The books have simple one-word titles. I have finished reading one and am halfway through the other. Neither is about media or journalism, but both should send important messages to those who presume to report on our society. The titles of those books are Mattering and Noise.
Mattering is really a self-help book. Written by former CBS Sixty Minutes producer Jennifer Breheny Wallace, it is aimed at people who feel their relevance is unrecognised, slipping away, or (worst of all) non-existent.
Noise is an altogether different book. Written by three professors – Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, business strategist Olivier Sibony, and legal scholar Cass Sunstein – it is a deep analysis of what gets in the way of sound judgement.
After I finished Mattering, and was reflecting on yet another profound insight in Noise, it suddenly occurred to me that I was reading about things that are fundamentally important for the future of professional news media.
Let’s start with mattering.
At a personal level I am sure we have all, at some time in our lives, questioned whether or how much we matter to our friends, work colleagues, local community and society in general. The multitudes who have been made redundant at a point in their working lives invariably ask such questions. So, too, do people like me who are increasingly separated by advancing age from the occupations that helped define us. Even a change in personal circumstances may give rise to doubts about whether we matter.
However, mattering is not only a personal need. We are social animals and our sense of identity and worth are bound up with neighbourhood, community and country. Just as we need to know that we are significant to those who directly touch our lives, we also need to know that we matter collectively.
This raised in my mind a question that I invite you to ask yourself the next time you read your newspaper or tune in to a news bulletin. This question is this: “Does this tell me that I or my community matter?”
It is more than querying whether a story is newsworthy. That sort of interrogation includes whether it interests you and, in the digital age, that translates as pushing the right emotional buttons to induce you to click on a story. My question asks the producers of the news whether they have considered my needs or the impact on me and my neighbours. And the answer affects not only the way in which a story is told but what stories are important enough to publish or broadcast.
If I am no more than a single unit in an analytical system that that places me into an audience determined by marketing algorithms then, no, I don’t matter.
Jennifer Wallace’s book discusses how much each of us matters in society and she has produced a set of bullet points that I invite newsrooms to consider when setting assignments, carrying them out, and presenting the results. I have turned her explanatory notes into questions that editorial departments might ask themselves when compiling the day’s newspaper, bulletin or homepage.
- Recognition: Do we recognise that individuals’ voices or actions make an impact on their community and that each community is important?
- Reliance: Do we understand that people rely on causes and groups which, in turn, rely on or benefit from the contributions of individuals?
- Importance: Do individuals and their communities count or are they merely bystanders?
- Ego extension: Do our stories make individuals feel invested in the broader world and feel that the broader world is invested in them?
- Attunement: Do our stories reflect that we understand, value and respond with care, dignity and respect to the needs of individuals and communities within our society?
While each of these elements of mattering in society is important, the issues of recognition and attunement carry the greatest weight in judging whether journalism is really meeting the needs of each of us.
At the risk of sounding too inquisitorial, let me ask another question: How often do newsrooms – outside the pressures of commercially induced exercises to reverse inexorable news audience decline – ask themselves for whom are they producing news and why?
Some of our news media have asked themselves those questions and I will be recognising one of those efforts next week when I discuss future newsrooms. It is high time the questions are asked.
I recall sitting through an afternoon editorial news conference in which I realised the participants were discussed stories with a worryingly narrow focus. In the end I spoke my mind: “[expletive deleted] When will you people start thinking beyond the Ponsonby ridge? How does it effect people in Otara? How does it affect people in Henderson?” The ridge was a symbolic boundary not only of the Auckland CBD but of an insulated worldview. I chose Otara and Henderson as South and West Auckland symbols for ethnic, social and financial imperatives that were not being recognised in that news conference.
The need is not for small innovations – new sections that say ‘look at what we are doing out of desperation’ – but foundational self-examination. Newsrooms must regularly ask themselves “who are we producing news for and why? Doing so acknowledges not only the needs of individuals and communities that deserve to be recognised but also establishes and maintains the relevance of news media to their audiences.
Mattering is a reciprocal arrangement.
And now to Noise.
Accusations of news media bias have become boringly repetitive. Much of it is no more than a response to stories with which the critic disagrees. Journalists are (or should be) aware of cognitive bias and take steps to minimise its effects. For example, I am aware that I need to adjust my writing to take account of being an Old, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Male. However, while bias is well recognised, ‘noise’ is not.
Kahneman and his colleagues have convinced me that we need to pay much more attention to ‘noise’ and so, too, do the news media. So, what is ‘noise’?
Put simply, it is a way in which we can explain unwanted variations in judgement after bias has been removed. Statisticians, for example, can allow for bias by building mean error rates into their calculations. However, that works only where there are verifiable true values on which to base the equation. It can’t take account of variation where there is no absolute to measure it against. ‘Noise’ is an explanation for why there are variations in judgements that should be identical, but where that ‘true value’ is not available. Much of their book explores why doctors working in emergency rooms, judges imposing criminal penalties, and insurance underwriters assessing risk can come up with different answers to similar issues.
As I read, I kept seeing parallels with day-to-day decision-making in newsrooms. Books on news values and news judgement provide yardsticks against which editorial decisions can be assessed, but anyone who has been involved in news selection and editing will tell you no two situations are identical: Each news story has its own unique players, qualities and circumstances. Now, however, I wonder how much ‘noise’ there is in the process. Can some of these unpredictable variables be eliminated?
One of the issues the authors identified was rather basic: Often the variations in judgement are not recognised because they are seldom compared. For example, insurance underwriters were shocked when made aware of substantial (and potentially very costly) variations in risk assessment. Training and internal processes were found to be factors in generating ‘noise’.
The book suggests carrying out what the authors call “noise audits”. Such audits can require a substantial amount of work. News organisations would find it difficult to muster all the resources. However, one exercise and some expert assessment would, I believe, be a useful way for news organisations to measure the robustness of their decision making. The results could produce a range of benefits but not least could be greater consistency in news judgements.
The exercise would use a set of hypothetical news events on which different editorial staff would then make judgements. Each of the staff would be required to rank the importance of various elements, and answer a questionnaire that explored the factors that were involved in each decision they made. Evaluation of the results can identify any systemic issues that give rise to significantly different decisions. Understanding any identified ‘noise’ in the system could result in more consistent (and arguably fairer) treatment of similar story subjects.
Such studies identify bias in order to isolate it. That knowledge, too, could be useful in countering claims that newsrooms are inherently left-wing or right-wing.
And if all of that is too much for the already-stretched resources of our newsrooms, the decision-makers should at least read the book. Being unaware of ‘noise’ is half the problem.
