On evaluating and acknowledging our biases
Posted by Cassandra | Filed under Ethics, Journalism
There are few professions in which individuals are expected to be completely without bias. In most professions, our biases rarely interfere with the integrity of our work.
Yet, as a journalist, it’s a constant battle. Because we consume so much information on a daily basis, we probably have opinions on many more topics than the average person does. And since we’re natural communicators, we’re prone to spewing out our thoughts (on paper or otherwise) at any given time.
It’s something that is completely in conflict with the work we do, however.
Upon doing research on the very broad topic of rodents in Toronto earlier this week, I came across some information that wasn’t secret, but it hadn’t been published yet. Like a good little intern, I jumped on it, dug some more and made a real breaking news story out of it.
Rodent infestations continue to bedevil Chinatown and Kensington Market, with health authorities ordering five recent business closures in the span of a few blocks.
I was also lucky enough to have the chance to turn it into a larger, issue-based feature story the next day.
More than a third of the city’s 56 closures in the past year have taken place in this area, with most inspection records noting rodent or insect infestations, or both.
However, as I interviewed Toronto city councillor Adam Vaughan about the issue and some of the things he’s been doing to make those neighbourhoods, which are in his ward, he raised a very complicated, loaded issue: bias in the media.
Now, he never said, “You’re a racist.” It was never that direct. But as a member of the media breaking and covering a story, I was clearly among those who he thinks approach the issue with a “tinge of racism.”
This has the tinge of racism to it and it’s unacceptable.
At first, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Am I being racist for covering this story? I thought. At first I panicked a little because, you know, I’m white. I don’t know what it’s like to be not white. I’ve never lived in a foreign culture. I’ve never been a poor immigrant struggling to make it in a new country.
But then I looked at how I drew my conclusions about this story. To start, I used real data: the City of Toronto’s DineSafe website has inspection records for every restaurant in the city.
Based on my knowledge of city street names, I could already tell many of them were in the Chinatown/Kensington Market area and the rest were scattered throughout the city.
But I wanted to be sure, so I created a Google Map which showed the location of every food premises which had been closed in the past year. My assumption was correct and clearly illustrated on the map; there was a high concentration of closures within those side-by-side neighbourhoods.
I also spoke to leaders in both of the communities, giving them the opportunity to tell their side of the story:
Barbara Kwan, vice-chair of the Chinatown BIA, said business owners in the neighbourhood are doing everything they can to combat the problem.
…
Kensington Market Action Committee chairman Chris Devita agreed but said many local residents and business owners are not doing anything to eliminate pests.
The only thing I can’t account for is widespread systemic racism.
It’s entirely possible that the city’s public health inspectors target this area more than others and hold business owners there to a higher standard than others because of their race.
And it’s definitely true that many new immigrants, people of colour and non-English speakers face extremely challenging societal barriers for a number of reasons, only one of which is racism.
While I’m aware of those issues, they’re not something I could tackle in this article — and they’re issues that, perhaps, no journalist could hope to tackle in any news article.
The easiest question I can ask myself, as a journalist, is: Would I still cover this story if one third of the city’s closures had occurred in another neighbourhood, in hoity-toity Yorkville, or the artsy-fartsy Beaches, or Little Italy, or the Church-Wellesley Village, etc.?
The answer is yes, I would.
I would cover the story if it could be found in any of those neighbourhoods, or any other community, because not only is it my responsibility as a journalist, it’s also what I would expect as a consumer who frequents restaurants in this city and doesn’t check the DineSafe inspection history of each one before I go.
Could I have done more to acknowledge my biases in this case? How do you acknowledge your own biases in your work life?
Tags: bias, National Post, story
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April 5th, 2009 at 3:33 am
hey, so i just read your post and speaking of racism…on your twitter you replied to someone on what i am assuming was something about the sex and the city movie. as for charlotte and her only eating pudding, didn’t you find that incredibly racist?
April 5th, 2009 at 3:39 am
No, not racist, but definitely extreme. It’s common knowledge that people from "first world" countries aren’t supposed to drink the water or eat certain foods in "third world" countries because they can contain bacteria we’re not used to due to the way our water is processed (and, apparently, theirs is not). People get sick all the time.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:31 am
"While I’m aware of those issues, they’re not something I could tackle in this article — and they’re issues that, perhaps, no journalist could hope to tackle in any news article."
But why not? I think this is something that could be researched or investigated. Why not look more deeply into this issue? Why not see if these restaurants are visited more often by inspectors, if inspectors are more strident in their inspections of some restaurants, or if fines and citations are more readily given out to certain restaurants?
In my opinion, stating "facts" that there are more reported violations in one area than in another, without even acknowledging that there might be other reasons which would cause those figures to be skewed IS biased reporting. I say this as a white academic who spent several years researching and writing about Indian film and youth culture. Sometimes what you don’t say is just as important as what you do.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:52 am
If journalists were allowed to cover whatever they wanted, I would definitely look into those issues. But, especially as an intern, my time is not my own and I’m running against other people’s expectations and deadlines. I’m not working there as an investigative reporter and very rarely get more than a day to work on a story — this was an exception because it was a larger issue and I need more time to get into it.
The other thing about journalism is that it’s not academic researching and writing. We pick a topic and we do interviews and we write about it immediately. We don’t have the luxury of months on end researching one topic — it wouldn’t be news, it would be academic research and writing.
Journalism is definitely one of the reasons certain norms are maintained, because we can’t explore things so in depth as to unearth serious flaws in our society, but it just is what it is.