The Iliad 499 is a multimedia project constructed by University of Alabama journalism seniors Alexis Faire, Peyton Shepard, Claire Turner and Mary Shannon Wells. We created this site as a place to compile all of our research and content as we explore the development of user generated content and online community posts.
Check out what we’ve been working on here!
This week, The Crimson White released an editorial and people took issue with it.
Shocking, I know.
The issue pertained to the CW Editorial Board’s endorsement of Lillian Roth for SGA President. Many people pointed out a passage in the endorsement in which the Editorial Board stated their disappointment in all three candidates lack of support for the University of Alabama’s status as a sanctuary campus, and argued that Gene Fulmer did indeed voice his support during the Presidential debate on Wednesday night. Twitter users called for the CW to “check [its] facts” and correct the statement.
The CW then tweeted a clarification, stating that while Fulmer supported the idea on Sunday night, in his interview with the Editorial Board three days prior, he demurred when asked the same question. One user replied, “@TheCrimsonWhite even when Fulmer clearly stated that “yes” he would support it during his debate stance? Your opinion versus fact?”
Well, yes. But also no. Sometimes they can be the same thing.
Readers often call for opinions to be rooted in fact, and in general, they certainly should be. Any argument can be better supported if there are numbers behind it, or even quotable evidence that speaks to the same end. But fact is entirely subjective when cognitive dissonance comes into play.
Take the CW endorsement interviews, for example. Though I was not directly involved in the writing of the CW’s endorsement (I recused myself due to previous reporting on the presidential campaign), I was involved in the interviewing process, as I have been for the past three SGA election cycles. The whole idea behind the executive interviews is that we get to probe each candidate about their platform in a depth and detail that the average voter is unable to achieve.
In that hour-long interview, a lot of factors begin to present themselves: feasibility, ambition, attitude, experience. Sometimes, a candidate presents a thorough platform but lacks what we believe to be a temperament for leadership. Alternatively, a candidate may possess an unparalleled background in their field and exude charisma, but when it comes down to it, their platform lacks justifiable execution.
We have to take all those concepts and weigh them against one another, decide which we value the most, and deliver an endorsement that best satisfies what is essentially an undefined criterium that we don’t know until we see it. On top of that, we often have differing opinions of our own that we have to reconcile, and we then have to be selective about with factors to consider to come to a consensus.
In reporting, selectivity is something that you have to actively avoid, within reason. Obviously, not every point on every spectrum of issues can be accurately represented, but the attempt to represent as much as can be represented within a word count is what matters. The selectivity is far less personal and more functional.
But in editorial writing, selectivity is often perceived as a means of strengthening an argument, and far too often that creates an unwitting lie of omission. A writer never wants to include information that detracts from their point, but by failing to include specific facts or knowledge, knowingly or unknowingly, a gap is left in the construction of an editorial argument, opening the door for a myriad of logical fallacies from the reader’s perspective.
But not only is fact relative; its application is as well. The CW Editorial Board could have very easily updated its opinion to reflect Fulmer’s more solidified stance demonstrated at the debate, but ultimately, it didn’t matter to the argument the column presented. What was more important was that Fulmer, when confronted with the issue with no time to think on it, was unable to conjure an explicit stance.
Essentially, the Editorial Board didn’t ignore that fact in favor of its own opinion. It failed to see how that fact would change the outcome, and thus omitted it from its reasoning.
Some people might not have done the same. They might have seen Fulmer’s reconsideration as a sign of growth and commended him. They might have seen it as a sign of policy weakness. But either way, the presentation of that fact can result in multiple opinions.
In well-written opinions, cognitive dissonance between writer and reader is ultimately what causes disagreement, not a deliberate attempt at misinformation. The two perceive a fact in two very different ways, due to circumstance or personal experience, and are unable to reconcile those differences to come to a consensus. What was important to that Twitter user was not as important to the Editorial Board, and vice versa, but only because of the way they were approaching the topic.
According to psychiatrist John M. Grohol, cognitive dissonance is a lie that we tell ourselves, and those lies come in varying degrees of severity, but we learn to curb its effects through self-awareness. When we can examine why we feel a certain way about something, it’s easier to understand our own biases, but it can also aid in the way we view the beliefs of others by teaching us to empathize.
It’s very easy – suggestible, even – to view opinions columns with a hint of skepticism. To struggle with cognitive dissonance is an inherently human trait. It’s why the term even exists. But the true mark of media literacy is being able to distinguish why a writer might have taken the stance that they did, why they used the facts they did and in what ways, and that while it may differ from what the reader believes, that doesn’t negate the opinion’s validity.
Media outlets have faced mounting discontent from some of their readership concerned about biased reporting, and the continued development of editing software has the potential to fan the “fake news” flames.
In November, computer software company Adobe premiered an add-on to its audio editing program that has the capability to accurately replicate human speech patterns. Project Voco, lauded at the demonstration as the “Photoshop of speech,” is an artificially intelligent voice manipulation software that, after analyzing a 20-minute voice sample, can reproduce any word in the speaker’s voice in a matter of minutes.
Experts are divided on the technology, with some worrying about the ethical implications on fields like journalism that rely heavily on digital evidence.
“It seems that Adobe’s programmers were swept along with the excitement of creating something as innovative as a voice manipulator, and ignored the ethical dilemmas brought up by its potential misuse,” said Eddie Borges Rey, a lecturer in media and technology at the University of Sterling, in an interview with the BBC.
Rey said Voco would be met with the same hesitation as Photoshop was upon its respective launch in 1990. The two programs enable users to substantially alter journalistic source material while ultimately changing the narrative those materials can portray.
Despite the program’s unveiling, Voco is still in development. Adobe has promised safety measures like watermarking detection in the future, and it has yet to be disclosed whether the product will be made commercially available.
“[It] may or may not be released as a product or product feature,” an Adobe spokesperson told the BBC. “No ship date has been announced.”
Even before the development of Voco and other artificial intelligence-based editing software, American media has often faced accusations of misrepresentation due to heavy-handed editing practices in text, audio and video alike.
Most recently, Breitbart editor and alt-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos said he was portrayed in negative light when video surfaced on Monday that showed him stating his apparent support for pedophilic relationships. In a response posted on Facebook, Yiannopoulos claimed the video was “edited deceptively”:
“As to some of the specific claims being made, sometimes things tumble out of your mouth on these long, late-night live-streams [sic], when everyone is spit-balling [sic],, that are incompletely expressed or not what you intended,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Nonetheless, I’ve reviewed the tapes that appeared last night in their proper full context and I don’t believe they say what is being reported.”
Yiannopoulos is far from the first political figure to point a finger at faulty editing practices in media coverage. However, with the advent of user-friendly editing softwares like Project Voco, Yiannopoulos’ claims, among others, could invite speculation as journalists face increased temptation to cut and crop the perfect story.
Though journalists have multiple sources for both fabricating and altering information at their disposal, many avoid their use in practice.
Andrea Mabry, a journalism instructor at the University of Alabama and freelance photographer, said she refrains from teaching or using Photoshop in journalistic work for anything other than resizing photos and fixing minor technical issues.
Every journalist dreams of their Watergate moment. It’s true, whether we admit it or not. We want the rush of some hooded figure requesting to meet us in an empty parking garage after midnight so they can get the scoop of a lifetime. We all want to be Bernstein and Woodward.
Realistically, it’s not such an intensive process, or so rare to find. My first anonymous source came in the form of a direct message on Twitter, and the information completely fell through any test for accuracy. My second was from a nursing professor who wanted to avoid revealing the internal functions of her class to future students who might read the piece. The third was an incoherent paragraph from an untraceable email that made sweeping accusations against a University official – and the official’s name wasn’t even spelled correctly.
As both an editor and writer, I get requests for anonymity on a near weekly basis for even the simplest of coverages. Just last week, a business owner tried to go off-the-record for a statement on how college students are his best demographic because they spend more money than the average young adult consumer. He wasn’t insinuating anything the general public doesn’t already assume, but when he knew he was on-the-record, he was instead prepared with a canned statement about the opportunities for financial growth in a rapidly expanding college town, or something to that effect.
More often than not, or at least in my experience, the people who ask to remain nameless have no quantifiable reason for doing so, nothing that a writer could ever justify to their editor. I didn’t want to let him off the hook, or the record, for a 300-level journalism class story, but for the sake of my grade, I accepted the altered quote, a quote that wasn’t nearly as colorful or engaging or genuine as the one I got off-the-record.
The situation did raise a significant question, though – how often do journalists sacrifice candor for credibility, and vice versa?
That’s not to say the two are mutually exclusive. There are plenty of honest people willing to be interviewed and tell the truth to the best extent that they can. But in any situation that entails the possibility of anonymity, there’s always a reason a source wishes to remain unnamed.
The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics contains two key points for journalists to consider as they debate anonymity: 1. To identify sources whenever possible, and 2. To always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity.
When a source remains anonymous, they effectively bypass any accountability for their words. For journalists, it’s important that we determine why somebody would want to evade that responsibility.
In New York Magazine’s “Welcome to the Sausage Factory,” Kurt Anderson argues that journalists need anonymity “because people who are willing to tell reporters interesting things—that is, confidential or disturbing information or opinions—are usually disinclined to appear to be the candid plain talkers or snitches or whistle-blowers or gossips or backstabbers they are.” But sources, he also warns, look for facelessness as a means to say the things they need and want to say, and can fall anywhere on a spectrum from “dime-dropping scumbags to heroes.”
Sure, plenty of people want anonymity so they don’t have to answer for their words. They don’t want to be readily available for criticism when the information is refuted or countered, but they want their words included so that the harm is done. Unfortunately, journalism isn’t always the ultimate justice, and there are many who need the protection that anonymity can offer so their story gets told, so their voice can be heard over those who have always spoken over them.
The only difference between those two types of people is a discerning journalist. Journalists are entrusted by the public to determine the motives that drive people to refuse acknowledgment, to objectively discern morality without imposing it, and that means developing the ability to read people.
Though there is no black-and-white method with which to approach requests for anonymity, a good and intuitive journalist will know their Watergate moment when they see it, and they’ll know when to give that source a name.
Ethics and Diversity in Media 