What's the Big Deal?
One of my favorite things to do is switch back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News when big news stories break. Based on this unscientific experiment, I can personally attest to the fact that, depending on the cable news channel they watch, Americans are living on two completely different planets.
On cable news especially, it is clear what channels are “Team Red” and which are “Team Blue” — loyalties that are reenforced by what they choose to cover and how they cover it, the words of their hosts and anchors, and the guests they book.
But now, I fear, other media sources are feeling the need to overcompensate for this phenomenon.
Roy Peter Clark — a senior scholar and vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school that owns the Tampa Bay Times and operates PolitiFact — wrote an article in response to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Actually, he wrote an article about another article written in The Washington Post about the attack on the Capitol. Of course, I quickly went to the referenced article and found the writing to be — as almost all Washington Post writing is — masterful. I also found most of the writing in the front-page piece perfectly appropriate:
No problem here, the journalists were simply reporting exactly what we all saw with our own eyes — nothing more, nothing less. However, in other parts of the article, words used to describe the Capitol attack included “attempted coup,” “saboteurs,” and the phrase “much of it incited by the president’s incendiary language.”
Of The Washington Post article, Mr. Clark said, “I am astonished by the way the lead was written, and by an epiphany: Language that pushes the boundaries of traditional neutrality can be used in a responsible news report.”
I could not disagree more with this statement. In all honesty, his words really scare me.
It is absolutely imperative that news coverage be neutral, with the goal of nothing beyond presenting raw, vetted facts. The reader must then be trusted to make an independent, informed decision based on facts and facts alone.
Please believe me when I say this is not a thread we should pull on.
The words/phrases “attempted coup,” “saboteurs,” and “much of it incited by the president’s incendiary language” do not belong in a Washington Post front-page news story, at least not on the very day of the event when emotions are high, information is still being gathered, and investigations hadn’t even started. At that early juncture, they belong in its opinions and editorials section — if even there.
< I have long believed that newspapers should make a better distinction between the news section and the opinion section on their websites. The New York Times has made a solid stab at this by replacing the term “Op-Ed” with “Guest Essay” and clearly labeling it as such. >
In his article, Mr. Clark also references another author, Samuel Hayakawa, who wrote Language in Thought and Action. In this seminal book, Hayakawa argues that reporters should avoid “loaded” language and always understand that it is not their job to declare something good or bad. Hayakawa warns that straightforward reporting is the only remedy for malicious propaganda which, around the time of his writing, had been widely disseminated by the Nazis.
He is so right. The only thing more dangerous than brazen lies told by a destructive leader is overcompensation — somehow convincing oneself that the actions of this person are so terrible that it gives everyone else permission to abandon their own moral principles.
Unfortunately, this very thing happened a lot throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. Many journalists fell right into his trap, chasing every distraction he threw down and giving him the oxygen he so desperately craved.
Often, the media’s calculation seemed to be that, since Donald Trump was such a danger to this country, they had the responsibility to fight back with anything and everything they had — even if it meant sacrificing a few basic journalism rules here and there. Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Wrong. That’s nothing more than misguided justification. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Listen, I get it. Journalists have one of the hardest jobs in the world, especially during a time when a sitting U.S. president was actively telling his followers to attack them mentally and physically.
Journalists are only human, after all, and every one of them has a deep love for our country. It would be exceedingly naïve to believe that humans can switch off their opinions and world views every time their hands hit a keyboard or camera lights come on.
This is the reason I could never be a journalist, as much as I would love to be. I would find it incredibly frustrating to not freely give my opinion whenever I wanted. And forget anyone trying to edit me! : ) But that’s why I’m not a journalist.
It is important to remember that Donald Trump’s presidency also came at a time when media was already going through an extremely difficult transition. The Internet has given anyone and everyone access to a public platform, which has cut deeply into traditional newsrooms.
Plus, let’s face it, most straightforward new stories don’t sell nearly as well as salacious ones. That’s just a fact. Buy any reporter a shot or two of tequila and I bet anything most would admit that, while incredibly frustrating and utterly exhausting, the presidency of Donald J. Trump was on balance a huge windfall for them.
My fear is that these new realities create additional motivations for journalists. A decade ago, I would never even know what my favorite newspaper reporter looked like. Even now, The Economist doesn’t include the name of the person who writes each article.
But today, I see print journalists everywhere, especially on cable news (and am I crazy or does it seem like many of them also have brand new gym memberships and stylists?!?). I buy and read their books, which usually reveal early on if they are Team Red or Team Blue …then their bylines show up in supposedly straightforward, unbiased articles in The New York Times or The Washington Post.
Take Willie Geist, whom I adore. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Willie is free with his personal opinions, and it is pretty obvious which side he generally comes down on. Then soon after, you’ll see him anchoring The Today Show on NBC. It gets a little muddled.
With poles bearing blue Trump flags, the mob bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were evacuated shortly before an armed standoff at the House doors. The woman who was shot by a police officer was rushed to an ambulance, police said, and later died. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags.