Chris Satullo, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and subject of this post, graciously responded to my criticism of his op-ed, even though I called him “pompous” and said his op-ed “reeks of arrogant, elitist, condescending denial.” He’s classy.
I got up on Saturday morning surprised to see it, and I’m glad he came on my blog to defend himself. The following comment was posted on Saturday, October 2, and 1:10:45 am EST:
Wow. This thread has gotten away a bit from the original post critiquing me, but I hope you won’t mind if mildly defend myself.I think if you read my whole piece you’ll see a) that i wasn’t equating all bloggers with the “orwellians.” Far from it. I’m talking about people, most of them political operatives from the left and right, whom i deal with daily and whose goal in crying “Bias” is just to muzzle all criticism of their side, and; b) I would never claim journalists don’t commit sins of bias. Good Lord. I said explicitly that they screw up and provide plenty of ammunition to critics. In fact, I agree that the notion of “objectivity” is a false goal, because unattainable. Everyone is biased. The point in journalism is to have enough loyalty to a set of principles — fairness, thoroughness, accuracy (plus enough internal checks in your organization) — so that you can scour bias from your work as much as humanly possible.
There was a line I cut from the column for space (still a problem when you’re working ink on paper) that I wish I hadn’t, seeing how I left myself open to certain critiques. This was it: “Too many journalists content themselves with a false syllogism: Journalists should be objective; I am a journalist; therefore I am objective.”
That reasoning is of course absurd. The only way to do the job is to be vividly aware of your preconceptions and prejudices, so you can be on the alert for them distorting your work. If you’re smugly clueless that you’re biased, you will screw up.
Call me a fogey, but I still think it’s worthwhile to have some people around whose first allegiance is to those stuffy principles of journalism, instead of having everybody operate on: My team is always right. My team must always win.
Re: the Paris Hilton crack that annoyed some. I’m guessing a lot of people who blast the MSM as a unified entity don’t realize something: most print journalists consider most TV newspeople to be as annoying as you find them to be. we view them as shallow faux journalists. (We have our own flaws, but I’d argue we have a much greater residual allegiance to seriousness and depth) I no more want to be lumped in with Dan Rather than you’d want me to pretend to be spokesman for the blogosophere.
Finally, “make public life go well.” That’s an allusion to the basic creed of civic journalism, which some of you might not be familiar with. The idea is not that journalists know what the best result is; it’s that democracy works best when issues get aired, real dialogue happens and ordinary people aren’t shut out of the deal by elites. It’s actually a commitment not to let arrogant elites have all the fun, and a belief that journalists can help good dialogue to occur. so any card-carrying civic journalist is going to celebrate the blogosphere. Sorry to have rambled. Too much caffeine.
Update (10/5): More on Christ Satullo from PressThink.
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Way, way cool. I like it, big time.
Chris, thank you for coming on and having your say and La Shawn thank you for airing it in a post so it would not get buried.
I have always believed that what is key is being up front about your prejudices and biases to your readers. Then everyone knows the playing field. I have always considered that then what you write between the first and last words should be honest, well researched, and have a fair devil’s advocate component that explores the holes in your own thinking (when opinions are expressed).
It is so easy to slip things in though. Last night, while watching “Cold Case” there was a character who had been a junky but cleaned himself up and joined the National Guard. The policeman interviewing him said soemthing along the lines of, “You got yourself clean and are doing a stint in the Guard. With a start like that you could become President.” In print, that line could be neutral and left to the reader to interpret. In the mouth of the actor it was snide semi-putdown.
For me, too many journalists are like actors who interject that snideness into the neutral possibility so that the statement might be, “You got yourself clean and are doing a stint in the Guard. With a start like that even a lowlife junkie could become President.”
That is why I have such a big problem with a lot of TV news. Dan Rather, for example, literally drips sarcasm even when reading innocuous neutral material. If you were reading the transcript you would say there is nothing wrong with that, but watching the broadcast the additional component adds a profound level of bias.
Chris Satullo, I salute you. Thank you for taking the time to clarify your points, and for doing so with dignity and class. That in and of itself shows that you’re walking the walk that you wrote about (here and originally).
And I salute you too, La Shawn, for sharing this with us. Props and what-whats to you!
I find Satullo’s defense of ‘the Paris Hilton crack’ annoying. As an editor, he should recognize – at least upon reflection – that it makes no logical sense whatsoever.
Dan Rather has been a prominent TV journalist for four decades. It is hard to think of anyone more de facto representative of MSM than Dan Rather, whether Mr Satullo wants to be ‘lumped in’ with him or not. And Paris Hilton has never been a farm girl.
The analogy irritates because it is, frankly, idiotic.
I’m still mad at him for writing nasty things about “some” bloggers. What does he think of Daily Kos, who wrote of the American contractors that were burned alive in Iraq… “s**** them”. Orwellian or no? On a different note, I wonder how print journalists felt about pamphleteers back in the day.
Hmmm. Maybe if Satullo was on the ed board, I’d start buying the Inky again…
The public has been complaining about bias in the media for years. The last few years, journalists started telling us that no one can be objective since we all have our biases so they strive to be fair. Well, as far as I am concerned they lost the argument so they changed the terminology. I remember watching David Brinkley and I could never tell what his politics were (although I read he was a liberal) when he was talking. That’s what I want them to strive for, not “fairness” which they choose to define. When you read or listen to a journalist and can tell where he stands in politics, he has lost every argument whether is fairness or objectivity.
Sue,
)
I can go for that. I could also deal with open bias. Make it clear you are partisan, one way or the other, so that we, the public know what filters we need to use when evaluating the report.
One good point Satullo made (though it is by no means new) is that many journalists make the logical error in thinking that they are by definition fair. Like one of the other posters mentioned last week, about his athiest reporter friend who thought that being an athiest made him unbiased regarding religion.
I think a truly unbiased person with regards to religion is even more rare than the politically unbiased (most people who truly have no bias in these areas can chalk it up to ignorance rather than enlightenment
Whatever…it all sounds like doubletalk to me. The bottomline is the media now has a much needed check and balance and they’re having a hard time digesting this democratic sandwich.
Sue and Jim,
I think you have condensed the problem nicely. I hope more journalist are listing…uh, reading. I think they are.
I believe it was SCSIwuzzy that said on another La Shawn post: “Just report the facts, not the truth”.
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