The sidelines, which is where American journalism and news used to live, have become a far less interesting place. Why merely annotate events when you can tilt the playing field?
— David Carr, New York Times, November 8, 2010
By Joel Thurtell
The Times is at it again: pretending to be an impartial arbiter of news while pushing opinion, in this case company policy, in disguise.
I wrote about this ploy a few days ago when the Times published an “objective” report on political commentator Keith Olbermann, suspended by MSNBC for donating money to political candidates. The Times article failed to note that the Times’ ethical guidelines prohibit political donations by staffers. Some news organizations don’t prohibit politics by staffers, though, and the Times writers failed to mention that Olbermann would have violated Times policy. Such an omission lends the Times a pretend sort of objectivity, cloaking an underlying motive to promote suppression of political activity by its employees.
[I understand Olbermann is back on MSNBC.]
Today, November 8, 2010, using similar duplicity, Times writer David Carr takes the Times’ case against staffers’ political participation a step further by calling Olbermann “dumb” for making his contribution.
“Dumb”? For exercising his right as a U.S. citizen to take part in poliltics?
Oh, by the way, in case it’s not apparent, this is an OPINION piece.
Are we to believe that Carr’s article is not an editorial opinion piece?
[For a discussion of the political donations issue at great variance from what you’ll read in The New York Times, see my new book, Shoestring Reporter
It’s interesting that the Times chose to print as its B6 jump head from from Page One of the Business Section this headline: “Olbermann, Impartiality and an MSNBC Ethics Policy.” How curious that the Times mentions MSNBC’s ethics policy, but declines to disclose its own.
Nowhere is Carr’s article marked as “opinion” or “editorial.” Yet it advances as opinion a viewpoint that reflects the Times company mantra. Carr’s very choice of words — “tilt the playing field” — is echoes the Times’ 2004 treatise on staff behavior modification, Ethical Journalism A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Editorial Departments:
Voting, Campaigns and Public Issues
62. Journalists have no place on the playing fields (italics mine) of politics. Staff members are entitled to vote, but they must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times. In particular, they may not campaign for, demonstrate for, or endorse candidates, ballot causes or efforts to enact legislation. They may not wear campaign buttons or themselves display and other insignia of partisan politics. They should recognize that a bumper sticker on the family car or a campaign sign on the lawn may be misread as theirs, no matter who in their household actually placed the sticker or the sign.
63. Staff members may not themselves give money to, or raise money for, any pilitical candidate or election cause. Given teh east of Internet access to public records of campaign contributions, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides.
Isn’t it sweet that the Times allows its employees the privilege of voting? Funny – I thought somehow that voting was a citizen’s right that could not abridged except maybe by being convicted of a felony. But the Times generously allows it, as long as its staffers don’t try to exercise other rights like actually supporting a political cause.
The odd thing is, journalists like Carr and his colleagues at the Times apparently don’t see their employer’s policy as an abridgement of their First Amendment right to free expression.
The Times doesn’t stop at censoring its employees. Family members of employees also must refrain from political expression for fear of painting the holy Times with the brush of opinion.
“In news operations,” Carr wrote, “opinion used to have a separate address. In newspapers, the publisher or his surrogates would toss around lightning bolts in a walled off section at the back of the paper, and on television, some odd guy (usually the owner) whose tie was a little tight would come on at the end of the broadcast and make Olympian pronouncements on monetary policy or the importance of the coming school board elections.”
Fact is, the Times for years has mixed opinion articles with straight news articles. There is no “walled off section at the back of the paper” at The New York Times. It’s hard to imagine what Carr was thinking about.
Well, I think I know: He was using the news pages of the Times to trumpet, albeit undercover, his employer’s company policy about staffers’ taking part in politics.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
Fair observations about hypocrisy and disingenuity, Joel, though I knew when reading Carr’s piece this morning (before your post) that it was commentary.
Even for readers unaware that he writes that weekly Media Equation column, the label “Insight & Analysis” should signal that it’s not an ordinary news article. Look again at the online business front, where Carr’s essay is right below that designation.
Though it doesn’t say “Opinion,” as on two walled-off pages, I feel only a young student or first-time Times reader might reasonably assume Carr’s essay is a straightforward news report with just the facts and nothing but the facts.
I do agree, of course, that any “walled-off section at the back of the paper” came tumbling down long ago, and that “The Times for years has mixed opinion articles with straight news articles.”
[ cont. ] . . . The Times trusts readers to be sophisticated enough to understand the difference between straight news and “Insight & Analysis,” aka commentary.
That’s one reason I read The Times and usually admire most of what it delivers.