That the American media and its many critics have been involved in a bare-knuckled brawl over the idea of “objectivity” in journalism is hardly breaking news. The battle is as confusing as it often is silly. Bloggers and critics on both sides of the ideological fence spend their days trying to prove the ideological bias of major newspapers, and have made a cottage industry out of inventing ways to catch reporters breaking rules that the critics themselves have devised. Some pundits, unconvinced that reporters can simply tell a story without slipping their own biases into the narrative, have demanded that reporters take the unprecedented step of laying their voting histories out on the table for public consumption, so that, presumably, conservative voters know not to take anything seriously written by a Democratic voter, or vice versa.
Thousands of critics fight this battle (largely among themselves) every day, rarely offering solutions to the problems they see in reporters’ work, but being only too happy to pile on.
And now, surely to the consternation of many of on the political right, the French have tossed in their two Euros’ worth of advice. In the November issue of The Atlantic, Bernard-Henri Levy continues his road trip across the United States (subscription required), and this time dishes out a little bit of unsolicited advice to his brethren in the American press.
In speaking of MediaMatters’ David Brock (whom he describes as “one of the most objectively loathsome [people] I’ve met in the ten months I’ve been traveling through this country”), Levy pens a few paragraphs of media criticism. It’s airy and general, to be sure, and like any good continental thinker, Levy includes a good amount of bluster, but it’s worth taking a look at the substance of his comments. He writes:
Imagine the leading media reaching a decision on some kind of minimal ethical charter. Imagine them agreeing on the absolute necessity of respecting the private lives of political leaders. Imagine them proclaiming the inalienable character of this new human right: not, as Baudelaire proposed, the right to contradict yourself and the right to leave, but the right to privacy.
Envision a solemn declaration by which the papers, radios, and networks would enjoin one another from ever acting as the echo (whatever the form of this echo, whether underhand, or mock-hypothetical, or warning-like, or seemingly disinterested) of any ad hominem attack that hasn’t passed the test of those famous fact-checking techniques at which they’re self-professed experts.
Picture a journalist who has publicly confessed that he made up information with the sole aim of hitting a president “between the eyes,” or launched, without verification, the appalling accusation against a presidential candidate of having invented, exaggerated, or simulated his war wounds. Imagine this journalist, this rabble-rouser, being banned from his profession with the same vigor as a plagiarist or a fabricator of interviews in this country.
A different paradigm might be created. Junk politics in its entirety might turn out to be less profitable. And for American democracy it would be the most resounding way of reviving the legacy of Thoreau, Emerson, and, of course, Tocqueville.
Levy’s reference to hitting a president “between the eyes” is a comment on Brock’s statements about the virulently anti-Clinton pieces he wrote for the American Spectator in the mid-90’s, which fed the scandals that would eventually result in the president’s impeachment proceedings. What Levy fails to distinguish here, however, is that despicable as Brock’s factually challenged stories were, they were written for an opinion magazine. Outlets like the Spectator or The Nation play by a very different set of rules than reporters from the Washington Post or the New York Times, with the former wearing their political views on their sleeves, and the latter ostensibly casting their own out before they sit down to write. This doesn’t excuse the lousy journalism of which Brock was guilty, and it doesn’t allow opinion magazines to simply make things up, but their duty to the truth is nonetheless informed by what they see as their duty to the overall public good.
Then there’s a third group, rapidly growing, that Levy doesn’t acknowledge and that he may not even be aware of. That camp readily concedes that “objectivity” is a false god, that all journalism consists of subjective choices, but that those choices don’t have to be duplicitous and that they can, and should, serve the goal of fairness. (That’s us, by the way.)
Meantime, Levy’s “different paradigm” seems to consist of little more than of muzzling the press from reporting on “character” issues that help a voter choose a representative. Even if reporters vowed to censor themselves in this way, it’s likely that not only would “junk politics” continue unabated, but the public’s ability to form an overall picture of their candidate would suffer.
What’s more, if the big dailies and weeklies decided not to report on some of the more salacious stories that get floated during campaign season, presumably they also wouldn’t print stories debunking rumors that are spread on the Internet and in publications that didn’t sign the pact.
Beyond that, voters have decided again and again that character does matter in a national leader, and if that’s a view that is more American than European, so be it.
Now, we realize that Levy is thinking out loud here, as he has been wont to do in the past, and his dispatches in the last few issues of The Atlantic often have the air of a condescending daddy speaking from on high. But beyond that, would any of his ideas really make any headway toward “reviving the legacy of Thoreau, Emerson, and, of course, Tocqueville”?
Hardly. Rather, they smack of the stuffy corridors of European journalism and political culture — and also of a kind of pack mentality wherein anyone who falls out of line is banished.
Is this the way that Levy thinks American democracy could rediscover the bloom that he imagines to have fallen off its rose? We’re not buying it. Censorship, even in the name of some higher ideal — in fact, especially in the name of some higher ideal — is never the answer.
–Paul McLeary
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.