The Disease of American Journalism
“Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.“And the creed of objectivity becomes a convenient and profitable vehicle to avoid confronting unpleasant truths or angering a power structure on which news organizations depend for access and profits. This creed transforms reporters into neutral observers or voyeurs. It banishes empathy, passion and a quest for justice. Reporters are permitted to watch but not to feel or to speak in their own voices. They function as ‘professionals’ and see themselves as dispassionate and disinterested social scientists. This vaunted lack of bias, enforced by bloodless hierarchies of bureaucrats, is the disease of American journalism.”
(Thanks to alert Muskovite WORDster Jim Brooke)
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
Editor’s Note: So, what’s your opinion on that?
.
On Feb 8, 2010, at 7:52 AM, Bud wrote:
ReplyDeleteM. Hedges methinks isn’t reading the same “journalism” I am. Reporters opinions and biases are woven throughout most stories subtly, and even quality editing (oxymoron?) doesn’t change that. I see it literally every day … call me old fashioned, but I still want my reporting to be objective and my opinion to be slanted. If we encourage reporters to let their biases into their coverage of a story, then do we really need opinion pages?
Bud
Pease responds:
As far as I know, Hedges has never had this kind of problem. Of course, he *is* a columnist, b/c he couldn't survive trying to do straight news. But he has a point that front-line reporters have often bemoaned--that the neutral-reportage expectation can tend to make reporting on dire events dull and lifeless. When one is on the scene and hip-deep in tragedy (as in Haiti), how is it possible with WhoWhatWhereWhenWhy&How to communicate that? But it's easy to slide from there to argue that a reporter who has back-room, off-the-record information from the city council should be able to tell the "real story." Contrary to popular belief, journalists are human, too, and it's impossible for their personal perceptions not to inform their reporting in some ways that are important and valuable. But Hedges' breast-beating over "objectivity" is outdated. There's no one on the city desk who believes that humans can be objective, but that doesn't mean staying with confirmable facts isn't a good place to start reporting news.
The professor will now shut up
Bud replies:
ReplyDeleteI’m just sayin’ that it’s already jumped the shark. Even the great old grey lady has succumbed to “creatively crafted” reporting. Even an old fussbudget like my own self doesn’t expect reporting to look linear and boring, but an opening line like, “Sparks flew at last night’s school board meeting when … “ sets a tone that’s different from the straight up, who, what, where, when kind of stuff. And, Professor, the “why” and the “how” tend to allow for some exposition in the craft.
Bud
Peez answers:
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Although the night I was a cub reporter covering the selectmen (city council) in Belchertown, Mass., and one of them turned and planted his farmer's fist in the nose of another during the meeting, well, it was hard to separate the "sparks" from the usual droning about bridge repairs and barking dog complaints.
Hi Ted,
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t disagree more with Chris Hedges. Disregarding fairness and balance (objectivity has never been possible because we are human), as much of what now passes for the news media has done, rightly invites scorn from consumers and allows all manner of charlatans to claim the title of journalist. There is a place for opinion, it is called the editorial section. The world and our readers are better served in the long run by accurate, balanced rendering of ideas and events.
Lee
If reporters won't provide objective facts and balanced information, who will? If reporters want to be advocates for a cause, let them change careers and go into PR or become lobbyists or run for office.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the disagreement over Hedges' remarks. If we don't listen to other sides, and try to understand all sides, how can we ever present a story that people find credible and is powerful enough to change opinions or educate? Passionate rants may be cathartic for the reporter, and red-meat to the already converted, but the journalism of verfication (as opposed to false he-said, she-said objectivity) is what changes minds.
ReplyDeleteWasn't Zinn, who just died, widely discounted by many historians for his "lack of objectivity" in his History?
ReplyDeleteI loved his book.
I also like Chris Hedges' books very much.
I confess that I am outside the argument about objectivity in reporting. I do, however, know when I like a book I am reading.
Is there a difference--when it comes to this argument--between reporting (journalism) and writing books?
I used to be very moved by the facts that Chris Hedges reported when he was a reporter. I think that since then he has lost respect for the importance of reporting facts and for the view that journalism should be the pursuit of truth -- through both facts and ideas. He seems now to prefer expressing anger based on a series of assumptions rather than engaging in reporting and analysis based on research.
ReplyDeleteI think most people are far more likely to be moved -- and empowered to act -- by a story about Haiti that is full of facts that describe the devastation and feelings of people the reporter has interviewed than they are by a reporter telling his or her own reaction to the scene they observed. Stipping away reporting is an arrogant and selfish act.
Journalists in numerous countries, most recently Mexico, have been sacrificing their lives because of facts they reported. Tell those courageous journalists who follow in the footsteps of the fallen journalists that they should stop being objective, that they should stop searching for the facts that corrupt forces in their countries want to keep hidden, that they should instead express their opinions and feelings and not care much about whether people have access to the secret facts that may control and damage their lives.
People everywhere need both facts and analysis. It seems to me it is profoundly arrogant for a journalist to conclude that fact-gathering is a lower form of practicing journalism, and that it is more important for a journalist to convey his own feelings and opinions. Every act of the journalistic process involves the reporter making decisions about which people to interview, questions to ask, stories to pursue, stories to ignore. That's a lot of power. It can produce a valuable public service, one that is far more valuable than it would be if sources were stripped out and the journalist focused instead on himself.
Sure
I don't know what Hedges has been reading or watching, but clearly it hasn't included network and cable news or major print media. Katie Couric, the AP team and Time Magazine, to name just three, have had one story after another on newsfolk giving quake victims supplies of food and water that they had brought from the States and the DomRep, how they used their vehicles to take injured people to hospitals and emergency clinics, etc.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, we may ask: at whom should the media direct anger cited by Hedges? Getting mad at nature for having earthquakes is my idea of an exercise in futility. Anger at the hundreds of non-government organizations that are there to help (some of which lost their own personnel in the quake) and the scores of nations that have sent help seems equally misdirected.
Hedges would have us believe that editors kept subjective reports out of print and off the airways for fear of offending advertisers. What advertisers were or are those? The Haitian National Tourist Bureau, maybe?
Railing at editors is always fun for reporters. On the other hand, I wish I had a dollar for time that an editor has caught something that needed fixing in one of my print efforts or broadcasts. I'd have a whole lot of money to add to what we've already donated . . . for Haitian relief.
--Joseph Benham, Editorial page columnist, Kerrville Daily Times. Former staffer for daily papers, cable news, NBC Radio News, U.S. News & World Report
and AP.
Tony Seton writes:
ReplyDeleteIn the classic example, a refugee from Nazi Germany who appears on television saying monstrous things are happening in his homeland must be followed by a Nazi spokesman saying Adolf Hitler is the greatest boon to humanity since pasteurized milk. Real objectivity would require not only hard work by news people to determine which report was accurate, but also a willingness to put up with the abuse certain to follow publication of an objectively formed judgment. To escape the hard work or the abuse, if one too many says Hitler is an ogre, we instantly give you another to say Hitler is a prince. A man says the rockets won't work? We give you another who says they will. The public may not learn much about these fairly sensitive matters, but neither does it get another excuse to denounce the media for unfairness and lack of objectivity. In brief, society is teeming with people who become furious if told what the score is. -- Russell Baker
I don't know Betty Medsger, but she sounds like the kind of person whose work we can and should all admire. Kudos!
ReplyDeleteOn Feb 8, 2010, at 10:42 PM, Mark wrote:
ReplyDeleteTed,
You ask in this message "What's your opinion on that?" I find myself torn.
On the one hand, in cable TV news we've begun to see what happens when the creed of objectivity is rejected. Viewers now can choose to obtain their news solely from sources that will confirm their biases and preconceived notions, and this is likely one reason why our government is spiraling downward to a level of gridlocked ineffectiveness that rivals the first 40 years of post-war Italian democracy.
On the other, the reason I chose to leave newspaper journalism some 23 years ago was that I was tired of a system where "objectivity" meant I had to give a roughly equal voice to people whose ideas have merit -- or at least were a product of careful thought, however misguided -- and to those who valued a memorable quote over reasoned ideas, or who could never have formulated a reasoned idea in the first place. I longed to be able to act, and to reject statements lacking in merit, not simply to describe things that matter to society with all the dispassion and monotony of a tennis commentator.
My opinion: The only thing worse than the current creed of objectivity is the coming creed of non-objectivity.
Mark
Pease replies:
Amen. As we learn, there are always ways for a reporter to weasel opinions and perspectives in and be as damning or booster-y (as Palin would put it) as you want. As long as you are sneaky and essentially willing to lie when you purport to be providing the "objective report," a reporter can direct the story by what s/he selects and omits. It fools nobody.
I have no problem hearing what informed people think about issues, when they frame their arguments based on concrete and informed knowledge. It's the ranters and sputterers and partisans who just rant with nothing but ungrounded ideology (like Palin, for example) that are killing the public conversation.
Ted
He's absolutely right. While there are exceptions and counter-examples to every rule, mainstream American journalism has resorted to stenography and "let the reader figure it out" instead of seeking understanding, truth, and reality.
ReplyDeleteBlind and deaf to the interests of actual humans, bureaucratic "leaders" of media outlets too often do exactly as he describes, and yank out anything that's interesting from a report, leaving the boring skeleton behind.
That is precisely why alternative journalism, and alternative newspapers like the one where I work, is still going strong. We own our demographic, add new readers (net!) every day, attract major advertising clients that are deserting vanilla in favor of things people actually read, and we seek truth and understanding, not sound bites.
And we watch the dailies lumber about under the weight of their bureaucracies, trying to focus-group their way out of the paper bags over their own heads.