MEDIA AND MEN BITING DOGS

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33514, 20 April 1974, Page 10

MEDIA AND MEN BITING DOGS

The Manufacture of News. Deviance, Social Problems and the Mass Media. By Stanley Cohen and Jock Young. Constable. 383 pp.

When it is doing its job well the press is not universally popular. It is seen from the I eft as an instrument of the Establishment to manipulate and control the lower orders. The Right views it as equally powerful but hell-bent on eroding social and cultural standards and advocating permissiveness for all. To the broadside in the political field must now be added the salvoes of sociologists, who find yesterday’s newspaper a fertile field, not only for its revelations about social behaviour, but also for the evidence it provides about the way in which the press covered this behaviour.

Cohen and Young have collected some 20 articles by themselves and other sociologists, each of them dealing with the media’s attitudes to deviant behaviour and social problems. Their central thesis, illustrated bv examples of how the press reported happenings as diverse, as a pop festival and the tragedy of Northern Ireland, is that journalists select and interpret events, not for any machiavellian purpose, but simply to fit their preconceived model of society. The model, they claim, is that of a democratic consensus in which there is considerable agreement about the political and economic arrangements.

But, they say, when the media are confronted with groups and phenomena which defy consensus—for example protest groups, racial conflict or homosexuality — they fail to allow them an integrity of their own, but characterise them as meaningless or immature or as involving a misunderstanding of reality rather than as an alternative interpretation of the nature of society. But the picture the authors draw of journalists squeezing events into categories suitable for the smooth running of the media bureaucracy and for upholding a particular social view does not bear too close an examination. It is generally true that the press did not cope well initially with post-war scientific and technological advances. It was not until specialist writers on these subjects were employed that a competent coverage of science was provided. But in the field of social behaviour, who is, or rather

who is not, an expert? And if there is no unanimity among the experts, how can the press be consistently right in its reporting of social problems? The contributors are unfair in other ways. They seem unaware of the importance of deadlines to journalists and the necessity to make quick judgments. They forget that newspapers must avoid libel. And though they enjoy more time and hindsight than any journalist, they are as fallible in their charges of bias as they claim the press is. It is ludicrous and grossly unfair, to suggest, as does Robert Cirino, that the press is responsible for the deaths of millions of Americans because it did not give wide publicity to early reports of the link between smoking and lung cancer. The press must always proceed cautiously when, conclusions are unproven. Once the Surgeon-General’s report put this matter beyond doubt vast publicity was,

and still is, given to the dangers of smoking.

Similarly, considerable attention has been given to the design of safer cars once the importance of design in safety was recognised. The authors, one imagines, would be quick to label the press as irresponsible if it featured every claim made for the cure of cancer; yet if one of the present promising lines of inquiry is successful, the press would, by this reasoning, be castigated for not publicising the matter sooner.

This book may annoy journalists in some respects but it should be read carefully. Just as liberty requires eternal vigilance, so objectivity requires constant attention. The authors have picked up instances of careless reporting, slipshod inquiry and immature interpretation; but to suggest that this is part of a selfimposed mission to maintain the status quo may be answered by one word: Watergate.