Body of Opinion: NPR, Journalistic Authority, and the Juan Williams Affair

Abstract

This article draws on and radically adapts the scholarship of medieval epistemology to suggest that at its heart, the Juan Williams clash with NPR represents an escalating conflict between two contrasting modes of authority in western culture with which journalism has long been aligned; scientia and probabilitas—in their modern forms, the authority of “disembodied objectivity” and “embodied” expert opinion. Discussing the controversy through the complex of theories surrounding issues of cultural authority, and employing the paradigm of “long journalism,” the article explores the repercussions of the rise of modern variants of probabilitas, not only at NPR but across the breadth of American journalism. In this light, the Williams affair is an illuminating flashpoint that represents this fundamental conflict, as the growing influence of probabilitas in news construction makes appeals to scientia increasingly tenuous ground on which to base journalistic credibility.

Notes

¹For this study, a selection of leading newspapers from the United States was focused upon; including: The New York Times, New York's Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Dallas Morning News, USA TODAY, Los Angeles Times and The Christian Monitor, these representing geographical and ideologically diverse audiences. Relevant articles published between October 20, 2010 and January 8, 2011 (the bulk in the first 2 weeks of the scandal) were netted through a Lexis-Nexis search.

²There remains a good deal of confusion and disagreement over the exact usage of these terms, probabilitas especially. A number of scholars see degrees of certainty of understanding in medieval epistemology as divisible into three categories: scientia representing “certain knowledge,” fides (faith) and opinio (opinion). By this classification, probabilitas represents a form of proof—that based on “probability” (see Park & Daston, 2006, p. 139). However, the definition of “probability”—especially as it has become associated with mathematical calculation—has changed radically over the centuries. Hacking and others have argued, persuasively, that probabilitas represented not “probability” in any modern sense of the term but rather that of learned authority—the approval and support of “respected” and “intelligent” people (Hacking, 1975, pp. 22–23).

While fully acknowledging the complexities surrounding the usage, in antiquity, of both probabilitas and scientia, for the sake of convenience and clarity I use and adapt these terms in this article in the following manner. Scientia, I take as a deductive notion of knowledge based on initial principles that point towards “universal truths,” while probabilitas will be defined in these pages as a form of knowledge founded upon, and validated by, learned opinion.

³A Lexis-Nexis search of editorials and opinion pieces on the Williams controversy netted 71 articles from newspapers in the United States. Of these, 47 were opposed to NPR's dismissal of the journalist, while 9 favored the action. A further 15 offered comments that were neutral on this point.

⁴These results can be traced back to the right wing online TV network PJTV, with the survey being part of a weekly “Tea Party Tracking Poll.” This may, for some, cast doubt over the impartiality of the results, but PR newswire reports that the survey was conducted by an independent body: “A telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research on October 24, 2010. Pulse Opinion Research, LLC is an independent public opinion research firm using automated polling methodology and procedures licensed from Rasmussen Reports, LLC. Margin of Sampling Error, +/−3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.”