Stick to the facts, reporters
Right on the front page of The Denver Post Wednesday, you could read about Donald Trump’s proposal to prohibit Muslims from entering the country, which “marked a sudden and sizable escalation … in the inflammatory and sometimes dangerous rhetoric of the candidate.”
The article went on to compare Trump’s rhetoric to “the racially based appeals of thenAlabama Gov. George Wallace,” and “the anti-Semitic diatribes of the radio preacher Charles Coughlin.”
Remember, this wasn’t on the op-ed page where it should have been; it was on the front page of the paper. And those phrases weren’t quotes from Trump’s widening class of critics; they came from Dan Balz, the chief correspondent for The Washington Post, where the story originally had been published.
Mind you, The Denver Post labeled it “analysis,” but given that Balz is a reporter, not a commentator, the point might be lost on a lot of Page 1 readers.
That same day, NBC Nightly News ended its broadcast with a story about Trump’s proposal, which anchorman Lester Holt introduced this way: “History is replete with examples of what happens when fear and intolerance take hold and an entire category of people is marginalized, as Tom Brokaw remembers.” Then, former anchor Brokaw said, “Trump’s statement, even in a season of extremes, is a dangerous proposal that overrides history, the law, and the foundation of America itself.”
Sadly, you’ll find this kind of thing almost everywhere. This past week in The New York Times, reporters referred to Trump’s “divisive phrases” and “the dark power” of his words. That was in news stories, not opinion columns.
Excuse me, but if reporters do their jobs right and give us just the facts, can’t the audience decide what’s dangerous and what’s not, what’s dark and what’s not, and whether Trump’s rhetoric resembles “racially based appeals” or “anti-Semitic diatribes?” Although I think it’s absurd to even hint at anti-Semitism in Trump’s case, I can buy the rest and personally agree with the deluge of denunciation from both ends of the political spectrum. But once reporters tell us about it, it’s our job — not theirs — to figure out what we think about it.
As a reporter myself until getting into the business of commentary, I have tried to defend my profession from the widespread impression that we put our biases into our stories. Sometimes I have tried by example, and sometimes by argument. This week, though, my efforts have been trashed, and by the very people I’ve long tried to defend.
The issue at stake here isn’t whether Trump’s proposal would be effective (who knows?), or constitutional (some scholars say it might be), or even moral (that’s a split decision). The issue is whether we want someone else, namely journalists, to “steer” us toward our conclusions. For the greater good of the nation, we don’t.
The people who report the news have one job: to collect the facts and deliver them. They should stick to it.