The Times' 'Blazing Straddle'

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-tent30jan30.story
OUTSIDE THE TENT
The Times' 'Blazing Straddle'
By Marc Cooper
Marc Cooper is a contributing editor to The Nation, a columnist for L.A. Weekly and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

January 30, 2005

In the weeks leading up to today's election in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times has distinguished itself for its breadth and depth of coverage. The correspondents on the ground have shown admirable personal courage and professional tenacity in doggedly reporting one of the most dangerous and important stories of our time.

Wouldn't it be nice, then, if The Times completely unleashed these fine reporters and allowed them to tell us — during the crucial period ahead — exactly what they are and are not seeing? And even more important, what they're thinking? All of it written in the first person from ground level?

That's not to impugn what has been reported to date. But that reporting, like nearly all reporting in The Times, has been run through the usual sort of editorial food processor that guarantees the prevailing standard of "fair, balanced, objective stories." You know the routine: he said/she said; yes/but; the so-called blazing straddle of "objectivity."

As thorough as The Times' reporting has been, it often reads as if written by acrobats in pain — skilled professionals twisting themselves and their copy into knots as they strain to "balance" what they are actually seeing with the sometimes fantasy-based spin of both Iraqi and U.S. officialdom.
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Believe it or not, readers are more than smart enough to figure out who and what to trust or not trust. Anyway, there is no single objective truth about anything. And the more The Times at least implicitly continues to argue there is, the less confidence, the less investment, an increasingly media-savvy readership will have in the product.