The trend started a decade ago, or even earlier, about the time when social media took over and many elite newsrooms began caring less about seeking out qualified, informed voices on both sides of hot stories.
The result was a kind of fail-safe method for spotting media bias, especially with stories located at the intersection of politics, religion and the cultural changes, especially those linked to the Sexual Revolution.
First, readers can print a copy of the story in question and then, with a highlighter pen, mark quotes from people who appear to have been interviewed by the reporters — the sources whose voices provide the framing anecdotes and quotations that provide crucial facts and material that interpret the facts.
Then, with a second highlighter, mark the quotes from experts, activists and citizens on the other side of the issue. The key question: How many of these quotes came from actual interviews and how many were taken from online press releases and statements?
Compare and contrast. The big question: What sources were shown respect — with personal interviews — and which sources were demoted to PR release status? (Personal comment: As a columnist, I have found that quoting personal weblogs — Twitter as well — can offer a kind of neutral ground, with more information and authentic “voices” than mere press releases.)
In my experience, 99% of the time the people who are quoted from interviews represent the viewpoints that are favored and respected by the journalists who produced the story. With that in mind, let’s look at the sourcing in an international-desk story that ran in The Washington Post with this headline: “Mexico decriminalizes abortion, a dramatic step in world’s second-biggest Catholic country.”
The Catholic angle is crucial, of course. Who would be interviewed? Activists in ministries to pregnant women? Canon lawyers? Perhaps a Catholic priest or historian who knows why “life” issues are so crucial in the church’s theology? I will also ask: Was anyone from the religion-desk allowed input into the sourcing?
Let’s start with the overture:
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s supreme court voted Tuesday to decriminalize abortion, a striking step in a country with one of the world’s largest Catholic populations and a decision that contrasts with tighter restrictions introduced across the border in Texas.
Ten supreme court judges ruled unconstitutional a law in northern Coahuila state that imposed up to three years of prison for women who underwent illegal abortions, or people who aided them. The 11th judge was absent during the vote. The ruling is binding on other states.
“Today is a watershed in the history of the rights of women and pregnant people, above all the most vulnerable,” Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar said.
Quotes from the actual decision are important, of course. That goes without saying.
But who was interviewed about the context, logic and impact of this decision? Who was interviewed and, thus, allowed to frame this debate?
Well there was “a former supreme court judge,” who offered progressive views, along with a “prominent political scientist” whose credentials remained vague — but whose views backed the decision.
Then there was a leader from the “Mexican feminist organization GIRE, along with someone from a “New York-based Women’s Equality Center.”
There were the usual quotations from information provided by the Guttmacher Institute, which was founded in 1968 as the Center for Family Planning Program Development. It has a long history of institutional ties to Planned Parenthood Federation of America. However, there was no interview with a Guttmacher official in this story.
Now, who was interviewed for the other side of the story and, in particular, as part of the Catholic angle stressed in the headline? Here is that section of the story:
A handful of antiabortion protesters prayed and demonstrated outside the supreme court Tuesday as the justices wrapped up their second day of arguments. The Catholic Church had expressed its concern a day earlier, in an editorial in its magazine Desde la Fe — “From the Faith.” “Don’t create a huge setback just to please an ideology in vogue, or due to peer pressure,” it urged the judges.
The conservative National Action Party also rejected the court’s arguments. “We are in favor of defending life from the moment of conception until natural death,” it said in a statement.
The key phrases, of course, are “in an editorial” and “in a statement.” There are no quotes from the protesters. No one called the logical sources that I mentioned in above.
It’s obvious that the “Catholic” and religious element of the story is part of what makes this a symbolic moment in the history of Mexico, a nation that has — as noted — “one of the world’s largest Catholic populations.”
So who was approached — person to person, as opposed to defining and copying words off the Internet — to offer information, anecdotes and expert opinion on that side of the story?
Did I miss someone?
FIRST IMAGE: Photo illustration at SWNewsMedia.com