05 Trojan Horses of Race

Why are you picking on the local news?

In its 2003 Media Consolidation Order, the FCC effectively equated the "public interest" to more hours of local news. (Broadcasters are charged with furthering the “public interest,” a sort of quid pro quo for receiving 6 MHz of premium spectrum for free.) In other words, the FCC justified allowing greater media consolidation because it would, of all things, increase local news. I’m focusing on local news because the FCC did.

What’s wrong with local news? Why don’t you like it?

There is powerful social science evidence that if we watch more news, we grow more fearful of the world.  Even as actual crime rates go down, we believe that we are under greater threat. The work of political scientists such as Frank Gilliam (UCLA) & Shanto Iyengar (Stanford) suggest real world consequences, such as greater willingness to vote for "three strikes" criminal penalty laws. 

What’s worse is a new body of science called "social cognition"—a combination of social psychology, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. It has demonstrated the existence of pervasive "implicit bias" against racial minorities, notwithstanding sincere statements by most of us to the contrary. By using various latency measurement tools, scientists can now measure how tightly connected attitudes and stereotypes are to particular social categories. These measurements have been correlated with amygdala activation (using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) as well as real world behaviors, such as body language, job interview evaluations, and shooter bias. (For more, see the work of Mahzarin Banaji at Harvard, and Tony Greenwald at Washington.)

Scientists have also discovered that implicit bias is malleable, and that environmental exposures can both increase and decrease their magnitude. Violent and misogynistic rap music can increase implicit bias (even when explicit surveys of racial attitudes remain the same). Exposure to positive exemplars of African Americans, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., decrease implicit bias. On the basis of this evidence, I believe that being inundated with crime stories, disproportionately featuring racial minorities, is likely to increase implicit bias. That is a hidden downside to local news, a sort of Trojan Horse virus that infects our brains. 

Not only local news has this effect. To repeat, the reason why I focus on the local news is because that's what the FCC did. The FCC has created what amounts to a fetish for local news because it's easy to count and not particularly controversial. But one can be both simple and wrong. The viral payload of increasing implicit bias needs an accounting.

But isn’t that just reality? Minorities commit more crimes; how can you fault the news for accurately portraying the real world?

I call this the “accuracy” objection. First, the data are probably not accurately represented. For example, there is no proportional representation of crime in the real world. Even as crime rates go down, news coverage goes up. Also, there is a reasonably good case to be made that the news treats Black-perpetrated crime in a more threatening manner than White-perpetrated crime (and gives more attention and solicitude to White victims as compared to minority victims). Are you so sure that the news is fair and balanced?

Second, even if the data were accurate, that’s not what we’ll remember. Social psychologists call this “illusory correlation”--we’re likely to remember a higher correlations with minority-perpetrated crime. In various tests, even when no race is mentioned in a mock newscast, people recall a racial minority as the perp.

Third, even if we remember correctly, our interpretations will often be biased due to in-group bias. Outgroup homogeneity: We think outgroups (others) are more homogenous than ingroups (the groups we belong to). So, even if mean criminality data are provided accurately, we will underestimate variance among racial minorities. Ultimate attribution error: We all favor our own groups. When ingroup members screw up, we think it an aberration or the circumstances. When outgroup members screw up, we think it’s their nature, either genetic or deep-seated culture. 

In sum, the data are not fair and balanced; we misremember what we see; and our interpretations are self-serving. 

This just sounds like a lot of political correct mumbo-jumbo for the fact that colored folks are more likely to be criminals. Why don’t you just fess up to the facts?

First, it’s now politically correct to be politically incorrect. Second, the arguments I make are not convenient stories. They are backed up by painstakingly detailed citation to social science research with often full descriptions of methodology (535 footnotes, mostly to social science, in 100 pages of the Harvard Law Review). Of course scientific research can be wrong or conflicted. But it’s just too easy to discount all this knowledge simply because it’s convenient to do so. Honest debate requires actual engagement with the best scientific evidence available.

But your proposal to censor local news is ludicrous!

As I explained in my Columbia Journalism Review interview, the press tends to sensationalize. Before getting too worked up, let’s focus on what I really said.

My only concrete, current recommendation is for the FCC to break the near equivalence between the "public interest" and "local news." That equivalence is not justified. The Commission should engage in a Notice of Inquiry to examine how it defines the public interest and whether local news should play such a crucial role. For example, in the 2003 Mass Media Order, FOX suggested counting the Cosby Show and Will & Grace as promoting "diversity." The FCC declined and instead embraced only local news. But on what grounds can the FCC justify such an action? For example, why shouldn’t a nuanced characterization of a racial minority in some fictional drama count as contributing to viewpoint diversity more than another car chase? What contributed more to the public interest: the airing of Alex Haley's Roots or another 15 minutes on an armed robbery?

But you’re asking the government to pick right versus wrong, better versus worse sorts of broadcast. I thought the First Amendment required the government to be neutral.

Without getting into a long deconstruction of neutrality, let’s just remember that broadcast is already highly regulated. Remember further that the FCC has already broken any simplistic conception of "neutrality" by equating the public interest with local news. I simply want them to justify that definition, given the recent social cognition findings. Imagine the outrage if the FCC equated the public interest with showing more breasts and buttocks. The country would be in an uproar. "It's indecent! It's scandalous! Why should the FCC encourage the showing of buttocks?" Would it be an answer to say that the consuming audience actually likes to see breasts and buttocks? (Trust the market.) Now, why do our intuitions change so much when we replace breasts and buttocks with "violent crime imagery that increases implicit bias"? Is it an answer that people like to see it? Of course, the FCC didn't make quite this equivalence but 25% of local news may be just that: violent crime imagery that increases implicit bias. 

OK, but the press are saying that you want to censor the news. Did they make all this up?

Not quite. In addition to that concrete recommendation, I launch two thought experiments teasing out the Trojan Horse virus metaphor. How do you stop viruses? You either disinfect or enact a firewall. Consider the less controversial strategy of disinfection—what might be called counter speech. We already have stations broadcast hundreds of public service announcements per week (counts differ wildly). "Violence, don't play that game." "Don't do drugs." Recall the powerful PSAs that were run after 9-11, with the testament that "I am an American" coming out of mouths of different looking people, with different accents.  Why not encourage PSAs that promote tolerance, that decrease implicit bias, that align our implicit sentiments with our explicitly-held normative commitment to equality for all? Why shouldn’t tolerance-promoting PSAs count more than local news (as currently constituted) when a station has to make the case that it served the public interest?

The final thought experiment is a firewall strategy. We cap indecency. Bono cannot say the F word at the Golden Globes. Stern has fled to satellite. Jackson's wardrobe should not have malfunctioned. (In March 2004, the House passed a bill that would allow $500,000 fines per violation.) Before we deregulated TV in the early 80s, we also capped commercials (16 minutes per hour). Congress has actually mandated the installation of "censorship" chips in television sets to be able to filter on the basis of labels that the FCC strong-armed the networks to broadcast "voluntarily," to cap violence, nudity, and language. If we are willing and able to cap this sort of "bad" content, I explore what it would mean to discourage the local news' obsession with violent crime. Of course, indecency can be distinguished from nonfiction crime stories, but as I argue in the paper, does our nonchalance toward regulating the former and near apoplexy in thinking about regulating the latter reveal something about our values?

As I concede in the paper, any such soft cap would likely be struck down on First Amendment grounds. But it's a harder case than one might initially imagine. And working through the argument consistently uncovers what we as a society really care about. We're willing to stop the airing of the F word or the showing of breasts with almost no social scientific evidence of harm to minors. It's just our moral values. But no matter how compelling the scientific case might come to be on the issue of implicit bias, we would not permit any modulation. Would we? It's just our values. That speaks volumes about who we are.