‘You Decide’… pure claptrap

One sure sign of dishonest or lazy journalism is the tag of ‘you decide.’

In most research professions, the job of the researcher is to find or discover facts and construct a story or narrative around those facts. A journalist functions in reverse. They are given a story and their job is to collect connected stories, identify the facts and then verify those facts. The credibility of their final report (written or otherwise) depends on proper validation or refutation of the facts of the original story. It is human nature to collate facts (any string of facts) into a narrative… this is how humans make sense of the world. When a journalist presents a list of ‘facts’ and instructs their audience to ‘decide for themselves’, they  nudging their audience to reach a certain conclusion by the facts given. This is not journalism and anyone who takes this road should be barred from the practice of journalism.

Let me set this up as a set of contrasts...

A lawyer…

… is given a set of facts: (1) house has been burgled; (2) no forced entry; (3) some stolen items found in local pawn shop; (4) nephew of homeowner who has been unemployed for some months, is spotted with a new motorcycle

In court, the prosecutor’s job would be to take these facts and stitch together to tell a compelling story that a jury would believe (nephew burgled house and pawned items to buy motorcycle). The job of the defense attorney would to cast doubt (ideally, disprove) on some of the facts so the story doesn’t work or persuade the jury with a better story to fit the facts (nephew can’t get in house; nephew has never been to pawnshop; nephew’s motorcycle is gift from wealthy parents/girlfriend…).

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A biographer (similar for historians, anthropologists, social scientists…)...

…starts with some readily available facts: (1) person born __year, __day, __county; (2) grew up in affluent part of town; (3) died a highly regarded statesman…

…and searches available resources (diaries, school records, newspaper articles, interviews…) for additional information ...

… (1) always unkempt as a child; (2) no father of record and mother never married; (3) mother employed by owner of house they lived in…

These biographical facts along with additional historical context (a) limited public education available at that period; (b) unwed mothers were looked down on...

… would be used construct a narrative of the life and times of this person. They would use the facts and historical context to make a compelling story about this person (An illegitimate child of wealthy man who had him privately educated…).

Should additional facts emerge or current events call for reflection, the prevailing narrative about individual and events can change. An example would be Socrates, a founder of western philosophy, who was seen, in his time, as a criminal and executed by the state. And in modern times, contrast the approval ratings of Jimmy Carter just after losing the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan to that of today.

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Charles Darwin (a natural scientist)…

…collected a series of facts (by observation): (1) small birds collected on a particular Galápagos Island were all the related; (2) they had highly variable beak morphology; (3) beak morphology correlated with foraging behavior (see here and links within)…

… and developed his Theory of Evolution by natural selection.

And facts discovered by scientists in many fields (biology, geology, paleontology, etc.): (1) age of earth; (2) transitional fossils; (3) genetic inheritance…

…have all served to confirm evolution by natural selection.


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All people...

…when given a set of facts...

-baby gets vaccinated; baby diagnosed with autism

-many people hospitalized with acute flu-like symptoms had direct contact with domestic chickens

…readily draw a narrative…

-vaccines cause autism (false; there is no evidence of this)

-chickens are infecting humans with something (true; multiple outbreaks of bird flu in Asia)

Such narratives (or stories) is how humans understand our world and direct the way we relate to those around us.

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To bring this back to the role of a journalist…

The information gleaned by journalists is more often than not, already in the form of a story. Their job is to identify and verify the facts and report on the accuracy of the narrative(s) provided by their sources (see here). It is human nature to construct a narrative when given a series of facts, a narrative which can easily distort the truth by careful pre-selection or distortion of the facts. When a journalist writes a piece, supposedly presenting all the facts as provided by their sources and tells their readers ‘you decide,’ they completely abrogate their role as responsible journalist. Audiences do not have the tools (sources, references, time) at their disposal to critically evaluate the validity of news reports they consume. When reporters do not, they do no more than hold a megaphone up to the mouths of ’newsmakers’.