Warning Labels for Biased Articles?

What a great idea: Warning labels for biased articles! Jeffrey Gedmin of the Aspen Institute in Berlin made this hilarious suggestion in an article published in Germany's daily WELT. (The cartoon on the left added by us.)

(I should mention that we now can offer the original English version of Jeff Gedmin's WELT article that was sent to us by the Aspen Institute Berlin. Many thanks to them and to Hartmut Lau who provided the English translation of the first version we presented).

This is Gedmin's article:

I hate over-regulation, but I wonder whether journalism needs what the food industry has. I like being able to read the label to know the ingredients in my juice or tomato sauce. Why shouldn't I know more about the news I am consuming?

I think about this when I consider much of the one-sided reporting on Iraq. The United States is no exception. I came across an interview recently with Rod Nordland, the Baghdad bureau chief of Newsweek magazine. Asked why we should be optimistic about democracy in the Middle East, Nordland says, "Who's optimistic?" Asked why Bush cares about the people of Iraq, Nordland says, "Who says he cares?" Nordland has strong opinions. Me too. But Nordland is in the news business, so why not disclose in his by-line, "Mr. Nordland opposed the Iraq war, thinks Arab democracy is an illusion, and believes George W.  Bush is heartless and cynical." At least there would be no pretending about neutrality and objectivity.

I think about this when I consider the one-sided reporting in Germany about the United States. Take the Berliner Tagesspiegel. The paper's correspondent writes for the news section and publishes columns on the opinion page. I often find it hard to tell the difference between the two. Sometimes the news stories are so opinionated I yearn for a label, like "Malte Lehming thinks that the president of the United States is a war-mongering ayatollah whose conservative-religious revolution is destroying American democracy."

Columns and documentary films should be no exception. Why not have a box score, like in American baseball? "Jeffrey Gedmin was batting 300 in 2004"-that's being right one out of three times. Maybe a second line could attest to the accuracy of the facts that underline our arguments.
This should apply to political documentaries, too. The most notorious in this business is America's Michael Moore. He preferred Saddam Hussein in power. Last year he was cheering the Iraqi insurgents to kill as many Americans as they could. That's free speech, however repugnant. But then there are those things we call facts. In Fahrenheit 9/11 Moore asserted that the White House approved special charter flights for bin Laden family members to leave the US, without being interviewed by the FBI and while US airspace was still closed. But none of this turned out to be true. Moore also asserted that the Carlyle Group, a business with ties to the Bush family, profited from September 11th because it owns United Defense, a military contractor. But United Defense's jewel project of the time, an $11 billion artillery rocket system, was cancelled by the Bush administration. Maybe a label should warn, "this product could be dangerous to your mental health."

Maybe journalism should have something akin to a driver's license.
Break enough rules, endanger public safety, you get your privileges revoked. Ok, free press is a right. I oppose all forms of censorship. You're safe, Michael. You can run those red lights and still drive on the side walks.

In truth, though, the rest os us could police ourselves a bit more. I recall a journalist from a top daily once telling me he was struggling with a story about Jürgen Möllemann, because he found it so hard to keep his own views out of the story. For news, that's surely a model. Until then, why not stick a label on the by-line of that next Iran story, "John Doe thinks American foreign policy is neo-imperialist and personally does not understand why the Mullahs should not have nuclear weapons."
___________________________

Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, gets not a dime from the U.S. government, but wishes someone in Washington would reconsider.      

I should mention that Malte Lehming of Tagesspiegel is no stranger to this blog:

...you need to have a deeply ingrained anti-American sentiment to become Washington correspondent of a German media outlet. Credentials as a journalist? Well, let's not be too demanding... Malte Lehming is definitely superbly qualified for the job.

Update: When searching for a warning label image at Google I found this beautiful cartoon. I thought you'd like it too:

Comments

[Dick C.]

Davids Medienkritik = Pro-American bias

Note from David: Oh, sure, Dick. We even admit it... check our comment policy (see right column): "Our criticism is from a “politically incorrect” point of view – our position is pro-American, pro-Israeli and pro-capitalist."

The difference to "journalists" such as Malte Lehming: we let you know our position - he doesn't.

[Lou Minatti]

I appreciate Gedmin's sentiment, but requiring labels on reporters is so... European. :-)

People should be intelligent enough nowadays to distinguish fact from opinion and propaganda. People everywhere (places like North Korea and Cuba excepted) have an enormous array of news sources they can choose from and they no longer have to rely upon their local Official State News Agency or dinosaurs media outlet like CBS.

Rather than labeling the reporters, perhaps a better idea would be to enshrine a universal law based on the First Amendment to the US Constitution. "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom...of the press." Yeah, I know many people don't care for America right now, but I think this is a good law. Surprisingly, in this day and age a number of advanced countries do not guarantee such press freedoms. (Hello, Canada! Hello, France!) Further, instead of labeling reporters there should be a mandate to remove governments from the news business altogether. Should government officials really be in charge of the purse strings of the BBC/CBC/NPR? Doesn't the fact that many European newspapers rely on government funding make their reporting suspect?

I think that's where the real problem is. Get the government out of the news business and people can make up their own minds.

[amiexpat]

@little Lord
del.

Note from David: Sorry, amiexpat - I had to delete your comment. You quote little lord, but I had his comment deleted, so repeating his comment in yours introduces his garbage again...
Apologies again.

[kid charlemagne]

Lou: Gedmin's suggestion is not meant seriously, he's just making a point about biased reporting and the mixing of editorializing and reporting which is all too common in Germany.

[Joerg Wolf]

You guys are so obsessed with pointing out the left's mistake and this stupid and not even funny idea of warning labels, that you do not notice errors in Gedmin's article:

According to Gedmin Michael Moore “claims that the White House made it possible for members of the Bin-Laden family to leave the US in special charter flights before the FBI could question them and while all American airspace was still officially closed to all traffic. That turned out to be a false assertion.”

I assume Gedmin is referring to the report by the 9/11 commission.
A day before his article was printed, the NYT wrote that newly released government records show that the “FBI gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed.”

“The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, which provided copies to The New York Times.”

I love the US for spreading freedom of information. We should have a Freedom of Information Act in Europe as well. I am sure you guys agree that we would learn many interesting things…

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/27/news/saudis.html

[Pogue Mahone]

What Moore is saying is "White House made it possible" for these Saudi's to leave the US

What the 9-11 report says is that the FBI conducted this operation

Of course the FBI works for the government - but there is no evidence that Bush made this happen in the days after 9-11 - in fact its laughable to think he would concern himself with anything like that at such a time

Unless of course you want to insinuate such a thing due to your own violent hatred of Bush - als Fatass Moore

[Joerg Wolf]

Pogue Mahone wrote:
"in fact its laughable to think he would concern himself with anything like that at such a time"

In fact it's laughable to think that the FBI would concern itself with making special arrangements for fatass Saudi royals and Bin Laden Family members to leave the US at such a time, unless the Bureau got a special order from the White House, which considers the freedom-hating Saudi fundamentalists their friends.

You accuse me of "violent hatred of Bush - als Fatass Moore" although I never even mentioned Bush's name. I was pointing out the facts, and you think that makes me "violent." Thank you very much. You seem to have lost your marbles.

Judicial Watch writes:
"It is apparent from the [FBI] report that Bin Laden family members and Saudi royals were subject to only cursory, pro forma questioning by the FBI. Experienced investigators suggest detailed counterterrorism interviews would have taken a minimum of two hours per passenger. There is no evidence offered that any such efforts were made by the FBI."
http://www.judicialwatch.org/5139.shtml

This is highly unusual. After every crime, the family members of a suspect are questioned extensively. => The FBI was supposed to question them. The FBI was supposed to be busy finding the bastards responsible for 9/11 rather than making special arrangements for the Saudis to leave the country right after the attacks, when all air traffic was supposed to be grounded.

Judical Watch obtained the FBI report under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) and through ongoing litigation (Judicial Watch v. Department of Homeland Security & Federal Bureau of Investigation, No. 04-1643. The full text is on their homepage.

Will Gedmin correct his mistake in his next column?
Will he admit that he was wrong and Michael Moore was right after all?

Gedmin wrote that "he was right once in every three attempts" last year. He would fail any exam I can think of. Should not he be a bit more carful with expressing his ideas/speculation? Why do you still read his stuff? Henryk M. Broder is better and much funnier.

To be fair, Gedmin probably was not aware of the newly released government records. The NYT article was published just a day before his column was published. Still, he should correct his mistake in his next column. Do you think he will do that?

[dubya]

After four and a half years of being the foreign correspondent in Washington, D.C. for the German, Berlin daily “Der Tagesspiegel”, Malte Lehming, is returning home to Berlin. Beginning August 2005, he will take on the job as “Leitender Redakteur Meinung” (managing editor opinion section) at the Tagesspiegel. He certainly seems to be qualified as is articles often displayed a – more or less subtle – spin and bias. Now, he can focus on what he really is good. ;o) He became known to a wider audience after he plagiarized a NY Times article about "metrosexuals" (http://www.taz.de/pt/2003/06/28/a0259.nf/text). Anyway, this time he wrote an interesting piece in today’s Sunday edition of Der Tagesspiegel (No 18827, May 8, 2005, page 8) that catches some of his thoughts on his time as a foreign correspondent in the US as he is about to return to Germany. Her is the Link (in German): http://www.tagesspiegel.de/meinung/index.asp?gotos=http://archiv.tagesspiegel.de/toolbox-neu.php?ran=on&url=http://archiv.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/08.05.2005/1804905.asp#art

He even mentions “Davids Medienkritik”:

„In Deutschland gibt es nur wenige interessante Blogs. Einer davon ist „Davids Medienkritik“. Dort tummeln sich all jene, die überzeugt davon sind, dass Bush ein prima Präsident, Guantanamo nicht schlimm und die deutsche Presse zutiefst antiamerikanisch ist. Unter deutschen USA-Korrespondenten gilt „Davids Medienkritik“ inzwischen als eine Art Qualitätskontrolle: Wer dort nicht ab und zu für seine Kommentare verprügelt wird, macht etwas falsch.“