In the 2016 film Denial, the leading barrister talks about the bent waiter phenomenon. Any waiter can randomly overcharge or undercharge a customer. The bent waiter always overcharges. The film depicts the libel action bought by Holocaust-denier David Irving against Penguin books and Deborah Lipstadt.
The metaphor is used to describe David Irving’s consistent pattern of misquoting or selectively presenting evidence in ways that favour Holocaust denial. The point is that his errors aren’t random: like a dishonest waiter who always gives the customer too little change, Irving’s distortions consistently work in one direction.
Media treatment of public health
I often used to wonder whether the bent waiter syndrome was playing out in the media treatment of public health. The media has always seemed to end up pushing the anti-establishment point of view, tending to favour David over Goliath, treating dubious or wacky theories as equal to the consensus.
My career spanned many public health measures that were constantly under attack from opponents, including vaccination, fortification of flour to prevent neural tube defects, and water fluoridation to block tooth decay. I have often wondered whether the media is malevolent, misguided, misdirected or just mischievous.
To find out, in 2000 I analysed how a health advocacy issue was treated in the national and local press. In my study, published in a reputable scientific journal (Lowry R. What the papers say: How does the United Kingdom press treat water fluoridation and does it matter? British Dental Journal 2000; 189: 14 – 18), I studied all the press cuttings collected by a reputable national agency and held by the British Fluoridation Society covering a nine-month period (July 1998 to March 1999). After quality controlling the data, all cuttings were then rated by me as being profluoridation, antifluoridation or neutral.
Overall, press article coverage was antifluoridation. But not because the journalist was against fluoridation. It was the protagonist in the story that determined the pro, neutral or anti angle; so, for example, a report of an anti-fluoridation rally generated an anti-fluoridation news item. To the uninitiated user of the media, they might come to a false and harmful view on a major beneficial public health issue based purely on who broke the story.
So I was wrong: the verdict on the press was “not proven guilty”. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, circumstances made them take shortcuts. And I don’t think much has changed over the years. Though I am not so sure about social media, I think the legitimate media is not bent; maybe cautious, vacillating, even timid, but not malevolent.
Watch the direction of mistakes, including our own
That still is the truth game today, although the mix has changed beyond recognition with the “old” media under threat. The obligation of journalism is to minimise its mistakes, not to never make them. If a newspaper gets things wrong sometimes to the benefit of the government and sometimes to its detriment, sometimes underestimates a danger and sometimes exaggerates one, we’re probably looking at ordinary fallibility. Although with the media as it is today, many more media outlets display the bent waiter tendency: disguised bias, not always thinly.
We cannot tell whether someone is a reliable seeker of truth merely by asking whether they sometimes make mistakes. Everybody does. Watch the direction of the mistakes, including our own.
For many years, as a professional health promoter, I gritted my teeth when the media played fast and loose with an issue I knew about. It’s a common problem that most people recognise: how many times have you taken reports at face value, and modified your judgment on that basis; only to make exceptions for the reports on issues you are familiar with? Most of us limit our response to shouting at the television. But we might get the opportunity to play them at their own game, to enter the media fray.
It’s a risk, but sometimes you can be lucky. I was set up to record an interview on a controversial public health topic. I was outside the Regional Health Authority with a cameraman and an interviewer. It went badly. I was stumbling, inarticulate and shifty. I was about to skulk off at the end when the cameraman announced that the recording was duff. We would have to do it again. I was cock-a-hoop. This time I was word perfect, erudite and authoritative (I knew the questions before they were asked). To the disgust of the interviewer, the issue was well represented and I looked OK. And they put out the interview, highly edited to undo some of my brilliant performance, but this time it was one to me.
Holding back is the default position for many of us. It’s not surprising as it can be threatening to go further.
Years ago, during a consultation on new fluoridation schemes, a particularly virulent opponent published a pamphlet riddled with fake science and inflammatory rhetoric. It circulated like wildfire, quoted with gusto by local critics. We couldn’t let it stand. So, with scholarly rigour, we tore it apart, argument by argument, claim by claim. The analysis was published in a top UK dental journal, complete with legal assurances that our critique was fair, measured, and above reproach.
Then came the libel suit. The author took us to court, and in the UK’s notoriously plaintiff-friendly legal system, we had to prove we were right. It was a nerve-wracking ordeal, saved only by the journal’s insurers, who backed the fight. Ultimately, the case was resolved, but the experience left scars.
Tiny stick and big carrot?
So it’s a dilemma: let it all wash over our heads or pick up every small mistake? Or somewhere in between. The latter was our approach. But there was one additional thing we did and I urge our modern-day equivalents to do: help and encourage the media to reduce their mistakes and support the ones who try to be truthful, for example by making our expertise easily accessible, acting on tight deadlines, letting them know when it is well done. Tiny stick and big carrot is probably the way to do it.
This is all leaden with emotion. Many people feel intimidated by waiters and the issue of tipping clouds the handling of money at the end of the meal. A potentially-bent waiter piles on the agony. So our relationship with the media as seekers of truth can be equally fraught with difficulty. However, it is important to get it right if public health advocacy is to be nourished.
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