Columnist Jim Slusher: The news and biting dogs

A constant challenge for Daily Herald writers and editors is the need to manage bias in news coverage. I and other editors have written often about our efforts to present news reports as thoroughly and objectively as possible, despite the unavoidable fact that each of us unique humans has opinions that, hard as we may try to set them aside, cannot help but influence our decisions. But during a couple of unrelated meetings this week - one involving editors from around the country discussing managing news and newsrooms with consciousness of diversity, the other a discussion among Daily Herald editors prompted by a reader's respectful observations about issues of news bias - I was struck by a different, but not unrelated factor involving news influence.

A variously attributed familiar quotation describes "news" thusly: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news; when a man bites a dog, that is news." In other words, what people want to read about are not common events, but unusual ones.

This philosophy is far from conclusive, of course. Reports about the actions of community boards, upcoming public events, scientific discoveries and so on have more informational intent than pure curiosity value. Even among these broad areas, it's generally the unusual or surprising that merits reporting, but it, too, must be managed.

In the realm of diversity reporting, errors can become manifest if reporting on some activity tends to frequently involve a certain ethnic or cultural group, leading to misguided impressions that the activity is common among members of that group when it is in fact rare. And the phenomenon can become just as pervasive in the realm of political or public affairs reporting. Here, it can be the actions and comments of extremists and outliers that attract attention though they don't truly represent the range of values or opinions within the group the so-called "newsmakers" belong to. The outrageous comments, for example, of a Marjorie Taylor Greene or a Maxine Waters, can lead to impressions that everyone in the speaker's party - Republican or Democrat, respectively - shares or tolerates those views.

Even more disturbing to me is the notion that such reporting leads to impressions that all politicians share the characteristics of greed, duplicity or arrogance shown by the few who actually make headlines or broadcast news appearances. My experience from decades of interacting with hundreds of politicians from both parties at all levels of government tells me that the group's makeup is far more nuanced than that, and much lest sinister. Indeed, I think a long-term failing of ours in the news media, accepted and enlarged by entertainment media, is a portrayal of political leaders as universally acknowledged crooks, phonies, incompetents and punch lines. Such impressions stir mistrust among the general population and diminish faith in our leaders and our government.

The tricky part, naturally, is how to manage the reporting. Outrageous remarks by a powerful or potentially powerful person certainly cannot be ignored, and the routine competence of a dedicated journeyman public figure doesn't always attract or deserve prominent headlines.

It's important for us in the news business to make decisions with awareness of such tendencies in mind. Readers, too, should remember that the behaviors, comments and actions vying for their attention may indeed be interesting, but they very rarely tell the whole story.

Let's none of us forget that dogs are far more commonly petted by men than bitten by them, even if it's the latter who get our attention most often.

jslusher@dailyherald.com