Why we will no longer endorse in elections
The Chicago Sun-Times:
What we will not do is endorse candidates. We have come to doubt the value of candidate endorsements by this newspaper or any newspaper, especially in a day when a multitude of information sources allow even a casual voter to be better informed than ever before.
Additionally, senior management of the newspaper will be prohibited from making financial contributions to political campaigns — the same rules journalists are required to follow.
I’m waiting for more newspapers to follow in the Sun-Times’ footsteps.
Last week, the New York Times asked a question that I found to be absurd:
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
Yes, and always. It is the job of journalists to research the claims that their interviewees make, and report on the facts.
The problem is that, in an effort to appear unbiased, many news sources simply report what both sides say without doing any fact-checking.
A local politician claims the world is flat, but one scientist disagrees. Who’s right? We report; you decide. Tonight at 11.
The New York Times adds:
Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign debates, The Times has employed a separate fact-check sidebar to assess the validity of the candidates’ statements. Do you like this feature, or would you rather it be incorporated into regular reporting?
The problem with the “fact-check sidebar” is that it implies fact-checking is not real reporting, but analysis or opinion that must be kept out of the article to remain unbiased. Fact-checking someone and reporting that they are wrong is not bias. It is good journalism.
NPR’s On the Media covered this very topic in 2010, and here’s the quote that summarizes it all:
Ultimately, it’s the reporting that matters, reporting that is undistorted by attempts to appear objective, reporting that calls a lie a lie right after the lie, not in a box labeled “analysis,” reporting that doesn’t distort truth by treating unequal arguments equally.
Here’s Vanity Fair with the comic relief:
Just as New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane is concerned whether his newspaper is printing lies or the truth, we here at V.F. are looking for reader input on whether and when Vanity Fair should spell “words” correctly in the stories we publish.
One example: the word “maintenance” seems like it should only have one “a” in it. It should be “maintenence,” right? But it’s not. So is it our job as reporters and editors to spell it correctly?
The lack of curiosity from our local media is astonishing.
Several years ago, I was browsing the Eastern Corridor project website and came across the map above. It shows that the widening of OH-32 in Eastgate will require several businesses and homes to be demolished. As most of the businesses are chains like Starbucks, Blockbuster, Perkin’s, and Jimmy Buffet’s Cheeseburger in Paradise, I considered writing an Onion-style article to the effect of, Route 32 Widening To Destroy Eastgate Cultural Landmarks.
Now, The Enquirer has learned of the project by way of the closing of Cheeseburger in Paradise. They mention the restaurant “has closed its doors to make way for an ODOT highway project – a new westbound exit ramp for Ohio 32.” But not a drop of curiosity beyond that. (What is this highway project? Will other business have to close? What is the cost of this project?)
UrbanCincy published an article in January exposing what’s really going on: an $809 million extension of I-74 through Cincinnati’s eastern suburbs. Nine months later, the Enquirer has yet to make a peep about this.
Good reporting “calls a lie ‘a lie’ right after the lie, not in a box labeled ‘analysis.’”
Good reporting “doesn’t distort truth by treating unequal arguments equally.”
—Brooke Gladstone, NPR’s On the Media
