AN OPEN LETTER TO LEONARD DOWNIE ABOUT FALSE BAD NEWS Julian L. Simon "If it bleeds, it leads". Question to journalist: "Why do you give so many benign stories a bad-news slant?" Answer: "Because that's what attracts readers and interests people." Question to Willie Sutton, the renowned bank robber: "Why do you rob banks, Willie?" Answer: "Because that's where the money is." Mr. Leonard Downie, Managing Editor The Washington Post Dear Mr. Downie: The purpose of this letter is to document that a bad-news spin often is given to news stories, using for illustration my home-town paper, The Washington Post. I believe that these examples go beyond an acceptable "tilt" for the purpose of eliciting reader interest, and are evidence of a serious flaw in the character of contemporary journalism. The aim of this letter is not to show that the press errs by imbalanced choice in publishing negative news in its reporting on social-scientific and environmental matters, or that the reporting is often in error; that is shown ad nauseam in such books as Michael Fumento's Science Under Siege, Ronald Bailey's Eco-Scam, Edith Efron's The Apocalyptics, Elizabeth Whelan's Toxic Terror, and I think especially sharply in my own The Ultimate Resource. Rather, my aim here is to show how the press intentionally puts a bad-news twist on information even when the information in its hand (and often given in the body of the article itself) shows the opposite. I hope you will read this letter in the context of your October 18, 1992 (p. C7) column in which you wrote, "We are determined to keep our coverage of the news - especially an election campaign - fair, unbiased and unpartisan," asking your editors and reporters to "come as close as possible...to completely cleanse their professional minds of human emotions and opinions." Earlier on I sent you this letter privately, twice. As you journalists say when you imply that a person does not want to respond: you did not answer my repeated letters. Ombudsman (Ombudsperson) Joann Byrd wrote (August 29, 1993, p. C6) "The news columns are as free of bias as the newspaper can make them"; I also sent a copy of this letter to her, and she responded "I don't know whether I'll write about it, but will do my best to get back to you" (August 29, 1993). Repeated inquiries have not elicited any get-back from her, either. Saying anything bad about your local newspaper is imprudent in the extreme for anyone; it is even worse for someone who would like his/her writings published in that paper from time to time. Why would anyone do so, then? The obvious Washington answer - the ultimate insult in this city of clever people - is: simple stupidity. (Here honor and decency as well as prudence remind me to mention that there are many wonderful things about the paper - it is one of the world's great newspapers, and I know that you are committed to making it better. And many wonderful people who work there - a few of them among those I consider friends. But that is not my topic now.) The bulk of the news stories mentioned below date from late 1992, when I watched the phenomenon seriously for a while. The rest were clipped haphazardly. Please notice how each presents a negative headline even though the text is positive. 1. In Figure 2-1, the September 17, 1992 (pp. A1, 14) story on high school dropouts - important enough to be on your front page - suggests that bad things are happening. The story first focuses on the District of Columbia, which one may argue is a legitimate local negative story for a Washington newspaper. But the negative outlook carries through to the inside page with comments on the general situation by supposed authorities. Figure 2-1 Yet the diagram on your own page A14 (Figure 2-2) shows that the long course of the events in discussion is undoubtedly a positive trend - toward an ever-smaller proportion of youth dropping out over the years. This positive trend is noted only in the last two paragraphs of the story, however. Figure 2-2 (Post extended by Simon) Additionally, if the chart had been carried backwards just a bit more, the impression of a positive trend would have been even more marked, as can be seen in my extension of your graph backwards a few years. Did the data the reporter worked with start in 1972, or was that an arbitrary choice? Certainly it is easy to extend the data series further. 2. Many stories about the black infant mortality rate that suggest that the appropriate reaction is a wringing of hands. For example, March 23, 1990, A3: "Growing Disparity Found in Health of Blacks, Whites." The subhead tells the important story: "Most Americans Living Longer, Report Says." As to the "disparity," look at the infant mortality chart in Figure 2-3, which makes clear that the infant mortality rate was far higher in the past, both for blacks and for whites. Additionally, the black and white rates have come much closer to each other in absolute terms. Yes, other countries have rates lower than in the U.S. But is not the most important overall judgment that humanity and the U.S. population are riding on a wonderful trend? To leave another impression with if's, and's, and but's which are at the head of the story and are the main theme rather than as qualifications, is to misstate the truth, in my view. Figure 2-3 This story is almost a yearly staple. On April 30, 1994, your headline on an AP story was "Infant Death Racial Gap Is Widening", and the first paragraph was "By the turn of the century, black babies will be three times more likely to die by their first birthdays as white babies, federal health officials said today". Bad news, indeed! The second and third paragraphs tell the full statistical facts - a story of unmitigated good news. "From 1980 to 1991, the most recent year for which data are available, the rate of black infant deaths dropped nearly 21 percent, from 22.2 to 17.6...The death rate for white babies fell 33 percent, from 10.9 to 7.3 per 1,000". Not only did the black rate fall, but it fell by more absolute deaths (4.6 per 1,000) than did the white rate (3.6 per 1,000). But the headline only looked at the comparative effect, and only at the difference in percentages. Happily, positive health news also is reported sometimes without any bad-news twist. "Risk of Stillbirth Falls, Study Shows" (October 15, 1995, p. A 20). But that is hardly an exculpation of the false bad-news twists. And can anyone point out a single case in the main-stream press of a false good-news twist? 3. The first-page story about fish farming on August 22, 1992 (A1, 8) has a headline suggesting that something bad has been happening: "Fish Farms Fall Prey to Excess: Economic Prom- ise Ebbs With Market." The central fact is that stiff competi- tion has greatly reduced the price of fish. This means more abundant food, and lower consumer prices - phenomena which all agree (I hope!) are good. Wherever and whenever the opposite happens, you decry higher prices as bad - properly. Yet this good-news story is presented as bad news, so bad that it rates the front page. Of course the Post is not alone in all this. The New York Times had, "On Long Island Sound, Too Much of a Good Thing," with continuation, "Pursuit of Lobsters Spawns Tensions" [May 2, 1992, pp. 45, 53]. What's the supposed problem? "...in 1991, lobstermen pulled a record 2.9 million pounds of lobster from the waters around Long Island"...What would the headline have been if there had been a record low instead of a record high? Probably danger to the lobster species.) ...And on the following Sunday, Jonathan Yardley in the Post reviews "a most charming and informative book, one that gives a vivid picture of the current state of the country's eastern short" that "In Northern Maine ...finds the first evidence of a pattern that is repeated all the way down to Key West: the declining harvest of the sea, from Maine lobsters to..." (May 9, 1993, Book World, p. 3). 4. The interpretation of good news about plentiful food as bad is again seen in the headline "Good Crops a Bad Sign" (August 14, 1985, A2), and in "Alaskan Salmon Harvest Is Fisherman's Nightmare" (August 25, 1991, A16); the latter reported that the "avalanche of salmon is returning to the same Prince William Sound that two years ago was fouled by oil from the Exxon Valdez tanker in an environmental disaster that some feared would devas- tate the fishing industry." Would the important element not seem to be this remarkable good news? But the headline says "...Nightmare..." 5. Still another food-supply twist: "Splicing Genes, Slic- ing Exports: U.S. Firms' Bio-Engineered Tropical Plants May Threaten Third World Farmers" (September 27, 1992, H1). When you read the story you learn about "new, genetically altered tropical plants whose resistance to disease and insects could vastly improve agriculture in the Third World." The result would be that fewer farmers could feed more people, allowing other things to be produced - the very story of the advance of civilization. Here it is referred to as a change that "could rob thousands of tropical farmers of their livelihoods, and cost Third World countries millions of dollars in agricultural exports." The journalistic propensity for bad news is independent of the newspaper's political stance. The Wall Street Journal had this gem of a headline in 1995: "Scrapping of Canadian Wheat Subsidy Could Mean Problems for U.S. Growers" (June 21, 1995, p. A2). The dominant direct effect of Canada cutting the wheat subsidy is to reduce the amount of Canadian wheat grown and hence to reduce competition for U. S. growers. But the reporter managed to find a possible negative effect in the concurrent reduction of Canadian transportation subsidies that might induce more Canadian shipments to the nearby U. S. 6. The phenomenon may be seen in other types of stories, too: "Low Energy Prices Viewed as Threat to Conservation" (March 27, 1988, A14). "Falling Interest Rates Are Mixed Blessing". (October 24, 1993, p. H7) "Danger Seen in Falling Jobless Rate" (November 30, 1993, D1). You'd be hard put to find any major economic drawback to any of those phenomena. The recent champion of bad-news-out-of-good was the headline spread across the top of Page 1 on January 4, 1994: "Gaza Women Fear Setback from Peace". Snatching that defeat out of the jaws of diplomatic victory took high skill. 7. The headline - "Teen Birthrates Reach Highs Last Seen in '70s"- and the body of a January 19, 1992 (p. A3) story on teenage childbearing by B. Vobejda leave the impression that the teen-age fertility rate has risen over the years - which most people would take to be bad. (It should be noted however, that this view embodies a value judgment which is certainly open to question. A married (say) 19-year old woman who [with her husband] chooses to have a child has been the cause of many of the happiest events in human life. But that matter is beyond any hope of non-judgmental reporting in the 1990s.) Despite the tone of the text, the right-hand part of Figure 2-4 accompanying the story showed a general decline in teenage childbearing over the years, with only a recent blip upwards. One may argue that the blip has happened, and therefore it is news. But to my mind, reporting on the blip in this fashion gives the public a false impression of the overall trends. Figure 2-4 - include 20-24 age group Furthermore, if the chart had been carried even further back (as in Figure 2-4), the decline would have been even more pronounced. The decision about the date to start the chart was purely arbitrary, because the publication from which the data were drawn contained data going back to 1960. Additionally, the slight tick upwards in teen-age births tells nothing at all about teen-agers because the same uptick is shown by the 20-24 year-old group (see Figure 2-4); there was some general movement that was simply shared by the teen-agers - a movement, I reiterate, which is still trivial compared to the long-run trend. (A later year's headline was "Teen Birth Rate Drops After Rising Since Mid-1980s" [Sep 22, 1995, p. A9]. So the "good" news was reported.) 8. The front-page story of October 10, 1992 - "U.S. Exports Off Sharply in August" - suggests that something bad had been happening to the U.S. economy, as indicated by the trade deficit data. At the surface level of the data themselves, the chart with the story shows that the longer-run trend over the past few years had been positive, and the recent data are best seen as a blip or temporary reversal in this longer-term trend. Anyone interested in the course of the trade deficit should have felt encouraged by the totality of the evidence. (At a deeper level, it is by no means obvious that a trade deficit is a bad thing. From a point of view of the consumer, it means that we are sending out less goods and getting more in return than if there was no deficit. But I suppose that subtlety is beyond reach.) The deficit story is an interesting example of a more gener- al trend: As the world becomes richer, there are fewer stories about human success in beating back the raw forces of nature to yield increased length of life and a higher standard of living; inevitably, there are more stories about the comparative standing of the various sub-groups of the population. In any comparison between countries, say, there inevitably is one loser, which means that one can always justifiably write a bad-news story about one side or the other. This can be seen in the above- mentioned story about the gene-altered plants that we are sending abroad. The overall development is an improvement that means more food for the world, including the poorer countries. And it boosts U.S. exports. But the story focuses on possible harms to the poorer countries, though these are only very speculative. 9. A front-page story was headed "Stress Ambushes Army Recruiters" (July 31, 1989, page A1). As the story says in its opening line, "U.S. Army officials are finding that recruiting in the affluent Washington area - where unemployment is low and educational standards are high has led to severe stress among some recruiters..." In other words, the D.C. area is in good economic shape in the relevant respects. And the writer has to resort to the difficulty of people selling a product that people don't want to buy - Army service - as the bad-news hook for a story. I interpret the fact that this story could gain a position on your front page as indicating that the world is in such good shape that it offers very little bad news that journalists can find to report on - a paucity of wars, fires, cyclones, and dictatorial takeovers. Would you agree? 10. The August 20, 1992, story on page A24 headed "Gulf War Oil Damage Less Than Expected, Scientists' Report Says." The early supposed bad news was on page 1, then later on the reduction in the scope of the bad news was reported much further back in the newspaper. 11. "U.S. Lags in Education Spending" was the headline of a Washington Post story (September 24, 1992, page A9). The tone in the text of this article is negative in every sentence in terms of the supposed data being reported. And it leaves no doubt that the supposed low spending by the U.S. is a bad thing. Figures 2-5 and 2-6 show that in absolute money terms, the United States spends more per student at the primary and secondary levels (in purchasing-power-parity measures, the economist notes) than does almost any other country - exactly the opposite of the impression the story leaves with its focus on percentages rather than absolute amounts. Japan and Germany - which certainly have not done so badly economically - spend much less than the U.S. not only in dollar terms but in percentage terms. If one wants to connect economic success to this measure, the cases of Japan and Germany would hardly support the idea. Figures 2-5 and 2-6 At the tertiary level, the United States has a larger proportion of students attending than do most other countries. Combined with the expenditure per student shown in Figure 2-7, the United States clearly spends more per tertiary student, also, than does almost any other country. Figure 2-7 The news story discusses only percentages of income spent for education, rather than absolute dollars. By the most tor- tured interpretation, this measure might not be absolutely false in saying that the United States "lags." The justification given is that this magnitude represents "effort." But this is not valid, in my view. Even if it were true that the United States were at the bottom of the list in percentage terms - which is most certainly not so - this would not necessarily be bad evidence. As a person gets richer, s/he tends to spend a smaller proportion of income for certain important goods - for example, food. On average, people in the richest countries - just like the richest families - spend a smaller proportion of their income on necessities such as food than do poorer persons. Indeed, a small proportion of one's income spent on such things is an exceedingly good indica- tor of how well off one is in general. In aggregate, a poor country may spend 80% of its income for food, whereas a rich one spends only perhaps 25%. It would hardly be sensible to say that the rich country "lags" in food spending. And there is good reason to think that the same is true for education. A poor family certainly spends more for education as a proportion of its income than does a wealthy family, on aver- age. Hence the data on proportion of income spent for education tell little about countries. If one is interested in how the United States compares against other countries, it would certainly be relevant to consider the total amount of education that Americans have. The OECD book from which the above data are drawn (from which the Post story was drawn) also includes a table of the educational levels of people 25 - 64 in various countries. Though this does not refer to current educational efforts, it does put the matter in perspective. Given that most Americans finish high school eventually, the best measure of total education is the percentage of people who have a college education. These data show that the United States is far ahead of any other. Figure 11-4 shows how the U. S. has a much more educated adult population than does any other country - suggesting that the U. S. does not "lag." Figure 2-8 12. The October 5, 1992 Washington Post (page A17) included a story with the headline, "'Social Health' Index Hits a 21-Year Low." This is a story about a professor's press release, not a peer-reviewed report appearing in a professional journal or at a professional meeting. The headline continues, "Professor Says National Problems Contribute to Lack of Confidence." Here is some analysis of that article: a) The story uncritically accepts that the data really show things getting worse in such matters as school dropouts and infant mortality. But dispassionate analysis indicates that earnings, housing and poverty trends have been improving over almost any past period, and are certainly not getting worse by even the most biased reports. b) The article does not consider that the indices may have been chosen by the professor to arrive at a conclusion he wished to reach. The measures he used (see Figure 2-9) certainly are very arbitrary. Figure 2-9 c) Increasing health costs for those over 65 also are not necessarily a bad sign; it makes sense that more is spent for health in the United States than in a poor country which cannot afford such costs (and perhaps this also means a very much small- er proportion of old people, who consume the most health care; the report does not say). Unless one assumes that people living long and getting a lot of health care is a bad thing, this indi- cator is almost surely not sensible. d) It is certainly not clear why highway deaths due to alcoholism (sic) should be selected as one of only 15 social indicators. But in any case, the trend in that indicator appeared not two months later on the front page of the December 30, 1992 USA TODAY, as Figure 2-11 shows. What could be better news? Figure 2-11 e) Why is Food Stamp Coverage a sound indicator? I'd think that fewer people getting food stamps would be a positive sign - or does the Index have it that way? The report does not say. I will not belabor the other indicators. Suffice it is to say that this "report" would not pass muster with respectable social scientists - nor apparently did your reporter check it out with any (none were mentioned in the story). Neither the report (nor, I hope, the newspaper story) would get by in a basic course in college. To test whether this report is misleading to the point of being false, open The Statistical Abstract of the United States to a random 25 pages, look at random measures on those pages, and you will see that by far the bulk - if not almost all - will show a positive trend from the point of view of the welfare of U.S. citizens and the world population as a whole. Another handy source of similar data is the widely- circulated Prevention Index, prepared by Prevention Magazine and surely received by your staff. The enclosed 1993 issue lists 21 sensible indicators, and the overall measure shows steady improvement from the 1984 (the first date shown) until 1993. Why is junk science published by you, and not this scientifically- acceptable study? A bias toward false bad news seems the only reasonable explanation. 13. The headline on page A25 on October 8, 1992 was "Polit- ical Participation is Increasingly Linked to Personal Wealth, Survey Finds." One cannot verify the headline from the story. Indeed, the story suggests that the data were collected just once - this year. Unless the survey asked people about their behavior in the past, there is no way that such a survey could support the headline. And even if such reports were collected, they are bound to be of dubious validity in a matter like this one. Without even examining the survey, I'd bet two to one that there are no such data on past behavior. The headline, therefore, would be nothing more than someone's opinion, the sort of thing that journalists claim to eschew. 14. "Study Says Poverty Rising Fastest Among Whites" was the October 9, 1992 (page A4) headline. It implies that poverty is rising in general. The story purports to report on the past 20 years. I have not read the study to which the article referred, but I believe it is fair to say that there is a strong consensus among economists who study poverty that when the appropriate adjustments are made, the poorest segments of the population have greater purchasing power, more assets, and better health care now than 20 years ago. (See Lebergott in Simon, 1996.) But if you accept that this is true, then the headline points in the wrong (and negative) direction. The only way you can calculate poverty to be not decreasing is by constantly raising the standard used to measure poverty. Do you acquiesce to reporting on that basis? Does that tell the truth or hide it? 15. June 4, 1992 (page A20) headline: "Blast on Ex-Soviet Nuclear Sub Kills One." A compressor (presumably an air compres- sor) exploded on the sub, and a metal splinter killed a crewman. The accident had absolutely nothing to do with any nuclear mat- ters. Yet the story quoted a Greenpeace International spokesman, and carried a headline suggesting nuclear danger. Worse indus- trial accidents happen in Washington every day, with greater potential danger to the public. Is it ethical or helpful to the public to stretch so far as this for news? 16. Front page, July 28, 1989: "Gains by Blacks Said to Stagnate in Last 20 Years." No journalist can be unaware of the health, education, and economic improvements by blacks on average over the past 20 years. (I hope that these are not really the "last" 20 years, but forgive my purism.) 17. A story about lead pollution on October 21, 1992 (A2) gives the impression that some environmental problem has been worsening - that is, some new problem has been discovered, which implies the former. Does that square with Figure 2-12, charting the steep decline in lead concentration in the air? One wonders exactly what was in the full text of the EPA report referred to; the story does not even name it to help one check. Figure 2-12 18. The story on October 18 headlined "Some Positive Global Trends Are Seen in Environmental, Social Conditions" makes it seem as if some exceptions have been discovered to a general situation of things getting worse. (I do not think that my reading of this is tendentious, though you may differ.) The story goes on to assert some non-facts - such as that the food condition in the world has been getting worse - a point of view shared by practically no agricultural economist in the country except Lester Brown (though Brown must certainly be quoted more often than any other "authority" on these subjects in your pages; I would pay for a citation check on that). And it goes on to cite some things as being good - such as a shift to bicycle manufacturing, which would be a shift for us toward the kind of economy China has; China specializes in bicycles for obvious reasons. The views of neither other agricultural economists nor general economists are quoted in the story. I do not believe that any story except one of this nature could pass so uncritically through your machinery. 19. The headline and the story entitled "Healthful Habits of the 1980s May Go Way of the Hula Hoop" (March 12, 1993, p. A2) could hardly be more contrary to the facts. Figure 2-13 shows the summary "Baxter Index," and Table 2-1 shows the data from which it was compiled. If a reporter reversed the thrust of a politician's remarks in similar fashion, there would be quick and pungent reply from the politician, with egg all over the face of the reporter and a quick trip to the woodshed. Data like these do not cry out for correction, nor does anyone do so on their behalf. Nor are you likely to want to print a correction after you see this; a long-dead issue, last year's news. Figure 2-13 and Table 2-1 Furthermore, the main "bad news" seems to be that more people are overweight. But this accompanies a decline in smoking and drinking (Wall Street Journal, April 21, 1993, p. B1), and it is not implausible that the latter causes the former. If so, the increase in weight is not a simple case of bad news, I hope you would agree. 20. What would you say if a publication or politician you loathed reported that violence in inner-city schools is declin- ing, as evidenced by the decline in the number of assaults with baseball bats and knives (assuming that to be true)? You would say that that publication or politician is constructively lying, because it is paying no attention to assaults with guns, which may be a better measure of the violence, and certainly are a partial substitute for knives and baseball bats. Now how about your paper reporting that child abuse is increasing as measured by the number of reports of child abuse? The data show that the number of deaths of children due to abuse has been falling, according to Douglas Besharov at AEI (who also shows that false reports have been going up along with total reports). Is there not an analogy here? And is it not true that the number of deaths is a much more reliable basis for estimating what is actually happening than the number of reports, especially when we know the documented number of false reports has been going up?...Maybe it is true that the reports data are correct, and that actual abuse is going up. But do not your reporters have an obligation to check out the deaths data, and explain the discrepancy if there is one? 21. Try this experiment for yourself. Show a few social scientists - or even laypersons - the left-hand graph in the June 13, 1993 (p. H3) story headlined "Fewer People Opt for Early Retirement" (Figure 2-14), but without showing them the title on the graph or the headline. Ask them what the graph shows. (Even better, show them a longer-run graph of the same phenomenon.) Ask them what the graph shows. They will certainly reply, "Men are retiring earlier". Then show them the headline which says exactly the opposite. Then watch them shake their heads in disbelief. I'd love to be there when you explain to them why the headline says what it does. Figure 2-14 22. A May 26, 1993 (A20) story headlined "Quality of Recruits Declining," referring to the armed forces. What would the reporter's reaction be if an expert witness were asked on the stand in court, "What has been happening to the membership of unions?," if the membership had risen in just the past year after falling for fifteen years, and the expert answered "Membership has been rising." You would heap scorn on the expert as being a false witness even if not actually guilty of perjury. Now what about a news story that headlines declining education in recruits in the last year, when the measure has been increasing almost steadily for the past fifteen years? And when the story goes on to add the adjective "slightly" and the source says the quality is still "excellent"? And when the "decline" is a fall from 99 percent high school grads in 1992 to a bit lower? What is the difference between your judgment of the expert and the reporter, who we shall assume has a responsibility different than an advocate who feels no need to tell the whole truth? And lest one reply that "everyone" understands and is not misled, on June 3, 1993 (p. A7) you report that "Aspin Voices Concern About Slight Decline in Quality of Recruits." Your work obviously has large consequences for our society. 23. "Fewer People Opt for Early Retirement", says the June 13, 1993 (p. H3) headline, and the story begins: "Retiring early has long been part of the American dream. And for most of the past 20 years, more and more workers have been making that dream come true...Now, though, the trend has slowed and perhaps may even be reversing course..." Figure 2-15 Look at the charts next to the headline (Figure 2-15). Maybe, as the body copy says, the trend "has slowed" - maybe. But the headline about "fewer people opt..." clearly bears no connection to the overall story conveyed by graph, or even more so, by the long-run data in the accompanying graph of male labor- force participation that I prepared (Figure 2-16). There was a sharp down-turn when the Social Security rules changed around 1970, as your reporter should have learned. Maybe the effect of that stimulus has been played out, maybe not; that's about all that one can say with any justification at all. (But I'll be happy to make a big bet with any of you - my winnings would go to more research - that 10 years from now the retirement rate is higher rather than lower than now. Any takers? ) Figure 2-16 24. "Financial Outlook Seen as Grim For Many Nearing Retirement" (June 18, 1993, p. A4). The sixth paragraph quotes the leader of the study saying that "clearly, most of these people [those who are nearing retirement] are better off". And about the lower-income group, who are the only ones who might be worse off, the director can only say "My hunch is that people at the lower end of the income distribution are worse off than they would have been 15 years ago." This "hunch" is in contrast to "It's certain that those at the upper end are better off". And it is a well-known success story that the rate among the elderly has declined in recent decades. 25. Occasionally one encounters a headline so blatant that one is hard=pressed not to use words like "fib" and refer to Pinocchio's nose. Consider the headline "Japan's Imports of Computer Chips Dipped" (June 18, 1993, p. D1) in light of Figure 2-17. If a physician offends the canon of medical ethics by purposely harming a patient, does this not - and to the same degree- offend the journalistic canon of ethics (of which journalists make so much) by plainly violating against the truth? Figure 2-17 If a politician made a claim like this one in a campaign speech, the press would flay the skin from the offender, treating him or her as a simple liar. But the press somehow absolves itself in such matters, offering a dazzling collection of excuses about why it is justifiable and cannot be otherwise. 26. The creation of bad news works in both directions with respect to graphs. If the graph shows a long-term decline in smoking with a slight blip upwards, the caption is "The percentage of high school seniors reporting any cigarette smoking during the past month is increasing across the board" (February 25, 1994, p. A18). And unlike the infant mortality data discussed in point 2 above, the amazingly lower rate of smoking of black students (in truth, this is almost not believable and warrants checking) is not mentioned in the headline or caption. And if the use of all drugs and alcohol is down in the long run, and all but marijuana and LSD are also down in the short run, the headline says "Use of Marijuana, LSD Is Up While Heavy Drinking Continues" (Health section, July 27, 1993, p. 7). If one can find neither a long-run nor a short-run increase in oil prices, then one can produce a graph that forecasts an increase (December 30, 1993, p. D10) based on "experts" - the same sorts of experts that have been wrong every time in the past that they have forecast long-run increases. (Examine, for example, the following figure, which tracks the long term trend in oil prices; those prices have fallen throughout all of history.) *** There are occasional positive stories. January 20, 1992, page A14, had the headline "Black College Enrollment Up, Faculty Levels Stable." But should this be a matter for rejoicing or comment when the true news is reported accurately? And it was not on the first page. I have heard this excuse for the false headlines: the reader of the full story will find out that the news really is good, despite the headline. Can any self-respecting journalist really credit that? Another excuse is that newspapers operate under such time pressures that some mistakes are inevitable. Agreed. But if this were a true explanation, there would be as many false good- news headlines on bad-news stories as the opposite. Can one show this to be the case? I'd bet against it. Furthermore, getting the story right need not be extraordinarily time-consuming. I'll bet that preparing all the exhibits in this letter - including getting the data together, and getting charts drawn - plus writing this letter, took me no more time than one of your reporters spent on the average story mentioned here. In some cases, a true explanation may be extraordinary credulity. In your sister publication Newsweek there appeared a major story (the cover story, I think, January 10, 1994) entitled "Kids Growing Up Scared". Among the boxed statistics offered to make the case for a trend in that direction was "36% of children said their chores including making their own meals in 1993. Only 13% said the same in 1987" (p. 44). Anyone who could believe that a change of that magnitude could occur in a large society in just 6 years must either have been born almost yesterday and lack all critical judgment (both the writer and the editor, I note) - or want desperately to believe such silliness. Incidentally, the story says that "the actual physical threat to children is less important than the perception of danger", and warns that no one "has...counted the psychic cost of raising them in a state of perpetual hypervigilance". But what shapes the perception of children about the stalkers concerning which the story says "Disease still kills more children than stalkers" [Yeah! Probably 100,000 or a million to 1]? It is the news media, and only the news media, that can be the ultimate cause of such perception. How else would most children know about an incident with a stalker? Your own writers remark on the phenomenon discussed here. "This image...that our society is a Balkanized mess in which blacks and whites, rich and poor, men and women, gays and straights are in a state of perpetual hostility...is reinforced daily by the news media, which have an important professional interest in conflict and disaster: 'It ain't news if the plane don't crash'", wrote Richard Harwood (September 13, 1992, C7). And "Some reporters say privately that it is difficult to write stories that debunk the conventional wisdom of environmental activists, whom the press treats more deferentially than industry spokesman and other lobbyists," notes Howard Kurtz (January 14, 1991, A3). I would add to Kurtz's list those persons who have no organizational stake in the issues but simply want to get the record straight. Of course I understand the market motivation for bad news stories. But I also understand the motivation for breaking into banks; the fact that it is a quick way to get money hardly justi- fies the activity. I am dramatizing for effect, of course, but I think that the moral point must be considered. David Broder (in your September 20, 1992, page C7 paper) wrote an article entitled "When Politicians Lie." That headline provides an interesting backdrop for the material discussed in this letter. We can be sure that Lyndon Johnson, the subject of the story, would have referred to the behavior that Broder re- ferred to as not deserving the label "lie," but rather would have called it "rhetoric" or some other such thing. And he surely would have considered his motivations in those activities as being in the best interests of the public. Washington Post behavior may well be no different than that of other newspapers. To determine any such ranking would require serious research, and I - unlike journalists - have little inter- est in such comparative scoreboards. What matters is journalism in general. The result of all these stories may improve the lives of some readers by giving them titillating material to keep their adrenalin up. But the cost of invalid bad-news stories may be very great. People think that things generally are going worse than they are - indeed, most people think that things are going badly, when in general things are going well in the world (though you may not see it that way, which may be the heart of the mat- ter). Evidence for this can be seen in the many polls showing that people have a much more negative assessment of trends for the country as a whole with respect to a particular phenomenon than they do with respect to that phenomenon in their own lives - a logical inconsistency which can only be explained by what people take in from the press and television. The press then reports on this very pessimism, as can be seen in your Sunday page one headline story of November 3, 1991: "A Tide of Pessimism and Political Powerlessness Rises." Actual- ly, the content of the story does not even deal with people's negative or positive mood, but with phenomena that journalists interpret as the signs of a bad mood - lack of interest in, and voting on, national affairs (which of course is associated with reading fewer newspapers, a subject on which newspaper journal- ists are not exactly without vested interest). And as you know, many political scientists take low participation to mean the sign of a satisfied electorate rather than of crisis. So we have an interesting cycle here - reports of pessimism necessarily create the belief that others are pessimistic, which a reasonable person might conclude is based on some evidence to produce pessimism - all based on nothing. 108. Lest one doubt that people somehow have the ability to discount false bad reports and are able in any mysterious prescient manner to peer to the heart of truth, consider this incident reported by your own David Broder, who certainly is as generally well-informed as any human being on the face of the earth, and is as respected for his clear understanding and fair and balanced reporting as any newsperson. Following a trip to Europe in the spring of 1993, Broder wrote this report about his trying to understand the attitudes toward the U. S. of the attendees at a conference of movers and shakers from various countries in Europe and Asia: [Y]ou have to make a mental adjustment that I found difficult. You have to see the United States, not as most Americans do, as a nation beset by problems and maybe headed down the chute, but as a citadel of economic and political strength in a world of stumbling economies and faltering leaders. It is startling to be told that no major economy is growing as fast or generating jobs as well as the United States is today. But the figures are irrefutable (June 9, 1993, p. A19). If David Broder entirely misunderstands whether things had been getting better or worse in the U. S., and the overall standing of the U. S. relative to other countries, should we be surprised that less-informed persons also have things backwards and upside down? And - what possible explanation can there be for Broder's fundamental confusion except that the impression left by the information provided him by the media is upside down and backwards? *** What might be done? Is there any possible therapy for the problem other than greater awareness on the part of newspaper staffs? One possibility might be to contract with first-class social scientists to serve as intellectual ombudspeople. For one example only, Peter Rossi of the University of Massachusetts can undoubtedly smell misleading data a mile away. (He is himself the author of a wonderful myth-shattering piece of research about the number of homeless in the United States.) I have never met the man or even talked with him over the telephone, but I am sure he has no ideological agenda. And there are others like him. If there were a stable of such people, each of whom might serve one day every two weeks to vet stories based on social statistics, the accuracy and validity of stories might improve. Sincerely, Julian L. Simon Bad news sells papers and hypes television ratings (except in the Soviet Union); good news is dull, except for the ending of crises such as when the cannons fall silent at the end of war. The predilection of the media for bad news is empirical fact, not mere casual observation, as shown by Haskins' (1981) survey of the research on the subject. For example, when London Times editors were "given a choice between more negative or less negative versions of the same news stories, they chose the more negative version by 71% to 16% for one story and by 92% to 1% for another" (Haskins, p. 8). It is also interesting that "bad news contains more errors than other news" (Haskins, p. 7). Curiously, when some kinds of bad news are trumpeted in the media, you know that society is in good shape. For example, when you see headlines about fires and scandals, you know that we are free of gener- al catastrophes such as war and pestilence. page 1 /article2 downi02m/October 31, 1996