Who should decide what’s fit to publish?
Ructions in the US over opinion columns threaten the pillars of journalism, writes Bruce Kohn.
Social unrest and the divisional and confrontational nature of current American politics have provoked an introspective debate within the publishing industry that has pitted journalists against journalists, reporters against management, and threatens basic tenets of the craft.
Even the New York Times, long renowned for accurate, independent and insightful reports and commentaries, has not been immune from the internal anguish gripping newsrooms.
At the heart of the tensions is fierce debate over the essential pillar of independent reporting – presentation of the facts as the reporter sees it, be they good, bad or ugly – with decisions on publication left to the judgment of news editors and the editor. Readers are, under this tenet, free to make up their own minds on the merits of the item published.
Even the publication of opinion columns, printed under bylines with the writer’s position identified, are challenged by those on staff who either disagree with the opinions expressed or consider them to be out of line with the particular ideologies they hold.
Included among the news organisations caught up in this outbreak of division of judgment and assessment of what should or should not be printed are titles such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New Yorker and the Nation.
The NYT’s editorial page editor, James Bennet, resigned after he approved for publication an opinion article written by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, calling for a show of force to quell the protests that followed George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. The article was entitled ‘‘Send in the Troops’’. Staff critics of the decision to print the item protested that, by doing so, the NYT was placing black staff in danger.
Bennet’s successor issued a directive reportedly telling employees that anyone seeing ‘‘any piece of opinion journalism, headlines, social posts, photos – you name it – that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately’’.
An investigative reporter, Lee Fang, of The Intercept publication, tweeted after reporting an interview with an African-American man who described having two cousins murdered in California: ‘‘I always question why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it? Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it is going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life it might not even be spoken about. It’s stuff like that that I just want in the mix’’.
The upshot: a co-worker protested – ‘‘Tired of being made to deal continually with my co-worker, Fang, continuing to push back on black crime narratives after being asked not to. This is not about me and him, it’s about institutional racism and using free speech to couch anti-blackness.’’ Fang was asked to make a public apology for ‘‘insensitivity to the lived experience of others’’ and reportedly told that his continued employment was contingent upon avoiding comments that may upset colleagues.
Testing the boundaries in media coverage is not new to the US. Perhaps significantly, the last major transformation of its print media occurred in the 1970s, after the Watergate scandal.
Civil rights, diversity in newsrooms and gender equality were all to the fore. Led by the Washington Post and the NYT, investigative reporting teams were established. Pages were opened wider to opinion columns. Interpretive analysis became a feature.
That there will always be tensions between advocacy and objectivity is expected. Editors and news editors hold responsibility for truth and accuracy, fairness and an open approach to news coverage.
Decisions to hold back on publication of a straight and factual news item because it does not fit with the sensitivities of members of the reporting staff introduces a whole new ball game. The thoughts of former Dominion deputy editor Frank Haden on such a possibility would not be suitable for publication in a family newspaper.