As a young journalist fresh out of school, I decided to pursue criticism rather than reporting. I knew I’d chafe under the stricture of American journalism that forbade the expression of opinion. (Also, I knew I was temperamentally unsuited for shoving notebook or microphone under the noses of people who were recently bereaved, newly indicted or otherwise thrust into the spotlight.) If I became a reporter, I could wait 20 years and maybe, just maybe, if I worked hard and was good and got lucky, I’d earn a column, and, finally, be able to write what I thought, instead of having to seek out “experts” to say what I thought I already knew. Or I could become a critic — and start writing, immediately, not just about what I was observing but also about what I was thinking about it, which seemed more honest.
This is how it looked to me a quarter century ago, anyway. Since then I’ve ended up doing somewhat more reporting in addition to columns and criticism, and my respect for the insanely difficult work of reporting well has risen.
But also, the strictures have evolved. In the disintegration of journalistic norms taking place all around us today, it is increasingly common to find out-and-out opinions sitting right in the middle of ostensible “news” articles. I’m not talking about the kind of complaint you hear all the time from partisans of every stripe who dismiss facts that are inconvenient to their side by relabeling them as opinions. I’m talking about real opinions — statements that do not stand on their own as reported fact but hang in the void, unsupported by anything other than assertion.
These musings were occasioned by a piece in Sunday’s New York Times Business section by Louis Uchitelle. “Two Tiers, Slipping Into One” describes the decline of the bargaining power of Rust Belt unions. A union leader tells Uchitelle what he says to young workers who are getting a worse deal than their elders: “I assure them that five years down the road, when the present contract expires, we in the union are going to improve their lot in life.”
Uchitelle begins his next paragraph: “That does not seem likely.”
I am not questioning the accuracy of Uchitelle’s forecast, nor do I begrudge him his sarcasm. I am instead marveling at the forthright expression of an opinion. The union guy says one thing, and the reporter says, “Nope, sorry, not gonna happen.”
Uchitelle is a veteran labor and economics reporter. I have no reason to think he’s wrong. I’m just wondering — can we extend this practice a bit? If we’re saying it’s OK for reporters to point out that something a union leader says “does not seem likely,” maybe it would be OK for them to point out the same thing in other places and at other times, for other speakers?
Consider:
“We’re working with Congress to hold the line on spending,” Mr. Bush said Monday. “And we do have a plan to cut the deficit in half.”
That does not seem likely.
The insurgency in Iraq is “in the last throes,” Vice President Dick Cheney says.
That does not seem likely.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “”There is no wiggle room in the president’s mind or my mind about torture.”
That does not seem likely.
Is this practice of writing truth to power going to spread across the pages of America’s dailies? That does not seem likely. But we can dream.
