Reporting Biases, From Moses' Spies in Canaan to Modern Day Media

By ALEZA SUMMIT

Parashat Sh'lach (Numbers 13:1-15:37)

In this week's parashah, Sh'lach, Moshe sends twelve men to investigate the land of Canaan. Moshe charges them, "Go and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they dwell in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land." (Numbers 13:17-20)

After forty days, they return with enormous fruit and an enormous sense of foreboding. They report, "The country we traveled and scouted is one that devours its settlers! All the men that we saw are men of great size, and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them." And the people of Israel believe them; they break into loud cries, lamenting that it would have been better to die in Egypt than to confront this ominous situation.

But two of the scouts, Caleb and Joshua, have a very different story to tell. They say, "The land we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land." They go on to express their faith that God will aid them. And yet the people of Israel react by threatening to pelt them with stones.

Clearly, we have a major case of reporting bias on our hands here. Though all twelve of the spies saw the same land, ate the same fruit, and observed the same occupants, their reports could not have been more different. Their pre-existing perspectives, personal political agendas, and feelings at that particular moment affected what they perceived and how they reported it.

We also see a very clear case of the way in which the information transmitters, be they political leaders or the media, have the power to shape future events. When the children of Israel choose to believe the ten men and their vision of danger and foreboding, they seal their own fate — because of their reaction, they are doomed to wander in the desert for forty years. Indeed, only Moshe's pleading keeps them from being eliminated by God entirely.

Conventional media tell us about the developing world, but the messages they transmit are shaped by a variety of sources, from U.S. policy to corporate interests to editors' personal predispositions. Thousands of stories are never deemed worthy of reporting at all — the degree to which a story is judged "newsworthy" often has more to do with publications' perceptions of readers' interests rather than the events themselves. Mainstream media gave us extensive coverage of the December 2004 tsunami, at least for a few months, because it hit areas where European tourists wielded video cameras. No such coverage was available when, just 10 months later, an earthquake hit Pakistan, killing 75,000 people and leaving 3.5 million homeless and vulnerable to disease and hunger at the start of the harsh winter months. (http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53793&SelectRegion=Asia; http://www.theirc.org/where/Pakistan-Quake-Aiding-The-Survi.html) Mainstream media tell us that people are dying of AIDS in Africa, but only rarely mention that that their deaths could be averted if they had access to generic drugs, access which multinational pharmaceutical companies and U.S. policy do not support. (http://www.healthgap.org/camp/trade.html; http://www.accessmed-msf.org/) Mainstream media sometimes tell us about the conflict in Sudan, but they largely ignore the conflict that has been raging for eighteen years in northern Uganda. (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2005/top10.html)

Beyond the unreported disasters, though, mainstream media also rarely tell us of causes for hope, the work that people in the developing world are doing every day to improve their own lives and the lives of their communities. Every day in Guatemala, rural health promoters trained by our grantee Rxiin Tnamet are going door-to-door, talking to their neighbors about disease prevention and good prenatal care. In Maharastra, India, fifty tribal activists affiliated with our new grantee Lok Dhara are conducting interviews and community assessments to figure out how best to serve the needs of nomadic tribal groups which lack state services and face discrimination. In Liberia, the Committee For Peace and Development Advocacy, another AJWS grantee, provides training in carpentry, soap-making, and tailoring for former child soldiers who have recently withdrawn or escaped from the ongoing violent conflict.

But all too often, we don't hear these stories. We hear the same ones over and over again, about formidable giants and dangers that cannot be overcome. We do not hear that the land is fertile for change; we do not hear of the depth and the richness of the work done by community activists. And so, too often, we lament, we break into loud cries, and we give up hope.

Certainly the situation is dire. I do not want to minimize the very real obstacles faced by people in the developing world. But I would like to highlight the stories of hope and struggle and resistance as well. Every time I travel to the developing world and meet with our grantees, I am impressed again and again at their work, and that is what gives me the energy and excitement to continue with my own.

The media is powerful — it shapes the world for good and for ill. Since we can only act on the basis of what we know, it is crucial that we seek out information from many sources. AJWS grantees have Web sites, and their countries have newspapers, often available on the internet. An abundance of blogs carry alternate news and describe world issues on a personal level; the Independent Media Center network (also known as Indymedia) features Web sites and reporters all around the world. When researching any issue, seek out a broad range of sources of information and check them against each other; look for media directly from the relevant countries and parties; follow references and links from already trusted sources; ask friends with expertise on these issues. When I seek out information, instead of searching for the chimera of "objectivity," I seek to understand the particular subjectivities an author brings to a piece. Each of us also has the power to, as the IMC puts it, "be the media": by writing articles for alternate papers, by writing letters to mainstream newspapers, and by spreading information in many forms to our friends and communities.

We, as North Americans, have powerful voices and great comparative ability to shape the course of world events. For the sake of the actions we are taking, and the actions we are not yet taking, we owe it to the rest of the world to seek out various sources of media, non-mainstream, non-corporate, and grassroots. Otherwise, we run the risk of seeing only a tiny fraction of the picture, and in the process, keeping ourselves and others from any sort of Promised Land.

Reprinted with permission from American Jewish World Service.