This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 7, 2011 - Journalists do their job best when they worry less about getting all sides of a story and more about providing the context their readers need to understand its importance, former New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse said Wednesday night.
"To rely on one person saying this is great, and another saying this is terrible, then leaving it to the reader to figure it out, I don't think that adds much," Greenhouse said in response to a question after giving the annual James C. Millstone memorial lecture at Saint Louis University.
Too often, Greenhouse said, reporters rely on grabbing quick quotes from what she termed "supposed experts" on a topic, then write a hurried and superficial story to meet the growing demands of instant journalism in the internet age.
The result, Greenhouse said, is what has been called a "scrupulous passivity" that gives too much attention to a "hypersensitivity to charges of bias" and does not come close to what journalists should really care about: Giving readers the closest approximation possible to Truth with a capital T.
In her talk -- titled "She Says. He Says. Says Who?" -- the longtime Supreme Court reporter for the Times, now a lecturer in law at Yale University, gave many examples from her former newspaper as well as other journalism organizations.
NPR, for example, would not call waterboarding torture because, it said, that word had a loaded connotation. The Washington Post said that the shooter charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009 "allegedly opened fire" even though he did so in front of many witnesses, while the Times called Jared Loughner "the man accused of opening fire outside a Tucson supermarket," though he too acted in sight of a large crowd.
While the question of their guilt is a legal one, Greenhouse said, what they did is indisputable and should not have to be couched in such terms.
Similarly, journalists should not worry that if they interview someone on one side of a story, they always need to balance that view by talking to someone perceived to be on the other side.
"Many stories worth telling have many sides," she said, "or only one."
Such "reportorial ping-pong" gets in the way of what journalists really need to do, Greenhouse said, which is using fairness and objectivity as tools to an end rather than seeing them as ends in themselves.
In a court case, for example, reporters have arguments and briefs to study when they are writing a story, to put the issues in the proper perspective. Doing such work can take time, she said, but it's necessary.
She added:
"When a federal district judge issues a decision, there is no other side. The decision is the decision."
A slavish devotion to making sure they have quotes from both sides leads to a situation that Greenhouse addressed at some length -- finding and interviewing the so-called expert who may or may not really know something about the subject at hand. The example she used was a lawyer named David B. Rivkin, who she said was quoted in more than 30 Times stories as a former official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush on topics such as detention of suspected terrorists.
She said she asked several reporters who had quoted Rivkin why they used him as a source, and the answers boiled down to the fact that he presented himself as an expert and had been quoted before.
The time pressures introduced by the 24/7 news cycle of online journalism and cable television have only made such situations more prevalent, she said, because editors and audiences expect to have quick stories on topics that deserve more study and more nuance.
Under such conditions, Greenhouse said, reporters will too often take the easy way out, which is fielding calls from people who may or may not be the best people to respond to the issue at hand.
The goal, she concluded, should be making sure that the story helps readers understand what has just happened, and why.
"Editors have to empower reporters to give their audience the information needed to help them think for themselves," Greenhouse said.
Is the Supreme Court moving to the right?
At a panel discussion on Thursday at Saint Louis University, on the topic of whether the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is making a sharp turn to the right, Greenhouse said it is. But she cautioned that Roberts' conservatism is not the same brand as that espoused by the Tea Party and other groups that want as little government influence in people's lives as possible.
Rather, she said, Roberts' conservatism has been shown by his great respect for precedent. "He's a different kind of conservative," Greenhouse said.
She was responding to a view expressed by Anders Walker, an assistant professor of law at Saint Louis University, who read passages from Barry Goldwater's 1960 classic "The Conscience of a Conservative" to show that the 1964 GOP candidate for president would have never agreed with some of the opinions from the Roberts court that have allowed greater influence of the government in the day-to-day dealings of Americans.
The third panelist, William H. Freivogel -- director of the journalism school at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and contributor and board member of the Beacon -- noted that it is notoriously difficult to predict what direction the Supreme Court and individual justices may take.
As evidence, he quoted from stories he wrote as a Supreme Court reporter for the Post-Dispatch, on the drastic consequences likely from the retirements of Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall and the prospect of Justice Antonin Scalia's becoming a force for conciliation and compromise on the court.
Those inaccurate predictions prompted Greenhouse to note that personnel is key to the future of the court, in terms of which justices may take the lead and which will be able to build coalitions that can influence the court's direction.
"Whoever is in the White House and whoever controls the Senate is where this game will be played," Greenhouse said.
Millstone Lecture
The Millstone lecture is named for a former assistant managing editor of the Post-Dispatch who covered the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, then directed coverage of its Washington bureau and was a mentor to many reporters. It is presented by the SLU law school and the Beacon.
Before Greenhouse's lecture, the Beacon announced gifts totaling $2.6 million, including $1.25 million from Emily Rauh Pulitzer and $1.1 million from Richard K. and Josephine Weil. Richard Weil is chairman of the board of the Beacon.