Asymmetrical Information

Ethics and nonliable responsibility are an afterthought in the free market. Newspapers print what sells, and since they arent "in the moment" and the internet is, they look to whats popular on the internet for headlines, when an obvious headline doesnt jump out. Another point is the global nature of the internet has really internationalized the news, and offers a pov different from Americas.

I'd like to point out that there is one small area where the media studiously ignores publicity-seeking troublemakers: Doofuses who interrupt a sporting event by running out onto the field. Used to be the camera would follow their every move until the cops brought them down. Now the cameras get aimed at the dugout until the drunk guy is led away, and oftentimes no one at home is even aware anything happened.

Have these incidents decreased since the decision was made not to broadcast these guys? I would bet yes.

Yeah, the refusal to televise fans who run onto a baseball field was the first thing that popped into my mind as well. However, it's difficult to measure the effect of that, because other deterrants arose around the same time. I'm pretty sure there are much stiffer legal penalties in place now, and there have also been dramatic increases in stadium security since both 9/11 and the incident a few years ago when a coach was attacked. Also, those who run onto the field still get to enjoy their idiotic moment of fame in front of tens of thousands of fans, which may be enough for most of them anyway.

As many here might already know, the Japanese launched thousands of balloons laden with explosives into the Pacific jet stream during the latter days of WWII. About 1,000 of them made it to America, some as far east as Detroit. Six picnickers in Oregon were killed, and one of the balloons actually took out powerlines that supplied a factory manufacturing plutonium for the atomic bomb. The Japanese scoured US newspapers and radio broadcasts for months, but the US government had asked all media outlets to remain silent about the attacks, and the media complied. Thinking that all of their balloons went down in the Pacific, the Japanese abandoned that particular campaign.

I'm not really advocating a position here, just relaying a story that I think is interesting and relevant.

There needs to be an equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Journalism curricula. Philosophically, it would mean that reporting on some newsworthy event affects the event.

Why can't we just trust the market? If people end up disgusted by gore, or convinced that watching it encourages other horrible acts (and, obviously, they are against horrible acts), then they'll stop watching that channel. Note the amount of heat that Boston paper received for running the pictures of the girl killed after the Red Sox victory.

Trust the market, and the underlying people who make up the market.

This is why I am a reluctant non-libertarian. While I agree with the concept, I don't think it can be implemented or sustained. If we have a free and competitive press, "suppressing" sensational stories, to be effective, requires virtually 100% cooperation. If one news organization breaks with the pack, publishes the gore, and prospers thereby, the "pact" crumbles. Self-regulation by a group of independent operators is a form of cartel. It can be broken whenever one player is willing to sacrifice the whole for individual advantage. For voluntary, cooperative self-regulation to work, we would need to develop a breed of New Libertarian Man, a prospect I would meet with skepticism.

The coverage of sports-doofuses can be enforced because for each game there is ONE broadcaster. A monopolist can enforce standards (in this case, the sports governing body is probably acting as the "censoring" agent, requiring broadcasters to ignore these events as a condition of broadcasting).

If suppression of this kind of story is desirable, some kind of mandatory standards will be required, with enforcement powers wielded by ... who?

Is the encouragement of spectacular crime too high a price to pay for freedom of the press? If so, what is the alternative, and how do we keep it from becoming even worse?

"Is the encouragement of spectacular crime too high a price to pay for freedom of the press? If so, what is the alternative, and how do we keep it from becoming even worse?"

Is covering up the effects of bad government policies too high a price to pay for discouraging terrorism? If so, what is the alternative, and how do we keep it from becoming even worse?

Hmm. "Self-regulation" has a tangential relationship, if any, with sales. Currently, the structure is setup that media companies wish to maximize profits. If "it bleeds it leads" is true, because it sells, then the media company would not be representing their stockholders, if they didn't lead with the bleed.

That's how the market works, right?

I agree that modern media is all about the profit margin. The market will therefore take care of it by continuing to print the gore, to stick with the sensationalism. That's where the bucks are and will be for the foreseeable future.

There are multiple reasons that the media hasn't addressed this: they don't want to be thought of as "helping" the Bush administration by playing down gory Iraq coverage...

A few months ago, the warblogger complaint was that the media wasn't showing us enough of the beheading of Nick Berg, because they were protecting the beheaders from the cold light of day. See, for instance, why, Glenn himself:

Here.

The media is always going to go for ratings. But take the decapatations for example, the coverage was more of the video being on the net, then the execution itself. If not for the whole world being able to watch the videos on the internet, there would have likely been far fewer hostages taken, and none of them decapitated on video. The global nature of the internet and the creation of Al Jazeera has changed the tactics of the terrorists, they now use the media against us, and that isnt the US medias fault.

A free market system can deliver more ethical behavior on the part of firms under several conditions:
A) Consumer prefer an ethically produced product (dolphin safe tuna)... not relevant to this terrorism-media case.
B) Investors prefer to invest in ethically run companies. This leads to higher cost of capital to unethical firms.
C) Workers prefer to work for ethical firms. This forces unethical firms to pay higher wages. This seems the most plausible route in journalism, what with journalistic codes of ethics, etc.

The investors and workers (principals and agents) can impact the practices, even if consumers prefer (or do not have perfect information) unethical practices.

The alternative would be a tax (or subsidy) to make the firm internalize the externality. But giving the government that kind of power would seem dangerous and contrary to the first amendment.

no idea about the state of affairs in the US, but over here in Germany there is a gentlemen's agreement to cover suicides only rarely, since this apparently does have a measureable impact on the number of suicides and attempted suiceides that occur.
Still, the IMO crucial difference between suicide and nudism on the one hand and reporting on atrocities committed by terrorists is that the former are mostly individual acts, which do not concern/interest a wider audience. The latter on the other hand might be crucial to my willingness to e.g. take a job somewhere, in other words I "need" that information much more.

In a nutshell, gore is not the only news factor. If something is not newsworthy by other factors, gore will not be sufficient and journalists can be persuaded to stop reporting the matter (especially if negative effects can be demonstrated). Which is part of the reasons why starved children's corpses don't make the evening news daily, despite the fact that there's no shortage and certainly enough gore .. and in this particular case it would actually be relevant in that something might be done about it.
On the other hand, if something is newsworthy by other factors and gory on top, networks in a free market would hurt themselves by not publishing it.

Markus, that's assuming that the viewers like gore. I'm sure that not all people do. I'm not sure whether a majority do - or it's just that the ones that don't want to see gore quit watching TV news long ago. (I haven't in years - but that's more because of there only being a few minutes of actual news coverage per hour of advertisements, self-promotion, sports, and BS-ing.)

Yeah, news is a business. I guess that's why the accountants at CBS approved the insane chase for bogus Bush National Guard memos (for example). It was the accountants who did that, for good business reasons one assumes, and not some bunch of rabid ideologues who would throw away the reputation of the business for their personal politics, right?

I wonder: when exactly did the TV networks decide not to show yahoos running onto the field? I vividly remember the streaker at the opening ceremonies of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, for example...

The dynamite balloons story is fascinating...reminds of the (apocryphal?) story of baseball announcer Dizzy Dean who was unable to tell his audience that a game he was calling had been postponed due to rain; supposedly there was a quasi-ban on weather forecasts on the radio during the war -- enemy bombers, you know. (According to legend, Diz said something like "Well, sir, this game's been called, but I can't tell you why...just look up into the sky and you'll figure it out. And you better have an umbrella handy when you do...!")

The "terrorists are running riot" stories are valuable for multiple reasons:

(1) It makes Bush look bad.
(2) It bleeds, it leads.
(3) Cool pictures!
(4) It makes Bush look bad.
(5) It makes the media look important; on the verge of history and all that.
(6) We'll be damned if we're going to lose out to those SOBs at [competing news agency/channel]!
(7) It makes Bush look bad. Bastard.

It's not true that journalists don't treat the heavy weight of their gatekeeper responsibilities seriously:

"Experienced journalists treat exit polls like hand grenades with the pin pulled; they are unstable and dangerous."

That should explain everything.

Top post.

The non-coverage of suicides came in after Phillips (1980) demonstrated coverage of suicides directly causes added suicides in the market that saw the coverage. It is known as the Contagion Effect. It was shown that even airline crashes go up as a result of suicide coverage, as pilots sometimes suicide and kill their passengers. Who remembers the copycat light-plane crashes in Florida and Italy after 9/11? And in our town in Australia, we had a suicide bomb-belt case after the media gave the Palestinian murder-bombers free publicity.

Only yesterday in my town a woman was killed with a knife by her ex, just one day after an estranged husband got major air by shooting his wife's lawyer in the leg then suiciding.

I suggest that if the media started seriously dissing suicide bombers - disparaging their masculinity and their beliefs, miss-spelling their names in insulting ways, we might actually reduce terroris recruitment.

And the present fawning coverage of Arafat is crazy.

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