Editor whines about defenses against media

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Sept 20 

RE: Good Stories need balance and background

Spectator editor Paul Berton complained in his weekly piece on Saturday of the defenses now mounted against media investigations, saying media is only trying to present a balanced picture and understanding of the background of the story.  For brevity, I made no mention of Ben Rhodes's comment that today's journalists are 27 year old know nothings who were fooled, for example, about Obama's Iran deal by setting up a media "echo chamber."  And forget about fake news altogether.

This opinion piece is loaded with irony.  It contains the understanding that today’s journalism is more than mere reporting, it is about shaping of opinion.  While the article explains how opinion shaping can be avoided, it also reveals how it can be done.

Take balance.  There is nothing in the idea of ‘facts’ that entails balance.  The facts are what they are.  Balance arises out of the idea of editorial slant, that is, the manner in which facts are presented and/or withheld so as to encourage the reader to adopt a certain opinion.  Balance is ostensibly an effort to combat that tendency, or at least to provide the publisher with deniability that the story was indeed intended to shape opinion.  The trouble with balance is what is being balanced.  What is the balance between good and evil?  If a story reports on human rights violations perpetrated by China on its Uighur minority, is the story balanced by obtaining from the Chinese Ambassador a categorical denial of all the facts alleged?  Balance is not a virtue in reporting.

Media have become tedious and predictable.  Organizations now defend themselves against misrepresentation in media by having media relations departments, to which reporters are referred.  This may be unsatisfactory, but journalism did this to itself - it’s always looking for ‘a story’ and embarrassment and conflict always make for a better story.

What went unmentioned was the idea of narrative.  A narrative is a larger story, and news articles are contrived to support the narrative.  Trump-Russia collusion was one such narrative, and earned the New York Times a Pulitzer Prize, even though it was completely false and without a shred of evidence.  The narrative is standard practice in today’s journalism, and narrative goes beyond balance and background, the latter being subordinated to the narrative.  Narrative is at the heart of editorial selection, of deciding what to publish and especially not to publish.

The airing of problems that modern journalism has in presenting good stories is full of irony, since many of the problems arise from reactions to past journalistic practices.

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