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But what the complaints don't recognize is that this approach isn't only about self-aggrandizement or a license for punditry (which, actually, didn't appear often on Weigel's "official" blog). It's a response to the straitjacket of "traditional" journalism, which presumes that there is only one way to tell a given story, and that all professional journalists will converge on it. It's a tool to get past false equivalence and he-said/she-said reporting and blandly written, conventional-wisdom-spewing "news analysis" stories, and of saying, "Here is what I, an intelligent, critical observer who has earned your trust (or not) by virtue of my prior work, find to be interesting, newsworthy, and true—and, as important, what I find to be not true." It is one response to the very real editorial failures of political journalism, which too often result in mummified, sterile accounts that fail to inform readers of what is actually at stake.
Look at Us! : Lessons from the response to the David Weigel flap
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- Public Discussion (1)
If there is any reporter anywhere who has not expressed views in private, or on a bar stool, that might make it difficult for him to do his job were they made public—and I doubt that there is—he is barely a sentient human being, let alone a good journalist.
Exactly. Being a journalist doesn't mean checking your brain when you clock in, and it certainly shouldn't mean checking your soul, either. The myth of objective reporting is that just that: a myth. It's time for it to die so we can get on with the business of actually learning from our news sources.
Further suggested reading: objectivity as a business strategy (via Matt Yglesias):
In a winner-take all market like this, it pays to be seen as scrupulously neutral and even-handed. Being seen as “the liberal paper” effectively concedes half of the market to a potential competitor with few offsetting benefits. A reporter that inspired fanatical loyalty among 10 percent of the population but angered a different 10 percent would have been bad for the bottom line: The loyal 10 percent would probably have subscribed anyway, but the angry 10 percent might cancel their subscriptions out of spite if a particular reporter angers them enough. So the most successful newspapers tended to be the ones whose reporters pretended not to have opinions. And as papers with that culture came to dominate the industry, it came to be seen as not just good business strategy but as central to Journalistic Ethics.
- 4 votes
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