Journalism’s ‘neutrality fetish’
Like Murrow and Pyle of a generation ago, Hoyt, Lundy, Rather and Russert get it. Apparently Jennings, Wallace and Jenkins do not. Objectivity does not require neutrality. You can be objective and
patriotic at the same time. Here’s some quotes from the Jeff Jacoby column in the Boston Globe:
“Contrast Hoyt’s and Lundy’s attitude with that of Loren Jenkins, the senior foreign editor of National Public Radio. Talking with Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, Jenkins said he had ordered his reporters to track down the American Special Forces. “The game of
reporting is to smoke ‘em out,” he said.Johnson pressed him. If NPR reporters discovered the whereabouts of an American commando unit - information the Pentagon says could put the troops’ lives at risk if made public - what would the network do?
“You report it,” Jenkins replied. “I don’t represent the government. I represent history, information, what happened.” What about the
warnings from the military? Jenkins brushed them aside. “They never tell you the truth.”
“Last month ABC News prohibited its reporters from wearing US flag lapel pins. “We cannot signal how we feel about a cause, even a
justified and just cause,” a network spokesman said.”
“When CNN’s Bernard Shaw returned from Baghdad in 1991, having witnessed the outbreak of the Gulf War, he refused to talk to American debriefers about what he had seen - because, he said, he had to remain “neutral.”
“The most infamous expression of this neutrality fetish occurred during a PBS debate in 1989. A hypothetical case was put to Peter
Jennings and Mike Wallace: You’re covering a war, traveling behind enemy lines with a “North Kosanese” military unit that sets up an ambush to kill a group of Americans. Do you film the ambush or do you try to warn the Americans?Jennings answered first. “I think,” he said after a long pause, “that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.”
That appalled Wallace. “I am astonished” that you would interfere, he said to Jennings. “You’re a reporter!” But shouldn’t a reporter do something, asked the moderator, when his fellow Americans are about to be massacred? Doesn’t he have a higher duty than covering the story?
“No,” Wallace replied at once. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”