Posted on 12/08/2001 4:15:16 AM PST by JIM O
For journalists, a question of balance
By Ellen Goodman, Globe Staff, 12/6/2001
THE END of the 19th century, when African-Americans were strung like ''strange fruit'' from Southern trees, The New York Times required every story about lynching to include a quote from a segregationist justifying the hanging.
At some point, the absurdity of that journalistic ''evenhandedness'' struck home to the editors. Murder is not a story with ''another side.''
I mention that footnote to my profession's history because I've always found something odd in the notion that ''balance'' is a seesaw, outfitted with exactly two seats for opponents whose views are carefully and equally weighted. A given story may have 15 sides - or one.
When terrorists struck on Sept. 11, there was only one side. No editor demanded a quote from someone saying why it was fine to fly airplanes into buildings. No one expected reporters to take an ''objective'' view of the terrorists.
Journalists were a part of the story. Sometimes literally. My Boston Globe colleague David Filipov, now reporting from Afghanistan, lost his father on Flight 11. It doesn't get any closer to home.
Not only did many in the media from Boston to New York to Washington feel their hometowns under attack, the first targets of anthrax - home-grown or not - were Congress and media alike.
For the first time in a while, the public saw journalists as part of the vast American ''us.'' Being neutral on terrorism was as absurd as being neutral on lynching. Approval ratings soared, along with our sense of self-worth.
Now we are into the next layer of the story; the one with 15 sides. The view of Ground Zero has become a more complicated prism on countries from Afghanistan to Iraq. The story is no longer just about victims but also about policy. Not just about what was done but what to do.
And as it evolves, some old, familiar questions are cropping up about journalism and patriotism.
We've had arguments about whether journalists should wear flag pins and whether Reuters writers could use the word ''terrorist.'' We've heard Geraldo Rivera say that he might shoot Osama bin Laden rather than interview him. We've heard Dan Rather blurt out that ''George Bush is the president. He makes the decisions and ... wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where.''
Some readers complain that publishing pictures of Afghan civilians apparently killed by our bombs is a disloyal act. Some viewers believe that airing disagreements about administration policy and strategy is un-American.
Meanwhile, Roger Ailes, whose Fox News Channel promoted itself as ''fair and balanced'' in a jab at the more liberal media, has a new mantra: ''Be accurate, be fair, be American.''
But in the Fox dictionary, being an ''American'' journalist, however, is not a matter of citizenship. It apparently means referring to bin Laden as a ''dirtbag'' and muting talk about the origins of Middle East hostility to the United States.
''We don't sit around and get all gooey and wonder if these people have been misunderstood in their childhood,'' says Ailes dismissively.
Well, this may qualify me as a traitor in Ailes's book, but as Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, says, this idea of American news ''cooks the books. Journalism is supposed to be as close a rendering of the complete story as you can offer, not preaching a declared slanted perspective.''
You can be a patriot and a journalist but practicing ''patriotic journalism'' sounds suspiciously like propaganda. ''Bin Laden the Dirtbag'' falls a wee bit short of a useful profile of the enemy, and editing out the Middle Eastern view turns Fox into our own al-Jazeera.
Tom Rosensteil at the Project for Excellence in Journalism has been holding media seminars asking loaded questions: ''Are you a journalist first or an American first?'' Not surprisingly, reporters reject the conflict or choice. Since Sept. 11, they tell him they feel more connected to country and more committed to helping people make sense of events.
Maybe the phrase that works the best is the one offered by The Tampa Tribune's Gil Thelen, who describes the role as one of ''committed observers.'' We have - or should have - a strong commitment to the community, a stake in our country, a stake in creating a more secure world. And a role as independent observers.
This is what we mean by balance. And this is the reason to retrieve the Fox mantra for our own: Be fair, be accurate, be American.
Agree. A good example is the media's sympathy for the cop-killer-turned-liberal-celebrity Mumia what's his name...
I have been repeatedly impressed with how childish, immature, and dense these "journalists" are... except I think a group of real children would probably ask more profound questions!
What else do Goodman's Americans do? A little help here ….
Ellen has always qualified in my book.
The real question is what gets presented as news? And in what context? Toward what goal? In what tone? And yes, using what words? It is ALL of these aspects that the conventional media's bias becomes obvious.
A few months ago, an underage girl was caught trying to buy beer in a bar. That story merited 16 column inches on the front page of the New York Times. That same edition, a story about an obscure Middle Eastern terrorist got 2 inches right under the pet cemetery ads on page 51. The girl was Jenna Bush, the terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
When Richard Nixon's goons burgled the Watergate Hotel, the Washington Post took to the story like Inspector Javert chasing a bread thief. Yet when Bill Clinton indulged every vice imaginable, including virtual treason for selling techno secrets to the Chinese, the Post was too busy chasing Newt Gingrich around to care.
During the 1992 presidential election, a local newspaper ran stories about the candidates' daily whistlestops, accompanied by color photos. The picture of Bill Clinton showed a coiffed, beaming candidate surrounded by red, white, and blue bunting, reaching into a sea of hands and happy faces. The picture of George Bush showed a disheveld, windblown man with a pained expression on his face as a gust of rain hit him, coming down the ramp of Air Force One, alone on the tarmac. I'm sure both candidates had other pictures of them taken that day. Why did the editors of the newspaper choose these two particular photos?
That is bias, spin it however they will. Now that Bernard Goldberg has blown the whistle on the shenanigans at CBS, he has verified what conservatives have known all along. The media, far from being the guardians of freedom, are its greatest enemies. The Fourth Estate is a Fifth Column.
That was exactly my thought as I began to read the column. She and other liberals are slowly being driven crazy by their inability to bash Bush. So she is looking for some hook, some excuse, ANYTHING!, that will permit her to start spewing her particularly yucky form of venom again before her repressed hatred of W drives her absolutely stark, raving mad.
A humorous aside: you know a column is heading down a very wrong path whenever it contains the following language:
"as Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, says"!!
What Goodman and the rest of the media mean by "balance" is that they START with the scales tilted 2/3 of the way to "liberal".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.