Dennis Ryerson, editor of The Indianapolis Star, wrote a blazing editorial defending traditional media for not getting the story on John Edwards’ affair before the tabloids did.
Rather than just tell you what he said, I’d rather let you read it for yourself. It’s a rather funny read, only it’s not so funny. It’s tragic. Ryerson would have been better off just writing a three word editorial, “Sorry, we failed.” Nope. Not gonna happen. Instead, we get a string of rationalizations, excuses, and a veneer of respectable standards set against those scalawags on the Internet. Here’s Ryerson’s 30 years of blissful experience:
Anybody can post anything on the Internet. A lot of good information shows up but a lot of lies, innuendoes and outright falsities surface as well.
That never happens to print media, does it? Anyone remember Jayson Blair? Oh, how quickly we forget, Mr. Ryerson. This is funny because just prior to his comment, Ryerson said this:
Those who say the media are biased on this one conveniently forget who did in Gary Hart during his Democratic presidential run. They forget all those front-page stories about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. They forget Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hayes and Brock Adams, all Democratic leaders brought down when sex-related indiscretions were exposed by the mainstream media.
It’s not that Democratic politicians have cornered the market on infidelity. Rather, people remember what they want to remember and forget what they want to forget in order to further their own bias.
I agree, and Dennis Ryerson is the perfect example. Let’s continue:
At The Star, as is the case with every newspaper for which I’ve worked, it’s not easy to get a story published. We go through layers of editors. At our morning and afternoon news meetings, questions are asked. Stories are held, sometimes for days, until we are convinced we get it right.
Do we have the facts? Are we relying on word of mouth or verifiable information? Are our sources reliable? Do we have not just facts but all of the facts to provide proper perspective?
Even then we make mistakes, which I regret. But our goal is to print the facts and nothing more.
I’ve been a journalist too. I’ve won awards for my journalism. I know that newspapers don’t just print the facts. They also print opinions. That’s why they have editorial pages. But Ryerson’s comment is designed to imply that bloggers don’t report the facts. Tabloids don’t report the facts. OK, maybe tabloids get it wrong more often than they should. Newspapers and TV reporters aren’t perfect either. But you don’t here bloggers bloviating about how much better we are to newspaper reporters because our facts are better. That’s just plain nonsense.
Ryerson’s argument can be boiled down to this: Because we didn’t have the facts, we didn’t print them. In fact, we didn’t print anything. We didn’t have the facts.
Well, Ryerson evidently doesn’t know what a fact is. In his mind, as the “superior” journalist, a fact is something that is verifiable and undeniable. In other words, since no one knew for sure that Edwards had an affair then they couldn’t report it. But what they actually had was an allegation of an affair. The allegation was, in actuality, a fact. It always is. Someone said something. Someone alleged something. It actually happened. It really happened that someone alleged that someone else did something. Now maybe what was alleged didn’t happen, but the allegation itself is a fact and for the media to ignore the allegation is not the same as “sticking with the facts.” This is convenient doublespeak.
News reporters often report rumors. Someone alleged that Senator Larry Craig solicited gay sex in a men’s room at an airport. The media reported that before it was known that he actually did. It was just an allegation. And as the story unfolded, the media told more of the facts. It could have been that the story totally turned out to be unfounded. It often happens. Allegations are made then they are proven false. All along the way, reputable media organizations report the facts as they are known. But not in the case of the Edwards affair.
Here’s more Ryerson:
In my more than three decades in the business, barely a year has gone by that I haven’t heard of some alleged personal indiscretion committed by one politician or another. Few such tips become news stories because those misbehaviors are so enormously difficult to prove.
In most cases laws aren’t broken so there is no string of public records to follow. Often, it’s one person’s word against another. And if we don’t have our facts, who is hurt? Not just some public official, but wives and husbands, sons and daughters.
So yes, I plead guilty. We will be less inclined to report these kinds of stories than the average supermarket tabloid.
OK, I get it. People make false allegations. That’s true. It happens all the time. They’ll allege that such-and-such politician is pro abortion when in fact he simply believes that a woman has a right to make her own choices in that matter. False allegations. Still reported.
People sometimes allege that a politician is for higher taxes when in fact the politician just wants to impose a new tax on a certain group of people for whatever reason. In many cases, those new taxes won’t affect the majority of citizens. False allegations. Still reported.
The fact of the matter is that the traditional news media didn’t pursue the story. Is it possible that maybe they were hoping John Edwards would be the vice presidential pick and therefore conveniently neglected to pursue the facts? Then - then - when it became evident that the facts could no longer be denied and that Edwards might not have a chance at the veep position anyway - then, OK, then we’ll report the facts along with our insipid apologies. Do you think that’s possible?
Oh, and here’s the kicker:
But public officials beware. The Technoworld, for all its assets, also creates something of a Wild West Internet atmosphere. Anybody with a notion of some misdeed has more of an opportunity to report it, to me and my colleagues at The Star with our set of standards, to the National Enquirer with its set of standards, or directly on the Internet without attention to any set of standards.
Wonderful. They’ve got standards. We don’t. Of course, how many news stories have been broken by Internet journalists? The Smoking Gun, Matt Drudge, Huffington Post … these sub-standard news organizations routinely report stories much quicker and more accurately than traditional media do.
Let’s fact it. Traditional print media is out. New media is in. People trust online sources more than print sources. We’ve been losing interest in print news for a long time now. Dan Rather’s mishap on Bush’s National Guard record wasn’t a first. People have been losing faith in traditional media for years and the reason why is because journalists fail at reporting accurately and timely and now the word is out. These virtues that Ryerson is claiming, all bogus. They aren’t virtues. They’re excuses. And we’re not accepting them.
