An Informative Opinion
The Benefits of Advocacy Journalism
Bias is the truth, just only one part of it. Bias is everywhere. From cable news networks to print news to government statistics, facts are always selected in an attempt to prove a point. Bias exists in every source, in every publication, and in every part of our lives — but that’s not a bad thing.
Our very own Phillip Hedayatnia recently wrote an article criticizing ‘advocacy journalism’ — a form of journalism which presents the facts in order to support a particular position — particularly examining John Oliver’s weekly show, Last Week Tonight. In his critique, Hedayatnia claims that advocacy journalism fails to take opposing viewpoints into consideration, and that this partisanship shuts down public debate in the process. However, just as he laments Oliver does, his critique fails to take the other side into account.
The primary assertion of Hedayatnia’s article is that advocacy journalism ignores opposing viewpoints. He states:
“This is a problem that extends to much of our media: the fact checkers, the pundits, the worlds of cable and print journalism in the 21st century… John Oliver has a point of view, and he thinks it’s right. Opinion shows have no obligation to showcase the other side, and they have no reason to: people watch because they want the host’s opinion, not a talking head discussion or a frenzied debate.”
His particular protest of partisanship lies with Oliver’s recent segment on charter schools. Within the segment, Oliver examines ways in which the charter school system has failed and asserts that more work needs to be done to ensure the success of charter schools in the future. Hedayatnia claims that Oliver framed the debate in such a manner that the other side could not even be considered, shutting down any viewpoint that might consider charter schools a good thing. However, this is by no means the case. Even within the segment, Oliver readily admits that charter schools, when done right, do work — he simply states that more oversight and scrutiny should be implemented to ensure that they are successfully educating students. Therein, he considered two viewpoints: the viewpoint that charter schools can be good, and the viewpoint that charter schools can be bad, and developed a position based on the facts on both sides.
Taking the other viewpoint into consideration is an essential part of advocacy journalism, and argumentation in general. In writing education, it is known as “addressing the counterpoint,” and it is taught as a doctrine of appropriate argumentative strategy, for good reason. Without utilizing a comparative analysis, and explaining why taking one side of an argument is preferable to taking the other, a writer can never effectively advocate their position. If a piece of advocacy journalism fails to address other viewpoints, then the writer of the piece didn’t do his or her job.
Another complaint Hedayatnia lodges with the practice of advocacy journalism is the fact that it reports the facts in a way that supports one side of an argument, establishing a specific bias of the author and the source. However, the same can be said of most traditional journalism. Hedayatnia willingly concedes that all news organizations have inherent biases, but posits that journalists should attempt to subdue any form of innate bias and strip away coded language to the point where every article becomes “a NYT-styled, bland, emotionless hodge-podge of descriptions, opinions, counter-opinions, and counters to those opinions.” Why? If there are inherently true facts which support a position, why not introduce them as such? If almost all available evidence shows that climate change is real, does the simple fact that there is an opposing viewpoint make it wrong to report that climate change is happening? Even the objective truth must sometimes be argued for.
All of this boils down to one central concern Hedayatnia holds with advocacy journalism: the idea that it stifles public debate, discourse and change. This ideology channels a traditional journalistic perspective, which emphasizes objective reporting above all else. Certainly, objective facts are necessary for a reliable consideration of the issues, the presentation of these facts in a more subjective way actually encourages public discourse and political change.
Take John Oliver for example. For all the criticisms of how Oliver has supposedly stifled public discourse and political discussion, there has certainly been a lot of talk about his pieces. Last Week Tonight’s effect on public discourse and sociopolitical action even has a name: “the John Oliver effect.” The term refers to spikes in discussion and action on the issues of Oliver’s segments that may have never received proper attention otherwise. Examples include:
- Miss America: In September of 2014, Oliver aired a segment on the Miss America Foundation, which claims to be the largest women’s scholarship program in the US. He debunked estimates from the foundation about just how much money the organization provided in scholarship funding, but still acknowledged that they remained the largest women’s scholarship program in America. He then asked his audience to help change that reality by donating to other women’s scholarship programs. In the two days after the episode aires, the Society of Women Engineers received $25,000 in donations — 15% of what they usually receive in a full year. The group named the spike the “John Oliver bounce.”
- Bail: In June of 2015, Oliver detailed how the imposition of bail has increasingly been used to create effective debtor’s prisons in America, trapping the poor within the criminal justice system. A month later, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new plan to relax bail requirements for non-violent, misdemeanor offenders in the city.
- Territorial Rights: In March of 2015, Last Week Tonight’s primary segment focused on the lack of constitutional rights granted to residents of US territories. Particularly, Oliver cited the Insular Cases, a series of sixteen Supreme Court cases which established the rights granted to territories acquired in the Spanish-American War, claiming that they fail to ensure rights of citizenship, protection, and representation granted to other American citizens. Five months later, in the 2015 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case Paeste v. Government of Guam, judge Marsha S. Berzon cite the episode in her opinion, writing on how the Insular Cases have been “the subject of extensive judicial, academic, and popular criticism.”
Last Week Tonight is a prolific success story on the benefits of advocacy journalism, but it is by no means an isolated one. From increasing educational rights in Nigeria to promoting HIV awareness here in America, advocacy journalism has brought crucial issues to the public light, enabling real discussion and real change. Pieter J. Fourie, a professor at the University of South Africa at Pretoria, wrote in his 2010 book, Media Studies: Media History, Media and Society, that the process of advocacy journalism has lead to the documented changing of attitudes, social change, and eventual action from authorities. This is because outlining specific arguments in news reports both is more interesting to readers and provides clear contextualization and analysis for readers, allowing the average person to understand the argumentation behind the defining issues of the day. Every argument requires a subjective claim on its behalf, asserted as subjective truth. Even right now, in this article, there is advocacy. This is how debate works. This is how conversations start. This is how positions are created, and solutions are found.
In an age where people can be overwhelmed by a glut of surplus data, advocacy journalism helps readers make sense of the evidence. Many feel distanced from the political process because objective, empirical data is often reported in an esoteric fashion, forcing people to put in too much time and effort themselves in order to understand even the basic arguments on the issues. Advocacy journalism simply lays out those arguments to readers, allowing them to engage in the dialogue more easily. Larry Kirkman, Dean of American University’s School of Communication, explained this concept at the March 2011 Advocacy Journalism in the Digital Age conference:
“When media barrage us with fearsome and unintelligible images of catastrophe, making audiences feel helpless and hopeless, advocacy journalism can provide the context and analysis and the evidence and testimony that frame and drive public debate.”
Objectivity in the facts is certainly a vital part of journalism; facts found through bias are bound to reflect those biases. However, objective facts and subjective reporting, though separate, can go directly hand in hand. For example, it is objectively true that raising the minimum wage has both raised wages and diminished job opportunities, and a thorough debate of whether the minimum wage should be raised can and should see arguments on behalf of both objective truths. This way, real debate, discourse, and change can ensue.
So, yes, this article has a bias — a bias that bias is not such a bad thing. A bias that the evidence shows that advocacy journalism has driven people to speak and to act on the issues which matter most to them to them. A bias that advocacy journalism has done more good than harm for America and the world. What’s so wrong with that?
Special thanks to Quinn Stewart.
