The “speculative” journalism I’ve read just tries to explain the possibilities of what might happen given certain constraints. If it makes a prediction, it’s based on an assessment of how these constraints make one possibility more likely than the others. This is not beyond truth and falsehood: it is real reporting on possible worlds. This serves the same valuable function of traditional reporting, i.e. it helps readers understand what the relevant players are doing at present as they try to bring about their favored outcome in the future.
2
"Speculative" journalism isn't the problem: Lies frames as "opinions" are. If the Society for Professional Journalism was a legitimate organization, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and Breitbart would be unstaffed. This reader welcomes other readers' thoughts as to why none of the above organizations has been sued out of business. Also why the President of the United States hasn't been sued by any American citizen, since we all have standing, for the pain and suffering his 2000+ lies have caused. Class action, anyone?
Another major point about effective journalism: Reporting just the facts is only a start. Explaining what they mean, putting stories in context, predicting their probable ramifications, and communicating their relevance to individual readers and society are ideal qualities of journalism at its best.
4
Speculative journalism? LOL. How about, “Wishful thinking”?
4
Politics is essentially about deciding how we want to organize our collective future.
Journalists are supposed to describe facts, but describing political facts means describing decisions that are based on predictions about the future.
So how could journalism about politics even exist without speculative journalism?
The "news" in politics isn't just one or the other event that just happened, as political events always include statements about the future.
Example: Trump's tax reform has been signed into law because, Trump told us, it will create millions of jobs. That's a statement about the future, AND about a causal link between an event today (the signing into law of a bill) and future events.
Critical journalism implies that journalists don't just report THAT the president believes that this will create jobs, but also investigate WHAT the proven facts about what created jobs in the past are, to be able to know whether his prediction CAN be believed or not.
Conclusion: real journalism reports both proven facts, verifiable and verified events that just happened, AND the different scenarios experts are using in order to be able to make political decisions today.
There's no problem at all with speculative journalism. The problem of fake news isn't that journalists start speculating, it's that:
1. things that have been proven to be false are described as if they're true;
2. statements described as true aren't backed up;
3. opinions are presented as proven facts.
4
You might have forgotten the WMD Story- Print Journalism basically came clean BUT Broadcast News totally punted and took ZERO responsibility. I honestly thought print would call them out and take them on, because of their dishonesty and double dealing. But a government official stated that "Media Insiders never rat on another Insider" - If this is true, it would partly explain the pervasiveness of distrust.
But perhaps a better question might be, who might GAIN from the break down in trust in American institutions. If the current shutdown of government had lasted long enough to "Devalue the Dollar", RUSSIAN oil reserves (now languishing) would probably increase in value and their ability to operate in the Middle East and Eastern Europe would be greatly enhanced.
So what is the REAL reason the Donald constantly causing trouble?
1
Yes, there are problems with today's journalism. But sheer recitations of knowable facts, without giving a sense of an event's proportion or direction, often suggests that what's happening today will happen indefinitely. That's irresponsible journalism.
The writer's definition of non-speculative reporting would mean barely covering issues like climate change. You have to give presently known facts, but often, you also have to include expert extropolation into what that may mean for the future.
Sometimes journalism must be about preparing people, because only then might they change the course.
There is such a thing as improperly relying on opinion as news. Too much of the 2016 presidential election coverage was centered on the polls of the day. The Times ran numbers on the probability of each candidate winning, giving odds like bookies.
But the Times and other news media also covered a lot else, talking to voters and politicians of all parties and campaign insiders and political scientists. An over-reliance on polls was only one factor of many factors in the surprise over Trump's win. It stunned huge swaths of the country -- including Trump.
But reporters would have shirked their jobs if not for offering observer insights. You can't have election coverage, or a lot of other kinds, without it. Consulting others who have important, interesting or knowledgeable views is not reporting made opinionated. It's often the essence of good journalism.
2
As someone with a science editing background, I disagree with your claim that climate change reporting can only be done with loose speculative permission.
Data measurements abound for solid trend analysis of climate.
Stick to the facts. And stick to the measurements about how precise quantities of various fuels release various precise effects on the environment.
7
Statistical "trend analysis leads to theories of causality, not scientific fact.
The essense of science is to be skeptical of theory, even when proof appears to be in hand.
Remember that Einstein managed to turn portion of Newton's theories about gravity on its ear
Just because data sets appear to be supporting a popular theory and the"popular theory" has adherents doesn't necessarily PROVE that the theory is right. The only thing that such data sets can establish is that those sets are consistent with the thinking. Consistency does not equate to proof.
1
Yes op-ed only please, and no opinions on the front page as it's opinion not news.
4
"Journalist" is a term applied far too loosely to too many, and pundits and commentators are allowed to speculate widely, and then the "journalists" cover what they say. So very frustrating.
Application of some fundamentals learned in the first year of journalism school is much needed in reporting today.
3
Prominent people sometimes pose these days as journalists and are expected to receive as much credence as real reporters, without checking their publicly known views at the door. Oprah Winfrey recently did a TV interview of women who had been sexually harassed and abused. Then she lined up the group, and herself stood in the middle, to pose for pictures. A reporter does not step into the line of sight nor make themselves part of the story. My other problem -- and it's not related to this questionable concept of "speculative' reporting -- is that sometimes TV reporters provide on-air facts and then turn give their own opinions. Anchors often encourage that by asking what their views on what they just covered. It's a journalist's job to curb the urge to opinionate on what they report.
5
Yes, good examples from newspaper headlines. Cable TV sets trends for newspapers. Speculation helps fill cable TV time. Has anyone compared 24 hour TV news content today with the pre cable half hour national news each day?
In the past, TV news was not the big profit center, unlike now when hype and speculation create suspense and drama for infotainment news.
Will Oprah run? Could Oprah beat Trump? Could Trump be impeached? Plus hours of minutia and possibilities on the Mueller probe. On network news, national weather reports fill up time. And Michael Wolf, great for profits, but he’s a wolf, provocateur and publicity hound. Better books will come out later.
Some TV pundits think they’re doing their jobs with banal ‘if-then’ talk that adds little to understanding. It’s best used with explanations of trends that inform the public, then related to past cause/effect trends.
But now the trend is the ‘star’ show hosts and pundit guests. They like create drama, to talk over each other so viewers can’t understand what they’re saying. 1 MSNBC host can’t let a guest talk without aggressively interrupting---the guest is just background for the star host.
And does the media’s preoccupation with violence and tragedy, with its videos of tragic happenings desensitize us or sensitize us? I wonder how parents monitor children watching TV? How do they explain Trump and these scary times to kids?
5
There are way too many one-side advocate talking heads allowed on cable news.
Flacks, promoting agendas, are not remotely journalism.
4
“What is the future of speculative journalism?”
Hopefully, as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols growled in another context, “No Future...”
2
I'm a former radio journalist from a family of journalists; I've been upset with the speculative journalism trend in recent years and have written to my only radio/TV news source, NPR, that I'm tired of hearing every story have a speculative question or 2 about what's likely to happen next from the reporter. I object to the speculation no matter who it comes from, but I especially object to it coming from the reporter rather than a subject matter expert or somebody actually involved with the news story itself. Why? Partly that the speculations take precious time away from providing more facts - there is a huge opportunity cost of taking time away from facts to speculate instead. The purpose of news is to give citizens the most factual info possible in the time/words available so they can make up their own mind, and if they wish to, to speculate about what's next. The facts of the story can and often should include next steps if there is a process that the news story is about, e.g. "this decision will now be reviewed by an Appellate court". But to speculate what that appellate court might do is for the opinion pages/shows only, IMHO.
8
Hey, speculation sells, and it's easier to speculate than to go out and get facts! The trouble with the online age is that everybody wants to do their work online, and everything is online except the truth, because nobody wants to expend the energy to get offline and find some truth.
Turn off the screens and the smartphones, give 'em all note pads and pens, and tell them what Perry White told Jimmy Olsen!
3
Not only is it easier to speculate than to dig; it is also considerably cheaper to line up three talking heads to pontificate about the unknowable.
2
Speculative journalism, I also notice, allows the 'reporter' to cover the story without any pretense of objectivity. Every headline in this article's paragraph 3 played right to the editorial bias of the publication, except 'maybe' the Journal's. And, though I didn't read that article, I'll bet it told their readers what they wanted to hear, too.
4
Speculation is not journalism.
Let's get back to the basics. What would Uncle Walter Cronkite expect?!!
5
Journalism by definition is gathering and disseminating news and news is a written or broadcast accounting of events so, as at least one other person has commented here, "speculative journalism" smacks of oxymoronism.
Keep it on the op-ed page, please.
6
So, you’re saying that if the reader wants news, he should look elsewhere than The Times?
9
Speculative journalism seems like an oxymoron. Isn't that opinion not journalism? Thought journalism dealt with the facts.
3
The NYT is confusing speculation with outright printing any kind of garbage they feel like.
Whatever happened to simply reporting news? Or is that too hard?
Where can I send cases of diapers, sippy cups and pacifiers to the "journalists" who screamed, pleaded and argued with Trump's personal physician when he announced Trump's health was great? The meltdown in that room was breathtaking.
6
Is the Trump Presidency one step on the road to Fascism? This is an example of speculation. We also speculate about the past for the same reasons. Without knowing all there is to know, we want to understand what happened, what is going on, and we want to be prepared for what is about to happen. This is something that needs doing in journalism and in many other forms of discourse. Speculation is absolutely necessary, but it needs feedback, it needs critique from others in society. It needs a continuing back and forth. One can also speculate that when this back and forth gets shut down, because the two sides are not listening to the same news and not accepting the same journalistic and epistemological standards, that we are headed for deep trouble. I can also speculate that maybe there should have been more journalistic speculation about Hitler's character and motivation in the early nineteen thirties, when there was a chance to stop him from taking power. And here is something that isn't speculation: In 1933, it was too late for speculation.
6
Thank you for so clearly articulating this dangerous shift in journalism. If it’s happened in response to “shock,” isn’t it more essential than ever that journalism holds its ground in facts and objectivity? “Anyone” can speculate. It takes discipline and skill to report - and make sense of - the news of the day. The screaming speculation only gives credence to “fake news” claims. THIS is what journalism has to resist.
4
ESPN specializes in speculative journalism. 90% of their programming is just that.
3
The problem with a lot of speculative "journalism" is that it's speculated from within the writer's own personal framework and bubble. And it's essentially useless. I'll take the old school real journalism, the kind where the journalist gets their hands dirty and actually talks to people and gets the story that's there, not the one they've manufactured.
Remember when the Breitbart journalist went down to Virginia, and noticed that Eric Cantor was never in his district? Stuck around, sniffed it out, and called it that Cantor was headed for a loss? There were tons of these type of stories around in 2016. In MI, PA, and WI even if and reporters could have been bothered. 538 should have taken it's own advice from Cantor's loss -
"Cantor’s loss proves there are limits to strictly data-driven election predictions."
Good piece, btw.
5
Ms. Wampole speculates that Trump as POTUS may contribute to speculative journalism increasing. She has forgotten the 2016 campaign with endless polls and speculation 24/7, when he was not yet president.
She also claims 911 set off future insecurity. In other parts of the world, entire cities have been destroyed, millions have died, and millions of refugees have no security at all. 911 was a terrible thing, but we are so narcissistic here that we think our suffering is worse than all other suffering. If two buildings and 3000+ deaths still have us so worried, we're babies.
Cristy does not discuss news as entertainment. Cable news requires 24 hour content. The networks choose to fill up time with this repetitive questioning of the same experts, thus targeting the political bias of the viewers.Disasters, misery, murders, morbid curiosity is indulged for ratings.
VICE shows how to do non-infantile news. They tell you once only if it is an event. Policy issues are discussed with a VICE reporter giving both sides of an argument-no lies as supposed facts allowed. Experts may be on screen but not at length. GOOD news is featured, uplifting things, in huge variety. VICE reporters go to the most dangerous spots to get interviews with our enemies, amazing risks. MSM could fill up the time with all sorts of uplifting things.
Speculative journalism is a lofty term for educated guesses.
Instant gratification. Booze, drugs, speculation, save me now, Mr. Trump. Infantilization USA.
4
Your article outlined why I find myself reading less and less of the NYT and the Washington Post. Very many of the articles on politics or international relations are speculative, offering various alternatives as to what "might" happen rather than reporting on what did happen. I can think of alternatives by myself and rely on journalists to report on what did happen.
8
Speculation is no substitute for reporting when it comes to explaining the five Ws. But journalists, in competition for time or space, must also explain the significance of their stories to their audience (including their editors). This invariably leads to a certain amount of speculation. Example: suppose a municipal government approves spending that could bankrupt the town within five years. Wouldn't it be irresponsible for reporters not to point out this potential future outcome? I completely agree that there is too much pointless speculation in the press. I completely agree with the article about some of the psychological underpinnings of this phenomenon. But I think striving to eliminate all speculation as a function of journalism is a ridiculous idea.
3
Soothsayers get the glory. Consider Nate Silver. After rightly predicting the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, Time named him one of The World's 100 Most Influential People a year later. Additionally, ho hum, just-the-facts reporting is worrisomely like supplying data to the computer that one day soon will take your job.
2
The 9/11 attacks, the 2003 Iraq invasion, the crash of 2008 and climate change have combined with the internet to change the situation dramatically.
At one point speculation from journalists about similar obvious but murky "what ifs" might have been seen as fear-mongering. Now it feels like a necesary nudge because many of us do not trust the people that are directly in charge of these risks to skillfully and altruistically manage them.
2
Speculation & fantasizing are part of mental life. Od the examples that the author cites I would say a fair # are just clickbait. I would say substantive speculation is appropriate, especially in the opinion pages. when it addresses a matter of widespread concern - say, the Mueller investigation - by laying out all the known facts, which in this instance would be Trump and hic company's decade-long involvement in Russia, etc etc , so as to inform the reader - that ought to be the direction such pieces take - of the complexity of an issue.
2
More reporting about what happened and less about what the reporter thinks is going to happen, please!
2
No, "everyone" was not caught off-guard by 911. If you bought the notion that the U.S. was a neutral, peace-seeker in the Middle East, then yes -- omg, why do they hate us? But objectively, the question was why did it take so long for the chickens to come home to roost? Except that it was of course the same group's second attack on the World Trade Center.
3
"Reporters and editors making guesses at what might happen rather than reporting what did happen results in what is typically called speculative journalism." Aren't "speculative journalism," and the later reference to "fake news," and yes, speculation by the author about "mitigation of risk" provocative ways to frame the analysis of trends? In a changing world I have no problem with journalists trying to assemble what is known to predict how events may turn out.
Newspapers started doing pieces on the news pages labelled "news Analysis" about a half-century ago. It hasn't worked out well. There used to be a lot of hot air about how readers sought interpretive help. They are not being helped by this speculative stuff. In fact, most such political stories, first of all, are limited by their emanation from inside the Beltway, where I live. Most read as if they are being floated or planted--not that the reporter intends to put out planted content but he or she listens to a few insiders who have axes to grind. This influence can be very subtle but it is there. It works its way into the "analysis" the way "right-thinking" (of either left- or right-wing version) or conventional wisdom does.
2
When I detect “futurizing”/“awfulizing”, I tune out. An in depth analysis of current issues can’t help but provide some elements of future outcomes.
1
"Speculative journalism": that should be a Pulitzer right there!
1
I have a little switch in my head. When I read, "could," "might," etc., the switch adds "or not," thus separating the wheat from the chaff. I wish editors would do more separating.
1
How about some hard analysis of what's happened and the possible consequences? We're seeing precious little about the hollowing out of government departments and agencies like State, EPA, Interior, HHS, CFPB and all the rest that can no longer function properly in the national interest or to defend the interests of ordinary Americans.
It's not speculation to predict that people will get ripped off by banks or suffer health consequences when financial or environmental regulations are gutted.
3
Actually, I think the New York Times has a glorious future.
2
Therapists have to do this all the time.
I think the liability explanation is one side of this. For many professions.
But I also wonder whether the number of detective dramas and novels play a role.
Weather is forecast every day.
And let’s not forget that our frontal lobes were designed for forecasting. For anticipating consequences. It’s a survival mechanism.
1
Occasionally I’ll see an old court case that, reading between the lines, shows me people back in the day were thinking ahead and thinking broadly. If the legislature spends state money to build infrastructure or sea walls along the coast, does that violate the constitutional rule against local or special laws or spending state money to benefit a local area? No, the importance of the coast to the economy of the entire state means it’s more like building a local road that connects to the state road network and accordingly benefits the state as a whole.
There’s a narrow safe harbor exception to the general Texas prohibition against state debt. The courts said OK. It was a creative way to finance national guard armories between the world wars. Hmm. Doing what they could to prepare, I think.
My point is that while we’re revisiting epistemological categories and our dysfunctional politics let’s remember the difference between preparing for reasonably likely threats or opportunities and borrowing trouble. My guess is that most speculative journalism is borrowing trouble. There will be the occasional piece that galvanizes useful preparation, but even then fact and analysis will set up the prediction.
4
Highly intelligent analysis with a solid conclusion.
Interesting point, Jack, is that the building of hardened shorelines and the removal of protecting Marsh systems is the likely caus of a great deal of misery to cities like New Orleans, Houston, Miami, and New York and their suburbs. The "useful" and economic benefits came at the expense of the physical security of the regions and the emotional an economic interest of the inhabitants.
Speculation that fails to unveil all of the scenarios is often quite costly to those who are forced to live with not.
And when you speculate about the political future of 325 million people, it is wise to do enough to!honking and fact finding to be right!
2
Ask why reporters and talking heads are speculating. They and their audiences are afraid of the unknown—and with good reason. So far the Trump admin and Congressional Republicans have offered them nothing but chaos. Moreover, the admin has dabbled in various policy proposals that would bring the nation to constitutional crisis. We're all speculating.
2
Address fears with facts!
5
Could it be that today's continuous (rather than daily) news cycle creates space and airtime that must be filled... even when there's no "real" news to report? Are speculative think pieces make-work projects to keep reporters busy until they're summoned to do genuine reporting?
4
I think that this uptick in fortune telling is actually a response to global warming rather than 9/11.
Global warming has the rich people worried, and the concerns of rich people always dominate journalism.
Global warming is scientific fortune telling. Most of us believe it is going to cook the earth, and that it seems likely that the human species is going to shrink in numbers to perhaps a million people within the coming century. Billions of legacies will be erased if so.
I think journalists should keep their opinions to themselves. Fortune telling should not be a part of the game.
It is merely a small step from speculative journalism to event handicapping, which has overtaken the news media. Event handicapping means the only question to be parsed in news coverage is who is going to win and who is going to lose.
Think election coverage. The only analyses three years ahead of the next Presidential election is whether Trump will win a second term, or will he lose to (at this point) a long list of potential Democratic nominees. All else -- policy, experience, capability, mental faculties -- is secondary to the horserace question: who wins, who loses.
Thus, today: who won and who lost the shutdown battle? Is Trump a winner, or a loser? Are Dreamers going to stay or go?
It reflects a race by everyone to get to the "bottom line" as quickly as possible, on virtually every question that comes up as part of life.
6
Keep it to:
Who, did What, When, Where, Why and How.
Not:
Possibly, Might, Sometime, Depending and Best Guess.
7
I would like to see someone correlate headlines prior to and after the Daily Show started. When the media takes a stance on a daily basis pulling the days event into the realms of fantasy and mockery, it has a tendency to pull the "real news" into those realms because people enjoy it. When this resignation occurred in journalism (news papers, tv, radio, etc), like someone playing the lottery, they would rather spend a dollar in order to day dream. Little risk with near zero chance of receiving a match. "But it woukd be so great," they say to them selves.
This is a good time for a relevant David Brinkley quote:
"The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were."
Another Brinkley quote especially worth remembering
at this time in American history is:
"Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press.
"Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians."
4
Not for lack of trying to muzzle Bernie Sanders.
3
Speculative journalism hit the height of absurdity last week with speculations about Trump's heart health. The man is either going to have a heart attack or he's not. Once I saw that absurdity, I realized it wasn't too different from speculating about who the Mueller team will indict or whether Trump will fire Mueller. However, I think there is a difference between speculating things over which we have absolutely no control (Trump's heart health, the Mueller indictments), and things over which journalists and the public might have some influence (who runs for president in 2020).
2
Speculative Journalism is an oxymoron. If the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How questions can’t be answered in a manner subject to verification, it’s NOT journalism, but rather voyeuristic media profit-centers fighting for attention in an issue-fatigued, fear-based society.
3
Hmm, asking questions about the future is an unavoidable human activity. I expect good reporting to tell me *who* is asking which questions about the future, as well as the questions themselves. The "who" is necessary for contextualizing the general state of deliberation about the course of events (I almost typed "the curse of events"; that would be a telling slip!). I think what the author of this piece is fatigued with (as I am, too) is writers who hold *themselves* up as creditable sources about future consequences or implications. I agree that those should appear on opinion pages, but then, 99% of the web is opinion pages.
1
The writer should have mentioned the demands of the 24-hr news cycle, the proliferation of media, and the inevitable need to "feed the beast" and keep writers on the payroll. Avoiding speculation simply doesn't pay these days.
1
That is an excuse. Everyone can bank feature stories, or do man on street pieces. Dig deeper into the resources offered by the wire service from each state.
Occam's razor; follow the money. Speculative journalism is spawned by the relentless need for content (any content) to fuel the hyper 24/7 digital and cable news industries. In today's digital news cycle, the number of eyeballs drives revenue and it doesn't really matter if those eyes are looking at a speculative piece that took a 1/2 hour to write or an in-depth investigative piece that took 3 months to write as long as there as there are views and clicks.
We are all a bit complicit in this trend. Real, thoughtful, fact-checked, and investigative journalism takes time and money. Yet, the vast amount of the public is interested in fast and free. In the end, speculative journalism might be the only means to fund journalism's original intent.
Conjecture about the future, given the wretched state of the present (and the impotence it has brought) is useful and should be encouraged. It's not mentally healthy to remain stalled in a bizarre world where "leaders" fail to govern, enrich themselves and their pluto-class, and where historic procedures of governance are daily scorned. In the short term, the barbarians are inside the gates, and the house is burning down. We can't prevent this now, but we can begin to conceive of a national return to purposeful, rational, and principled behavior. Such conceptions rest on active, creative, energetic engagement, and speculative thinking is one of the best ways we can direct ourselves toward a better tomorrow.
2
Economic models by economists, comparisons of economies of world at various time are much different than speculation.
Scientific measurements and comparisons to other data also is not speculation.
Stories about voting histories, how gerrymandering alters trends, etc. all are about data.
But speculative hysteria has no place--unless in an opinion column.
1
"Journalism", as it always has, breaks into to components: Providing the facts, and offering analysis. This naturally leads to the news and the opinion pages where in the facts are offered in one place , and the analysis is offered in the other.
It is wise for a "news" provider to recognize that bright line and, wherever they may physically place offerings of others, the provider needs to offer a clean distinction between the two.
During the 1980s, an amorphous group of editors determined to challenge the existence of this separation and began encouraging editorial content within the "reporting" parts of the their offerings. This decision accelerated the decline of the "print" media and lead to a significant contraction of the infrastructure and talent base on which the news outlets depended for their content.
They shot themselves in the foot.
After the debacle that was the media's coverage of the 2106 election, portions of the journalist community began understood that the hemorrhaging was continuing.
It will take decades for the profession to recover from its self-inflicted wound. And the quickest way to heal would be to return to the model of strict separation of reporting and analysis.
Will they do what is needed?
I doubt it.
But, I will be pleased if they do and will encourage them in their efforts.
Get going, guys. Time is not on your side.
2
A high-quality newspaper or media cannot possibly NOT engage in speculative journalism.
Journalists are studying new facts as the are happening, so they certainly have an interesting and well-informed idea about what might happen next. And as ordinary citizens, we need to know what people whose job it is to determine what is "new" and what isn't, think about what new things may happen in the future, based on what happened in the past.
The only problem here is that because of the massive amount of Fake News spread by Fox News, combined with their constant presenting of opinions as being real and proven news, a lot of people don't seem to realize anymore THAT the media's task is not only to report objectively on what just happened and that is new, but also to give us insight in what reporters are speculating about the future, and in what experts can offer as well-informed and well-argued opinions.
Today, conservative leadership and their media have completely blurred the line between objective reporting and subjective opinions, to such an extent that many citizens either believe that everything what a newspaper writes is supposed to be true, or everything is supposed to be "political" (read: opinion).
So we don't need less op-eds and speculation, but more articles that clearly explain the difference between journalism, speculation, opinion and science, so that ordinary citizens (and this president ...) can know again WHAT the "truth" status of what they're reading is.
2
Politics is about the future, history is about the past. Politically interested people turn to the news to find out what just happened and to gain insight into what could happen next. Both are legitimate foci for politically relevant news. It is quite appropriate and helpful for news articles to connect what has happened with what could happen.
Opinion pieces concern themselves with what should happen or whether what has happened is good or bad, right or wrong. If one turns to opinion columns and talking heads, there will be plenty of normative information with which the consumer may agree or disagree.
Personally, I disagree with this opinion piece. The author may believe that news stories *should* be confined to recounting the past, but the demands of politically interested news consumers such as myself suggest otherwise.
3
Facts are expensive and finite. Speculation is cheap and expands to fill the 24/7 news cycle.
3
And the recent NYT op-ed "Is this the Evidence of Collusion we have been Waiting for?". The writer had decided (without evidence) that there was collusion, and is eagerly waiting for this prejudice (in the literal sense of pre-judgement) to be confirmed.
2
Thank you! You have articulated what has been my pet peeve about "journalists" and the "news" media in recent years. This is the first time I've heard anyone say it besides me.
You are dead-bang accurate in this piece. At least on the cable news networks and a lot of online publications are 90% speculation. Most of it doesn't even rise to the level of respectable op-ed. The need to create "click bait" is apparently so strong due to the necessity to attract eyes for advertising dollars. I have literally quit watching the TV news as I already know what I will hear, I never watch video content from the internet because I like to read and not have subjects over-summarized for me, and I have cut down substantially on clicking on most articles to avoid rewarding the "click bait" phenomenon.
To decide whether to read an article I go by the writer. If he or she tends to write about facts, and has a good track record interpreting what those facts mean, then I will read the article. Because newspapers and magazines are becoming more and more partisan in order to cater to their reader base, I have reduced the number of newspapers to which I subscribe online as I feel that in giving some papers and magazines my subscriber dollar they are being rewarded for becoming more and more partisan. And, I am of the generation who has never minded paying for content, be it newspaper, magazines or music--not like the young freeloaders who think everything should be free. Time magazine is a shadow of what it was in the 60s and 70s. Newsweek has become a tabloid.
It may be we need to fund certain reporters directly, such as Greenwald.
1
Great to see this addressed. I've never seen the point of this kind of article and I rarely read them unless, as one commenter says, an article exhaustively constructs all possible outcomes of an issue as a way of informing the reader. Like beauty, the interpretation of facts to speculate on political outcomes lies in the eye of the speculating journalist and his/her colleagues. It's opinion under the heading of news.
Speculation on political outcomes is a powerful way for a media venue to plant ideas and interpretations and to influence outcomes, or to create a backlash that brings about an outcome alien to the one predicted. It's also a powerful way to raise false hopes for the reader. So I particularly avoid speculation that predicts advantages for my team.
5
There's an important distinction that journalists and news readers alike need to make: on the one hand, engaging in casual speculation, and, on the other hand, quality reporting on the future as a topic. Examples of the latter are, as Wampole describes here: "pieces that aim at exhaustiveness, diagramming all possible outcomes and playing out some of the scenarios as examples."
I would go so far as to say that "The Future" should become a distinct journalistic beat. I say this because, arguably, conservative politicians in America have held back the future for decades. They do this by blocking infrastructure improvements, opposing socially progressive policy ideas, trying to entrench atavistic economic policies, etc.
If it seems as though the Trump administration has led to all sorts of discussion about The Future, that's because it has. It's sparked a crisis of the future, where good ideas and possibilities are in sight, but are being held back by the politics of an older era.
In this context, it makes perfect sense that journalists would report on future scenarios. One would hope and expect that they do so by grounding their reporting with solid sources and expert opinions and bring an awareness that The Future is a particularly relevant subject for our current historical moment.
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"pieces that aim at exhaustiveness, diagramming all possible outcomes and playing out some of the scenarios as examples."
Thomas Edsall is probably the only one who does that around these parts. Coincidentally or not, he's the only columnist i read here with any regularity.
Ideally, all reporting is about what happened to the best of knowledge of a reporter. Speculation should have no place in reporting; however, when it is indexed to sources then I suppose journalists may choose report it after calling it so. That said, once a speculation about future outcome is reported, I think editors must avoid the temptation to raise a speculation in the hierarchy information in news to headlines or leads. A more pernicious trend in contemporary journalism is reporters drawing conjectures about what may have happened or speculating about what happened, if you may.
6
"Because the muddling of epistemological categories like truth, fiction, lie, conspiracy and conjecture changes how we behave politically, it is incumbent on us to revisit these categories with care and to ensure that serious journalists make a concerted effort to maintain strong distinctions among them."
For starters it is much simpler than it being made out; the media lives and works in a bubble. The bias and lack of coverage of mainstream media led to the rise of Fox and others, who are mainstream now. Politico has a very good article on the subject.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-jou...
The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political.
So when your conservative friends use “media” as a synonym for “coastal” and “liberal,” they’re not far off the mark.
Sometimes, correcting for liberal bias can be smart business as well. For instance, by rightly guessing that there was a big national broadcast audience that didn’t see their worldviews represented in the mainstream networks, the Fox News Channel came to dominate cable TV ratings.
7
In that case, how would you define "bias"?
As to Fox News: I wouldn't be so optimistic. Fox News has been the neoconservatives propaganda machine for two decades now, and if you care about objectivity, they're certainly not LESS projecting a "bubble" than the other media, they simply call it the truth, whereas others tend to call it "opinion" or "speculation".
They do have been the only corporation to do so, from a Republican point of view, whereas the landscape of less biased media and the liberal-leaning media is much more fragmented. That, and not the idea that Fox News would somehow contain less fake news, is what made them dominate cable TV ratings (after all, they continue to represent, politically, only one third of American voters, remember?).
I'm fairly liberal, but what gets me more than speculative journalism in the NY Times and other eastern seaboard media outlets is the heavily East Coast bias. Paul Krugman (whom I like) wrote about the downfall of small cities. His example? Rochester, New York, a metro area of more than a million people, not far from ... you guessed it, NYC. He could've used many more examples and bravely ventured to the Midwest, Rocky Mountains, or horrors (!), the west coast. I love the NY Times, but some things they write about might as well be Swahili to me. Outside of their fine "California Today" news section, they have absolutely no clue on what goes on outside the Big Apple, and this goes for some of my favorite writers Krugman, Brooks, Bruni (who has an Ivy League obsession), and many of the sportswriters. It's a big world out there, find it.
1
`... speculative journalism ...'
Do I detect an oxymoron?
Perhaps it's time to return to the old UPI caution: Be first, but first be right.
26
I like the old news room mantra:
"Even if your mother says she loves you, CHECK IT OUT!!"
2
Journalism is always about more than the facts. It tries to explain. What are the actors thinking? Why are they doing what they do? And what is happening behind the screens? For example: is Trump's tax reform an effort to please his billionaire friends or does he really believe that it will help the economy?
Much of this speculative journalism is explanation dressed up to get the most clicks.
13
It was refreshing to see a self-reflective piece like this. While I suspect this has the potential of being cherry picked by those who want to emphasize media bias (and many of us understand the structural nature of that bias from a "non-populist resentment" vantage point), it was particularly nice to see the role of structural incentives referenced here.
Don't journalists and major news corporations compete in much of the same way as the social media giants? Is there not an intense competition for our attention, where 'speculative journalism' serves as both a method and end in itself?
but of course, entertaining a response short of a peer reviewed sociology article or weekend thought piece would be mere speculation...
2
It's about time someone said this besides me. Less predicting the future, more reporting on the present, _please_!!
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I don't care if the journalist speculates...It's human nature.
I strongly object to the limiting of the reporting of the facts for the purpose of reinforcing the speculation in which the journalist is engaged.
One need only look to the contrast of the "reporting" that Barack Obama received and the hysteria that is injected when dealing with Trump and his administration.
It's like night and day. The is no way that Obama was always right, and Trump is always wrong...
Especially when the positions of the two presidents is exactly the same.
2
Oldest meme about NYTimes: "World to end, poor to suffer most."
Same ol', same ol'.
1
The author ignores the idea that this is a perfectly rational response to nature of probability and the proliferation of channels.
The world is filled with folks broadcasting their opinions and the laws of proby suggests that sometimes they will predict a black swan event - we then fawn over them until they demonstrate their unreliability.
You can see this daily on Financial News programs where inevitably someone will come on a predict a massive market correction or a recession - they have been wrong for a number of years but eventually one will be right and we will crown him the new seer.
The original Speculative Journalist was the Delphic Oracle - so this popularity is certainly not new.
"Sophocles is wise, Euripides is wiser, but of all men Socrates is wisest"
1
“Speculative journalism” is itself a contradiction in terms.
Speculation is what might happen. Journalism is what did happen.
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It's more complicated than that.
First of all, yes, journalists' job is indeed "reporting what happened". But you cannot possibly describe everything that happened in one day, so you have to make a choice.
According to the type of journalism and media, the criteria for what you decide to choose, differ. In many cases, those criteria have to do with what will be considered to be "new". To know what is new, however, you need to be able to predict what WOULD have happened if things just went on as usual. So speculation is, in this way, at the very heart of what journalists have to think about, day after day.
Secondly, there's the fact that a report written by a journalist is essentially a piece of "communication". As always, that means that the knowledge of the reader will determine to a certain extent whether he understood what just happened and is described in the article, or not.
Often, however, you also need to be well-informed about the context in which an event happens in order to understand what actually just happened. That context, often, did NOT change. So it's not included in the article. And that's why another crucial part of journalism are lengthier pieces, which take the time to provide that context, whereas op-eds, where experts give us their take on "the news", can help us to know how to deal with it too.
Each time, proven facts and not yet proven hypotheses are combined. Good journalism allows the (educated) reader to distinguish both.
1
Some stories are about what happened, others are about what might may happen. In some cases with trend information one can make reasonable accurate predictions, in others the information available may be inadequate or biased making predictions either difficult or just wrong. In spite of the mass of survey data from multiple sources the media got the 2016 election wrong. In some cases just the possibility of an outcome may be worth attempting to mitigate, such as war or other catastrophes, and in my opinion that falls in the realm of respectable journalism.
"Speculative journalism" is an oxymoron. You can either report what has happen, or ask what will happen. Only one is "journalism".
The media indulge in speculation for two reasons. One is media saturation: the basic facts of any event are few and well known. Repeating them is unnecessary and uninteresting. If I want to know how the election is going in Alabama, That information is available from myriad sources on the Internet. I don't have to wait for Walter Cronkite at 6:30.
The second reason is that speculation is cheap and easy. We all like to indulge our imagination, and that includes reporters and their audience. Speculation doesn't require money to reveal new facts. Much easier, and more entertaining, for Shields and Brooks to bloviate about the political impact than to dig up the numbers and explain the issue.
9
I sympathize with the tenor of this comment, but I have to disagree with the idea that the facts of any event are well-known, when set against the backdrop of an ocean of extraneous bloviation in the media about any event, plus a plethora of lies and half-truths broadcast all over Facebook by anyone with the ability to create a meme and an axe to grind. Teasing the basic facts signal for any event out of all this 24/7/365 noise is a time-consuming process, even for people who have the intellectual ability to tell/smell the difference between reporting based on facts and that built on lies or conjecture.
1
When journalists go on a binge,
Predicting the news from a twinge,
They’re turning the trade
Into a charade;
No wonder their readers do cringe!
14
And cringe we do.
Finally. I've been making this point for years. Headlines on hard news stories with the words "might", "may", "could", etc; have no place in journalism. Those are editorials and belong on the opinion pages.
Unfortunately, the outbreak of speculative journalism will grow as bandwidth and activism increases, I see no good solution except to segregate speculative journalism from real news.
23
The future's not ours to see. Que sera, sera.
2
It used to be said, too, that the advent of the 24-hour news cycle had left the news media with a constant hole to fill.
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There is a whole world out there! Thousands of stories in every city.
1
Fact is a misused word in journalism - science used the word fact to mean " a set of measurement data of an experiment". Later investigation on the behavior of light it was found that this is not always correct - underlying in the measurements there is always a theory of working of the experiment and that theory explains the fact. There is no truth hidden in the data - truth comes out of the conscious mind that explains the data. This forced the scientists to become careful about any experimental data and elaborate boundary condition specification of experiment become compulsory of scientific data. This helped to progress in science without the loud claim of Fake Data. Journalists should start reforming their practice of narrating an event which is nothing but an experiment. There current practice of narration that is not precise will not be accepted by social media - a crowd verification process. The bright light of multiple observation data will make the journalists report a Fake News.
2
Hey, it's not rocket science! Just give me the facts man!
A benefit of speculative journalism, especially for those who are right, is that they get a spot on TV and the rewards that come with it. How many articles, interviews, etc have you seen of those who guessed (and I am using that word deliberately) correctly about the outcome of the last presidential election? (Except of course for Newt Gingrich, who pops up like a bad penny continuously. )
The next round of TV pundits are warming up in the wings.
Journalists need to be aware and concerned with speculative journalism but it has always been around. In the 60's and 70's it was futurist trying to speculate how the world would be in 2018. In many ways they failed miserably, i.e., we do not have flying cars. The main concern now should be the Disneyfication of the news exemplified by ABC and its run of disaster stories night after night and use of language to hype things up. Lately CBS is doing the same thing. The only somewhat rational reporting is still being done on NBC but they, too, have eaten of the apple. Print media has already succumbed. For those of us who love the news this is very disheartening especially now when we hope to find truth.
2
Exactly. David Muir: "Shocking video, right here in the U.S.!"
For better or worse, journalism has replaced history, philosophy, theology and science in interpreting the meaning of the present to those of us who live in the postmodern age. Journalistic “facts” are never objective but presuppose a web of conjectures about the future and assumptions about the past. Events like 9/11 and the election of Trump show worrisome cracks in our understanding of present events, and newspapers try to compensate by showing their hand, revealing the underlying assumptions and expectations about possible futures that uphold the “objective” facts they normally content themselves with reporting. But since we are all lost and seemingly alienated from a true understanding of history, such “branching” conjectures give us no guidance at all. For all we know, the “doomsday scenario” we envision might be our salvation and the “fortunate” outcome we look forward to our downfall. History has been swallowed by journalism, and darkness has descended upon our understanding.
11
You and I rarely agree, Mr Hoffman...
But your statement her is well put, and I urge readers to think seriously about your observations.
What about the number of commentators, talk show hosts and other talking heads who refer to themselves as journalists but who do little or no reportimg.? News organizations , who already blur the line between news and entertainmemt, will mot fund investigative reporters. That kind of time consuming research more snd more often comes from independent sources or whistleblowers.
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Thank goodness for PBS' Frontline and the venerable 60 Minutes.
2
The concept of speculative journalism in the modern age, the concept of reporting what might happen rather than what did happen, which is the traditional reporting of news, what is most closely associated with ideas such as sticking to the facts, reporting the truth?
Speculative journalism seems to me the inevitable future of journalism, in fact journalism in the sense of reporting what already occurred seems all but dead and incompatible with advance of liberty, free will, the capacity of citizens to make their own days. Institutions of news in the sense of reporting what already occurred are merely reactive institutions, one in fact reporting days for millions of citizens who have had their days largely made for them by power structures, which is to say power structures decide course of life for millions then institutions of news record what occurred as if the citizens themselves had control over their lives when they largely did not.
Any person can observe over the course of his or her life that it is absurd to go through life merely reacting to things and then reporting what occurred to oneself. Ideally a person lives creatively, forward, which means inventing not only the future for oneself but obviously a past one has created for oneself. Well, news organizations are now, and for some time have been, and probably always have been to an extent, in the same situation. One of reflecting intelligently on what occurred and assembling courses to a better future.
4
I disagree entirely. The speculative headlines prove time and again that guessing what might happen has no place is a news paper. Remember the hand wringing over the probability of doom to the economy if Trump were to be elected? Remember how the DOW was going to plummet, other countries would stop investing in the USA, etc. etc.? Some days half of the Op-Ed page headlines seemed to end in a breathless "could-this-happen"question mark. These kind of attempted prognostications strike me as just so much filler, as if there isn't enough actual news in the country or in the world to fill the paper.
2
Advising clients, I could tell them what they can do now, but resist telling them how they could cope with what might happen in the future. Once the tree branches more than once, there are too many possibilities to consider in theory. We will think out what we can do then, if that happens, is the best I can say. It never happens as you anticipate it, anyway. Always things happen that you could not have imagined.
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