Montreal Philosophy
"Philosophy" is just a brand for a form of thought that seeks understanding in all its depth.
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(Recommended Artist: Thievery Corporation – Until the Morning)
One inherent difficulty in producing article that allows readers to have an objective understanding of the material offered is the reality that the facts do not always portray the whole issue accurately. Consider, for example, this article on how Amazon.com recently removed some books that had homosexual content from their “top selling” ranking system. After fury in the blogosphere, they claimed that it was a computer glitch.
On one hand, there’s the fact that Amazon.com is explaining that the issue arose from a computer glitch. Amazon is a large company with a fine reputation and it would usually seem fair to assume that they are telling the truth.
However, there is also the possibility that they are lying. Someone who is familiar with how computers work can easily conclude that it would be extremely improbable that this is a glitch, because, as far as we are aware, Amazon does not label books specifically as having homosexual content (a label that would have to be applied by a human), so there would be no way for the system to distinguish between books that have homosexual content and those that do not; it would have to be a human decision, not a glitch.
I should note, however, that there is the possibility that someone — hopefully users and not Amazon employees — can identify certain books as having homosexual content, either directly (not possible, as far as I am aware) or indirectly (such as reporting the book for offensive content; there are anti-gay lobby groups who would work hard at that). A glitch could allow books that were identified as having homosexual content to be removed from the sales rankings. I won’t make note of all the details here, but the more I think of this, the more unlikely it seems.
Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that Amazon is lying about their situation. But how can this be shown in a news article that is meant to be objective? It’s clear that Amazon’s point of view should be described. The community’s response is what makes this a story, so this also has to be included. But this leaves us with: books with homosexual content were removed from sales rankings, community cries foul, Amazon claims that it’s a computer glitch. Add in a few personal accounts and you have the news article.
However, though I believe that Amazon is indeed lying, I do not believe that this is portrayed in an objective manner. Consider another scenario that follows the same pattern: gay BADCO employees are fired, gay community denounces BADCO as racist, BADCO claims that sexual orientation was not a factor. Based on such key points, on such a framework, it is possible to leave the reader thinking that BADCO is anti-gay (”all gay employees…”) or that the gay community is over-reacting (”one gay employee…”).
Based on the CBC article, there is much that is not clear concerning the actual problem. Did all the books that were delisted contain homosexual content? The answer to this is very important. So far, I have assumed that this was the case, but, based on the information found in the article, it’s possible that many books were delisted and that it just happened that some had homosexual content.
It is made clear that the writer of the article wants to cast doubt on Amazon’s explanation, and with the article’s “filling” the reader is lead to conclude that Amazon must by lying. I believe that a better way to have explained that Amazon may be lying is to be open about it by bringing forth the pros and cons of the “Amazon is lying” argument by asking a person who is familiar with how such websites work what he thinks. The CBC failed to do this and instead lead the reader to conclude that Amazon was lying based not on reason, but on how the facts were chosen and organised. Had different facts been chosen and had they been organised differently, I am confident that it would be possible to, while maintaining the same framework as the CBC article, produce an article that left more readers thinking that it was indeed a computer glitch.
This seems like a significant problem to me, as the article did not serve as an objective — complete or incomplete — assessment of the situation.
Now, though I qualify this as a significant issue, it remains a minor one. But it serves an example — not the best example, I should note — that even quality news on relatively simple topics can be biased one way or another. Because of this, we must always be careful and critical when reading the news.
-Dussault
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