Slandering Higher Education: The Magic of Media Spin

Journalism tends to take the imperfect and amplify or scandalize it. Fixing things isn’t enough; solutions are boring. So you add “scary,” and you agitate readers. You arrest their attention. You bleed them of clicks. Because in the end, journalism is rarely about balance and truth; it’s about pinning more and more eyeballs — those revenue-generating eyeballs — to the page.

If “Only” There Was Balance

Higher education, like everything in life, suffers imperfections. Undoubtedly there’s room for improvement. But in framing this need for improvement, journalists LOVE leaning into (often making up) something scary. Consider this scary title from the AP:[1]

Is college worth it? Poll finds only 36% of Americans have confidence in higher education

A very serious question answered with a very serious statistic. But is this tension honest or amplified?

1. The title implies that “confidence” — as a broad, unqualified term — is limited to 36% of Americans. However, the poll actually found that “Americans are … divided among those who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence (36%) [and] some confidence (32%).” [emphasis added][2]