“Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?” is the title of an online column today by New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane. It’s raising a lot of dust, and well it should. Is there something lawless about printing the truth? Are reporters some sort of lynch mob? Brisbane chose a terrible word for his headline. What’s more, news consumers have been expressing their frustation for years about politicians and public figures uttering lie after lie and getting away with it, while news organization stand by abetting the outrage by uncritically repeating these statements. By now, readers might well appreciate a reader going rogue and unleashing a fury of anger on an obfuscating source. To cut Brisbane some slack, I think he’s asks readers if Times reporters and editors should be calling out the falsehoods uttered by public figures–calling a lie a lie line by line–or continue simply reporting the statements of those figures, surround those statements with deep and solid reporting, allow readers to judge the veracity of those remarks, and leave the up-front opining on such statements to features clearly marked “News Analysis” and to writers and columnists on the Editorial and Op-Ed pages. While I’ve also long been frustrated with news reporting’s refusal to call a lie a lie (i.e. the Swift Boating of John Kerry), I think before we make reporters into referees of truth–which could make reading a news story as boring as watching a football game when a disputed touchdown has been sent up to the replay booth for labored review–there is a very simple way to ameliorate much of the problem. I recommend that news organizations institue the following policy.
Reporters and editors at newspapers and all news orgs should routinely replace the word “said,” as in “Mitt Romney SAID President Obama apologized for America”–which is the false statement at issue in the public editor’s column–to”Mitt Romney CLAIMED President Obama apologized for America.” This would signal clearly to readers that Romney’s statement was an assertion of opinion, not a statement of objective or established fact.
I’ve been doing this for years as I read news article and I urge you to do it for yourself. Try it the next time you read or hear a news story that does little more than give a platform to a typically tendentious statement by say, a press flack blowing smoke about a defective consumer product, duly repeated in a news story. Like this,
“Spokesman Joe Flaherty said that Prostate & Grumble uses only the finest materials in assembling their baby cribs. Flaherty also said the company had received no other complaints about their cribs collapsing in a heap.” Now, try this: “Spokesman Joe Flaherty claimed that Prostate & Grumble uses only the finest materials in assembling their baby cribs. Flaherty also claimed the company had received no other complaints about their cribs collapsing in a heap.” It takes the unearned authority away from the statement, rendering it less powerful, not so magisterial.
A final point regarding Mr. Brisbane’s column. Why did the Times close comments online so quickly? Yes, there was lots of pushback, but so what. Guess they can’t handle the truth.
Please try it and let me know what you think. If you like it as much as I do, please recommend it to your favorite news organization.
With indie record labels now routinely making downloads of music available to buyers of vinyl LPs, I’m heartened to see a similar strategy taking hold among indie publishers too, with regard to ebooks and printed books. . . . With the print book and ebook initiative announced today, Coach House has demonstrated their continuing relevance, if it were needed–and that of publishers like them– in the burgeoning digital age that publishing has entered. I wonder how long it will be before big, commercial houses are also routinely making ebooks available, or some digital product, available with purchase of a new book. Meantime, congratulations to Coach House Books for leading the way. // more. . .
