Value of truth, objectivity in journalism debated
Modern writers disagree over ageless question
Kovach sees an ominous threat from the growth of "commercialized
speech" in the overly profit-driven, corporate-owned media that allows itself to be
essentially edited by big business, or conversely, uses the "news" to promote
interests that have financial ties to the media.
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
"The fiction of nonfiction" and "Why we should believe in
journalism" were two of the talks given by heavy hitters Lawrence Weschler and Bill
Kovach in the big tent at last week’s Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. While
extolling truth in journalism, they disagreed on how to accomplish it.
Who doesn’t want to believe in the written word? But what is
truth—a philosophical construct, or a set of facts, that can be verified?
Weschler, a staff writer for The New Yorker who has twice won the
George Polk Award and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, seemed almost gleeful
Friday afternoon when he leaned over his microphone and announced to 600 readers that
objectivity, considered by most to be essential to good journalism, is a "myth"
and a "fraud," because every writer has a distinctive, inescapable narrative
voice.
"Every narrative voice is fiction," he said. "The essential
paradox today is that we know everything is chaos, and any form a writer discovers is in a
sense imposed on the material."
Weschler said he is flabbergasted by news stories that say "a
visitor" observed an event. "We all know it was the reporter," he said, so
the story should say that—"anything else is a dishonest attempt to fool readers
into thinking the story is objective. Stories should always have the "I voice,"
he said, to let the reader know this is one person’s perspective.
Sure, truth is still possible, he told a perplexed audience member, but it
doesn’t depend on verifying a collection of tidbits.
A writer, he said, "can be scrupulously factual and still ring false,
and in fact be false."
That sentiment had Kovach, a 41-year reporter, editor and bureau chief at The
New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, rolling his eyes and
uttering an unintelligible disparagement during an early afternoon interview Sunday on the
Sun Valley lawn.
During his talk earlier that morning, Kovach told practically the same
audience that good journalists strive for truth "not in the philosophical sense, but
in presenting facts in such a way to allow the reader to form a judgment." The
function of those facts, he said, "is to bring to light hidden reality."
No doubt about it, the white-haired, regal-looking Kovach is the champion
of good, old-fashioned reporting, which he says readers are as responsible for preserving
as the press is.
Democracy, he said, depends on it: "Public opinion created democratic
self government, and journalism created public opinion."
Kovach sees an ominous threat from the growth of "commercialized
speech" in the overly profit-driven, corporate-owned media that allows itself to be
essentially edited by big business, or conversely, uses the "news" to promote
interests that have financial ties to the media. Kovach said commercialized speech often
entertains more than it informs.
"The voice of independent, citizen-oriented journalism is hard to
find now," he said.
To bring it back, he maintained, "talking about the craft is
essential. Quality journalism depends on a critically aware and critically thinking public
that demands it."
That doesn’t necessarily mean that a journalist can ever achieve
absolute objectivity. Kovach said that no matter what a journalist writes, somebody,
somewhere is likely to claim the writer was biased, but that’s okay.
"Journalists are not necessarily unbiased," he said. "It
may not even be good for them to be unbiased. Sometimes, it’s good for journalists
not to report right down the middle. I think you have the right to expect that kind of
information, as well."
For his part, Kovach said he keeps an open mind to constructive criticism
while striving to remain true to the things he thinks are important in a story.
Throughout history, he said, the more controlled society becomes, the more
it has tended to belittle the idea of literal truth. In the early 1980s, just after Ronald
Reagan became president, his press secretary, David Gergen, displayed an alarmingly
cavalier attitude toward informing the public, Kovach said. As long as the "symbolic
truth" of what the president says is valid, Kovach recalled Gergen telling the
national press, the "literal truth is unimportant."
The public’s refusal to accept the government’s version of the
truth was a major dismantler of communism, Kovach said. The Polish Solidarity movement in
the early 1980s was largely a response to the communist government’s ratcheting down
controls on the media, he said. Citizens began walking their dogs during news hour and
they displayed the blank, cold screens of their unplugged televisions in the front windows
of their homes as a protest, he said—and the underground press flourished.
"The thunderbolt of the electronic [Internet] news," Kovach
feels, may inject into all reporting the sort of grassroots behavior on which democracy
renews itself. Kovach praised Internet publications like Salon, whose editor, David
Talbot, is "totally accessible" because he regularly goes online to answer
readers’ questions.
"That kind of behavior is going to catch on," Kovach predicted.
And, he said, "There is a new active youth out there frustrated by
inaccessible, remote power controlling their lives, and that’s good for the media. I
think the pressure’s going to start coming, and that’s going to be
positive."
