Detecting Bull

How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism in Print,
Broadcast and on the Wild Web

By John H. McManus

John McManus founded Grade the News
(Courtesy Stanford University News Service) 

This multi-media book will help you develop your own BS (Bald Sophistry) detector as you look for reliable news in this era of "buyer beware" journalism.

	Winner of the 2009 Research Award from the Society of Professional Journalists

The news media constitute our society's central nervous system. They sense the world for us, connecting us to each other's progress and pains, allowing a nation of 300 million to act as one. But this vital system is collapsing as journalists are being laid off by the thousands.

As a consequence, mainstream news is becoming shallower and more commercially biased -- more written for advertisers and by publicity agents. Online, new providers are arising. But most don't follow professional principles. Hidden conflicts of interest abound. So we live in a strange new world where information purporting to be news is abundant but the public doesn't know what to trust.

	Now available in paper, as well as DVD and download versions

Ironically, trustworthy news has never been more important. News explains change and technology is accelerating changes in every aspect of our lives. In this era of uncertainty, we need news literacy tools to distinguish the reliable from the rest. This book provides such critical thinking tools with lots of real-life examples.

Detecting Bull exposes the biases of both audiences and journalists, helping us notice how we interpret the world as well as how media do. It lays open the fundamental conflict of interest all news providers face between maximizing audience and servicing advertisers on the one hand and on the other, providing a picture of the world upon which citizens can act.

The author, a former journalist and professor, rejects objectivity as impossible for humans and undesirable for journalists. In its place, the book provides a set of rules for judging journalism based on a more accurate, honest and rigorous standard -- empiricism -- the logical assembly of reliable evidence.

Detecting Bull features a bias detector for any content purporting to be news regardless of medium, and a separate tool for images. You'll also learn how to spot bias among stories, including omission. Finally, you'll be able to rate the quality of news, using a tool derived from the ethical standards of the Society of Professional Journalists.