Caveat Emptor

It should be a wonder if anyone is surprised by the notion that there are biases in the media. In his survey of print media semantics William P. Cheshire (2004) reports on the biases of journalism when it writes about the human embryo. What many of us suspected to be true is now documented by his review of the literature. And what is more important, something about which many bioethicists have been concerned all along, is the strong correlation drawn between what we call something and how we treat something—a correlation that should cause us all to stop and take notice. The use of euphemistic language is so prevalent in the debate over the use of the embryo that even the U.S. president's own Council on Bioethics, in their first published report, commends to us the task of linguistic clarity:

The issue is not a matter of semantics; it is a matter of trying fairly to call things by names that correctly describe them, of trying to fit speech to fact as best one can. For the sake of clarity, we should at least stipulate clearly the meanings we intend by our use of terms. But we should also try to choose terms that most accurately convey the descriptive reality of the matter at hand. If this is well done, the moral arguments can then proceed on the merits, without distortion by linguistic sloppiness or chicanery. (President's Council on Bioethics 2002)

Three groups participate in this debate: the journalists and those whom they interview, the experts that seek to provide an understanding of the issues facing society, and the public. Each had their own concerns about accuracy in these matters.

First, Cheshire's documented assessment of biases in the printed medium begs the question of what is the obligation of journalists in reporting today. Let's face it, news is their product and news agencies are out to sell their product. We live during a time when we are bombarded with news from every angle. You can watch 24-hour news on television and have round-the-clock access to news through the World Wide Web, not to mention all the news talk-radio programs. We all know at least one news junkie. And how else does a news organization improve their ratings and sales but by providing bigger and better news each and every minute of the day. Sommerville (1999) charges that the "product of the news business is change, not wisdom." This business model inherently promotes the strong tendency to sensationalize, to hype, and to be bolder and edgier than the other guy in order to sell the product: news. The model promotes the notion that news must change with each passing day. What happened yesterday is old news. And we have to come back each day to get the new news. This model, by necessity, encourages the biases that Cheshire points out as he looks specifically at the language surrounding nascent human life. Why would you read the news each day if you knew you were going to hear the same thing again? This model leads also to the linguistic sloppiness that Kass and others have called on us to avoid if we as a society wish to engage in legitimate moral dialogue.

But it is not fair to pin the entire problem on the journalists. After all, they are just reporting what the experts tell them. We don't have to look far to find examples of experts giving journalists a bum steer. Take for example Stanford University's announcement of their new center for cloning research. They denied they would be cloning human embryos and rapidly found themselves in a public relations fiasco. And what about the latest congressional bill aimed at protecting the biotech industry's right to build embryo farms for experiments. It has the audacity to redefine "human cloning" only as the implantation of the cloned embryo. Yet...