This is hardly new to American journalism; the abject weakness of "he said, she said" objectivity has been well known at least since Sen. Joseph McCarthy's reign of anti-communist terror in the 1950s. Then a know-nothing press abetted the Wisconsin bully by printing his accusations about "card-carrying communists" without checking the facts behind his charges. Instead reporters merely ran the accused's denials, allowing McCarthy to ruin lives on the basis of innuendo and falsehood.
Is that the kind of journalism Mr. Brisbane admires? I can't imagine. There's a vast middle ground between reporters promoting their personal views in news and reporters acting as empty ciphers of information.
No, reporters are not supposed to share their personal views. But they also are not supposed to leave it to the public to figure out what's true and what's false.
Surely, the public editor of The New York Times doesn't need my lecture to realize this. But why then is he skirting close to an advocacy of "know-nothing journalism" in his column?
I do take heart in the robust response of his readers. Media blogger Jim Romenesko catalogued some of it and linked to reaction on Twitter that was lively and harsh:
"When did truth-telling and fact-checking become novel ideas?" tweeted "blogdiva" Liza Sabater. "This is your job."
Tweeted Glenn Greenwald, "This post from NYT Public Editor should be put on the wall of a museum to explain contemporary US journalism."
And "Calvin," whose Twitter handle is "aurosan," wrote, "Is the NYTimes kidding? Are they really asking people if they should act like journalists or not. What a disaster."
Even after the fact, Brisbane, in a response to Romenesko, seemed flummoxed. He wrote:
What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut dubious facts in the body of the stories they are writing. I was hoping for diverse and even nuanced responses to what I think is a difficult question.
Really? What's so difficult about the concept of context? Without it -- without measuring statement against background and fact -- the news is little more than a rolling firing range. For that, we only need a megaphone, not paid journalists.
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