All the News That's Fit to Neuter
When the obituary for American journalism is eventually written, a milestone in the journey to its death-rattle will surely be the column that the New York Times' ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, wrote on Sunday.
Hoyt's job is to hold the feet of the Times to the flames of journalism's highest standards.
What bothered him on Sunday was that Times business staffers like Andrew Ross Sorkin, Gretchen Morgenson, and Floyd Norris not only report economic news under their bylines, but that they also, on some days, write opinion columns.
One example that ticked Hoyt off was Gretchen Morgenson's coverage of a House oversight hearing on credit-rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's, coupled with her column three days later on the same topic. Why, Hoyt asked, is it OK for Morgenson "to write a straight news article about the hearings and then give her personal opinion about them in a column"?
In case you've forgotten, it was those hearings that established how deeply the ratings agencies were in the tank with Wall Street's malefactors. Instead of assigning credible independent grades to securities that we now know to be toxic assets, the agencies were hopelessly compromised by the fees that the securities issuers paid them to issue ratings. Here's an e-mail exchange between two analysts at S. & P. about a deal they were examining: "Btw - that deal is ridiculous. We should not be rating it." "We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it." The reaction by S. & P.'s president to having his company caught red-handed? "The unfortunate and inappropriate language used in these e-mails does not reflect the core culture of the organization I am committed to leading."
It's ombudsman Clark Hoyt's distinction between "straight news" and "personal opinion" that I think captures the reason that journalism is on the skids. "Straight news" is a dinosaur - not because Fox or MSNBC has discovered that there's a market for personal opinion, but because the "straight" ideal turns out to be so misguided and dangerous.
Straight news puts the defensive blather from top executives of Moody's and Standard & Poor's on the same footing as testimony about conflict-of-interest by former officials of those firms at the hearings. Each piece of damning evidence is juxtaposed with a flack's denial. Each incriminating e-mail demonstrating the corruption of the ratings process is laid against the executives' contrary assurances of integrity and high standards. Straight news is stenography: these guys say "day"; these other guys say "night." It's up to you, dear reader, to decide whom to believe.
The trouble with this conception of journalism is that it inherently tilts the playing field in favor of liars, who are expert at gaming this system. It muzzles reporters, forbidding them from crying foul, and requiring them to treat deception with the same respect they give to truth. It equates fairness with evenhandedness, as though journalism were incompatible with judgment. "Straight news" isn't neutral. It's neutered - devoid of assessment, divorced from accountability, floating in a netherworld of pseudo-scientific objectivity that serves no one except the rascals it legitimizes.
In her opinion column about the oversight hearing, Morgenson was free to characterize the ratings agency executives' testimony with the words it deserved: hypocrisy, malarkey, smoke-and-mirrors, hogwash. Yet her newspaper's ombudsman is worried about having the same person both report the news and -- in a different piece, on a different day -- analyze it; he fears that it risks giving readers the impression that the paper is biased.
But what's the virtue of reporting, if it stops short of calling a blackguard a blackguard? I know the knock on analysis: it privileges one person's opinion, one set of values, in a world of many competing opinions and values. But it's ridiculous to deprive readers of reporters' critical thinking. It may be true that different people may see the same evidence differently, but that's no reason to require journalists to take stupid pills. If I don't like the way your reporters come to their conclusions, I won't read your paper or watch your network; instead, I'll find outlets whose employees' judgments strike me as warranted.
I'd rather there be many competing ways of framing and analyzing and coming to conclusions about what's happening in the world, than pretend that there's some Platonic ideal of Fairness that high-end organs like The New York Times are obliged to pursue. The problem with quality journalism isn't that the line between news and opinion is too porous; the problem is that the news lacks the courage of its reporters' and editors' convictions.
(This is my column from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, where you can e-mail me if you'd like.)
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
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The massiveinfoentertainment media (MIM) are way beyond on the skids. Check their ownership to understand the MIM title. Check their declining reader, listener and viewership, revenues and layoffs to understand the clarity of their death rattle.
They started dying in the 1960s with their deplorable coverage of JFK's/LBJ's Southeast Asia War based on lies and false assumptions of their Best and Brightest advisors. I call the latter Ivy-League-educated ignoramuses.
Journalism ceased to be when "to inform the people" was supplanted by such foolish notions as I have heard from "journalists" - "to make a difference in the world." That the MIM have survived this long in any form short of being buried as dead is what amazes me.
Well, I quite agree with Hoyt. It does look strange when someone writes an informative story, and then comments on it. There is a split of personality in it. I agree that comments and views are sometimes revealing, but why would I want to read the views - I became quite sick from the pro-this or pro-that media during the election. I like press agency journalism, where mere facts can guide you to the truth, or, more likely, possible truth. Judgments are for judges, information, facts, are for journalists. Let people find the truth through facts. That is not to say that commentaries are not usefull and sometimes good and fun to read.
It's not about "convictions;" It's about truth, accuracy, judgment and context. It serves neither accuracy, nor truth to put self-interested rebuttals of accused CEOs on a par with e-mails and testimony from less culpable witnesses.
In my mercifully brief stint in the journalism school of a big university, lo these many years ago, I found the doctrine of "objectivity" baffling, meaningless and fraudulent. This was at the same time that other pseudo-scientific doctrines were all the rage, from New Criticism in English departments to behaviorism in psychology. Reductive and not at all descriptive of the world in which we all act, react and, I guess, abreact.
Analysis and interpretation are essential components of reporting if it is to have any value or relation to the world and context that it chronicles.
Mr. Kaplan's article is a fine rebuttal to the ass-covering hogwash of Mr. Hoyt.
I plug this book so often that you'd think i was trying to cash in on this man's estate, but here goes: "The Brass Check" by Upton Sinclair. Written in 1919. Many of the boogeymen are familiar to a modern audience, notably the Associated Press and the New York Times. The business media has always had an ideologically right-ward slant and has often gone out of the way to slander the left. It's remarkable how little has changed in 90 years. Actually, I retract that: it's pretty unremarkable. Why would a business press, owned by business people, not consistently flack for a pro-business agenda?
It's not just American media, either. Have any of you had the great fortune (snark) of watching TV Globo in Brazil? I'm sure there are many other examples across the globe.
I have no problem with balanced reporting and objective reporting if it can be pulled off without lying. What you are describing is essentially misrepresenting the truth. Just because there was no fabrication on the part of the journalist doesn't mean it's not a lie. It is the function of a journalist to represent their point of view. I believe good journalists are able to expand their point of view large enough to offer room for additional interpretation and discussion. Some journalists just naturally have a more zen point of view and make perfect daily writers while others tend to get more passionate about particular subjects or points of view and make more interesting weekend reading where there is time to really digest a deeply-held opinion. I think a great newspaper includes reporting of all different styles including 'straight' factual reporting along with serious analysis. I think the concern here seems to be the audience knowing when each is going on and with everyone's favorite biased news channel still on the air Americans are going to have to learn that skill regardless of the local paper's editing.
The author noted: "I'd rather there be many competing ways of framing and analyzing and coming to conclusions about what's happening in the world." I agree: the multiple perspectives expressed on the net fulfill that function. Granted, there's a lot of trash, but is that not also true of the NYT?
Wow i totally agree with this blog post. I wish more people would understand that objectivity is humanly impossible. Its better to at least know where someone is coming from ideologically. All searches for information in this world originate out of some motivation. Totally objective reporting is impossible because there is always some things you do and dont report on. You cannot report on every single fact there is. There is always choice and selection involved, and there are biases, ALWAYS. To think otherwise is deeply naive.
"The trouble with this conception of journalism is that it inherently tilts the playing field in favor of liars, who are expert at gaming this system."
The recent election was a grand proof of this statement. I saw one politician after another parade on to the news shows and lie with the fluency of an artesian well....and the TV journalists just said, "We'll let the viewer decide."
J. H. Christo! Don't stop there! Call them out!! Push these expert "gamers" to defend their words (lies)!
In my mind, "straight news" is telling the viewer what the Dow Jones did today, not provide a forum for any liar to spout nonsense without challenge.
The difference between political spin and common sense just happens to be informed analysis.
That is provided by investigative reporters whom the spinners disparage because their columns reveal their political plotting.
Dirty politicians always try to present their tarnished morality as equal to reasonable differences of opinion. Of course they do misjudge the voters' intelligence often, and start to believe their own lies about their political opponents. That, their large egos, and their short memories are what ultimately defeat them.
Honest reporting is all that stands between the ordinary citizen and the anarchy of wealth and power.
What Hoyt calls opinion used to be called analysis. Skilled, insightful analysis is what made the old CBS News the best in the business. Analysis gives context and meaning to the news. Fox News has gone far denigrating analysis; it's well known that context and meaning have a liberal bias.
"...it's well known that context and meaning have a liberal bias." THAT is an interesting statement.
"Why, Hoyt asked, is it OK for Morgenson "to write a straight news article about the hearings and then give her personal opinion about them in a column"?"
Because this is how the news biz has always worked? Telling news from opinion is a basic media literacy skill. If you can't do it, you are definitely not qualified to read the financial pages of the NYT, nor to seek investment advice therein.
Mind you, educating their public about this distinction is something all papers should see as their duty, but not to the point of insisting that no reporters can write columns. They're distinct skills, but doing the one enlivens the other, in my opinion.
A columnist who never confronts the rigor of a hard news story gets more and more detached from the facts. It's not difficult to collect a roster of big-name media columnists who appear so detached as to have a private set of facts all their own, and to write about these exclusively.
The MSM has become so corporatized that it just seems normal to allow a rebuttal in the form of a press release or carefully worded statement such as the one from the rating agency. To expect the audience or the readers to weigh two assertions and decide which is fact demonstrates a lack of journalistic ethics.
It should become more and more the job of the journalist to point out that the corporate spokesperson has an agenda that is not going to concede to the facts on the ground. The facts lie in the law, the regulations, the determination of a Congressional hearing, etc. To have a corporate, biased think tank or spokesperson opinion given as a counterpoint to what should be a more determinative conclusion is a symptom of a corporatized media that puts corporate power above journalistic ethics.
When a reporter knows information being given is not true, is there no obligation to note that ?Seemingly not in the MSM because, as is pointed out below again and again, reoorters quote different sources with (usually) opposing views as if those comments were newsowrthy. I love many things about the NY Times, but the seeming penchant for "fairness" and the oft quoted "other side", when the other side is pure blather, strikes me as wimpy.
Oh for the old days of openly biased papers with screaming headlines and reporters who made their living by digging up dirt. Yellow journalism? Perhaps, but the public was more often well srved than not. Wimpy it was not.
With the media environment so drastically expanded in recent years and so many more sources of information available, I don't believe that the neutral, unbiased reporter is relevant anymore. Readers and audiences can be expected to be more sophisticated when they are reading, listening to or watching a report and discern when a reporter is reporting and when they are providing opinion.
I think that keeping a reporter's political affiliations and opinions secret is becoming quaint, and we should expect more reporters to also provide their own analysis and political opinions. The wheat will be separated from the chaff, because we won't only learn what reporters' opinions are, but who are the jerks and whose opinions are based in reality.
A good example of this is Mark Halperin. He used to be the wheat when he was a supposedly unbiased reporter and editor. Now we know better, and the guy has recently reveled himself to be part of the chaff because his biases are not based on reality but only his own prejudices.
We should expect more from audiences and readers as well as from reporters. The Times Ombudsman has it wrong.
This piece is the best thing to come out of CA in decades. God knows who will read it and fully grasp it in this dumbed-down country, but having the NYT hoist on this fine petard was pure joy for me. I've lived here . . . since the Gray Lady was a lady, you might say. Now it seems to be written mainly by recent college grads on their way to PR, advertising or some other slop-sump. And this is the great liberal media? Ho-ho-ho!
Aging white former conservative.
I agree, very public relations type reporting a lot of the time. No teeth.
I think truely professional journalists, mostly on the web it appears, should speak out against
the main stream media hacks who spew talking points, personal,flawed opinions and trivia.
The fourth estate in a democracy is supposed to perform the function of validly informing the electorate about what is going on. Never mind the pundit's opinions,just "give us the facts" and let the electorate do some home work.
I hope Press Secretary Gibbs and President Elect Obama require a sharp learning curve on the main stream media hacks who have let the American people down over the last eight years by not doing their job of informing the public.
I believe the coporatization of TV and radio news with the bottom line emphasis means product promotion is the name of the game and anything that titivates the the viewer, and raises the Nielson
numbers is what will be presented. The Congress and FCC needs to investigate ways to make the
airwaves sources of meaningful information for the electorate. . .or their licenses will be withdrawn.
The on-screen or on the air voices do their superiors and owners bidding; so that is where the corrective action must be taken.
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