Journalism Without Judgment Is a Cop-Out
Screenshot of Edward R. Murrow, who knew a journalist must be more than a stenographer. (Wikimedia Commons)
Author: Leonard Pitts
“Five minutes for Hitler, five minutes for the Jews.”
That, according to legend — and a Facebook page for alumni of The Miami Herald — was the routine response of an ’80s-era editor whenever some hapless reporter was working overly hard to bring “balance” to a story where none should exist; where the moral high ground was clearly held by one side or the other.
I don’t know who the editor was, but that riposte brims with a wisdom sorely lacking in modern news media, obsessed as they are with the fallacy of journalism without judgment.
Take as Exhibit A: Gerard Baker, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal. In a Sunday interview with NBC journalist Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press,” he explained why his paper declines to label Donald Trump’s manifold falsehoods as lies.
” ‘Lie,’ ” he said, “implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead.”
It is better, he argued, to report a given Trump claim, juxtapose it with the facts and let the audience make up its own mind. Otherwise, he said, “you run the risk that you look like you are … not being objective.”
Besides, he added, Hillary Clinton also spoke some untruths, but media were not so quick to label her a liar.
Of course, the plain fact is Trump is a liar — and a fantastically prodigious one at that. Baker’s preferred method of handling this would be like reporting on each individual drop of water that falls, but never mentioning the storm.
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