Nicholas Kristof and William Kristol both write regular columns about politics and policy for the New York Times op-ed page. But one is a journalist (Kristof) and the other is a political operative who last summer was listed by a Council on Foreign Relations report as an informal part of John McCain’s foreign-policy brain trust (Kristol). The latter, writing once a week since January, has had five published corrections for errors of fact in his column; the former, writing twice a week in that same period, has had no published corrections but did take the extraordinary step of using an entire column to apologize to Steven J. Hatfill, the scientist who was named (and recently exonerated) by the government as the leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks; in 2002, Kristof had written columns urging closer scrutiny of the then-anonymous “person of interest” who turned out to be Hatfill.
Our point is that journalists have a fundamentally different relationship to facts than that of most political operatives. Facts are the foundation of what journalists do—get them wrong and your credibility suffers; get them wrong often enough and you’ll be out of a job. For creatures of politics, facts are malleable—weapons to be used as necessary to produce victory at the polls and in the policy-making arena. Journalists are taught to check facts and assemble them without regard for whether they like the picture that emerges; political operatives only have use for those facts that enhance the picture they want to project.
But the larger issue here is that too many news consumers don’t make this distinction between Kristof and Kristol—both are simply members of the vast, undifferentiated Media. In recent years, news outlets have increasingly encouraged this lack of discrimination. There has always been some crossover between...
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Very important editorial that MSM--surprise--have failed to acknowledge, let alone address. You missed a few stalwarts in this menagerie like Matalin, Carville, Dee Dee Myers et al. And Gergen is no more a journalist by training or perspective than any of the political operatives you mention. Neither are Stephanopoulos, Couric or the late Russert, for that matter. Without sounding like a purist, you fail to address the heart of problem: if we only had legitimate journalists as commentators-columnists on TV, radio and in the print media, the market for folks that "act like journalists" would shrink and the press would be on the road to regaining the public esteem they lost before this cast of pseudo-reporters and experts arrived on the scene. The very future of journalism as we should know it demands that more outlets put a stop to this madness.
Posted by Blue Heron on Sat 15 Nov 2008 at 04:23 PM
Taking the "what's the best outcome and how to facilitate it" approach here....
Editors, could you please contact Clark Hoyt/ Bill Keller/ whoever, and engage him in a constructive discussion - reporting it here - on a) whether he agrees it's important that the line between operatives and journalist-columnists be drawn and conveyed to the reader, and b) how this should - and could feasibly - be done?
Opining is great, but I'd like to see it followed by engagement. You're building a fire over here, and their feet are over there; let's bring 'em close enough together to facilitate action.
Posted by Anna Haynes on Sun 7 Dec 2008 at 04:28 PM
A great fire, indeed. This commentary says what many of us feel instinctually. Perhaps the action starts with that realization, and the passing of this message to the otherwise unaware by those of us who feel its importance. I'm starting immediately. Thank you.
Posted by Anthony Sepe on Thu 18 Dec 2008 at 06:03 PM