Interesting Washington Post article on their pre-war coverage of U.S. assertions that Iraq had WMD. The article (free registration), by Post reporter Howard Kurtz, acknowledges that the newspaper should have been more assertive in warning readers that …

To go back to the main point, though, I’ve always found it odd that objectivity became a focus. As I remember it from high school journalism class, the point of objectivity is to safeguard accuracy, that is, I need to make sure I’m not letting my biases distract me from what is actually happening. The problem of accuracy is far worse now than the problem of bias–the absurd events surrounding this supposed hoax beheading, where so-called reporters couldn’t be bothered to do a lexis/nexis search (much less a web search) on the name of the person involved, to me says that journalists have much more to worry about than political bias.

By that, I meant that a story should be laid out as it falls. If you have to dig too many layers for the other side of the story, then you run into the danger of creating a side that isn’t really there. If, for example, someone was covering a lecture by Jesse Jackson, or Jesse Helms, for that matter, and there were protesters outside, then go ahead and get some quotes. If they weren’t, then digging up opposition where there wasn’t enough to go to the trouble of showing up would actually be skewing the story.

Having said that, I have always felt that market forces were the answer to the question of objectivity. If there is a bias to one media source, people (being rather less stupid than many would assume) will look to another source that is biased in another direction, and keep doing so until they get enough information to draw a conclusion. Is it a perfect system for informing the public? No, but It seems to be about the best we can do.

What is annoying about the media and what has, in my view, caused its steady errosion in public respect has been its absurd assertion that its completely unbiased – when NPR leads its report about the long-term effects of 9/11 with a story about how a mosque has suffered a decline in donations, we can easily spot the bias and get enraged that NPR doesn’t just admit its left-wing bias and get on with the job of doing a really excellent job of reporting the news from a left of center perspective. If they’d drop their pretension to lack of bias, they’d get a lot more respect – and a lot more listeners (and, as a result, they’d have a greater effect on the public debate – and it flabbergasts me that they don’t see this).

You’d think that the major media would catch on about the blogosphere and Fox News and realise that if you want to have the most massively successful news organisation in history you’d desperately seek to staff your organisation with really good writers of all political shadings and let them have at it getting at the news – the friction of the reporters would generate excellence in writing, while the need to not look like a fool would actually mute the biases of the reporters (don’t want to be caught out writing a puff piece on a favored conservative pol who’s just about to be exposed as a crook by one of your liberal colleagues and vice versa, for instance); a properly run major news organisation would have seen both Dean and Kerry politically destroyed by early January, with the field then left to winnowed to those who really have something worthwhile to ad to the debate.

Its a shame, in a lot of ways, because it means that independents (ie, bloggers) have to pick up the slack – I’ll bet dollars to donuts that most people who hang about the web get more and more variety in their news than people who just watch TV news and/or read the morning paper. Hopefully some media types will start to figure this out (Fox is almost there to figuring it out).

I’ve long believed that objectivity in journalism is both impossible and a foolish goal. Honesty and transparency are the real keys to good reporting. If such things interest you, you may enjoy ]]> http://rhetorica.net/archives/2462.html/comment-page-1#comment-2480 Dean Esmay Sun, 08 Aug 2004 17:56:52 +0000 http://localhost/wpp3/?p=2462#comment-2480 Oops: <i>...which stories they consider important and which note...</i> Which stores they consider important and which <i>not</i>. Must. Use. Preview! Oops: