NPOV: A Question of Time

Before we go further with the NPOV analysis, let's check our basic assumptions. We assume that the media has certain basic problems, and we are looking at NPOV to see if they help us solve those problems. The problem with the media basically is that it isn't serving citizen's in this democracy well -- at least, the citizens don't think it is. More than 70% of them, according to a recent Pew Trust poll, say they think that journalism basically is the tool of big government and big business. They think the U.S. press is not independent and does not have U.S. citizens' interest primarily in mind. Further, we agree that the press does not serve democracy well because for some reason or reasons which we hope to understand eventually, it distorts every issue it looks at in certain predictable and consistent ways. The two most prominent of those ways are: 1) It oversimplifies most issues by reducing them to two opposing sides, even though opinions on issues usually define a spectrum as opposed to a polarity; and 2) It over-dramatizes every issue by focusing on individual emotional stories that usually define the extreme case as opposed to the normal case. Both of these tendencies play into A) the manipulative schemes of political operators devising ever-more-efficient ways to define public issues in a way that gets their candidates elected but radically abuses the public interest; and B) the overwhelming tendency of all mass media over the past several decades which is away from a public service focus and towards an entertainment focus. In the news media, shout shows on TV and spittle-spewing columnists in newspapers are performing clowns who turn every complex public issue into a Punch and Judy show featuring repeated bangs on the head, projectile insults, and exploding balloons. Certainly in such an environment, "neutral point of view," just like "objectivity," sounds a certain note of appealing sobriety and detachment. But the question to ask, again, is whether NPOV is really a workable or desirable professional code in such an environment. The limited time and ability of individual citizens to absorb complex information on a multitude of important issues must also be considered. In some ways it is the first and most critical variable (a hat tip to Walter Lippmann here). Every citizen has X minutes per day to read the news. How are those X minutes best spent? Do these limitations of time and intellectual capacity suggest that some amount of simplification in the news is necessary? If so, are there other ways to simplify than turning issues like stem cell research and WMD's into Punch and Judy shows? Is NPOV such a way? Or are there aspects of NPOV that we could adopt while leaving others aside? Just some questions to consider before moving on.