's surrounded by will he have gotten?

I've gone on some amazing hikes, and have taken lots of pictures. Many of them are quite striking; here's one of my favorites:



This is just a tiny piece of the vista you can see from that spot. Depending on what you're interested in, it may not even be the most important piece to you.

Now imagine that someone else is controlling the camera, and they want you to think that you're in a terrible place. How hard would it be to take a dozen images of ugly things and pass those off as representative of the whole? This is what the media does every day - not because they're trying to favor the Left or the Right, but because Ugly sells and reality - which is often messy, complex, and too big to fit on the front page - doesn't.

So when you're reading the local paper, watching cable news, or scrolling through your FB feed, remember that what you're seeing is just a tiny, tiny part of the real world. There's a lot you're NOT seeing. Go out and find some more of that - and remember how big the world is the next time somebody tells you that it fits in a handbasket on its way to hell.

The Marketplace of Ideas Really is a Marketplace

A little over a week ago Mark Bauerline, an Emory English professor, published an op-ed in the Sunday Review of the New York Times that asked “What’s the Point of a Professor?” In it he laid out a variation of the old “kids these days” argument and lamented that professors had lost their “moral authority”. It was the kind of “what’s wrong with the world” Jeremiad popular in many public discussions.

Bauerline’s article was swiftly skewered by dozens of other bloggers and writers in higher education, from the famous and well-placed (DanDrezner in the Washington Post) to the semi-famous (Steve Saideman, Matt Reed in Inside Higher Ed) to the obscure (including me). As Drezner and Reed pointed out, the problem was not merely that Bauerline’s argument was wrong, but that it was published in the New York Times. As Drezner wrote, “off-base op-eds like these are the only source of information that general readers like my mother have about the current state of higher education”.

This isn’t the first time that the NYT Sunday Review has published a misleading piece that grossly oversimplifies the world of higher ed. Six weeks ago Paul Campos, a law professor at Colorado, published an argument entitled “The Real Reason College TuitionCosts So Much” in that same publication. It was just as simplistic as Bauerline’s, and met with a similar level of criticism. But it was, of course, widely read.

Why does this happen? Why are the most published voices about higher education those who have the most simplistic views of it? There are dozens of excellent writers and bloggers who understand higher education in all its complexities. Why aren’t they being published?

This state of affairs isn’t because the NYT’s editorial board only wants to publish simplified arguments. It isn’t because of their decision-making at all. The lack of good, widely-available public writing from people inside higher education is because of the choices we faculty and administrators make. To quote the late Walt Kelly, we have met the enemy and he is us.

To understand why this is so, you have to understand the dynamic that drives most human behavior: incentives. While for most people being published in the Sunday New York Times would be a very great honor, for most faculty and administrators it’s not that impactful. Academia is famous for developing metrics of productivity, particularly in writing and research. But popular op-eds (even in the NYT) don’t show up in those systems. They don't help you get promoted, or get tenure, or get a better raise. The same thing is true of administrators, who are rewarded and compensated for a host of measured things none of which involves contributing to the public discussion. University presidents will occasionally weigh in, because they can argue to their boards that they are “thought leaders”. But for most of the rest of us working stiffs, there isn’t enough in it to justify the effort.

So why do people like Bauerline and Campos do it? Because they stand to gain by doing so. Both have made careers as “public intellectuals” by publishing books that are both widely read and highly controversial. Every time their name appears in print, their book sales get a bump. Better still, as champions of publicly controversial arguments they are sought-after speakers. Each is represented by at least two speaking agencies that book speakers across the country for various events, generally for a minimum fee of $5000 - $10,000 per appearance. This is the way the modern intellectual economy works. If you want to make money as a professor, particularly in the humanities, the road to riches lies not within the academy but outside of it. And on that road, visibility in publications like the New York Times is the coin of the realm. It turns out that the marketplace of ideas really is a marketplace.

In pointing this out, I am not at all casting aspersions on either of these gentlemen or doubting the sincerity of their arguments. I am sure that they do, in fact, believe what they write. But it is true that both have a powerful economic incentive to make those arguments in as forceful, simplistic, and controversial a manner as possible in the most visible places in the public arena. Which is how they end up in the Sunday Review.

Since this isn’t true for the rest of us who rely for our living primarily on doing a good job within our universities, we don't have the same incentives. We write blogs, because it’s easy. A few who are still rooted in academia and who value more complex arguments, like Drezner and the founders of The Monkey Cage, have managed to land in higher-visibility places – though most of what they write about is politics and other issues more of interest to the wider masses. There are some excellent writers in the Chronicle of Higher Education, but few in the general public read that august publication.

This dilemma is not unique to higher education, but it is particularly problematic for us. We lament the fact that the public discussion is driven to a large degree by Jeremiads and sensationalist headlines (like Time magazine’s infamous “Is College Worth It?” cover). We wail and gnash our teeth as state legislatures slash spending on universities or debate laws dictating how many courses professors should teach. We know that the American higher education system, once and still the envy of the world, is being steadily eroded by a tide of ignorance. But we mostly complain amongst ourselves. If we want to turn this trend around, more of us have to push back against our own incentive structures and speak out. Otherwise the “marketplace of ideas” will continue to be impoverished, dominated by those who know the least about what is really going on in higher education.

Why the Coverage of the Health Care Law is Nonsense

Yesterday's news cycle was, of course, totally dominated by the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act. It was fun, in a way, to watch the ebbs and flows - to see people's reactions on Facebook, to watch CNN screw up the story in the first 30 seconds. Some are happy, some are sad. Those predicting doom and the end of Western Civilization are wrong, as such people always are.

But here's the thing: pretty much all of the coverage of yesterday, and into today, is flat-out useless. As a nation, we are consumed with every question except the one we should be asking.

I will concede the point that, to lawyers and people with an interest in Constitutional jurisprudence, the part of the media blitz devoted to dissecting the decision itself was interesting. To those folks out there who actually have the expertise and interest to follow that sort of thing - a very small slice of the American population, some of them my friends - have at it. I've no doubt that amongst the hullabaloo of yesterday some interesting stuff emerged.

For the rest of us, however, everything that we have heard might as well have been broadcast in Swahili. Those stories that weren't devoted to the legal theories were focused on the politics: how does this affect the Presidential race, what will this do in Congressional races, how are Democrats and Republicans reacting. At hastily-arranged (but widely broadcast) news conferences John Boehner vowed to "fight on", while Nancy Pelosi declared victory. Across the nation, every local media outlet turned to its local reps and Senators, every one of whom responded in ways entirely predictable and scripted.

None of this matters to anybody whose career isn't actually in politics. Again, we're talking about a very small slice of the American population here.

What really matters to the rest of us is simple: what does this law actually do? How will it affect our lives? Will it make us better or worse off as a country? I get that there are winners and losers - every change creates winners and losers. Some segments of society will pay more, some will pay less. Some will get greater benefits, others will get fewer. That's the nature of change. But the two questions we really care about are,  what will this do to me and will we be better or worse off as a nation?

I'm sure that somewhere out there in the vast media wasteland, somebody spent 5 minutes aimlessly cogitating on this. But on the whole, if you listen to the media coverage you would think that the careers of a few hundreds of politicians were the most important thing in the world, instead of the welfare, health and prosperity of 300 million Americans. Worse still, to a certain extent we inflict this same nonsense on ourselves, at least if my casual viewing of the social media streams is any indication. We followed right along with the CNN/Fox/NPR herd.

I don't, of course, expect this to change. The hard truth is that almost nobody really knows what the law will do, except in a few specific instances - barring insurance companies from blocking coverage for preexisting conditions, for example. It's fascinating to me that, according to most polls, the law itself taken as a whole is unpopular even as the few concrete things about it that people actually know are widely approved of. It's a triumph of the takeover of Tribal Perception. We are all quite ready to pass judgment on something we have spent hardly 30 seconds' thought actually considering.

We expect this from our politicians, whose well-paying jobs (have you seen their health care coverage, or their retirement benefits?) depend on continuing the Kabuki theater that is tribal American politics. But it appears that we, or some segment of us, have decided to treat the health care debate the way we treat the Super Bowl: as an occasion for cheering on Our Team, and for determining our feelings (and our perceptions) on the basis of whether our Team "won" or "lost".

I think - or, at least, I hope - that there are folks out there who really don't care about this nonsense, and who would desperately like to know more about this law and how it will affect their lives and the community and society they live in. Those of us in this group, of course, are pretty much abandoned. Politicians will not pander to us, because we don't care. And CNN, the NY Times, Fox, and NPR are not going to go get the information we want and bring it to us, because Horse Race Reporting is cheaper, easier, and far more profitable.

Is there a "silent majority" (to borrow Nixon's phrase) here? I doubt it, although voting behavior suggests there may be (even Presidential elections only pull about 50% of the electorate). But the ability of that segment to actually influence things will continue to be near zero, until and unless a common interest emerges to both unite people and pull them to action. Until then, back to the Super Bowl!