Connections: No Longer Fit to Print
Not only is the body politic askew as we head toward the presidential election in November, so, too, do the tenets of ethical journalism seem to have gone haywire.
The code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, which was updated about two years ago, has four straightforward principles: Seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent. I recommend the society’s website if you are interested in the reasoning behind each.
A few weeks ago, Liz Spayd, the new public editor of The New York Times, whose role is to reflect on readers’ reactions, addressed what she said was a popular perception that The Times is biased.
Why do “conservatives, and even many moderates, see in The Times a blue-state worldview?” she asked. She suggested that to dispel that view more attention was needed to where stories, editorials, and advertisements were placed; guilt by association was inevitable. She also referred to “the ranks of the newsroom’s urban progressives” and suggested “a better mix of values” might be in order.
We all recognize that Rupert Murdoch’s empire is a conservative stronghold. One would certainly argue that The Wall Street Journal is at least as biased (although in the other direction) as The New York Times and that Fox News and the New York Post actually glory in slanting the news.
I am a PBS “NewsHour” devotee, and its political coverage may or may not be as fair and unbiased as it claims. During the national conventions, however, I took some long looks at Fox News. (Besides, Bill O’Reilly has a house in Montauk, which makes him of interest as a local of sorts.) What I saw was indeed biased, but it was smart enough to almost seem straight.
Speaking of locals, when Dan Rattiner started his weekly Dan’s Papers decades ago, his basic principles veered away from the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics. Because truth is illusive, he told me at the time, his intention was to tell it like he saw it. By hindsight, he may have been ahead of his time.
Dan and I, however, came of age journalistically when print media ruled. Digital media apparently have made an adherence to the goal of objectivity in news reporting seem positively outmoded.
Online news media like Slate and Pro- Publica do serious investigative work, but they obviously have agendas. And today thousands upon thousands rely on social media for news, although I am not even sure it is fair to call what they read or see news.
According to a report early this year from the Pew Research Center, 66 percent of Facebook users and 59 percent of Twitter users get their news on those sites. We know Donald Trump has a tweeting habit; do his 140-character takes on everything and everyone make him a winner among the millions of that platform’s users? To be sure, strong voices, like Senator Elizabeth Warren’s, offer counter-tweets, but are any of their Twitter followers actually enlightened by this back-and-forth, or are they just further entrenched in their preconceived beliefs?
News consumers seem to relish taking sides, and to resist exposing themselves to differing opinions or dissents. Re-enforcing your own biases and stoking the intensity of your emotions around them is a lot easier than thinking about “on-the-one-hand . . . on-the-other-hand” journalism.