One hallmark of good reporting…
Here’s a must-read Q&A with award-winning New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald:
Q. You used the Marquette speech to comment on the ethical challenges of journalism. Can you elaborate?
A. One of the biggest problems that our profession faces is that we have trouble delineating between “facts” and “opinions” and “knowledge.” If you allow facts to be interpreted as knowledge, you may be completely wrong. You need a grounding in numerous disciplines for your article to be the closest representation of the truth that you can get.
Q. Have these practices contributed to any distrust of mainstream news organizations?
A. Absolutely. The biggest problem in American journalism is not bias. It’s not a matter of conservative or liberal. It’s laziness. Some go and collect a lot of quotes and put them together and never attempt to determine whose opinion is driven by fact and knowledge.
As I have said before, if you get a quote from Senator Numnutz and another from his antipode Senator Blowhard, your job is only half done. Reality is never as easy as a simple “both sides of the story” dichotomy. But now the good reporter must find out (something like) the truth. One does that by getting the facts and comparing the facts to what Numnutz and Blowhard said.
Comparing their statements to the facts does not constitute bias. It constitutes good reporting. Bad reporting is collecting quotes from “both sides” and leaving it for the reader to figure out. American journalism is full of bad reporting. Eichenwald calls it laziness, and it certainly is that. But it’s also caused by the deeply strange attitude so many journalists have about objectivity.
Eichenwald’s mention of facts and knowledge sound like Postman’s articulation of information theory. Here’s the Rhetorica canon on information theory:
Content and structure…
Whither knowledge?…
Too much information…
Too much information…
Making wise use of the internet…
