An argument for fairness

The problems with the fracas at the Los Angeles TimeS

Harry Litman, source: his Substack

When longtime Los Angeles Times legal columnist Harry Litman quit the paper, furious at its owner for “cozying up” to Donald J. Trump by cancelling an endorsement of Kamala Harris, he raised one of the most troubling questions in political journalism today. Should news outlets scrap the idea of “balance” in their coverage?

“First, the idea of balance is fundamentally misplaced when on one side of the balance is a sociopathic liar like Donald Trump,” Litman wrote in a Substack. The paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, “apparently would have the Times deliver an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand presentation to readers. But there is no ‘other hand.’ Trump is an inveterate liar, and journalists have a defining responsibility to call that out.”

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Litman further attacked the longstanding journalistic credo of neutrality, something long called “objectivity.” Instead, he suggested that news outlets need to clearly take a side, seemingly both on their editorial and news pages. He was particularly irked about the shelving of a multi-part series, “The Case Against Trump,” that was slated to run (presumably on the news pages) as a companion to the spiked pro-Harris editorial.

“These are not normal times. Look around. We are in the political, cultural, and legal fight of our lifetimes. Trump’s conduct since winning the election only reinforces his determination to replace constitutional rule with some form of authoritarian rule,” Litman wrote. “So the neutral posture that Soon-Shiong uses to justify his violence to the paper is exactly, fundamentally wrong. This is no time for neutrality and disinterest. It’s rather a time for choosing. And a choice for true facts and American values is necessarily a vigorous choice against Donald Trump.”

Source: Lifewire

Litman’s impassioned argument is understandable, based in cold, hard facts and on claims by Trump himself about his intentions and his targets. The writer is also unquestionably correct about the incoming president’s long litany of lies, both in his first term and in the recent election. And Litman rightly observes that “people who voted for Trump were fed a relentless false account of issue after issue, including Trump’s signature distortions about immigrants (eating pets, committing a disproportionate number of violent crimes), which Fox News and right-wing social media parroted relentlessly.”

But his suggestions and solution, in the end, are wrong-headed and self-defeating. They not only call for violating longstanding journalistic ethics about fairness, but they would have exactly the opposite effect he seeks on the electorate – especially the 49.9 percent of American voters who backed Trump (by the latest Associated Press count, though the Atlas of U.S. Elections pegs Trump’s tally at 49.72 percent). They likely would drive such folks even further away from responsible media than they are now.

Litman is in effect arguing that the press must become full-throated participants in The Resistance, as the effort was called during Trump’s first term. But is that tack going to persuade anyone in the 49 percent? Or, rather, are they simply going to do more of what such folks have done for decades, which is to turn away from the press as hopelessly biased? Recall that just 11% of Republicans and only 58% of Democrats have a high degree of trust in the media, as reported in 2023.

Source: The New York Times

Followed to its logical conclusion, Litman’s argument would have the press shouting into a void, preaching only to the choir. Sure, unceasing hostile coverage would please anti-Trump readers, reassuring them about their legitimate fury at the man and the dangers he poses. But would it make any difference in the end with many alienated folks? Would it win over hearts and minds that need to be gained?

Ever since Trump appeared on the electoral scene, we have seen polarization widen in the media. On the one side, news and opinion coverage in responsible outfits such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, as well as CNN and MSNBC, has been relentlessly negative. On the other, fawning operations such as Fox News and Newsmax have trumpeted rightist misstatements and exaggerations, pandering flagrantly to Trump and his partisans (and gaining ground in the process).

And the election results, tragically, suggest that the anti-Trump reports in the media made no significant dent. No matter how many ugly, if accurate, headlines the critics produced about Trump’s lies and dangerous plans, his backers remained unmoved. Many likely never saw them.

At best, the outlets proved impotent beyond their loyal readerships. At worst – and this is the more dangerous thing for our democracy and for an informed public – they alienated potential readers and viewers with the ceaseless critiques, no matter how legitimate they were.

In short, The Resistance failed. And now, Litman’s call for an end to balance and neutrality would drive it further into the wilderness. Abandoning such principles would cost the media still more readers and viewers.

What’s more, his problematic solution – as shown by his action – is to quit. Three other editorial page members did so at the LA Times and some 2,000 readers did so, in effect, by cancelling their subscriptions. Rather than join the fray and battle it out with pro-Trump commentators (such as CNN right-winger Scott Jennings whom Soon-Shiong is hiring as he develops what he called “diverse perspectives”) Litman took his marbles and went home.

Just who does that help? Certainly, it may be satisfying to Litman. And, yes, he still can air his views in his Substack and even might find other outlets. But will remaining LA Times readers be served by his trenchant views not appearing any longer in the paper?

Source: Financial Times

In the end, the press needs to call out Trump’s lies. It needs to report fully and fairly on whatever dictatorial overreaches he attempts. It must report on the incompetents and ideologues he plans to lard his Cabinet with. It has to raise questions about the dubious judges he is likely to stock the courts with, right up to the highest court in the land.

Moreover, it will be obliged to report on the pernicious economic effects likely to arise from Trump’s tariffs. It will need to detail the human tragedies that his deportation plans will spawn. It must spell out whatever disasters arise from foreign policies, perhaps including the abandonment of Ukraine. Certainly, it has to cover the disregard for the law shown by his plans to pardon Jan. 6 insurgents.

All that demands coverage. But, at least in the news pages, that coverage should be free of the writers’s opinions. Sure, they should quote the many smart Trump critics, but they also must give voice to his credible defenders (hard as they may be to find). Put the authorial condemnations on the editorial pages, along with defenses. But leave the news pages to tell things straight.

My suggestion, for instance, for the LA Times series, “The Case Against Trump,” would have been a sister series, “The Case For Trump.” Admittedly, the latter would be harder to flesh out than the former, but some in a near majority of the electorate may have warmed to it (and perhaps would then have read the critical package, too).

Importantly, fairness differs from “bothsidesism.” It’s not a matter of he said/she said coverage that insists on equal numbers of inches for various sides. The first mission of the press is to seek out the truth, as best it can, and that doesn’t mean parroting “alternative facts.” When the president speaks falsely, as he surely will, that must be called out, for instance.

But, in the case of Trump, it means letting people in positions of trust for him air their views, even if others undercut them. It means trying to understand the fears and hopes of his supporters and reflecting them in the coverage, as well as pointing out likely shortcomings in solutions by Trump (will he really bring down the prices of groceries, for instance?)

In the end, I disagree with Litman’s approach, but I second his fact-based criticisms of Trump, a man all too easy to loathe and fear. But I also am mindful of the need for fairness in journalism.

Source: William McKeen

That fairness ideal is fragile, relatively new and almost uniquely American.

As I wrote in an academic paper some years ago, it wasn’t until after World War I that a devotion to what was then called objectivity took hold in the U.S. In 1923, the American Society of Newspaper Editors adopted the Canons of Journalism, mandating that “news reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind.” The American Newspaper Guild, the journalists’ union, in 1934 adopted a code of ethics that called for accurate and unbiased reporting, guided “only by fact and fairness.” And by the end of World War II, objectivity was “universally acknowledged to be the spine of the journalist’s moral code,” according to academics Michael S. Schudson and Susan E. Tifft.

Yes, “objectivity” has long since been discredited, since no one is truly objective. The very questions journalists raise and their choices of what constitutes news are subjective matters. Their approaches arise from their backgrounds, their educations and their biases.

But fairness as an ideal endures. It’s a value that my former editor at BusinessWeek, Steve Shepard, insisted on, even as we undertook viewpoint-oriented magazine journalism. It’s possible both to have little use for Soon-Shiong’s financially self-interested actions at the LA Times and to uphold the ideal of fairness and balance in coverage.

Indeed, if journalists don’t do that, the levels of trust in media will surely plunge still further.

As our major political institutions seem compromised by Trumpism, and at a time when the risks that Trump’s presidency poses for our democracy are all too real, the press is a guardrail we can’t afford to lose. And that’s why the press can’t afford to keep losing its audience.

Litman calls balance a “bromide.” Isn’t it, instead, a pillar that should not be undercut, whether by Trump or those opposed to him? Should we, in effect, help a potential tyrant by abandoning cherished journalistic ideals?

Spitzer, News of the World and The Tree of Life

I just saw the Terrence Malick opus “The Tree of Life,” the 139-minute meditation on God, evil, love, death, evolution and a tortured upbringing in the 1950s. No date movie this, but it certainly gives a viewer something to chew on. Kind of like “2001” meets a dark, dark version of the Hardy Boys. It does have a ring of truth to it, despite its grand self-importance and distinct lack of humor.

The peculiar thing is it puts me in mind of two unsettling developments in the news business this week, the cancellation of Eliot Spitzer’s effort at redemption, “In The Arena,” and the shutdown of the News of the World. The connection may seem remote – chalk and cheese — but bear with me, dear reader.

First off, both these deaths of journalistic enterprises were sad but perhaps inevitable, much like the death at the center of the movie. The movie revolves around the loss, at 19, of a young man whose problem seems to be his innocence, sensitivity and talent in a life that values such things too little. The boy’s passing was crucial to explore the movie’s central tension – the question of whether life is about grace and wonder or torment and struggle. Are we all doomed to life as a matter of “nature red in tooth and claw” or is there a divine force that brings love and justice to the chaos?

To bring this idea round to the end of the Spitzer program and the British tabloid, the question is, were these journalistic deaths just? Further, what do they say about the nature of the world of journalism today? What do they say about the torments and struggles of individuals and enterprises? And what do they say about the evolution of our media?

In Spitzer’s case, the cancellation at base was a matter of ratings and viewership. The show was just pulling too small of a viewership for CNN, which is struggling to compete with the ideologically driven appeal of Fox News, as well as the glut of “content” that afflicts all media in the Internet age. On one level, the show’s fall is yet another example of the evolution of journalism, with the inevitable deaths of outmoded approaches this brings.

A guy sitting at desk commenting on the news of the day, with interviews – especially of other CNN pundits – just doesn’t cut it these days. Viewers need more or they’ll turn away and troll for news and information on the Net or elsewhere on the tube. This is part of the reason that conventional TV news is struggling. Such is true also of print news operations.

But Spitzer’s fall was more than that. Spitzer is a tragic figure, someone every bit as tormented and driven as the character Brad Pitt plays in “The Tree of Life.” The Pitt figure longs to be a musician but instead is a would-be entrepreneur stuck in a deadend factory executive role. He’s tortured and in turn torments those around him, including his wife and sons, as he wrestles with a life where he sees only deception and money as the driving forces. He’s cold and distant, an angry and intense figure, a sad archetype of a certain kind of 1950s father.

Spitzer, it seems to me, is every bit as cold, and someone constantly at war with inner demons. By some accounts, during his tenure as Attorney General in New York he bullied defendants, especially corporate executives. He beat them into submission, often by going outside the rules of the courtroom. He likewise brought an intensity to “In The Arena” that reflected no humor, no grace, only a penetrating and cold intellect. He’s a smart guy and a relentless questioner, but every night was a painful struggle with issues of political venality and ideology.

How much of that can an audience take? It proved too much for most viewers, it would seem. Indeed, “The Tree of Life,” with its relentless intensity, is likewise too much at times. It has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

More than that, Spitzer lacked something indispensable to journalism. He had no innocence, something crucial in a news person. He carried far too much baggage as a disgraced former governor whose dalliances with prostitutes may never be forgotten. His demons made him fascinating in a way, as one could imagine the torment that underlay his aggressive questioning of guests. But it ultimately distracted from the core mission of a journalist – to be a reporter or analyst of the news, not a center of attention oneself but rather someone focusing the limelight.

Spitzer, much like the Brad Pitt character, is akin to a figure in classic Greek tragedy. Spitzer was done in by his own grand flaws in the end. He rose to great heights only to fall, twice. The Pitt character is more the tortured victim of outside forces, but his personal flaws figure into his failed home life.

Tragedy is too grand a word, however, for the News of the World case. Certainly it is discomfiting for the people tossed out of work there. And it’s a disappointment, perhaps, for the hundreds of thousands who bought the paper each week, however trashy it was. The world will be poorer, perhaps, for the silencing of yet another once-powerful journalistic voice. But by most accounts the paper was garbage. Its voice was shrill and vengeful and no exemplar of quality in the field. The loss is hardly worth grieving over.

It may be that News of the World demonstrates that there can be justice in the world. It was killed for its journalistic sins, its inability to draw lines about what newsgathering approaches are appropriate and what are not. Paying off cops and hacking into phone mail, as alleged of the paper, is just not right. Fleet Street in general should learn from this sorry case and one hopes that Rupert Murdoch’s commitment to quality papers, such as The Times, Sunday Times and The Wall Street Journal, will only be deepened by this. Maybe it could even make Fox News less shrill.

Sometimes, deaths are appropriate. That was not true in “The Tree of Life.” It may be so for “In The Arena” and the News of the World, sorry cases whose passing will help journalism evolve.