On Wednesday about 3 o’clock, the report stated that J.B. Hickok (Wild Bill) was killed. On repairing to the hall of Nuttall and Mann, it was ascertained that the report was too true. We found the remains of Wild Bill lying on the floor. Black Hills Pioneer, August 5, 1876

In Deadwood, S.D., in 1876, Wild Bill Hickok was found dead on the saloon and gambling hall floor at Nuttall and Mann, gunned down by Jack McCall. It was a big story. Wild Bill was famous and the story of his death was intriguing. It had entertainment, violence, folklore, and a moral dilemma to boot. A reporter’s dream. It’s still a great story today, but today we see it through the interpretations of history. Hickok’s poker hand of aces and eights was average then. Today it’s known as the Dead Man’s Hand.

History isn’t black and white. It’s an interpretation that historians develop with lots of time and research. News is just the first line of history. It happens quickly, sometimes too quickly to warrant much interpretation. But then, even as news is happening, there is always the back story, the other perspective, the foreseeable consequences. So the news, too, needs interpretation, even from the first line. The trick for reporters is to interpret the facts without distorting the truth of those facts or drawing conclusions about them.

The responsibility for readers and viewers who find distortions is to hold reporters accountable. That’s where bias creeps into the discussion. Claims of bias, from inside and outside journalism are getting more and more attention. But the complaints are often vague. Reporters use the principle of objectivity to guard against bias. But any interpretation emerges through a filter, which involves intrinsic biases.

"On Wednesday about 3 o’clock, the report stated that J.B. Hickok (Wild Bill) was killed. On repairing to the hall of Nuttall and Mann, it was ascertained that the report was too true. We found the remains of Wild Bill lying on the floor." Black Hills Pioneer. August 5, 1876.

The Black Hills Pioneer played it straight with the facts. Leaving nothing to hearsay or interpretation, it went straight to Nuttall and Mann for the truth.

But the truth about Wild Bill’s demise is more elaborate than just habeas corpus. An unofficial miner’s court was set up to try Hickok’s killer, Jack McCall. McCall argued that Hickok had killed his brother, giving him reason to kill Hickok. The miners found him not guilty. Later, after McCall was heard bragging once too often about gunning down the great Wild Bill, he was arrested by lawmen, tried and hanged for the crime.

How does a news organization navigate such twists and turns? Hickok’s murder was dramatic news. Wild Bill was famous. The paper probably could have gotten cronies like Calamity Jane on record to tout his heroism. Or, it might have focused on Hickok’s reputation for cold-blooded killing. Either way, how the paper portrayed Hickok’s life could color the impression of McCall’s guilt or justification. There are facts and there are stories. Reporters choosing the appropriate facts to tell the story sometimes find roadblocks to unbiased reporting along the way. Using standards of objectivity, which call for telling both sides to the story, they are apt to ignore some facts.

Brent Cunningham, in the July/August 2003 Columbia Journalism Review, suggests that objective reporting encourages omissions. "Objectivity excuses lazy reporting. If you’re on deadline and all you have is ‘both sides of the story,’ that’s often good enough," he writes in "Rethinking Objectivity."

Sources that are easily accessible and trustworthy often drive the points of view, as the obscure sources take more time to find. Cunningham suggests that if the usual sources aren’t talking about a particular story, the reporter is inhibited from writing about it for fear of being accused of manipulating the news. If the Black Hills Pioneer couldn’t get it on record that McCall was bragging about Wild Bill’s demise, it might have lost a good story.

Gary Rosenblatt wrote in The Jewish Week that, more than getting good sources, the media need to interpret the information they get, especially from the two sides in the Middle East conflict. He says getting each point of view isn’t enough without the appropriate context. "That’s what journalists should be providing," Rosenblatt wrote, "rather than just reporting, ‘he said, she said,’ without offering the writer’s expertise in explaining who is more likely telling the truth."

Herbert Gans, author of Deciding What’s News, thinks the problem lies in reporting just two sides to a story. Gans told Jay Rosen in his blog, PressThink, that multiple perspectives should be introduced in the news to make it fair. For instance, he said "multi-perspectival" reporting would have improved Iraq war coverage: "The news media’s cheerleader role might have been supplanted by earlier and more detailed news of the various kinds of protests against the war and how it was conducted."

These journalism insiders realize that what the readers don’t know may hurt them. So, while insiders look at what is missing in objectively reported news, the bias police are looking for hidden messages in the news. Critics say that value judgments are creeping into straight news.

The News Council mediated a complaint by the Minnesota Republican Party against the St. Paul Pioneer Press in which the reporter’s word "bogus" was called into question. The GOP said the word was a value judgment. The paper said the facts backed up the assertion. This is a gray area where the reporter’s knowledge of the subject matter can come across as personal opinion.

The media also run into trouble if a reporter does not back up an assertion in an article, or at least provide historical context. A recent Star Tribune article (Dec. 19, 2003) asserted that the Minneapolis Park and Recreation board was following a pattern of bad behavior in hiring a superintendent who wasn’t interviewed for the job. "The vote and the chaotic meeting solidified the board’s reputation for dysfunction and disregard for the usual measures of public notice and process followed by other governing bodies," the reporter wrote. The rest of the article dealt with the specific incident, without documenting the board’s having a "reputation for dysfunction."

These are examples of journalists pushing the envelope. Journalists make fast calls, often without second or third thoughts. Editors are there for the second line of judgment. But the readership is also there, for a third line of judgment. It is up to readers and viewers to help journalists find the boundaries. And it’s up to journalists to test those boundaries. Sometimes they go too far, but it’s better to criticize an openly aggressive press than to have to goad it into action.

INSTITUTIONAL BIAS

Institutional biases are harder for news consumers to influence. Media, especially big media, work under conflicting principles as businesses. The newsroom is interested in a great story. The business is interested in profit. Andrew R. Cline on his Web site, The Rhetorica Network, argues that media’s bias is inherent in its function. He says it is biased commercially to seek out profit. It is biased against "old news" and "good news," biased toward stories with a beginning, middle and end and stories that can be researched in a 24-hour news cycle. And a Michael Jackson piece is born.

But the profit motive also fuels arguments about conservative/liberal bias in network news coverage, where political leanings can be profitable. Networks aiming for a specific demographic can entice new audiences with a more politicized perspective.

In the fall of 2003, the Center for Media and Public Affairs studied news coverage of the war, prompted by suggestions that networks were promoting a partisan agenda, or being too timid with their reports on the war. The study found that ABC, CBS and NBC together aired 50 percent negative items and 50 percent positive items in the coverage. Fox scored 40/60.

Fox News is often labeled conservative-friendly, but the network insists that it presents balanced coverage. James Fallows, though, predicted in the September 2003 Atlantic Monthly that, in fact, Fox News will soon embrace its partisan inclinations and the other networks will ultimately follow.

Any institutional media shift toward partisanship will be decided largely on where news consumers are turning their attention. So, it behooves us to let media organizations know when they’ve crossed a line. And it’s up to journalists to recognize the limitations of objectivity. At a time in history when information is carefully guarded, with security concerns or propaganda goals in mind, journalists should be turning over all the cards. And hoping they’re not holding aces and eights.

Christine Tomlinson is the Minnesota News Council’s Program Associate.