Becoming Somebody

I have a tendency to overlook stories covered in the mainstream media that I think are too silly or that have obvious answers unworthy of serious discussion. I do this to a fault, and often find myself out of touch with the concerns of the majority. I’m used to being out of touch in my personal life — it’s part of my charm, some would say. But to the extent that I am an active participant in the public discourse, I am damaged each time I blow off a topic I find trite or personally unappealing.

I fell victim to my own intellectual snobbery once again last week when, in the lead-up to the primaries in and around D.C., the question of whether or not journalists should vote became an issue of great debate. I saw some headlines around the web linking to editorials and blogs giving their opinions on the matter, but I thought it was pretty dumb and that most journalists would never withhold a vote for some conjured sense of ethical duty. I also thought most people would assume that journalists vote and not care. I was wrong on all fronts, however, a fact I learned courtesy of a blog post by Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post.

Cillizza’s post discusses the stances taken and written about by three high-profile staffers at The Politico — John Harris, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, all former Post employees at one time or another. In summary, Harris says journalists should vote, that their personal political opinions are unrelated to their abilities to cover issues fairly; VandeHei is a bit more conservative, believing journalists are free to vote in elections they do not cover (local or school board elections, in the case of Politico) but should refrain from taking part in those they do; Allen, positioning himself as a true bastion of media integrity, reasons that journalists “owe it to the people [they] cover, and to [their] readers, to remain agnostic about elections, even in private,” because they cannot neutrally cover an event if their hearts and minds are not themselves neutral.

Expanding on Allen’s view, Cillizza, a non-voter, writes:

[O]bjectivity in covering these races means that you stay objective before, during and after the contests.

As, or perhaps more, importantly, however, is the obsession among some people to sniff out a reporter’s “secret” political leanings. Time and time again, I find people commenting on this blog and elsewhere accusing me of having a pro-Clinton or pro-Obama or pro-McCain or pro-someone else viewpoint. I know in my heart of hearts that I don’t have any of those biased viewpoints, but if I did vote — even in a local or county election — it would add fuel to the fire of those folks who think I am a secret partisan.

I think these views and their rationales cover all sides of the debate, so kudos to Politico and Cillizza for providing a well-rounded, and thus unbiased, perspective. Journalism professors the world over would be proud.

As is my wont, however, I will now make journalism professors cringe. First, I want to throw out VandeHei’s argument because it is little more than a coward’s way out. Saying journalists should only vote in elections they are not covering is simply a non-confrontational way of saying they shouldn’t vote at all. The issue doesn’t concern elections not being covered. It concerns those that are. So I call shenanigans on VandeHei and ask, respectfully, that he grow a spine before subjecting the populace to further commentary.

That leaves us with two schools of thought: Yes or No. Harris or Allen. Normally, I’m hesitant to accept a question as a yes-or-no proposition, but this one seems pretty straightforward to me. There is no real gray area to worry about, a rare occurrence in an overly complex world. I think we should all relish these moments of simplicity.

Perhaps I’m too young and irreverent to bow to professional tenets — perhaps I studied too diligently at the knee of Hunter Thompson — but I think it is absurd to suggest, like Allen and Cillizza, that the true duty of a journalist is to be in his or her heart neutral in matters as deeply personal as politics. Ones political leanings speak to the ways in which he or she views the world. A person does not cease to feel the moment he graduates with a degree in communications. The idea that any journalist — or any human being for that matter — can be without an opinion on something he is so involved in is as ludicrous as the idea that babies are carried to Earth by storks or that a fat man in crushed red velvet delivers toys to all the world’s children in less than twelve hours every X-mas Eve night. It’s one thing for parents to condescend to their children; it is quite another for journalists to do the same to their readers.

The entire concept of media objectivity is a lie and a fantasy that has been advanced by arrogant elitists trying to protect the tender innocence of the masses. But it has protected nothing and has, instead, led to a degradation of the trust needed between the citizenry and the Fourth Estate to hold those in power accountable for their actions. It is simply impossible for opinions to stay safely in the background. Yet, by refusing to openly admit that bias exists and figuring out a practical way to deal with it, the media treats the public like a kindergarten class incapable of parsing information and drawing their own conclusions. What we’ve been left with, as a result, is a corporate media that pushes its own interests and sanitizes news, all the while operating under the transparent guise of neutrality. But everyone sees through the so-called neutrality, so no one trusts it.

Neutrality is a product of either ignorance, cowardice, or laziness. Journalists are steeped in the issues they cover, so they are rarely ignorant to the nuances of a debate. Therefore, those who are truly neutral are either too craven or too indolent to get to the real heart of an issue. For instance, in the build-up to the Iraq War, the media did the world a grave disservice by not asking enough questions and taking the Bush administration to task on all their lies and fear mongering. I truly believe the majority of reporters were either too afraid to challenge popular sentiment or too lazy to dig and uncover the truth. Rather than being chastised for this failure of duty, though, journalists hid safely behind the veil of neutrality. To pose a challenge is to appear biased. Better to adhere to the journalist’s version of Newton’s Law: for every idea presented, there must be an equal and opposite idea presented no more than two grafs below.

The real duty of a journalist, I would like to remind Cillizza and Allen, is to be fair, not neutral. Sometimes being fair means calling a spade a spade and not pretending the truth is an unbiased, diverse presentation of facts. The truth has an opinion. The truth takes a side. By doing neither and pretending to be above it all, journalists seem like dodgy intellectuals who are more concerned with protecting their interests than in serving the public.

Being fair also means putting aside any prejudices that get in the way of the truth. This is something mature, intelligent people should be able to do without much effort. If a candidate I support, for instance, is lying about a particular position, I am able to interpret the facts and draw a conclusion independent of my allegiance. I am also sensible and secure enough to make those findings public. Whether or not I vote has no impact on my ability to realize or express the truth. If someone finds it difficult to admit being wrong, or to believe that someone they like might have done something dishonest or criminal, then that is an indictment on his or her character. The entire pool of journalists should not be held to the lowest possible standard.

To the honest journalists afraid that critics will inspect their voting records and claim a biased viewpoint, thus eroding their credibility, I say grow up. Give people some credit. Most observers can see through partisan critiques. They understand that a person can have an opinion yet, as Harris notes, still exercise “self-discipline in the public expression of those opinions so as not to give sources and readers cause to question someone’s commitment to fairness.”

Being a journalist means putting yourself out there to be critiqued by those with something to gain from silencing the stories you tell. It takes conviction and, at times, bravery. When it is done well, that is. Any two-bit hack can go out and make a list of pros and cons. A journalist tells the story and the truth that comes with it, regardless of whether that truth falls in line with his or her personal views, consequences be damned. If every stiff with a tape recorder lived by that credo, and spent less time worrying about neutrality, we would all be much better off. And, most importantly, we’d hear the truth a lot more often than we do now. So vote on, young journalists. Take a stand for once and give the rest of us a little credit.

Tags: media ethics, voting

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.