Kwame wins one. Joel Thurtell photo.
By Joel Thurtell
In my lecture today, I’ll show you budding young journalists how to do what might seem impossible to many writers with less skill than you will have once you complete your training here in Joel’s J School.
I’ll teach you how to seem impartial in your news reporting while injecting opinion, prejudice, even malice, spite and sheer bitterness into the subterranean reaches of your writing.
It is vital for you to learn this skill, because it is a basic tenet of mainstream newspapers, whether written into so-called “ethics codes” or simply transmitted via the cult of the newsroom, that news reports appear fair and balanced.
Key word, “appear.”
The whole thing is a sham, of course, a miserable pretense whose main purpose is to lull customers, aka readers, into believing that their local news organization has no ax to grind.
In a future lecture, I’ll outline how the very raison d’etre of most newspapers is the use of these publishing organs to disseminate bile, vitriol, invective and calumny against the editors’ political enemies or social rivals.
There was a time when the mandarins of Journalism were more honest and didn’t try to hide their motives behind lofty proclamations promising fairness and balance. We live today in an age of slickness and deception, where bait-and-switch rules the roost and bullshit masquerades as rules about right and wrong. Those rules now carry a loftier title — “ethics.”
The best way to mislead readers into believing you’ve been fair and balanced is to hide your own opinion under the cloak of someone else’s oratory. This is commonly done in Journalism by using what we call Talking Heads.
Talking Heads are Experts. According to the Unwritten Code of Journalistic Behavior, we can quote Experts, setting them up as Authorities in some field or other. A really solid Expert for use as a Talking Head would be a Law School Professor. It’s virtually impossible for anyone to criticize a Professor of Law because though not highly paid, they are highly regarded in society.
A less convincing but nonetheless quite justifiable Talking Head would be the Political Consultant. The Political Consultant suffers a credibility problem because a savvy consumer, aka reader, might question why the Political Consultant’s thoughts should be given more prominence than, say, the reader’s own. But what seems like a weakness is in fact the Political Consultant’s virtually unassailable strength. The beauty of the Political Consultant as Talking Head is that you the reporter/writer can elevate anyone you want to be a Political Consultant. Usually, you know the Political Consultants well enough to predict what they say before they think it. It’s like having a catalog of opinions and you just dial up the one most likely to say what you think and bingo, you’re home free. Someone else carries the burden of expressing your opinion. Nobody can say YOU are biased!
Isn’t that neat?
A wonderful example of an absolutely masterful usage of the Political Consultant as Talking Head appeared in the August 19, 2008 edition of the Detroit Free Press in the lede Page One article headlined “Mayor’s victory puts Granholm in control,” with superheads telling us “KILPATRICK FREE OF ONE BIG BURDEN” and “JUDGE THROWS OUT COUNCIL’S OUSTER EFFORT.” Seems neutral, right? Then, a subhead sneaks a bit of Freepster wishful thinking atop the story: “Hearing by governor is quickest option left as decision on it nears.”
Assuming you think the mayor should be dumped.
To my eyes, that subhead tells me where the Free Press stands: They want Kwame out. The quickest option is their option.
Great job! The bias is already starkly astride the story.
Now for the coup de grace: The Talking Head.
Ever hear of Coit Cook Ford III?
Neither had I.
Oh, I’m sure he’s appeared in many news articles as a Talking Head. That’s the great thing about Talking Heads. No credentials needed.
So here in a Page One story, we have the Free Press sliding away from the Council slapping the mayor out of office, which process the paper was promoting vigorously until a judge said no, Now the Journalists are kowtowing to the seeming court of last resort, Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
The Free Press assumes you and I are with them in wanting Kwame gone: “Monday’s ruling should make it politically more palatable for Graholm to remove Kilpatrick because local removal efforts have been sidelined or are on hold indefinitely.”
That’s the Freep’s opinion, plain and simple.
But here’s the stealthy trick they use. Those words don’t come directly from them, it would appear, because they are attributed to one Coit Cook Ford III.
Coit said it, we didn’t, the Freep is telling readers. And he is a Political Consultant. A Detroit Political Consultant.
Pardon the pun, but how coy.
But in the paper’s next step, the editors and writers move beyond printing the Political Consultant’s own opinion. They let him pretend to express the opinion of Detroit voters: ” ‘It is probably as offensive, if not more so, for the majority of Detroiters to wait that long,’ he said, referring to a potential appeal of Monday’s ruling, or a felony conviction or a recall effort to remove the mayor.”
So there we have it — before the jump inside, baldly laid out on Page One — the Free Press’ stark opinion that Kwame needs to go before there’s a trial that might convict him and make it legally mandatory that he leave office.
No sense letting the voters who elected Kwame have a chance to recall him or reject him if he runs for re-election. Let’s stack the deck and sweep him out tout de suite.
But the Freep didn’t say it.
It was the opinion of Coit Cook Ford III, don’t you know.
Now, wasn’t that a great performance by the Freep? Journalistic sleight of hand. Deception, though I doubt it goes unnoticed by savvy readers.
Who can say it wasn’t fair and balanced? No way Kwame could complain he’s not getting a fair shake, right?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
