Stopping the Spin Cycle: Recognizing Bent Science and Stealth Marketing
posted by Frank Pasquale
American University’s conference last Friday “Does Red Lion Still Roar?” (about the past and future of media regulation) featured a number of great speakers, including Tara Malloy of the Campaign Legal Center, Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, and Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge. My talk focused on the type of social science considered by regulators, as did those of Catherine Sandoval and Philip Napoli. I think their perspectives could help us sort through a number of recent controversies in the media.
Sandoval highlighted some deeply troubling practices at the FCC, including decisions based on deficient data. Napoli noted that given government retrenchment in basic recordkeeping, and copyright challenges for private archives, it’s sometimes easier to study media of the 1920s than to get a good sense of what is going on today. Napoli noted that Europe has established “cultural observatories” which make such efforts easier. Both speakers suggested that it is essential for there to be some separation between data-gathering and policy-making arms of administrative agencies.
Their work reminded me of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon Ellen Goodman has deemed “Stealth Marketing“–and its power when combined with “bent science.” Just today the NYT reminds us of the degree to which we may be mis-evaluating biased data as “objective:”
Consider this reporting from David Barstow on the Pentagon’s management of opinion regarding the Iraq War:
[In response to Guantanamo], administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
Perhaps something like the principles of disclosure and objectivity proposed in this JAMA editorial (for medical publications) should be adopted more generally by government and the journalists who cover it. We deserve to know exactly who is behind the views and studies that inform public debate and policy.
April 20, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Posted in: Health Law, Philosophy of Social Science
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Responses (1)
A.J. Sutter - April 20, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Do you have the temerity to suggest that the Commander-in-Chief would not have the authority to set aside sponsorship disclosure laws (or their governmental analogues)? Given all else that has been set aside, notwithstanding what the American people might deserve to know, yours is at best a candle in the wind.
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