Two Perspectives: Reporting with attitude By Tim McGuire Reporting with authority and reporting with attitude are very different things. Mike Finney and I were talking about reporting with authority in 1981 at the old Minneapolis Star. In those days some reporters felt compelled to use a quote to support every contention they made. Finney, as managing editor, argued eloquently that some of those quotes were inane and did little to bolster the credibility of the story. We urged reporters to question every quote and to be more aggressive in making observations on their own authority. Both implicitly and explicitly we discouraged pejoratives or debatable judgments and observations. Quotations should be used to make arguable and controversial points. The context of the story should guide that judgment. If there is overwhelming factual evidence in the story then certain conclusions or judgments may be entirely appropriate. I have not read the story that required mediation between the Minnesota GOP and the Pioneer Press so I can’t speculate whether the use of the word bogus was appropriate. I can say the facts of the story would have to be very compelling in proving the bogus charge before I would be comfortable using that word on my own hook. Bruce Benidt is one of the most astute judges of good writing I know. He is correct when he says that writing with attitude can make writing more compelling. For me the question is what vehicle we’re talking about for such writing. Novels, non-fiction books, newspaper columns and web logs are great venues for such writing. Today’s mainstream newspapers are the wrong venue. Editors and reporters of major metropolitan newspapers attempting to serve entire communities must recognize that the role of the newspaper is to bind not separate. The more opinionated or loaded our language gets in newspapers the more we play into the belief that we have a political agenda. All you have to do is walk the book shelves of Barnes and Noble or turn on the TV pundits to recognize how fragmented our political picture has become. Liberals and conservatives seem locked in a battle to see who’s the most outrageous and mean-spirited. But we kid ourselves if we think that this ideological split is confined to books and television. This past fall I was the James Batten Visiting Professor for Journalism and Public Policy at Davidson College. I have no idea how typical Davidson is—it is highly selective, expensive and full of tradition—but I was surprised at the almost even split between Republicans and Democrats on the campus. One of the classes I taught was called "Ethics, Bias and Credibility in the News Media." That class taught me a truth that I’m not sure most American journalists have focused on. Some people see bias behind every bush. They see bias where journalists would never dream there was bias. I believe we have to take charges of bias seriously, but we’re not even in the same universe with our readers if these young people are a reflection of the broader population. I asked the students to find bias trigger words and I was stunned when I got these: no doubt, obvious, by no means, beleaguered, plenty to suggest, and verbs like flood and jump. These came after I had spent considerable time establishing that bias is a "values-directed distortion." That completely unscientific exercise convinced me editors and reporters are not prepared for what many readers view as bias. These young people were bothered by any evaluative, qualitative words that go beyond basic declarative sentences. I am convinced that newspapers must continue to serve the entire community to be successful. Newspapers must be what I call the "information general store" where everyone in the reader audience feels welcome. For many journalists, "writing with attitude" means writing with your opinions, prejudices and perspectives on your sleeve. That is not going to make many readers feel welcome to our pages. When I think of writing with an attitude I think of Rush Limbaugh. He reads press reports and then spins them with his own opinions and prejudices. He does so with aggressiveness, vigor and even anger. His "attitude" is clear to every listener. All this "attitude" is concerning enough on the bookshelves, radio and on our television networks I do not want to see that kind of work in a newspaper I read. Tim McGuire is a past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He was executive editor of the Star Tribune from 1992-2002. He now works as a columnist and speaker out of Scottsdale, Az. By Bruce Benidt What if the Los Angeles Times, every day before the California recall, had printed a big box on the front page saying, "Today Arnold Schwartzenegger again refused to tell voters anything about how he would solve the budget crisis"? "Foul," the campaign would have cried. "Bias," pundits would have opined. "Not objective," and "advocacy journalism," academics would have mumbled gravely. But the story about Arnold not saying squat would have been true, yes? So how can it be bad journalism? And would it have been in the public interest for a newspaper to push a candidate for the state’s highest job to say something about what he might do if he won it? Sure. Ain’t that America? Don’t we have a free press? Sort of. We have a press hobbled and muzzled by its own quixotic quest for disembodied objectivity. In Minnesota, a Pioneer Press reporter writes in a story that a Republican criticism of Mark Dayton is "bogus." The reporter doesn’t quote someone else saying that – in which case it would have been all right, according to the standards of journalism – but wrote it on his own hook. And the Republicans screamed. As would Democrats had the roles been reversed. The paper stood by its reporter. Is this "reporting with attitude," as former Star Tribune editor Tim McGuire used to call spunky reporting, or is it unfair? It’s certainly controversial, which means it’s scarce. And what we need is more attitude, more spunk, more controversy, more hollering. Here’s a modest proposal. What if every time one of our US Representatives or Senators voted for or against a bill in Washington, the newspaper routinely covered his or her vote and also listed in the same story the campaign contributions that person receives from groups or people affected by the vote? A Representative votes not to allow cheaper prescription drugs to be imported from other countries, and the news story includes the fact that the Representative received a total of $100,000 from several pharmaceutical and health-care companies. A Senator votes no on banning late-term abortions, and the story includes the fact that the Senator received a total of $20,000 from the National Organization for Women and several other abortion-rights groups. Would this be objective reporting? Would it be good journalism? Would it help readers understand how political decisions are made? Would it help voters understand how courageous an elected official is, and whether the official is serving the public good rather than his or her own reelection effort? Would the editor say to the reporter who was trying to include the contributions in the story – "You can’t include that, you’re taking an activist position. You’re implying that votes are bought by campaign contributions."? "Find out where a man gets his corn pone and you’ll find out where he gets his opinions," Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago. True then, true now. Objectivity is crap, and it makes for boring and misleading journalism. The oldest debate in journalism is objectivity versus subjectivity. It’s a debate that’s probably engaged in too much in journalism schools and not enough in newsrooms. Just reporting what happened is objective, supposedly. A reporter giving opinions about what happened is subjective, supposedly, and belongs on the editorial page, not the news pages. What twaddle. We learned in Vietnam – didn’t we? – that "objectively" passing on what the Pentagon and White House told us about the progress of the war gave the country a biased view of what was happening. It was only when the reporters on the ground started reporting what the grunts were saying and doing that we got a real view of the war. Letting the government, or a candidate, go unchallenged is irresponsible journalism. The founders knew this. We should exhume them. They guaranteed a free press when that press was obstreperously, joyously partisan and unfair. So what about letting Arnold Schwartzenegger have his say – or his not-say – on the front page and rail about his contentless campaign on the editorial page, where opinion belongs? Good luck. The front page sets the agenda, and only a fraction of readers ever make it to the editorial page. It would be like aiming security cameras in a bank only at a potted plant – that will help catch the few bank robbers who are after ficus trees, all right. Should reporters’ biases and judgments be kept out of their stories? Can’t be done. Those biases determine who gets interviewed, what parts of the interview get quoted, and where in the story those quotes are featured, which affects how many people read them and how seriously people take them. Let ‘er rip. Write subjective stuff, let reporters tell readers what they think about what they’re reporting on – but have the reporters relate their own biases in the story. The people will figure it out. Somebody writing about SUVs should be able to say in the story that he or she thinks SUVs are gas hogs that are polluting the planet and deepening our dangerous dependence on foreign oil. The next writer can report on SUVs and tell the readers that she or he thinks SUVs with their bulk help drivers and passengers stay safe. Let the debate rage. We readers aren’t dummies. We’ll sort it out. Ted Hall’s death in September made me think about this objectivity stuff again. Ted, one of Minnesota’s greatest journalists, left a career with Eastern newspapers and Time Magazine to start a weekly paper in the tiny town of Ranier up on Rainy Lake. He wrote glorious stories and had a small but loyal national audience. Because what he wrote was lively and provocative. And it wasn’t objective. In fact, he created characters who covered the county board and city council – Restless Reporter and the Wandering Lobsterman (in search of the Northwest Passage, the Wandering Lobsterman stopped at the Koochboard – the Koochiching County Board of Commissioners – to observe and report on the commissioners’ meetings and behavior). Ted wrote it all – how one commissioner always showed up late, how another mostly tried to catch flies with his bare hands while department heads were presenting information. And if some commissioner was voting on a proposal that would help or hurt his business – his resort or fishing-guide operation – Ted’s Wandering Lobsterman would write that clearly in the story. The citizens of Koochiching County had a very clear idea of what their elected commissioners were doing, and whose interests they were serving. And the stories were interesting and human, and so people actually read them. Very unconventional journalism, bless Ted’s soul. Bruce Benidt of Eden Prairie is a former newspaper reporter and college journalism teacher and is on the adjunct journalism faculty of the University of St. Thomas.