Former WaPo executive editor defends "moving beyond objectivity."

Former New York Times reporter shows how the media moved beyond objectivity in its war on Donald Trump.

Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of the Washington Post, contends that “newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust.” His column is a confused, and in places incoherent, mess. If Downie ever had a fastball, he has lost it.

Downie claims that when he worked at the Post he “never understood what ‘objectivity’ meant” and “didn’t consider it a standard for our newsroom.” His goals, allegedly, “were instead accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability and the pursuit of truth.”

But that’s essentially what “objectivity” means, as Downie acknowledges when he states:

“Objectivity” is defined by most dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice. Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing.

Thus Downie’s burden is to show how newsrooms can build trust if they move beyond accuracy, fairness, and nonpartisanship and instead encourage (or even just permit) distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings, or prejudice. Obviously, this is a burden he cannot meet.

Indeed, Downie admits that “nonpartisanship” was important during his days as a journalist. What has changed?

Downie points to “upheaval” in American society over issues like racism and sexism, etc. But Downie remembers, I hope, the upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It at least equaled, and I believe exceeded, the upheaval of today. The racism and sexism of that era certainly exceeded today’s.

In any case, Downie fails to explain why nonpartisan objectivity becomes less important when there is upheaval. If anything, turbulent times call for more clearheaded and unbiased reporting, not less.

So again, why have the values Downie claims were the centerpiece of Washington Post’s journalism during his time there become journalistic traits we should “move beyond” now? What’s suddenly wrong with “using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice.”

Inevitably, Downie’s answer comes down to complaints by “more and more journalists of color and younger White reporters, including LGBTQ+ people. . .that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view.” Downie goes on to quote various journalists who want more coverage of their concerns.

Again, Downey is confused. He fails to distinguish between what is covered in the news and what the coverage is like.

It’s no departure from objectivity to increase, up to a point, the number of articles about the day-to-day concerns of minority group members. To be sure, doing so can become quite tiresome for many readers, but this is a subjective concern, not primarily an objective one.

The problem arises — or at least does so most acutely — when these stories rely on the “personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice” of the reporter (to quote that dictionary passage) and ignore evidence that contradicts those beliefs, biases, feelings, and prejudices.

For example, it’s fine to report on cases in which police officers abuse black suspects. However, it’s not acceptable if the reporting highlights the race of the offending officers in the first paragraph when they are white, but supplies this information much later in the story when they are black.

Similarly, if the report includes claims that a particular case of police misconduct stems from systemic racism by cops against blacks, it is important to include evidence that undercuts this claim. Such evidence exists in abundance, but one would never know it from the non-objective reporting one sees throughout the mainstream media.

But the biggest problem with Downie’s apology for media bias is that he’s hiding the ball. The most egregious examples of newsroom departure from objectivity have nothing to do with race or diversity.

Consider the media’s treatment of Donald Trump, especially its bogus reporting of alleged collaboration between Trump and Russia. This reporting was entirely unrelated to race or diversity. Nothing in the “backgrounds, experiences, and points of view” of minority group members (to quote Downie) bears on the matter.

The egregious departure from objectivity in the media’s coverage of Trump/Russia was driven solely by raw partisanship and hatred of Trump. And this same raw partisanship affects media coverage across a broad range of issues that also have nothing to do with race.

Downie has nothing to say about this.

But Jeff Gerth, a longtime reporter for the New York Times, has plenty to say about it. He says it in a four-part series for the Columbia Journalism Review called “The press versus the President.”

Some readers probably recognize Gerth’s name from his investigative reporting on the S&L scandal in Arkansas when Bill Clinton first ran for president. It was Gerth’s poking around that led Hillary Clinton to steal her law firm’s records pertaining to its representation in matters pertaining to this scandal. I wrote in detail about the matter here.

Now, more than 30 years later, Gerth is scandalized by the media’s role in attempting to bring down Trump over a non-scandal. And unlike Downie, Gerth still has a fastball. His series can be found here (Part One), here (Part Two), here (Part Three), and here (Part Four).

Gerth is no fan of Trump. He makes this clear at the outset. Yet, he’s able to write a fair-minded account of how the mainstream media violated journalistic standards in its coverage of Trump.

That’s objective reporting.

Gerth shows that, among other failings in media coverage of Trump/Russia, were an unwillingness to report facts that ran counter to the prevailing narrative; a failure to seek and reflect comment from people who were the subject of serious criticism; and the volume of anonymous sources and the misleading way they were often described. He also complains about the lack of transparency by media organizations in responding to his questions. “Not a single major news organization made available a newsroom leader to talk about their coverage” of Trump/Russia, he says.

Such stand up people, these mainstream media types.

I won’t summarize the painstaking dive into the facts from which Gerth reached his conclusions. Most of our readers probably are familiar with many, but not all, of these facts. However, they may come as news to readers of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Instead of a summary, I’ll quote portions of Gerth’s series that pertain to Downie’s ridiculous claim that departing from objectivity builds trust in the media.

Outside of the Times’ own bubble, the damage to the credibility of the Times and its peers persists, three years on, and is likely to take on new energy as the nation faces yet another election season animated by antagonism toward the press. . . .

Before the 2016 election, most Americans trusted the traditional media and the trend was positive, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. The phrase “fake news” was limited to a few reporters and a newly organized social media watchdog. The idea that the media were “enemies of the American people” was voiced only once, just before the election on an obscure podcast, and not by Trump, according to a Nexis search.

Today, the US media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. In 2021, 83 percent of Americans saw “fake news” as a “problem,” and 56 percent—mostly Republicans and independents—agreed that the media were “truly the enemy of the American people,” according to Rasmussen Reports. . . .

I’ve avoided opining in my more than fifty years as a reporter. This time, however, I felt obligated to weigh in. Why? Because I am worried about journalism’s declining credibility and society’s increasing polarization. The two trends, I believe, are intertwined.

My main conclusion is that journalism’s primary missions, informing the public and holding powerful interests accountable, have been undermined by the erosion of journalistic norms and the media’s own lack of transparency about its work. This combination adds to people’s distrust about the media and exacerbates frayed political and social differences.

Articles like Downie’s that condone ,or even extol, media abandonment of objectivity will tend further to erode trust in mainstream media outlets. But if, as I believe, that lack of trust is deserved, then the erosion is not a bad thing.