One of the ways the media manifests its bias is with the language it uses to talk about certain things. There's a style we'll call the "language of scandal," and reporters using this language will tell you, for instance, that they have "obtained internal memos," or that that certain things have been "learned" from sources who wish not to be named. It's designed to make you think that what you're about to be told is sinister and objectionable, as evidenced by the clandestine manner in which the information was obtained.
Another element of this is the presentation of certain information as remarkable when it really isn't. If I tell a CEO called a company meeting to review sales figures, you'd say, "So what?" That's no big deal. But if I ran a story on the front page and talked about this like it was an astonishing revelation, you might wonder whether something is amiss - not as a result of the information itself, but as a result of the way it's presented.
We already talked earlier in the week about how easily the media can manipulate people by acting like something is a big deal when it's really not. And today the New York Times is trying to do it again, in an astonishingly shameless attack on one of its direct competitors. And what scandalous thing has the editor of the Wall Street Journal done that merits this sensational attention from the Timesmen? He told his reporters to stick to the facts:
Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve.
Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Wednesday after Mr. Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.
“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning to a group of Journal reporters and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.
He added in a follow-up, “Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?”
Notice the emphasis the Times puts on the time of night when Baker sent the e-mails, as if it's bizarre for an editor to be commenting on stories late at night. Anyone who knows the news business knows this isn't unusual at all. You deal with content when stories are filed, and you file stories when news is happening. But describing these perfectly ordinary missives as "blunt late-night emails" leaves you with the impression that Baker was ranting and raving under a full moon or something.
Also, the content of Baker's e-mails is not only standard journalistic boilerplate, but entirely correct as well. One of the first things you learn in journalism is that news stories are for straight facts, attributed to sources you can name. Opinions are for the editorial page. Editors have had to tell news reporters since time immemorial to leave their opinions out of news stories. This is one of the reasons we have editors.
But the Times treats this as an extraordinary, unreasonable demand, and emphasizes how upset reporters are that they're not allowed to editorialize against the president in their stories. Apparently if they want to do that, they should leave the Journal and go to work for the Times!
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Here's where the story gets even more dishonest. The Worst Web Site in the World somehow obtained a transcript, presumably from a liberal mole at the Journal, of a White House interview between President Trump and members of the WSJ staff, including Baker himself. The Times wants you to believe the following is highly unusual and reflects poorly on Gerald Baker. It is not, and it does not:
This month, Politico obtained and published a transcript of a White House interview with Mr. Trump conducted by Mr. Baker and several Journal reporters and editors. Unusually for an editor in chief, Mr. Baker took a leading role in the interview and made small talk with Mr. Trump about travel and playing golf.
When Ivanka Trump, the president’s older daughter, walked into the Oval Office, Mr. Baker told her, according to the transcript, “It was nice to see you out in Southampton a couple weeks ago,” apparently referring to a party that the two had attended.
So the big scandalous takeaways here are a) the editor in chief took the lead in the interview; b) he was friendly and chatty with the president; c) he was friendly and chatty with the president's daughter when she walked in the room. You're supposed to think all of this is highly unusual and proves editorial malfeasance on the part of Gerald Baker.
That is garbage.
It's certainly unusual for the editor in chief to personally take the lead in an interview with a run-of-the-mill news source. But when the interview is with a bigwig, it's very common for editors and even publishers to be in the room and take an active role. I've personally been in situations like this and I've seen it happen many times. When your senator or the governor drops by, the top editor will almost always be in the room - and out of deference for the position, if nothing else, reporters will usually let the bigwig(s) ask questions before they ask their own.
So when the interview is with the president of the United States, of course the editor in chief is going to participate. The Times is lying to you when they tell you this is unusual.
Now let's deal with the small talk. They want you to think friendly banter suggests some violation of journalistic objectivity, as if a friendly word with the president must mean you're in the tank for him. Bolshevik. When journalists sit down with a source to conduct an interview, there is almost always some sort of light banter to get the conversation started. It could be about something basic like the weather or the traffic on the way to the meeting. Or it could be about sports, or something the two of you happen to have in common. This is about nothing more than people being friendly and pleasant to each other. It's simple courtesy.
I guess you shouldn't expect that if you're interviewed by the New York Times. They have no room for friendliness. It's probably just as well because if I ever have to deal with a reporter from the New York Times, the sooner they finish what they're doing and leave, the better. But for everyone else, a little light banter before getting down to business is refreshing and appreciated.
The real question in the midst of all this, though, is why the Times now thinks it's a scandal for an editor to tell reporters to stick to the facts in their reporting. This has been a basic professional staandard in journalism for as long as anyone can remember. If the Times has now abandoned this because of its hatred for Donald Trump - and clearly it has - then it's the editors of the Times, not their counterparts at the Journal, who have some explaining to do.
By the way, when did newspapers start obtaining and publishing the internal memos of their rivals? Does the world of journalism really want to go in that direction? Or is everything fair as long as it's aimed at the destruction of Donald Trump?
