Posted by
Doctor Demex on Wednesday, January 17, 2007 6:16:23 PM
The following is a redacted transcript of an interview I conducted with a seasoned professional print journalist.
Doctor Demex: Thanks for your time. I want to ask you first why today's so-called journalists insist on covering every possible point of view no matter how unreasonable or obviously invalid the "opposing" view might be. It makes it difficult for readers to ascertain the truth from your stories.
Seasoned Professional Print Journalist: Well, you have to understand, whenever anyone says anything against his own interest, the statement is assumed to be true, because no one would do such a thing if it were not true. Accordingly, whenever someone makes a statement to the press, it must be assumed that he is choosing his words in a way to make himself look as good as possible.
D. D.: Are you saying that everyone is a liar?
S. P. P. J.: No, not exactly. Well, let me rephrase that. Yes, actually I am. At a certain level, telling an untruth is lying. Trying to pad one's resume is lying. Telling your side of the story might be lying. As a reporter it is my job to get to the truth, but if I cannot get to the truth, at least to write both sides of the story so that the reader can decide for himself what the truth is.
D. D.: Is that the way things should work, with each reader deciding for himself what the truth is? The truth is the truth, isn't it? Shouldn't you be trying to get at the real truth instead of promoting a million different distortions of the truth based on too much information whose veracity cannot be determined for sure?
S. P. P. J.: The truth is the truth? How quaint! Weren't you taught in school that everyone must find his own truth?
D. D.: No, not that some teachers didn't try. That approach never made any sense to me. If everyone operates according to his own truth and his own rules, civilization, not to mention reasonable personal interaction, become impossible.
S. P. P. J.: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you sound like a right-winger to me, trying to make everyone think the same way.
D. D.: That's a discussion for a different day, not to mention a patently insulting piece of disinformation. But before Watergate, the news media were skeptical of newsmakers, but not downright hostile. What happened?
S. P. P. J.: Well, we learned that everyone twists his story to serve himself. If the president of the United States did it, then everyone did it. To get to the truth, we have to supply some twist in the opposite direction to straighten things out. We do this in an objective way by finding a spokesman for the other side. You know, no matter what someone tells you the truth is, you can always find someone else who will say the opposite.
D. D.: It's your responsibility to sort it out.
S. P. P. J.: It might be. It even might have used to be. But really, it's not our responsibility to sort it out. How could we possible know? "We report. You decide." Isn't that what your favorite right-wing network says?
D. D.: It isn't my favorite network, necessarily. Something that is slightly less left-wing than you are is not necessarily right wing. That's a bit of a stretch isn't it?
S. P. P. J.: Well, yes and no. No, because I deny it, and yes, because I don't really care. If we cannot find an opposing voice, we'll apply our own opposite twist in the tone of the article. This is why we are criticized for being biased. But we're being biased toward the truth.
D. D.: Look, I have seen time and time again where someone will report a finding that is supported by all the available evidence and all the experts who know anything about it, but the media STILL must report a minority voice in dissent even if it's a lone voice and an unreasonable one at that.
S. P. P. J.: We have to report both sides of the story—
D. D.: Yes, but you make it look like opinion on the main assertion in the story is split right down the middle, 50/50, undermining the central truth of the story and making its information worse than worthless.
S. P. P. J.: What do you mean by "worse than worthless"?
D. D.: I mean worse than worthless, because you try to crease a false impression that something is controversial when it really isn't or that most people do not think a certain way when they actually do. You give equal time to a statistically insignificant minority without disclosing how insignificant the minority is. That doesn't reveal truth. That hides the truth.
S. P. P. J.: Just because a majority believes something doesn't make it true. By introducing that element of doubt into the story, people have to reevaluate their own thinking and make up their own minds about what's true or not.
D. D.: People don't wake up in the morning looking forward to reinventing the wheel every time they go to the bathroom, as though life were like a more horrible version of the film Groundhog Day.
S. P. P. J.: Well, it is what it is.
D. D.: What the heck does that mean? And besides, I see your publication writes stories that begin with assumptions that are completely wrong, but politically correct, like "Although a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, . . . ." What kind of responsible journalism is that?
S. P. P. J.: I wrote that story. It's responsible journalism because I feel strongly that people should support same-sex marriage, and if I state at the outset that most Americans support it, then I can do something to bring about the happy day when all the world's problems are solved.
D. D.: By same-sex marriage?
S. P. P. J.: By that, and other things, yes.
D. D.: I don't like you.
S. P. P. J.: I know.