Imagine a society that has lived on an island for hundreds of years, having no contact with other humans, and believing that the island is all that exists as dry land. The inhabitants believe that the blue water extends from the shoreline to the horizon then goes up to form the blue sky above them.
The people also believe that
once in a while, gray water moves into the sky and comes down as rain, which
they drink and use to plant vegetables. The religion to which they adhere, is
based on the dogma that they live on the one piece of dry land that has ever
been and ever will be. They also believe that the island exists inside a bubble
of the blue water that surrounds them in all directions, and forms the blue
roof they see over their heads.
This is the image that comes
to mind when you, my friend, read the article that came under the title: “Media
mixing news with opinion signals the end of journalism,” written by Gary
Anderson and published on December 9, 2020 in The Washington Times.
When you go through the
article, you begin to understand that the author believes in the dogma which
says that in journalism, there is only rock-solid news which stands out like a
solid island. Surrounding it, Anderson imagines a sea of opinions that may or
may not be relevant, but would go over your head if and when you neglect to
keep track of what's going on around you.
Gary Anderson begins his
argument by repeating the advice that his high school teacher of journalism
drilled into her students’ heads. He recalls her saying “that the fastest way
for any news outlet to lose its professional reputation and credibility was to
editorialize in the pages advertised as straight news.” Anderson then laments
that: “In the past few years, that ethic has been steadily degraded in outlets
such as...”
Worse than all this in his
view, is that “Instead of responsibly supervising their reporters, it now
appears that some editors are encouraging this practice. In a column in The
Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan celebrated this rise in advocacy journalism
and encouraged her colleagues to do more of it”.
Why is that? Well, the
justification seems to be that, “because so many Americans increasingly get
their news from social media and partisan sites on the internet, mainstream
outlets must become advocates for the correct point of view which represents
ground truth as Margaret Sullivan and presumably omnipotent group of fellow
journalists define it”.
This means that Gary Anderson
is rejecting Margaret Sullivan's observation that the island of news on which
we stand, is already surrounded by the blue water of opinions we see all around
us as well as above us. But given that Margaret Sullivan has been an editor for
several publications whereas Gary Anderson has not, could it be that she knows
something he does not?
To answer that question, we
first draw a distinction between the two words “editing” and “editorializing.”
Does an editor such as Sullivan was, edit (in the sense of redact) the pieces
that come to their desk as news? Or do they editorialize (alone or together
with the board) the opinions, they feel need to be purveyed?
You see, my friend,
editorializing is an act of commission. That is, you add something to the pool
of ideas so as to make a point or rebut someone else's point. If you don't like
what you read or hear, you exercise your right to edit the thing in your own
mind, or turn off whatever is blaring the opinion at you. In fact, like John Dewey
said: The “solution to the ills of Democracy is more Democracy,” whether you
take it or leave it.
By contrast, editing is an act
of omission. Whether it is self-editing done because of fear, or editing done
by the editorial board of an outlet, the audience is deprived of the knowledge
that there was something which isn't there anymore, not to mention being
deprived of the substance of that something.
So, I ask you this question:
If you were invited to choose between editing and editorializing, which will
you consider to be the greater evil? Is it someone adding something you can
remove if you don't like it, or is it someone removing something you'll never
know was there for you to decide what to do with?
When you think about it
seriously, you cannot evade the conclusion that social media has proliferated
because editing had gone far beyond what was tolerable; in fact, had become
full blown censorship. The people are now saying that if the choice they must
make is to get garbage with the desired goods, or get no goods at all, they'll
take the garbage and the goods.
They'll do the triage
themselves, say the people, and decide what to keep and what to reject rather
than hear the Anti-Defamation League and its army of mobsters tell them that
Linda Sarsour should be censored because she does not hate Louis Farrakhan, the
outstanding citizen who never said anything disparaging about celebrated
citizens of the Linda Sarsour caliber.
You see, my friend, if a
journalist tells a story that’s in the news in 100 words, and another
journalist tells the same story in 150 words, it means that the first
journalist unwittingly censored something in the story. And this means he did
not just edit he story, he editorialized it.
The moral of this story is that nothing that’s said escapes being editorialize. We do, indeed live in a bubble of blue water whether we believe we’re alone in it, or believe other islands exist out there beyond the horizon.