New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane has a new column wondering if the readers of the Paper of Record want to know if the politicians the paper covers are telling the truth.
Seriously. It’s right here.
He writes:
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
He even has a pretty good example:
On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.
As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: Should news reporters do the same?
I don’t think Brisbane’s trying to be cute here, though he might want to know that Krugman for a time was actually not allowed call a lie a lie: During the 2000 presidential election season, Krugman said the Times “barred him from using the word ‘lying'” when writing about George W. Bush (Washington Post, 1/22/03).
Nonetheless, Brisbane even offers some language that a reporter might insert into a story about Romney’s false assertion:
“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”
This would be an improvement over nothing, but it’s still pretty tame—if Romney’s making this up in order to generate a campaign rally applause line, is it really a “misleading interpretation” of Obama’s actual words?
The fact that this question is even being asked tells you something pretty profound about the state of corporate media—at least when it comes to politics, that is.
I don’t think sports reporters would be so baffled by the idea that facts matter. Let’s say New York Knicks star forward Amar’e Stoudemire declared after a game that he was proud of scoring 40 points, and went on to brag that this was much better than the measly eight points that Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett scored, who sat much of the second half due to foul trouble.
Reporters who watched the game and looked at the box score would notice that Garnett wasn’t in foul trouble, had actually scored 20 points, and that Stoudemire hadn’t actually scored 40 points.
I suspect that his odd, wildly inaccurate boasting would find its way into the paper—and that a reporter wouldn’t talk about how Stoudemire had “misleadingly interpreted” the box score.
Of course political arguments aren’t always so clear-cut (though the Romney example is pretty straightforward). But it is very easy to imagine a kind of journalism that demands powerful figures document questionable assertions—and note when they are unable to do so.
If the corpress had to document its own questionable assertions, there wouldn’t be any space left for the Style sections.
And it’s ironic how many of the false accusations hurled at Dear Misleader are about what I’d actually want him to be and do.
As the man said …
“Obama is not a brown-skinned, anti-war socialist who gives away free health-care.
You’re thinking of Jesus.”
I think, FAIR, you may have short changed Brisbane and the question he’s asking. I believe what he is asking is, What the balance between reporting and opining? Classically, a reporter is supposed to stick to who, what, where, and when, and minimize interpretation. Interpretation and opining are then left to the Opinion page, and the newspaper’s position is expressed on the Editorial page. However often it might fail, this division of labor is an attempt at objectivity. So newspapers and other media do often challenge and fact-check statements made by politicians and other members of society (surely not enough), but Brisbane is asking whether that’s the role of the reporter, not the paper as a whole. Krugman is not a reporter. He is an opinion writer; his column appears on the Opinion page. Certainly, where feasible, reporters should fact-check. But as FAIR points out, that’s not always so easy outside of the sports arena. And so perhaps the safest course is to leave interpretation to the Opinion and Editorial pages.
While we’re taught in J-school to be objective as reporters, I see nothing wrong with asking a politician to elaborate on his/her pronouncements. If then the politician is elusive in answereing, or refuses to do so, it should be duly noted in the news story
From Glenn Greenwald, on the subject of unquestionable content:
Arthur Brisbane, The NYT and Selective Stenography Journalism
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/13-11
How ’bout the bloody Gray Lady reporting this truth:http://my.firedoglake.com/jbade/2012/01/13/graphic-video-the-best-
reason-i-have-seen-to-support-ron-paul-help-stop-this-and-save-
iraniansyrian-kids-please/ ?
Amazing. A reporter’s job is always to be the skeptical devil’s advocate & not just accept what they’re told, especially when what they’re tOld is outrageous. When Romney says Obama apologized for America and a reporter never heard of that, the reporter should ask where & when. Whenever someone says surveys prove something (like sex ed. Is linked to higher ten pregnancy rates – which is false) the reporter should ask the person making that claim to cite & share these surveys.
JN: Are you brain dead? Asking an interview subject to prove what tgey’re claiming is not “opining” it’s good journalism! Only a lapdog reporter just dutifully writes down whatever tgey’re tild without question. If the person making the claim can’t back it up, THAT should be included in the story.
Sorry – above msg is for JB.
(I seriously need to stop writing comments on my iPhone.)
I think that every 60 or 75 years or so , the nation goes completely insane. I mean, how could Joseph McCarthy tell a women’s club in Wheeling, W. Virginia, that he had a list of known communists in the State Dept. and nobody called him on that? How did that happen? Not to demean the womens clunb, but if true, that information would be earth shaking news, and geez, I don’t know, but the womens’ club is the last place I’d pick for an announcement. WHY didn’t anyone think of that?
Then it seems that the country found its collective mind again, and we had Watergate, and ethics returned, and journalists too. Although, that crazy corporate government did really well with President Harding, and wow, they’re back again! I guess its that George Santayana thing about those who forget the past ARE condemed to repeat it. We’re back there too!
Maybe the problem is that just as big banks are too big, so are media owners. I read that 4 or 5 people own all the media. Maybe we should look at that too. America, used to be a melting pot of people and ideas; now it seems to be an empty cauldron of opinions with so few facts. We seem to be a group of people focused on celebrity and performing missions of “dirty tricks.”
I agree that the public should ask for more from media, but sometimes, people are just too tired to care because this nation seems to be so disconnected.at the moment. I did give up on tv though, and try to read all kinds of news and “views” on the internet, but sometimes it’s hard to recognize the wheat from the chaff.
I guess I’m brain dead, Frank. Everything you define as good reporting I agree with. But reporting is still different in content from what goes on the opinion or editorial pages of a newspaper. (I’ll come to TV journalism is a while.) So good reporting would certainly mean fact-checking, asking the right questions, second guessing, digging deeper in order to “get the story.” We saw a catastrophic failure to do that during the run up to the Iraq War. And we see it routinely with regards to events in the Middle East, North Korea, Venezueala, Iran, and so many other places around the world. So a good reporter can do all of those things without blurring the line between reporting an event on one hand and editorializing and opining about that event on the other. TV journalism in the early days was modeled on print journalism. And so when an event was reported, it was clearly presented as news, so to speak. And it was clear when the TV news program was providing opinion or commentary. All of that is blurred now. And I believe in a systematic way. To cite an obvious example, FOX news has deliberately blurred the distinction between reporting and editorializing. But its done it in such as way to make its editorializing appears as good objective journalism and reporting. I never defined a reporter as someone who “dutifully wrote down whatever they’re told without question.” I guess I’m willing to cut Brisbane some slack and infer that this is what he’s getting at. A good question would be, Why has this distinction between reporting and editorializing gotten so extreme in more recent years.
The NYT comes right out and openly wonders whether its role is stenography or whether it needs to report facts! This certainly vindicates a lot of old FAIR posts…
Back in the late 1940s, when I wrote for the high school newspaper, I thought I knew what the news was: an honest, factual account of who, what, where, when and why. In my mind, journalists were the purveyors of truth, the heroes of radio dramas like Big Town.
After a few years, I came to realize that newspapers and television newscasts could greatly influence public opinion by reporting only some of the news and simply ignoring the rest. When reporters speak, they are telling us what they consider newsworthy. When a television station covers one story and not another, news, to some extent, becomes opinion. The placement of an item within a paper or newscast is also a judgment call. Presenting the news fairly is an awesome responsibility, by nature nearly impossible to fulfill. In some cases, what we call news really should be called views.
My faith in our free press changed even more when the mainstream media helped President Bush and Vice-President Cheney deliberately mislead our country into war with Iraq. We heard what those promoting war wanted us to hear. We read what they wanted us to read.
Today, television reaches millions of people in minutes, disseminating information selected and controlled by a small number of executives who are, like all of us, only human. Fortunately, trustworthy journalists and news outlets still abound, and we can consult a huge variety of sources in order to find out what is going on. When it comes to mainstream television, however, biased coverage now seems to be expected and accepted, reinforced by a plethora of commentators often more loyal to their own political and economic interests than to the concept of journalistic integrity. When shown to have misrepresented the facts, some of them barely acknowledge having done so, and their audience is left misinformed, and sometimes angry to the point of committing violence.
Even when independent journalists do their best to dig out the whole story, do working people today have the time or inclination to examine all the newspapers, blogs and newscasts that are available? Can average citizens look out for their personal welfare when so much of what they hear is determined by people representing powerful corporate interests? Can democracy prevail when news and views are intertwined? Can a free press still contribute to world peace rather than to war? I would like to think so, but I’m no longer sure.
JB, Facts are not an opinion. A real journalist will write what was said then follow up with the facts of the issue,the truth. Truth is what is lacking in the MSM today. Half truths and distortions of truths are lies. Stories, written as if by independent journalists but in fact propaganda to push for the ends wanted, and propagated by contractors for the defense dept., lobby groups or think tanks and not for the benefit of the masses, is wrong and needs to be brought out into the light. Without truth in journalism our democracy is in peril.
It is not the job of journalists to challenge statements made by politicians they know to be false [lies]. That job was bungled by their parents.
Journalists are to write stories they know to be true.
The NYTimes would be save much paper by printing facts, and simply omitting the chaff.
Mr. Brisbane should be asking readers whether they would like the NYTimes reporters to discontinue repeating politicians’ lies in print.
Well, no, JB. Fox’ “journalism” appears to be good and objective? To you? Fox is a propaganda outfit, and anybody with a lick of sense can see that. Mr. Brisbane was quite clear in his remarks; I think you’re mis-understanding things here. This has nothing to do with editorializing and everthing to do with simply checking out unsubstantiated claims made by “newsmakers.” The Right has been very successful in blurring the line between editorializing and good reporting. When cold hard facts damn a person’s assertions, then the reporter is accused of being biased and playing for the other team.
A perfect example of this is Dan Savage’s latest column, Savage Love. Savage points to a piece in the Huffington Post in which the reporter does a softball interview with one of Santorum’s daughters. She asserts that she has gay friends who actually support her dad’s position on the economy, among other things. As Savage notes, the reporter didn’t treat this fantastic assertion with anything other than acceptance. A good reporter would have asked for the names of these people to check the assertion–that, indeed, is what a reporter must do. Very likely Santorum’s daughter would have been taken aback; she might have even complained to the reporter’s boss. Who knows? But if you expect to be a real journalist, you should expect to take heat when you try to do your job.
Finally, two things. There’s an old saying amongst journalists: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Lewis Lapham said something to the effect that if a journalist’s funeral is well-attended (indeed, attended at all), he didn’t do a good job as a jounalist. (Think Tim Russert here.)
Nice post, Helen Neeser Hanna.
should we cover the truth? – overwhelmingly yes.
but they still wont.
http://www.consensus911.org/
I don;t know if Obama has ever used the word apologize….in his life.I doubt he will apologize for his contribution to the state of this here union when he is gone.But his European(and elsewhere) tours were roundly referred to as his “apologize for America” tours by the right.He would basically lay out how America had failed.How it affected wherever he was speaking.And how he would make it right by remaking America.This became incredibly annoying after a time.It is usually a given that the president is his countries biggest cheerleader who try’s to put a good face on things.Here we had a man who many felt did not even LIKE his own country.
That’s the Cult of Objectivity for you; reporting the facts = editorializing. Absent is any understanding of the notion that underlies the entire theory of a free press; that it’s supposed to act as a check on power, on behalf of the public. Its the job of a properly functioning press to persistently challenge the Obamas, Romneys, Boehners, Rupert Murdochs, and Rex Tillersons of the world. That, in itself, is a bias, and a breach of that much-worshiped “objectivity,” but that, not “objectivity,” is the job of the press. Those in the press should always struggle to be fair and, more importantly, to get things right, but a theory that a responsible press should do things like elevate “balance” above reasonableness, and regard the reporting of adversarial facts as “editorializing”–both sins of the Cult of Objectivity–is less than useless. It’s actively pernicious.
Well said, classicliberal2.
as someone else wrote, the answer to the question is only in doubt among journalists….the readers are unanimous in thinking that what a journalist should do..call b.s. when they’re hearing b.s.