Disagreeing with Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen's a good press critic, and I liked his work even more after I found him writing while atop one of my traditional soapboxes.

But I think he's mostly wrong in his opinion about the competing methods of handling truth claims. 

Rosen wrote about the issue after a remarkable New York Times piece that asked readers if the paper should employ vigilante zeal in fact checking:

Something happened in our press over the last 40 years or so that never got acknowledged and to this day would be denied by a majority of newsroom professionals. Somewhere along the way, truthtelling was surpassed by other priorities the mainstream press felt a stronger duty to. These include such things as “maintaining objectivity,” “not imposing a judgment,” “refusing to take sides” and sticking to what I have called the View from Nowhere.

I'm not going to call Rosen entirely wrong. I've encountered persons in the journalism profession who see themselves almost like the Watcher from the Fantastic Four comic books. The Watcher was a figure of great power who was pledged to merely record great events without interfering. There are journalists who feel it is their duty to report every bit of news regardless of resulting harm. I could write a lengthy blog post about that, but for now I'll just concede that Rosen identifies at least part of the problem.

I think Rosen misses a more obvious explanation, one that better explains the facts. Journalists today are an educated class. And this shift falls pretty much in the 40-year window Rosen identifies. Traditional journalists knew that they possessed a broad lack of expertise. When confronted with complex or controversial issues, journalists responded economically: They punted. In other words, journalists found an expert or two, presented those views and left the rest up to their readers. Yes, this method preserved the appearance of objectivity--as Rosen notes. More importantly, it kept journalists from having to figure out aspects of the story they were unequipped to evaluate in terms of both time and education.

Consider PolitiFact's handling of many economic claims surrounding the effects of the economic stimulus bill. Are the journalists at PolitiFact experts on economics? They are not. They survey a group of experts, find a majority of Keynesians in that group and tend to confirm issues of fact according to a Keynesian paradigm. The reader is typically none the wiser.

PolitiFact's handling of such stories illustrates the key pitfall in journalists' vigilante attitude toward truth:  It makes journalists more likely to try to handle issues of fact they are not prepared to evaluate.

If journalists can stay safely in the shallow end of the pool of epistemology, then, fine, practice a vigilante attitude toward truth.  Traditional journalists uncomfortable with that approach need to clearly articulate a strong rationale for their opposition.  Doing so will help make it more clear to the truth vigilantes where they can safely swim in that pool.