everything i learned about journalism ...

... i learned from Jon Stewart? And Campbell Brown?

You probably already saw this, but if not, listen/watch what she has to say about "false equivalency" (aka "balance), access, the Washington press corps, and partisan news media. She gets it. bk

onto fairness

There's an old saying in journalism: if you use half the information you've gathered in your finished piece, you haven't done nearly enough reporting.

All of which brings up the issue of selectivity. How do you select what you leave in and what gets left in the deep recesses of your hard drive? That's the kind of question that keeps reporters up at night. Or should. It's a big issue -- whether you're thinking column inches or the short attention spans of online readers. Given the limits of time and space, how do you make sure you are playing fair, giving the readers an adequate representation of the facts at hand?

If you read my post on objectivity yesterday, you can guess where I'm going with this. Sarah Palin was on a money-raising tour of the San Francisco Bay Area yesterday, where her "palling around with terrorists" (actually she changed the plural to singular) has become her new stump speech.

Her speech was covered by both the San Jose Mercury and the San Francisco Chronicle. Good pieces that covered what she said, within the context of what such attacks mean for the campaign. Both included responses from the Obama campaign as well. Balance, right?

But what struck me is what the reporters who covered the speech (or their copy editors) left out. Namely that Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist to whom Palin refers, is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Barrack Obama met while working on a project that was a part of a national school reform effort financed by Walter H. Annenberg, the publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon’s ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Seems to me, that little add should be included as well for the folks who read what Palin says, but never go any further than that.

Just to be fair. bk

object lessons in objectivity

It's about the methods, folks. Not some freakish sense of balance in the finished piece.

In class discussions on objectivity, I often quote something from a piece by Joshuah Bearman I found on alternet a few years back: "Contrary to dogma of J-schools across country, there are not always two sides to a story. Balance is often necessary and indispensable, but there are times when media might have to mediate a bunch of information and make a judgment. And in those instances, presenting contrasting information as if it’s equally important is, in fact, the false representation – more false than saying, 'I’ve gathered a lot of material and vetted it all, and here’s my assessment.'"

Take Sarah Palin's speech in SoCal on Saturday. She was quoted in the LA Times as characterizing Obama as someone who "pals around with terrorists". From the article: "Evidently there's been a lot of interest in what I read lately," she said. "I was reading today a copy of the New York Times. And I was really interested to read in there about Barack Obama's friends from Chicago. Turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times, was a domestic terrorist, that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.' "

The LA Times piece balanced her claim thus: "The New York Times article, an investigation published Friday into whether Obama had a relationship with Ayers, concluded that the men were never close and that Obama has denounced Ayers' radical past, which occurred when Obama was a child. The article also said Obama 'has played down his contacts with' Ayers."

And then gave the Obama camp a chance to respond: "Gov. Palin's comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign's statement this morning that they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation's economic ills," said spokesman Hari Sevugan.

"In fact, the very newspaper story Gov. Palin cited in hurling her shameless attack made clear that Sen. Obama is not close to Bill Ayers, much less 'pals,' and that he has strongly condemned the despicable acts Ayers committed 40 years ago, when Obama was 8. What's clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy."

Balanced, right? But objective? You decide. Here's the whole story from the New York Times to which Palin was referring.

One last exasperated riff: Today's "Lies, Half-Truths Outed" chart, a weekly compilation of campaign lies and misrepresentations in the San Francisco Chronicle, focused on Thursday's debate between Biden and Palin. Take a quick look at the chart and it appears as if both candidates lied and/or stretched the truth in equal measure. Really? What a coincidence. bk