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July 7, 2010
Objectivity as a Form of Persuasion: A Few Notes for Marcus Brauchli"Reporting can be trusted if it is cured of opinion. Reporting can be trusted if it is dusted with opinion. Or even completely interwoven with opinion. It can lead to conclusions. Or the conclusions can be left to others."Wanted: Political blogger covering the conservative movement. Must be provocative and write with a strong point of view although not in a way that would reveal bias or offend any of your potential subjects. Social media a plus until it’s not. Must be completely transparent, unless that proves embarrassing to the newspaper. Send sanitized résumé, innocuous clips and nonpartisan references to The Washington Post. — David Carr, New York Times, Outspoken Is Great, Till It’s Not Sometimes we can only reach clarity by separating two things that have become tangled up with one another. Authoritative reporting and objectivity in journalism need to be disentangled, or the situation David Carr was satirizing will persist. These notes were written for Marcus Brauchli, the editor of the Washington Post, but anyone can read them. He’s the one who needs them. A system of signs The basic unit of journalism is the report, an account of what happened. The longer I’ve studied it (which is, uh… 25 years) the more I’ve come to see that “objectivity” as practiced by the American press is a form of persuasion. It tries to persuade all possible users of the account that the account can be trusted because it is unadorned. Some specific ways in which it does this are: playing up facts gathered and playing down opinions; using constructions like “he said,” or “according to the Senate report” rather than “I think;” refusing to characterize what easily could be characterized; rehearsing rather than resolving disputes; betraying no position on controversial items, and so on. J-school students when they are taught to write in this style are often told not to use the word “I” and to lose the adjectives. These are some of the signs of objectivity, which is a system of signs. But since the word “objectivity” has become a term of abuse, journalists who believe in this system now shy away from using that word. They may talk of the “tradition of non-partisan news coverage,” or put neutrality in place of objectivity. “No axe to grind.” “No vested interest.” “Straight reporting.” Different call letters, same station. Often (and I mean very often) they will concede a bit to the skeptics, “Of course no one can be totally objective…” and then re-affirm what they have always felt: “but I believe it’s important that we try to keep our opinions out of it.” There is always more to it Shifting about in these language games, journalists have kept objectivity more or less the same over the years: a system of signs meant to persuade us to accept an account of what happened because it appears to contain only what happened and not what the composer of the account feels about it. That’s why you should trust it: because it appears unadorned. The way we capture this in popular culture is by reference to Joe Friday: “Just the facts, Ma’am.” That’s not to say that an account presented this way actually is pure fact. No way. There is no act of journalism that is not saturated with judgment. Even a photograph is framed by the picture taker. When I refer to “Just the facts” I simply mean: that is how the story asks to be understood, not… “that is all there is to it.” There is always more to it. So objectivity is persuasion, the method is “just the facts, lose the adjectives,” and the outcome is supposed to be the user’s trust. Got it? I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it In my recent post, Fixing The Ideology Problem in Our Political Press, I said that the work of the journalist cannot be done without a commitment to the act of reporting, which means gathering information, talking to people who know, trying to verify and clarify what actually happened and to portray the range of views as they emerge from events. A primary commitment to reporting distinguishes the work of the journalist. It is also bedrock for journalistic authority, which begins in the statement: “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” Or: “I was at the Tea Party convention interviewing participants, you weren’t, let me tell you about it.” Or: “I investigated BP’s numbers for how many barrels a day were leaking into the Gulf, you were too busy living your life, so… let me tell you about it.” Reporting can be trusted if it is cured of opinion. Reporting can be trusted if it is dusted with opinion. Or even completely interwoven with opinion. It can lead to conclusions. Or the conclusions can be left to others. It can be persuasive with or without the adjectives. The presence of the word “I” does not prevent an account from being trusted. It all depends. Persuasion is an art form, a skill. It is rhetoric, which comes in different styles. It doesn’t always succeed, and rarely succeeds on everyone. Reporting has authority because the reporter did the work. I checked it out, you didn’t, let me tell you about it. If we saw objectivity — or the vow of neutrality — as a form of persuasion we would be in better shape for arguing about incidents like the resignation of reporter and blogger Dave Weigel from the Washington Post. For a bunch of things follow from this basic point. Easing the strain 1. “Grounded in reporting” is far more important than “cured of opinion.” What editors and news executives should worry about is whether the news accounts delivered to users are well grounded in reporting. That’s the value added. That’s the sign of seriousness. That’s the journalism part. Original reporting and the discipline of verification—meaning, the account holds up under scrutiny—should be strict priorities. Whether the composer of the account has a view, comes to a conclusion, speaks with attitude (or declines these things) is far less important. Here, looser rules are better. 2. If objectivity is persuasion, it’s possible that its power to persuade can fade. This is particularly so because of what I said earlier: every act of journalism is saturated with judgment. By not disclosing such acts, “just the facts” sows the seeds of mistrust. All it takes is an accumulation of users who want to know where these judgments arise from. Ostensibly “objective” accounts will fail that test. Mistrust will rise. As the clamor grows, journalists may misidentify it as a demand for even more objectivity. Now you have something that looks a lot like a death spiral, at least for those users who are no longer persuaded. (In part because audience atomization has been overcome by the Internet.) 3. Disclosure sets the fairness bar higher. James Poniewozik of Time magazine was seeking an escape from that spiral when he said that reporters should disclose their political preferences: Modern political journalism is based on the bogus concept of neutrality (that people can be steeped in campaigns yet not care who wins) and the legitimate ideal of fairness (that people can place intellectual integrity and rigor over their rooting interests). Voting and disclosing would expose the sham of neutrality—which few believe anyway—and compel opinion and news writers alike to prove, story by story, that fairness is possible anyway. Partisans, bloggers and media critics are toxically obsessed with ferreting out reporters’ preferences; treating them as shameful secrets only makes matters worse. In this sense neutrality can hamper credibility because it masks the hard work of proving you can be fair despite the fact that you have your views. 4. The View from Nowhere may be harder to trust than “here’s where I’m coming from.” Objectivity is often seen as safer by self-styled traditionalists in the mainstream press. But I like to put the accent on what’s tendentious about it. So I make use of my own term, the View from Nowhere, to describe the ritualized uses of objectivity and suggest that there is something strained about them. Easing that strain is not impossible. It means shifting to a different rhetoric: “Here’s where I’m coming from,” sometimes called transparency. This is a different bid for trust. Instead of viewlessness, “You know where I stand; judge accordingly.” 5. In deciding what the rules should be, the wise newsroom will trade polarity for plurality. Lose the binary, news people! Instead of two rigid poles—neutrality or ideology, news or opinion, reporter or blogger, adults or kids—I recommend a range of approaches that permit journalists to report what they know, say what they think, develop a point of view in interaction with events, and bid for the trust of users who have many more sources available to them. A plurality of permissible styles recognizes that trust is a puzzle unsolvable by a single system of signs. The View From Nowhere at Twilight Hour: A PressThink Series This post is part of a series I’ve been writing at PressThink over the past two years. The series is about the fading light behind what I’ve called The View From Nowhere, a term I started using in 2003 and have developed further on Twitter. The series is also about what might replace this broken practice, and the vocabulary I have chosen for describing what’s wrong with it. 1. Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press (January 12, 2009) Print. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. And now that authority is eroding. I will try to explain why. 2. He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User (April 12, 2009) Print. Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who’s faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in. 3. The Quest for Innocence and the Loss of Reality in Political Journalism (Feb 21, 2010) Print. “The quest for innocence means the desire to be manifestly agenda-less and thus ‘prove’ in the way you describe things that journalism is not an ideological trade. But this can get in the way of describing things! What’s lost is that sense of reality Isaiah Berlin talked about…” 4. Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press (June 14, 2010) Print. That it’s easy to describe the ideology of the press is a point on which the left, the right and the profession of journalism converge. I disagree. I think it’s tricky. So tricky, I’ve had to invent my own language for discussing it. 5. Fixing The Ideology Problem in Our Political Press: A Reply to The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder (June 22, 2010) Print. “If your job is to make the case, win the negotiations, decide what the community should do, or maintain morale, that is one kind of work. If your job is to tell people what’s going on, and equip them to participate without illusions, that is a very different kind of work.” 6. Objectivity as a Form of Persuasion: A Few Notes for Marcus Brauchli (July 7, 2010) Print. “Reporting can be trusted if it is cured of opinion. Reporting can be trusted if it is dusted with opinion. Or even completely interwoven with opinion. It can lead to conclusions. Or the conclusions can be left to others.” If you read them all, you will know what I think is happening to political journalism as it struggles to find a new footing amid culture war, platform shift, and collapsing trust in the political class, of which journalists are a part. If you read them all, let me know what you think.
Posted by Jay Rosen at July 7, 2010 2:14 PM
Comments
Excellent, Jay, and thanks for this. Your most important point is that if objectivity is persuasion, then its possible its ability to persuade can fade. This is evidenced by Gallup's press trust numbers, which began sliding post-Watergate in 1976 (now 55-45 DIStrust). Could it be that the people saw an agenda in Woodward & Bernstein and beyond? I also always point back to Chris Lasch and his beautiful essay, "The Lost Art of Political Argument," in which he argues that the rise of this "objective" or "neutral" press tracks with the decline in participation by the public in the political process. He also noted that objectivity served the business interests of the newspaper industry, whose advertisers preferred a neutral environment in which to sell their wares. I also did research in 2004 in two big markets in the Northwest and flat out asked people how they'd feel about reporters with a bias as long as the bias was revealed. The numbers were very favorable, and I am convinced that this is, in fact, what people really want -- a little honesty instead of the false premise of objectivity. Finally, if "just the facts" is the Holy Grail, why do we have a First Amendment. Facts don't need Constitutional protect, but argument certainly does. Posted by: Terry Heaton at July 7, 2010 2:57 PM | Permalink Brauchli said: "We should be transparent about everybody's viewpoint." If he was serious about that, he would follow Poniewozik's advice (and the lead from publications such as Slate and Reason), and have the newsroom show us who they vote for. You could even take an anonymous poll & allow for opt-outs -- just show us your vote. But Brauchli (like most big-city news people) is not remotely serious about viewpoint transparency. Keeping objectivity as a main tool of persuasion requires the *opposite* of transparency--not even *he* wants to know who his objective reporters vote for. The result, as Jay mentions, breeds widespread--and understandable--audience distrust. It also prevents managers from understanding their own product. Posted by: Matt Welch at July 7, 2010 3:35 PM | Permalink I wonder if there is an imbalance between our contemporary vocabulary for critiquing objectivity and that for cultivating judgment. I find that many of my students have an easy time recognizing the partiality of their perspectives, but have more difficulty figuring out what to do next. Perhaps claiming to "not judge" is a way of dealing with anxiety toward making the right judgment. Along the lines of articulating a vocabulary for good judgment, I find the phrase "how the story asks to be understood" really interesting. Could you say more? Posted by: cate at July 7, 2010 3:48 PM | Permalink Along the lines of articulating a vocabulary for good judgment, I find the phrase "how the story asks to be understood" really interesting. Could you say more? In encryption there's the encrypted message, and there's the key for deciphering it. The full transmission is both of those things. So it is with a news story; there's the story and how it asks to be read. One is the key for understanding the other. Sometimes a part of it is made explicit, as when a newspaper labels an account "news analysis." Most of it is implicit. A "just the facts, Ma'am" also called "straight" news story asks to be read as a viewless account. Implicitly it says, "I'm not giving you my view, you don't have to decide whether you agree with me or not because it's not about that; I'm just telling you what happened so believe it because this is how it went down." Those sentences are not in the story; they're the key for decoding the story. When I say objectivity is a form of persuasion, this is one of the properties of the form. Does that make it clearer? And, yes, part of the utility of objectivity is that it not permits but in a way valorizes the avoidance of judgment. I went into this point in some depth with my post on He, Said, She Said Journalism. I said there that he said, she said is considered a problem by people like me, but from the point of view of the reporter on deadline, it's a solution to a problem: How to make this story writable when you don't know who's right. Jay: Agreed 100%. Most important among your points is that personal opinion and perspective do not, in themselves, discredit reporting. If that's hard for to swallow at first, I think it's clear that after decades of being conditioned by the work of an industry that has internalized the "View from Nowhere" as official policy, some of us believe that objective reporting is actually possible. As you've pointed out, "objectivity" is an amazingly potent tool of persuasion. Not only do some journalists firmly believe in their status as "objective" observers--they rely on the pose of objectivity to legitimate themselves as oracles of Fact. The vindication of "subjective" journalism (as if there were any other kind) threatens to melt the wings of these high-flying would-be omniscients, and place them on an level playing field with the rest of us limited humans. Posted by: Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe at July 7, 2010 6:34 PM | Permalink Corcoran-Mathe -- "...subjective" journalism (as if there were any other kind)... I think you misread Rosen. My understanding of the professor's argument is not that he was consigning the rhetorical system of objectivity into the abyss, never to be used again. Instead he is inviting us to think of it as one register among many, to be used with discretion, when persuasion about a certain category of reported information is indicated. In many other instances -- when reporting on polarized disputes, ideologically controversial issues, stories in which the lack of a moral response would seem callous -- objectivity would be inappropriate. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 7, 2010 7:10 PM | Permalink Another fine analysis. One thing that goes unmentioned here is that cultivating a different approach to reporting is not something that can easily be done by the people who now call themselves journalists; many of them went into this industry because its limited intellectual demands (objectivity and all the rest) suited them. If they wanted to read about a problem (rather than call someone for a quote), think deeply, and make judgments, they would have done something else. (The anti-intellectualism of much of the press is a symptom of this.) What we see now is a craft--one that is quickly losing its value--but what Jay describes is a profession. And a craft can't be transformed into a profession without replacing many if not most of the people. Posted by: R Greene at July 7, 2010 8:12 PM | Permalink Andrew Tyndall: ..he is inviting us to think of [objectivity] as one register among many, to be used with discretion... I think you mean "impartiality", not "objectivity". The first (that is, attempting to right a fair, true-to-the-facts account) is a possible perspective for a journalist or anyone else; the later isn't. The point here is that not only is perspective-less journalism a myth, it's perhaps the most powerful perspective from which a journalist can claim to write. As Jay says:
The journalist's claim that he/she produces unbiased, objective coverage is therefore very, very dangerous, because it immediately places this person's subjective interpretation of an event on higher ground than that of "biased" observers.
A journalist who claims to provide objective information is being basically dishonest. It has nothing to do with "appropriateness"--it's never appropriate to make use of a strategy that's deceptive and unhelpful, if not downright damaging. A basic principle of science is that individual reports--no matter who wrote them--do not describe universal fact, but subjective observation. This is equally true of journalism. Posted by: Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe at July 7, 2010 8:43 PM | Permalink Persuasion is an art form, a skill. It is rhetoric, which comes in different styles. It doesn’t always succeed, and rarely succeeds on everyone. Reporting has authority because the reporter did the work.I'm glad you included this. I hope Andy Cline responds here or at Rhetorica.net. An important change in the noetic field impacting journalism is a greater need for show your work journalism with greater emphasis on invented ethos, less reliance but greater transparency in situated ethos. Challenging times for legacy journalism, the old business model, and aspiring "successful" journalists. I like the tension that this exposes between "The View From Nowhere" and "Here's where I'm coming from." Of course, the best way for a reader to understand where a reporter or columnist or commenter is coming from would be through an ongoing relationship, where the experiences and that's relevant to the reporting process is exposed and understood. But absent that relationship, I wonder if this kind of information can be exposed programmatically through the use of tagged metadata. In this case, key information that would help identify where the writer (and her editor) are coming from could be appended to the article. Depending on the type of story, such data could include: - political affiliation Clearly, not all of these would be relevant to all -- or even most -- stories. And, just as clearly, the list of situationally relevant data can grow much longer than this sample. Many of these examples would be seen as privacy intrusions by the reporter or editor, but true transparency often is. But if it helps to identify "where I'm coming from" there could be real value, both to the reader and to the news organization as it builds trust over time with its audience. Jay mentions the framing of the photograph as a choice, and, to me, it's the perfect visualization of the impossibility of The View From Nowhere. Not only does the photographer choose to include, he also chooses to exclude. Also, there are things that he simply can't see from where he's standing. Anything that helps the reader to understand the undeniable "real world" influences , subtle and not so, on the editorial process (and, by this exposure, to consider his own as well) is a good thing. I really like Jay's ruminations here, and I suspect they will kick off valuable discussions in many newsrooms. Posted by: Tim Windsor at July 8, 2010 7:55 AM | Permalink Thanks, TW. I think we are just at the beginning of the "tools for transparency" era, and so our ideas will necessarily be crude. But this is a start. By the way, I sent this post to the Washington Post ombudsman and told him he had partiallly inspired it with the weakest column he had yet done. This one. I think he will read it. Check out the typically blunt way Michael Arrington of TechCrunch addresses these issues: We take a lot of criticism at TechCrunch for writing stories that are clearly biased. That’s despite the fact that we tend to state our bias right up front, sometimes in the damn title. Tim's idea of turning "where I'm coming from" into metadata is interesting but I fear that the complexity and subtlety of p.o.v. outruns the ability of engineers to devise metadata buckets. In other words, as for instance in the recent David Weigel affair, one key point was that the simple category "conservative" failed to make sense of the reporter's politics. The well-rounded personal blog achieves the goal of helping readers understand "where I'm coming from" by painting a nuanced self-portrait over time. This is the value in mixing up personal posts with more traditional reported journalism in a blog format. You don't need to check off the "union member" metadata box if you shared with your readers your agonizing over the strike vote last year. Posted by: Scott Rosenberg at July 8, 2010 10:55 AM | Permalink Corcoran-Mathe -- In your dispute with Rosen, I take his side. You argue that a journalist who claims to report in the objective style is “very, very dangerous, because it immediately places this person's subjective interpretation of an event on higher ground than that of ‘biased’ observers.” Rosen states that original reporting and the discipline of verification are the strict priorities. On the question of whether this reporting should be filed in the objective style or not, “looser rules are better.” You argue that a journalist who claims to provide objective information is “being basically dishonest. It has nothing to do with ‘appropriateness’--it's never appropriate to make use of a strategy that's deceptive and unhelpful, if not downright damaging.” Rosen states that adopting the position of providing objective reporting is a form of persuasion, “a system of signs meant to persuade us to accept an account of what happened.” In his advice to a wise newsroom, he implicitly concedes that the objective style is indeed appropriate, but perhaps only occasionally: “I recommend a range of approaches…a plurality of permissible styles.” Reporting in the objective style is not the same as making a claim to scientific objectivity. It is a rhetorical device not a philosophical category. As such, it is effective for some stories but has become calcified from overuse. Rosen argues that its institutionalization -- and its deployment for reporting assignments where it is inappropriate -- has degraded its potency. I see no sign that he calls for throwing out this baby with the bathwater. And neither should he. This entire discussion would be more rounded if it included examples of story assignments where the objective style would be vindicated. Examining the network nightly newscast coverage of the Port-au-Prince earthquake in January, for instance, Tyndall Report argued that a fact-based, adjective-free, statistically heavy, unopinionated account was precisely what was missing. “The crisis requires a response that is institutional, infrastructural and programmatic -- not heartwarming at all. The problem with journalism that emphasizes personal care from TV doctors and human-interest anchors is not that those individuals are unethically personally involved. It is that their coverage works at the level of impractical emotion rather than rational explanation.” Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 8, 2010 11:27 AM | Permalink Bravo, Jay. My thoughts were similar: So: Expressing an opinion, particularly a negative one, about those one covers, makes it "difficult" for a reporter to do his job. How? Because doing so might create the perception that the reporter cannot be fair to them. Hypocrisy is killing modern journalism. Mark Twain Weighs In On Journalism and Betrayal From Beyond the Grave Sources: Rolling Stone quotes made by jr. staff Only a few of the quotes were attributed to McChrystal .... The remaining quotes have a variety of anonymous attributions ...According to mostly anonymous sources ... I am a journeyman, not a philospher. In 45 years of broadcast journalism I've observed that 1. Bias is more potent in story selection than it is in story preparation. 2. Explaining how the world works is the most helpful thing we do. In that, all biases are enriching. 3. Challenging a political figure to honor a promise is the next most helpful thing we do. Biases are largely irrelevant here. 4. "That's the way I've always done it," is the most powerful bias. Posted by: Doug O'Brien at July 8, 2010 4:39 PM | Permalink Jay and Scott, No question that my modest metadata proposal is merely a crude stab at the real problem, but I do think it's worth trying to explore ways to use the machines to help us make one first cut at transparency. It would be interesting to try to bring in the voice of the readers and commenters as well, maybe using Digg- or slashdot-style ratings systems to corroborate or dispute the reporters' self-tagging. The trick here is to not simply throw the latest online tools at a complex problem and think you're done, but to start exploring if they might be assistive in transparency. The tools by themselves aren't inherently stupid or evil, but as the half-baked "Wikitorial" train wreck proved, if you don't think these things through before launching, it has the potential to end up in a very foul place. Posted by: Tim Windsor at July 8, 2010 7:09 PM | Permalink I agree with that, Tim, and I welcome your suggestions for getting started. The View From Nowhere at Twilight: A PressThink Series. This post is part of a series I've been writing at PressThink over the past two years. The series is about the fading light behind what I've called The View From Nowhere, a term I started using in 2003 and have developed further on Twitter. The series is also about what might replace this broken practice, and the vocabulary I have chosen for describing what's wrong with it. Philip Bump at Mediaite, The Unsettling era of the Individual Journalist, a piece that grapples with my earlier posts, Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press, and Fixing The Ideology Problem in Our Political Press. How about this? The press is a group of individuals who come to the work from different backgrounds and with different motivations, and who report for organizations that have different backgrounds and motivations. A reporter may have a libertarian motivation and work for an established organization that is motivated to appear neutral. Another may be moderate politically and work for a media company that is pushing a conservative agenda. These things happen; we are not all tenured professors. (My turn to be patronizing.) Those motivations and backgrounds are not irrelevant – nor are they always tacit. So where does this view fit? Edward Wasserman in the Miami Herald: So boil it down: One of the country's most influential news organizations creates a blog covering, tweaking and commenting on the country's most influential political movement. It hires a journalist with flair and extensive familiarity with the movement, who proceeds to rile up some of the faithful by not saying what they want said about them. Me too. One commenter wrote this, agreeing with the professor: "... the real test of a reporter's work isn't whether there's a perception that he can't be fair. It is whether the work he actually publishes is fair, accurate, and ethically produced. That's all that matters." Let's look at other contexts. If you were appearing before a judge, and the judge was the brother-in-law of the person suing you, and the judge said, "The only real test of my work isn't your perception of whether I'm fair. All that matters is the result," what would you do? You'd insist on another judge. Same story if your own lawyer was the brother-in-law. You'd get another lawyer. Yes, we all have opinions. Yes, we are exercising judgment when we decide what to cover, what to include in our coverage and what to leave out. We should do the work fairly. How does taking sides in those disputes, even on our own time, help us do that? Or help us appear to do that with credibility? I suspect every NBA referee has opinions about Lebron James. But we don't judge the ref only by his work. If, at the game he's applauding James, or if on his day off via Twitter he's booing James, then can he ever work a game again with credibility? Does announcing his opinion -- which reinforces his bias, digging him into a position -- make him more credible? There are many jobs where impartiality plays a role. Most are in public service, and most are not lofty or exalted roles: a cop investigating a traffic accident, schoolteacher deciding which students make the National Honor Society, a military officer serving under political leaders of all stripes, a coach deciding which player gets to pitch the next game, a reporter deciding what to include in the news story about any of those events. Posted by: Bill Dedman at July 9, 2010 9:21 AM | Permalink Good points, Bill, developed in a fuller and quite compelling way by Mayhill Fowler here. This is part of the reason I called objectivity a "system of signs." The problem is that, while there is validity to the "appearances count" points you make, that observation is a runaway train, and it soon flattens even common sense, not to mention the loosening up that I have talked about here. For example, listen to Washington Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti saying, “It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: ‘In private ... have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job?’” Can we agree that's an on ramp for madness? I sure hope so. But it follows directly from your argument. It's not good enough to say, "appearances count," Bill. The real problem is: how do you stop that train? Journalism is not an innocent endeavor. Its practice has very real effects on the polis. Students should be aware of these and aware of how to enhance what ought to be enhanced and mitigate what ought to be mitigated–and they should know the difference. I'm amazed that journalists wonder why leading media institutions are held in such low esteem. How else would a rational person view a media outlet which constantly demands transparency and accountability from others yet -- using heavy-handed Cheneyite decrees -- explicitly declares that it will not respond to any inquiries about what it chooses to disclose and conceal?After Trust Me Journalism Comes Openness We used to do our reporting in a way that required the public to trust us, their professional journalists. It worked for a while, but times change. Now we have to do our reporting in a way that persuades the public to trust us.Too Transparent? It’s healthy for news organizations to be much more open about their decision making than they have been in the past. But in response to relentless pounding from bloggers and other critics, is the transparency movement getting out of hand?Court Battle for Filmmaker's Footage Spurs National Debate on Reporter's Privilege Dave Weigel, Stan McChrystal shared a mistake, and a fate Hastings’ bottom-line argument in the McChrystal case is that nothing is really off the record, and as a practical matter that’s true. The general and his staff placed their fate in the hands of a reporter who saw their arrangement differently than they did, and they paid heavily for that mistake. Jay, your "runaway train" sounds like a slippery slope. How can one require reporters to be fair, and not to take sides in public matters, without asking reporters whether they've ever expressed an opinion or had a thought? Well, how can one eat in moderation without starvving to death? It's only a ramp to madness if one is mad. C'mon, Jay -- I assume in class you demand more logical rigor. You know there is a middle ground of responsible action that doesn't require a thought police. You ask, how do you stop that train? Well, most professional reporters approach the matter simply like this, and have for a generation or two: We don't take sides. We don't write speeches for politicians, we don't give money to political candidates, we don't own stock in companies we might cover. We don't vote in primaries if we live in states that require declaring a party affiliation to do so. In short, we don't cheer in the press box. It's not that hard. We're not, by nature joiners. I have a library card, and a membership in Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Online News Association, only because those two groups require you to join to attend conferences. In my experience, non-journalists (such as members of the public and too many journalism professors) seem surprised that most reporters are not by nature political. The folks who grow up to be reporters, for better or worse, are not the same as the ones who become lawyers or business leaders or politicians. It's not a great sacrifice for us not to take sides in matters of politics or public debate. For example, I've never watched Maddow or Olbermann, or O'Reilly or Beck -- that sort of thing doesn't interest me, any more than professional wrestling or a Dancing with the Stars would interest me. I don't read editorials or op-ed pages. This isn't some self-abnegation -- those just aren't what I'm interested in. What's somewhat different now, and in some ways a throwback to the early part of the last century and before, is that we have people who call themselves journalists or reporters but who are intensely political; they're advocates by nature. It seems fine for news organizations to employ those people -- we've always had editorial pages, after all -- but let's all agree that they're opinion journalists, not reporters. Still, it doesn't serve an opinion journalist to be joining up with one side or the other. Following your own line, not a party line, adds credibility even to that side, no? By the way, no one on this page seems to have pointed out the obvious fallacy in the word "privately." If you're making comments on a listserv with more than one member, it's not a private comment. It's a public comment. But most journalists I know don't make comments about politicians at dinner parties or family gatherings, either -- we sit back while others parrot what they heard on talk shows. It's just not our nature to take sides with one party or another. Posted by: Bill Dedman at July 9, 2010 1:48 PM | Permalink Jay, you're entirely right (in your Poynter comment and here) when you say that there are many embedded judgments in journalism: what to include, what to leave out, how to frame a headline or photo, etc. That's all the more reason that we shouldn't start by taking sides, no? Posted by: Bill Dedman at July 9, 2010 2:25 PM | Permalink You missed my point completely, Bill. I guess I was being too elusive, or failed to explain myself clearly. Of course there's a pragmatic middle ground. My question was: if it's so simple, if it's so obvious, if it's so utterly clear to everyone in the profession how to modify "appearances count" with other factors that count too, then how did the Washington Post arrive, under pressure, at “It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: ‘In private ... have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job?’” and the equally crude lines from the ombudsman, "But his departure also raises questions about whether The Post has adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral reporters or ideologues?" How did they get there? And you're wrong when you say that I'm unaware that most journalists by nature don't identify strongly with one party or another. You're simply not familiar enough with my work. My entire critique of the Church of the Savvy is based on that observation. CNN's position re Octavia Nasr strikes me as even more alarming than WaPo & Weigel. A failure to speak ill of the dead is now a firing offense? Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 9, 2010 3:35 PM | Permalink Jay, I'm sorry, I must have been thick. Only now did I realize that you genuinely think it's inappropriate for the editor to ask, "In private ... have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job?’" What the editor is really asking, of course, is about comments that would, if they became public, make it difficult for you to do your job. That's a reasonable question to ask a reporter: Have you ever made in public (or to 400 closest friends and strangers whom you stupidly assume will not make them public) disparaging comments about the people you will be covering, or anyone else this news organization covers? The editor apparently hadn't ever thought to ask that question before, because the idea that a reporter would have done that seemed so far-fetched. It seems to me, at bottom, this episode is not about whether reporters should be making disparaging remarks and wishing death to the people they cover. Or others whom their shop covers. Of course not. The question is whether it's OK for opinion writers to make such comments. And whether John Weigel was a reporter or an opinion writer. It seems, from his public comments, that he's not sure. Today on Poynter he called himself a reporter, at the same time saying he wrote defenses of Rand Paul and criticism of Sarah Palin, which no reporter would do. Maybe our terminology needs to change. Some have drawn a distinction between reporters and bloggers. That's old fashioned, of course, because many reporters blog, and a few bloggers report. But the distinction between reporter and opinion writer is still a useful one. It seems that the lesson here is that the journalist, and the news organization employing the journalist, ought to be able to tell which one he is. Finally, Jay, I hope you will address the common claim, made here and elsewhere, that because journalists make many judgments and decisions, they have less obligation to be fair. We don't apply that standard in any other realm. Scientists, for example, make many decisions in design of medical trials, but that makes it more vital, not less, that they avoid being in bed with a drug company. Thanks for the conversation. Bill Posted by: Bill Dedman at July 9, 2010 4:47 PM | Permalink Jay -- I actually agree with you on the View from Nowhere (I prefer the old 18th century model of an explicitly partisan press), but I think you err in tying your horse to Weigel and (especially) Nasr. It is one thing for a journalist to express views, even strong views, about the issues of the day. It is another thing to be an embarrassing, immature jerk. And still another to lavish praise upon a terrorist. (And by the way, you are far too credulous of both Weigel's and Nasr's "explanations." I suspect if their comments were heaping scorn on Martin Luther King, or praise on David Duke, you would see things a bit differently.) P.S. Andrew Tyndall -- You are a moral idiot. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at July 9, 2010 10:48 PM | Permalink Andrew Tyndall: In your dispute with Rosen, I take his side. I don't have a dispute with Jay. Maybe that's why my original comment began with "Agreed 100%". And I don't think that the position you're calling "his side" is anything like what Jay says in this or any other article. Reporting in the objective style is not the same as making a claim to scientific objectivity. You've just made the point that you seem to be disputing--the objective style is just that: a pretense to objectivity. Writing as though you're an objective observer and proclaiming your supposed status as suchis the same thing as claiming the possession of "higher knowledge". This is exactly the subterfuge that Jay is advocating the abolition of--seriously, did you read the same article that everyone else here is commenting on? Posted by: Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe at July 10, 2010 12:09 AM | Permalink "I hope you will address the common claim, made here and elsewhere, that because journalists make many judgments and decisions, they have less obligation to be fair." No, Bill, I won't, because I didn't make that claim and I don't know who did. Yes, Bill, I think it's bizarre to ask a reporter, "In private ... have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job?’" So I'm on the other side of the moon from you on this one. Cheers. Friday I did an online chat with Dave Weigel at Poynter.org. Many issues raised here came up. You can replay and read it at this link. My parting words were: Dave Weigel should still be reporting for the Post, Octavia Nasr should still be at her desk in Atlanta, the culture war goon squad should be ignored in recognition that they're out to destroy journalism, and the simple polarities that tend to govern newsroom thought need to yield to a new pluralism that will have many benefits in the long run. Corcoran-Mathe -- You dismiss the objective style as a pretense and subterfuge and read Rosen’s post as a call for its abolition. Rosen uses no such pejoratives. He calls the objective style a “form of persuasion” and a “system of signs.” Far from calling for the abolition of the objective style he concedes that it is a viable option in the journalist’s toolbox: “Reporting can be trusted if it is cured of opinion. Reporting can be trusted if it is dusted with opinion. Or even completely interwoven with opinion. It can lead to conclusions. Or the conclusions can be left to others. It can be persuasive with or without the adjectives. The presence of the word ‘I’ does not prevent an account from being trusted. It all depends.” It all depends. So, per Rosen, sometimes the objective style is an appropriate rhetorical device to use to make one’s reporting persuasive, sometimes not. Rosen’s message to Brauchli is that Washington Post uses the style indiscriminately, inappropriately and unthinkingly. Did you read the same article that everyone else here is commenting on? Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 10, 2010 11:20 AM | Permalink FAIR: What Gets You Fired From CNN I understand the difference between a reporter (Nasr's former role) and a columnist (Baer's current gig at Time)--though a shorter version of Baer's column appeared as an obituary for Fadlallah on the Milestones page of Time's print edition (7/19/10). So will Baer's column attract similar outrage? If not, why not?Ayatollah Fadlallah tributes divide opinion "I find these adoring comments about him naive, but I also don't believe that positive observations about him should be off limits," Mr Pollock told the BBC.Fadlallah named in Dept. of the Treasury Terrorism bulletin (pdf) Executive Order 12947 of January 23, 1995 In the past few years objectivity has taken its punches. A recent poll showed that almost 70% of Americans think that objective reporting is dead. More American’s are tuning into hear cable news pundits than their counterparts on the broadcast nightly news. In 2009, press accuracy hit a record low with only 29% of Americans reporting that the press gets the facts straight and 18% reporting that the press deals fairly with all sides. There is still plenty of reasons to appreciate objective journalism, however. Indeed the traditional press continues to be the source of original information. In a case study of Baltimore, conducted by the Project for Excellence in journalism, research found that 95% of originally content came from traditional news outlets–the stalwarts of objective journalism. I think it is fair to say that democracy needs journalism, and journalism needs objective reporting. If objective reporting dies, the information that it uncovered once upon a time will remain covered. The investigative pieces will remain uninvestigated, and we will be worse off because of it. Opinions are fine, but if everyone is giving their opinion and no one is still in the business of reporting, then democracy is dead. I would also argue that objective reporting, when done right, does not have to hamstring reporters. Instead, objectivity hand-in-hand with the dedicated journalists digging below the surface, can create a journalism that is both ruthless, dependable, and defensible. And while it isn’t perfect, at least it’s attempting to be. Posted by: Matt Schafer at July 11, 2010 9:11 PM | Permalink More American’s are tuning into hear cable news pundits than their counterparts on the broadcast nightly news Schafer, for the record -- Bill O'Reilly has the largest audience of any program aired by a cable news network yet Katie Couric's audience is some 50% larger and she has the smallest audience of the three broadcast network nightly newscasts. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 12, 2010 10:52 AM | Permalink I think journalists often misunderstand what it means to step outside the concept of objectivity. They think it means to become partisan, or to add on a superficial level of analysis such as "in a turning point for the Obama Administration..." I think the best models are Consumer Reports or Snopes.com. They study a question thoroughly and -- this is important -- reach a conclusion. Then they put their name behind it. That leaves the reader better-informed. The "he said, she said, we'll have to leave it there" way informs nothing. Posted by: Brian Cubbison at July 12, 2010 7:04 PM | Permalink They study a question thoroughly and -- this is important -- reach a conclusion. Then they put their name behind it. Good point. The conclusions Consumer Reports reach are based on an objective study (qualitative or quantitative investigation?) of a question. The conclusion might be wrong, but useful and informative, if the method, data, and results are reproducible. But what about Snopes (or PolitiFact or FactCheck.org)? Q: How do I know the information you've presented is accurate? June 8, 1637: Descartes Codifies Scientific Method (Wired) Discourse on the Method (Wikipedia) Something I didn't know existed and was shut down last year: Consumer Reports WebWatch An excellent essay--it is truly difficult to get at the nub of what's wrong with the objective format and to explain it. In the 1970s after reading John Merrill's books on existential journalism I came up with the notion of the writer revealing himself but trying to be fair. For instance, Ted Williams wrote a great piece for Audubon on fishing tournaments, which he despised. the piece was fair and even sympathetic to the participants in an activity he deplored. Problems with seeing in newspapers this approach--the reporter as a human, a writer, instead of as a "journalist"--include lack of space and time. And the news columns' deracinated a style bleeds into other areas of the newspaper. Ultimately the objective format allows reporters and editors to shirk responsibility for how they operate and what they publish. The format also tries to conceal, as you indicate, that the work is shaped, but readers sense it must be and become suspicious and resentful. Posted by: Richard Gilbert at July 14, 2010 9:11 PM | Permalink |
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