American Journalism Review and the lying liars who accuse lying liars

American Journalism Review published a story late last year in defense of today's fact check fashion.  It carried the title "Calling a Lie a Lie," but that was deceptive.  The subsequent deck material was more clear:  "When something is clearly false, journalists shouldn’t be bashful about pointing it out."

The deck sentiment is correct. Unfortunately, writer Rem Rieder appears uncertain whether to support the ambiguous sentiment in the title or the more reasonable assertion from the deck.

Rieder strangles his message in ambiguity from the start:

So should journalists brand a lie a lie?

This should not be a tough call: Of course they should.

If we understand "lie" as  a clearly false statement, then Rieder is correct. 

If, on the other hand, we're talking about the much more widely understood definition of "lie" as a statement intended to deceive, then the answer is no, at least in objective reporting.  Objective reporting does not permit the journalist sufficient leeway to judge the motives of a speaker or writer.

So already we've got a problem.  If an "objective" journalist calls a statement a "lie" in the false statement sense and the audience understands "lie" to refer to intentional deceit, then the journalist is, in effect, communicating a false message to the reader.  A lie?

Why would the journalist use ambiguous language if not for the express purpose of misleading the reader?  Assuming the journalist is intelligent enough to distinguish between the different meanings for the term "lie," of course.

Rieder then follows with a nearly perfect illustration of his own problem with ambiguity:

The issue is very much in the air now in the wake of Mitt Romney's completely duplicitous ad about President Barack Obama.

The "Believe in America" ad shows Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

What Obama really said was, "Senator [John] McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.' "

This is a completely cynical distortion of the president's remark. It's an incredibly cynical piece of political mischief. It needs to be called out. 

 Just to state the obvious, journalists very often truncate quotations.  They lop material off the front.  They omit material in the middle.  They chop off material at the end. 

It's okay to shorten quotations under one condition:  It doesn't substantially change the meaning of what the person wrote or said.

President Obama's handlers immediately reacted to the Romney ad, alleging it distorted what President Obama said.  Romney's defenders pointed out that the ad provided enough context so that the viewer--even including left-leaning journalists--should be able to tell that Obama was speaking back in 2008 well before Mr. Obama would have thoughts of whether to talk about the economy when seeking reelection.

To amplify the point, Romney's ad carries the same message substituting the full quotation Rieder provides.  The only exception comes from viewers such as Rieder who assume, contrary to the facts presented in the ad, that Obama referred to himself in the context of the 2012 election.

Plainly the ad was intended to portray the irony of Obama condemning the economy in 2008 while holding responsibility for a worse economy leading toward the 2012 election.  And it's the journalist's responsibility to expose a lie in that?

No, it's the journalist's responsibility to explain the ad in terms of the facts and in terms of its message, correcting any obvious errors of fact in accordance with the statement in Rieder's deck.  It is not the journalist's responsibility to make false statements about how the ad is obviously false and in need of rebuke.

This controversy over fact checking helps illustrate time and again how journalists have lost touch with the concept of objective reporting.

"Impressive display" of objective reporting?

During the course of a post not long past, I took Wes Allison to task for using the phrase "impressive display" regarding one of President Obama's early achievements in office.

I don't think the phrase belongs in objective writing. On the other hand, I don't particularly champion objective writing. I think I can report objectively about as well as anyone (the neutrality part, anyway) when I want to wear that hat. But I have a big problem with mainstream media outlets pretending to set objectivity as the ideal while falling ridiculously short of even the appearance of success.

Google has added a searchable news archive. Anyone should be able to check the results of my survey.

I had never used the archive search feature on Google before, so the graphics immediately grabbed by attention. The phrase roughly doubled in usage in the mid 1980s and has stayed high ever since.

A 1989 hit from the Washington Post talks about an "impressive display" of military strength at George H. W. Bush's inauguration. This one counts as less as a failure of objectivity than as a failure to avoid trite phrasing.

A news analysis piece from 1993 talks about President Bill Clinton's "impressive display" of log-rolling. News analysis. That's where reporters are allowed to drop the pretense of objectivity.

Another entry combines elements of the first two. It was a news analysis piece from 1995 referring to an "impressive display" of military might by the Chinese navy.

The fourth hit, from 1998 in The New York Times, talks about how some of the past achiements of Indonesia's President Suharto amounted to an "impressive display" of political control. The phrase in context seems neither objective nor flattering.

The next hit was a public relations piece from Advantest. PR releases are generally not regarded as objective.

The next hit has the phrase in a quotation (that sort of thing doesn't count against reporter objectivity).

The seventh hit, from Reuters, again uses "impressive display" in reference to the military, this time in South Africa (2001).

The eighth hit deals with sports (cricket, which also suggests that the American standard of objectivity is inapplicable in the first place).

The ninth hit finally gives us "impressive display" in reference to the second Bush presidency. But we find it in its most appropriate application in American journalism, in the writings of opinion columnist Molly Ivins.

The second page of hits turns us back to 1939.

The 1939 entry again refers to a military display (thus helping to prove that it is trite).

The second hit on the second page calls Richard Milhous Nixon's floor support more impressive than that produced by Rockefeller during the 1968 Republican National Convention. What I can gather of the context suggests an underlying objective comparison (more signs, louder shouting).

The third hit is similar to the former in character, this time via the Chicago Tribune in reference to a museum display.

The fourth hit refers to an "impressive display" of (what else?) military strength. It's actually a repeat of one from the first page of hits.

James Gerstenzang, in the LA Times, wrote in 1990 about the "impressive display" of solidarity in establishing international resolve against Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait. Though the full context would require payment, Gerstenzang's non-objective phrasing is apparently somewhata mitigated since he seems to play off of a Bush statement that established the judgment in question.

The sixth hit perhaps equals Allison's transgression in characterizing political support for an announcing candidate as an "impressive display." David Ibata wrote it in 1991 for The Chicago Tribune.

The seventh hit repeats the Clinton log-rolling one.

The eighth hit represents another repeat.

The ninth hit is fresh, and represents a columnist's judgment of some negotiating by Jesse Jackson. Columnists get to offer non-objective opinions since columns are not expected to deliver straight news.


The survey supports my impression that "impressive display" is rarely used in objective journalism, and rarer still when applied to the achievements of individual politicians.