[Debate] (Fwd) NY Times stumbles on a 'difficult' question

[Patrick Bond]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/13/new-york-times-public-editor/print

  *


  * The New York Times public editor's very public utterance

Brisbane's question on reporters' duty to challenge misleading political 
speech has permanently altered readers' expectations

  *
      o
        Clay Shirky <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/clay-shirky>
      o guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Thursday 12 January
        2012 22.32 EST


Thursday, Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, went 
to his readers with a question 
<http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/should-the-times-be-a-truth-vigilante/>:

    "I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times
    <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/new-york-times> news reporters
    should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write
    about."

Brisbane (who, as public editor, speaks only for himself, not the Times) 
referred to two recent stories: the claim that Clarence Thomas had 
"misunderstood" a financial reporting form when he left out key 
information, and Mitt Romney's assertion that President Obama gives 
speeches "apologising" for America. Brisbane asked whether news 
reporters should have the freedom to investigate and respond to those 
comments.

The reaction from readers was swift, voluminous, negative and incredulous.

    "Is this a joke? THIS IS YOUR JOB."

    "If the purpose of the NYT is to be an inoffensive container for ad
    copy, then by all means continue to do nothing more than paraphrase
    those press releases."

    "I hope you can help me, Mr Brisbane, because I'm an editor,
    currently unemployed: is fecklessness now a job requirement?"

Brisbane had clearly not been expecting this excoriating and one-sided a 
reaction. Brisbane has since tried to clarify his views twice. The first 
was on the media blog JimRomenesko.com 
<http://jimromenesko.com/2012/01/12/nyt-public-editor-on-reaction-to-truth-vigilante-post/>:

    "What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut
    dubious facts in the body of the stories they are writing. I was
    hoping for diverse and even nuanced responses to what I think is a
    difficult question."

The second was on the NY Times site 
<http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/update-to-my-previous-post-on-truth-vigilantes/>:

    "My inquiry related to whether the Times, in the text of news
    columns, should more aggressively rebut 'facts' that are offered by
    newsmakers when those 'facts' are in question. I consider this a
    difficult question, not an obvious one."

This only added fuel to the fire.

Now, it's worth noting that Brisbane's question makes perfect sense, 
considered from the newsroom's perspective. Romney's claim that Obama 
makes speeches "apologising" for America isn't readily amenable to 
fact-checking. Instead, Romney relied on what are sometimes called 
"weasel words", in which an allegation is alluded to, without being made 
head-on. (Romney, for instance, never quotes any of the president's 
speeches when making this assertion.) For Brisbane, the open question 
was whether a hard news reporter should be calling out those kinds of 
statements, or should simply quote the source accurately.

This is what was so extraordinary about his original question: he is 
evidently so steeped in newsroom culture that he does not understand -- 
literally, does not understand, as we know from his subsequent 
clarifications -- that this is not a hard question at all, considered 
from the /readers'/ perspective. Readers do not care about the 
epistemological differences between lies and weasel words; we want 
newspapers <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newspapers> to limit the 
ability of politicians to make dubious assertions without penalty. 
Judging from the reactions to his post, most of us never understood that 
this /wasn't/ the newspapers' self-conceived mission in the first place.

If the Times were to commit itself to challenging deliberately vague 
political language, it would have to express skepticism about some huge 
percentage of utterances made by public figures. Newspapers, at least in 
their US configuration, are simply not in the business of broadcasting 
skepticism about mainstream political speech.

This is partly because centrist publications enjoy more uniform access 
to politicians than partisan ones (even if the partisanship is simply an 
intolerance for hogwash). It's also because treating readers as 
political participants rather than spectators would be frowned on by 
advertisers, for whom the relative neutrality of the mainstream press is 
a prized part of that platform's value.

The immediate fallout from Brisbane's question will be minor -- no paper 
in the United States <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa>, not even the 
Times (as its editor partially concedes 
<http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/update-to-my-previous-post-on-truth-vigilantes/>), 
has enough staff to express continuous skepticism about political speech 
-- but there may yet be a lasting effect to be reckoned with. Having 
asked, in a completely innocent way, whether the Times should behave 
like an advocate for the readers, rather than a stenographer to 
politicians, the question cannot now be unasked. Every day in which the 
Times (and indeed, most US papers) fail at what has clearly surfaced as 
their readers' preference on the matter will be a day in which that gap 
remains uncomfortably visible.

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