[Mb-civic] OUTSIDE THE TENT The Times' 'Blazing Straddle

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-tent30jan30.story
OUTSIDE THE TENT
The Times' 'Blazing Straddle'
By Marc Cooper
Marc Cooper is a contributing editor to The Nation, a columnist for L.A.
Weekly and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism at
the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

January 30, 2005

An experimental column in which the Los Angeles Times invites outside
critics to stomp vigorously upon a Los Angeles newspaper that willfully puts
cartoons on the front page of its Opinion section.

*

In the weeks leading up to today's election in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times
has distinguished itself for its breadth and depth of coverage. The
correspondents on the ground have shown admirable personal courage and
professional tenacity in doggedly reporting one of the most dangerous and
important stories of our time.

Wouldn't it be nice, then, if The Times completely unleashed these fine
reporters and allowed them to tell us ‹ during the crucial period ahead ‹
exactly what they are and are not seeing? And even more important, what
they're thinking? All of it written in the first person from ground level?

That's not to impugn what has been reported to date. But that reporting,
like nearly all reporting in The Times, has been run through the usual sort
of editorial food processor that guarantees the prevailing standard of
"fair, balanced, objective stories." You know the routine: he said/she said;
yes/but; the so-called blazing straddle of "objectivity."

As thorough as The Times' reporting has been, it often reads as if written
by acrobats in pain ‹ skilled professionals twisting themselves and their
copy into knots as they strain to "balance" what they are actually seeing
with the sometimes fantasy-based spin of both Iraqi and U.S. officialdom.

We need go no further than an otherwise compelling Times report out of
Baghdad a few weeks ago. It began with the assertion that although the
election process was, indeed, going ahead, its "planners" still faced what
were called "the nuts and bolts of holding a credible vote." Insurgents
gunning down election workers and candidates, the latter campaigning only
clandestinely, the polling stations still a secret, car bombs killing dozens
a week ‹ these are mere nuts and bolts? Maybe to the U.S. Embassy ‹ but for
the rest of us? Puh-leeze.

The Times, in an unsigned editorial a few days ago, spoke much more
forthrightly of the same surreal circumstances surrounding this election,
saying it could all prove to be a "disappointing farce" that could
eventually "fuel a civil war."

In other words, in accord with the odd strictures of American journalism,
Times editorial writers, sitting in offices thousands of miles away from
Baghdad, are permitted to directly tell us the unvarnished truth ‹ at least
as they see it ‹ but the front-line reporters risking their lives still have
to balance their reports with what is often little more than official
propaganda. How'd we get in that fix?

Somewhere along the line, American newspapers jumbled and polluted the
concept of being objective. Objectivity, maybe better called truth-telling,
should be the cherished goal of all reporters and editors. But objectivity
is a process, not a final product. Objective reporters must make a
good-faith effort to call 'em as they see 'em, offering firm evidence for
what they assert. Objectivity should not, however, be an end product, a
formulaic, filed-off article whose fundamental truths are watered down and
often distorted with an artificial balance of nontruths.

The latter is what New York University media critic Jay Rosen calls "the
contraption" of American newspaper journalism ‹ a decidedly obsolete device
that warrants the trash bin. The expectations, tastes and desires of the
mass media audience are rapidly shifting under the feet of American
newspapers, and The Times, along with other major dailies, must urgently
accommodate this change. One way to start is to respect the ability of the
readers to judge for themselves what to conclude and no longer spoon-feed
them the bland, precooked and predigested "balanced" vocabulary of
newspaperese.

Among the many Times dispatches from Iraq this past month, there was one
tasty first-person report that boldly stood out from the lot. Detailing the
frustration of her colleagues, the Times reporter wrote vividly of the
"short leash" they find themselves on, unable to travel almost anywhere in
Iraq without being transported by one set of belligerents in the war (i.e.,
the U.S. and British embassies). Just to get a standard briefing, reporters
are obliged to spend hours in an armored and impenetrable bubble as
helicopter gunships ferry them across the country. It was a wonderful,
unvarnished piece, free of equivocation, never pretending to give "both
sides" but ably conveying a convincing picture of the enormous obstacles in
reporting just about anything out of today's Iraq. What a refreshing read.

The Times should have the courage to run more of these first-person pieces
full of personal observation, analysis and interpretation from a staff of
reporters more than able to provide them. I suspect the resulting product
would be contradictory ‹ different reporters seeing different realities. So
what?

Believe it or not, readers are more than smart enough to figure out who and
what to trust or not trust. Anyway, there is no single objective truth about
anything. And the more The Times at least implicitly continues to argue
there is, the less confidence, the less investment, an increasingly
media-savvy readership will have in the product.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives.
TMS Reprints
Article licensing and reprint options



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times