The Irreplaceable (For Now) & Subjective Keith Olbermann: Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite & The Pretty Myth of Journalistic Objectivity

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—1/31/11—There will be a test. And, with Olbermann silenced, we may not pass it.

Back when I stood behind a desk at the front of a bland college classroom, teaching Reporting or Advanced Reporting or Feature Writing at Clemson University, the University of LaVerne, or Anderson or Southeastern colleges, at some point during the semester I would have written on the blackboard something along the lines of this:

“Write down/learn/ponder for future test: ‘Journalism is the best obtainable version of the truth.’—by investigative reporter, Carl Bernstein, who, along with Bob Woodward, broke the story of the Watergate burglaries and cover-up”

My students would have taken it for granted that they might be tested not only on that seemingly simple-sounding quote but, also, on the history of Watergate, Bernstein and Woodward’s role in breaking the story, objectivity versus subjectivity in reporting, etc., etc.

They would also have been responsible for extrapolating, from that paragraph on the board, what one teacher of journalism thought (and still thinks) of “objectivity” and “truth” and “fact” vis-à-vis journalism; vis-à-vis reporting, or observing, or writing of any sort.

Some of my former students are working journalists, writers and editors today, in the US and Europe and even Afghanistan and, if they even today “look at people funny” when they suggest that journalists are objective purveyors of the truth, or can even aspire to being objective purveyors of the truth, then I have done my job well.

There is no such thing as an objective story, an objective reporter, an objective writer of so-called non-fiction.

Objectivity is the unicorn in the word-garden.

For, to every line of prose produced by a human hand, there is a slant.

The “news” is often “bought and sold.”

The reporter, the writer, the editor, the photographer—all may be pawns, witting or unwitting; puppets, witting or unwitting; shills, witting or unwitting; or, they may actually be doing their damndest to get “the facts, just the facts, M’am,” but always, always, inevitably, through no real fault of their own, failing.

Which is why, which is why, Dear Reader, I so much more highly value our News Analysts, our Commentators, our Opinion Writers than our reporters.

Why I so value Keith Olbermann.

The young women and men are out there on the beats reporting (though the beats look nothing like they did 25 years ago), don’t really know diddly, about reporting, about life, about squat, truth be told. Reporters have strong legs and greater stamina, due to their youth; reporters-at-large, war-reporters and photojournalists have more balls than brains, usually, too.

But, above them (on the Masthead, on the Credits) the old hands, the grey-beards, the crones, are the folks who make sense, for us, of the raw data coming in across the transom. And some, just some, of these people can crunch all the data coming in, hold it up against the history they’ve studied, the history they’ve lived through, and regurgitate something desperately meaningful, something essential, for the news-bloated, 24/7/news-cycle reader and viewer and listener.

Almost. Almost. Very close to almost ALL the time now, we (the great unwashed, sitting on our sofas) don’t have time to take in the raw data, or do anything useful with it. Objectivity, always very overrated, be damned: we need our cleverest, our sanest, our best educated, our shooting stars, to INTERPRET “the incoming”; to boil down the thin soup of reporting, and get to the gist of the story. The Big Story.

In the heyday of Walter Cronkite, who died on my and Keith’s watch (November 4, 1916—July 17, 2009), a CBS anchorman could “aspire to impartiality,” with a straight face, while actually acting as a news analyst. Back in the 50’s and 60’s, we in the US actually believed impartiality, objectivity, subtracting oneself entirely from one’s story, was possible and desirable. The truth is, however, that, in the face of the Vietnam War, and Watergate, even Cronkite shed that mask, on national TV, and told the viewer, in no uncertain terms, how we should “interpret” what the young men (mostly men, back then) were reporting.

Danger, Danger, Dear Reader: Cronkite told us we needed to get up off the sofa and take action, and, By God, we did. And it was the right thing for him to do. Any other course would have been negligent, immoral, unethical.

In a “Special Comment” (see Number 3 below), Keith Olbermann discussed objectivity, Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, and what he sees (and I see) as the true vocation of today’s Ur-Journalist: Cronkite and Murrow were, he states, “not glorified stenographers. These were not neutral men. These were men who did in their day what the best of journalists still try to do in this one. Evaluate, analyze, unscramble, assess—put together a coherent picture, or a challenging question—using only the facts as they can best be discerned, plus their own honesty and conscience.”

And, if I were still teaching journalism today, Keith’s 11/15/2010 “Special Comment” would be one of the texts from which I’d be writing on my blackboard, and asking journalism students to commit to heart.

There is, as far as I am concerned, no one like Olbermann left in our national pantheon of “Special Commentators” and, whatever the “reasons” may be for his departure from broadcasting, I will from here on out vociferously mourn the passing of “Countdown,” the silence of Keith Olbermann.

It’s not that I can no longer figure out, for myself, what to think of what’s happening in Palin’s tiny cranium, or in the rowdy streets of Egypt and Gaza, or on C Street, or in Congress. Painfully, and over time, I can probably—probably—ferret out a best obtainable version of the truth, as it morphs from day to day, week to week, month to month.

But Keith, and the “Countdown” staff, made it lots easier for me. I’m not a lazy citizen, but there’s only so much reading and viewing and cogitating one woman can do: Keith and staff were up on the bulwarks round the clock, making sense of things for me. And I trusted them to do it because, almost all the time, their take on things was spot-on.

In the absence of “Countdown,” the on-air silence is pretty damned frightening.

1) List of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments,” from MSNBC’s cancelled show, “Countdown”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Keith_Olbermann%27s_special_comments

2) Videos of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments”:

http://www.google.com/search?q=keith+olbermann%27s+special+comments&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=keith+olbermann%27s+special+comments&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=oO0&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnso&source=univ&tbs=vid:1&tbo=u&ei=GaNETckLxc6AB6n83MgB&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CEQQqwQwAw&fp=1c5f2baf197528df

3) Text of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” titled “False promise of ‘objectivity’ proves ‘truth’ superior to ‘fact’,” final edit posted on 11/15/2010:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40202512/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/

4) Excerpts from Keith Olbermann’s book, Pitchforks and Torches: The Worst of the Worst, from Beck, Bill and Bush to Palin and Other Posturing Republicans:

http://books.google.com/books?id=XwdnwyPuRvgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=keith+olbermann&source=bll&ots=XlZtRAQde4&sig=EZzLeGpGq_FD1cnZD4fSwVHvNo0&hl=en&ei=MqRETY7eB4H2gAe2rKHLAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=22&ved=0CJUBEOgBMBU#v=onepage&q&f=false

5) Partial extract  from Wikiquotes’ entry on Journalism:

Sourced

• Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
  • Bill Moyers, “The Big Story,” speech to the Texas State Historical Association, 7 March 1997, Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 131

• I don’t want to be part of the story. I want to be an anonymous, quiet onlooker who tries to work out what the hell is happening—it’s not easy—and then tells other people about it. I don’t like being a figure in the thing.
  • John Simpson, interview in Barnes, Nicky (October 12, 2007). “Interview: John Simpson – John Simpson is one of the most respected journalists in the world. On a visit to Norwich he talked about his book Not Quite World’s End, whether he will ever think of retiring and how life looks now he is the father – at 63 – of a new baby“. BBC Norfolk (BBC). Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• I’ve always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.
  • Gay Talese (September 14, 2006) — reported in Cathcart, Rebecca. “Lecture: Gay Talese.” Bullpen: NYU Journalism (New York University). Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• You go all over America and you see small papers that do really good jobs in their communities of reporting. The modern New York Times, the modern Washington Post, the modern Wall Street Journal are better papers than they were at the time of Watergate in most respects. But if you look at the rest of the field, … real news based on the best obtainable version of the truth was becoming less and less a commodity, less and less a real part of our journalistic institutions.
  • Carl Bernstein, interview in Staff (July 10, 2006). “Interview: Carl Bernstein.” FRONTLINE (WGBH educational foundation). Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• Grassroots journalism is part of the wider phenomenon of citizen-generated media—of a global conversation that is growing in strength, complexity, and power. When people can express themselves, they will. When they can do so with powerful yet inexpensive tools, they take to the new-media realm quickly. When they can reach a potentially global audience, they literally can change the world.
  • Gilmor, Dan (2006). We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People. O’Reilly Media. p. xv. ISBN 0596102275.

• The Web sites of interest groups generally advance the cause of journalganda, in that everything is presented through the filter of the interest group. […] It is an odd, unreal world but very important because it’s where partisans can go to have their thoughts re-enforced. There’s nothing like journalganda to make you feel absolutely certain you are correct, no matter what your position. […] Real journalism can always be identified by the way it makes normal people sometimes feel very uncomfortable about the world.
  • Charles M. Madigan (October 25, 2005) “The problem with today’s ‘journalism’”, Chicago Tribune.

It is my hope that future journalists will adhere to the true principles of the profession and understand that they play a vital role in helping to keep democracy and the exchange of free ideas alive at home and abroad. —Helen Thomas

• I do not think that journalism is a dying art. If anything, I believe it is more important than ever, and journalists worldwide are adapting to our modus operandi—to make public officials accountable to the people. The role of the journalist is indispensable, and as reviled as reporters may intermittently be, they are still highly respected when they pursue the truth and obtain positive results. It is my hope that future journalists will adhere to the true principles of the profession and understand that they play a vital role in helping to keep democracy and the exchange of free ideas alive at home and abroad.
  • Thomas, Helen (2006). Watchdogs of Democracy?. Simon and Schuster. p. Foreword. ISBN 0743267818.

• My problem, and our problem—I think this is a view that’s pretty widely shared in the news business—is, you know, we, and I don’t just mean The Times, are too ready to publish the blandest of quotes, or, sometimes, the idlest of gossip and innuendo, behind a cover of anonymity. I think it cheapens the currency of source protection.
  • Bill Keller, The New York Times executive editor, about anonymous sources (May 13, 2005) in On the Media.

• I suppose, in the end, we journalists try—or should try—to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: ‘We didn’t know—no one told us.’
  • Fisk, Robert (2005). The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Fourth Estate. p. xxv. ISBN 0007203837.

• Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.
  • Pilger, John (2005). Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World. Thunder’s Mouth Press. p. xv. ISBN 1560257865.

• The duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way.
  • Noam Chomsky interview in Wang, Joy (December 2004). “Lecture: Noam Chomsky.” Bullpen: NYU Journalism (New York University). Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• If somebody came from Mars to America and went around for months or years, and then you asked them who has the best jobs, they would say the journalists, because the journalists get to make momentary entries into people’s lives when they are interesting, and get out when they cease to be interesting.
  • Bob Woodward, interview in Bradlee, Ben (May 1, 2003). “Bob Woodward Interview: Investigative Reporter, Journalist for Truth.” Academy of Achievement: pp. Page 7 of 9. Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• I mean to work for “60 Minutes,” and be able to go any place in the world, do any story, have enough time on the air, et cetera, there is simply no job in journalism like it. At the beginning, it was a dream. Even now, at the age of 84, I work with people who are half my age or less, and it is the draw of the story. If there is a good story going, why not be there?
  • Mike Wallace, interview in Staff (June 8, 2002). “Mike Wallace Interview: CBS News Correspondent, 60 Minutes of Truth.” Academy of Achievement. Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• Controversy? You can’t be any kind of reporter worthy of the name and avoid controversy completely. You can’t be a good reporter and not be fairly regularly involved in some kind of controversy. And I don’t think you can be a great reporter and avoid controversy very often, because one of the roles a good journalist plays is to tell the tough truths as well as the easy truths. And the tough truths will lead you to controversy, and even a search for the tough truths will cost you something. Please don’t make this play or read as any complaint, it’s trying to explain this goes with the territory if you’re a journalist of integrity. That if you start out a journalist or if you reach a point in journalism where you say, “Listen, I’m just not going not touch anything that could possibly be controversial,” then you ought to get out.
  • Dan Rather, interview in Staff (May 5, 2001). “Dan Rather Interview: Broadcast Journalist, On the Frontlines of Breaking News.” Academy of Achievement. Retrieved on 2009-02-20.

• Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned.
  • Anthony Burgess, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

• They lied about it! The enemy boils the ocean, cooks the sixth fleet and every man, woman and child within fifty miles of a shoreline—you could expect some coverage. What did they report? Minor soil erosion in the Florida Keys. They boiled the ocean, woman!
  • Arthur M. Jolly in the play After It’s All Over, Original Works Press (2009)

• So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here—not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. (April 22, 1985). Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. p. 48. ISBN 0446313645.

Today’s serious nonfiction writer is important to society because from a solid background of social sciences, combined with the journalistic skills of a reporter, one moves beyond the reporter function to the front edge of our emerging society.—Betty Friedan

• Today’s serious nonfiction writer is important to society because from a solid background of social sciences, combined with the journalistic skills of a reporter, one moves beyond the reporter function to the front edge of our emerging society.
  • Betty Friedan (May 1978) 30th Anniversary Journal, American Society of Journalists and Authors, quoted in American Society of Journalists and Authors; Edited by Glen Evans (1983). The Complete Guide to Writing Non-Fiction. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books. p. 5. ISBN 0-89879-117-0.

• In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the public. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
  • Hugo L. Black (1971). New York Times Co. v. United States. Supreme Court of the United States. pp. 403 U.S. 713, at p.717.

• The art of a news reporter is to learn how to lull a victim, because all good reporters are confidence tricksters in embryo.
  • Derek Tangye, British author. Ch. VII, The Way to Minack (1968)

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
  • United Nations General Assembly (December 10, 1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Palais de Chaillot, Paris: United Nations. pp. Article 19. Text

• One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
  • Robert H. Jackson (1943). West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Supreme Court of the United States. pp. 319 U.S. 624, 638.

• The freedom of speech and of the press, which are secured by the First Amendment against abridgment by the United States, are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties which are secured to all persons by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by a state. The safeguarding of these rights to the ends that men may speak as they think on matters vital to them and that falsehoods may be exposed through the processes of education and discussion is essential to free government. Those who won our independence had confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning and communication of ideas to discover and spread political and economic truth.
  • Frank Murphy (1940). Thornhill v. Alabama. Supreme Court of the United States. pp. 310 U.S. 88, 95.

• News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.
  • Evelyn Waugh (1938) Scoop, I, Ch. 5, Sect. 1 — Quote reproduced in Crystal, David; Hillary Crystal (2000). Words on Words: Quotations about Language and Languages. University of Chicago Press. p. 277. ISBN 0226122018.
• 
  

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.

But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.

• • Humbert Wolfe, “Over the Fire,” in The Uncelestial City (1930)

• When journalese was at its rifest the Ministry of Health was established—possibly a coincidence.
  • John Galsworthy (July 1924) On Expression, Presidential Address to the English Association, p. 12. — Quote reproduced in Crystal, David; Hillary Crystal (2000). Words on Words: Quotations about Language and Languages. University of Chicago Press. pp. Page 276. ISBN 0226122018.

• Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
  • Elbert Hubbard (1914) The Roycroft Dictionary of Epigrams—quoted in Epstein, Joseph; Shapiro, Fred C. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. pp. 374. ISBN 0300107986.

• Never forget that if you don’t hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.
  • Arthur Brisbane (c. 1900) quoted in Carlson, Oliver (1937). Brisbane: A Candid Biography. pp. Chapter 5.

The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech, if not the voice, of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world. —William Thomas Stead

• The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech, if not the voice, of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world.
  • William Thomas Stead (May 1886) “Government by Journalism,” Contemporary Review.

• Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, —very momentous to us in these times.
  • Thomas Carlyle (1859). On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History: Six Lectures: Reported. Wiley & Halsted. pp. 147, Lect. V: “The Hero as Man of Letters.”

• Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
  • Charles Lamb (1833) “On Books and Reading,” The Last Essays of Elia—Quote reproduced in Crystal, David; Hillary Crystal (2000). Words on Words: Quotations about Language and Languages. University of Chicago Press. pp. 276. ISBN 0226122018.

• The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.
  • Massachusetts Constitution (1780) John Adams, Samuel Adams, James Bowdoin (1780). Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. pp. Article XVI. Text

Attributed

• In America the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs forever and ever.
  • Oscar Wilde—quoted in Janis, Lois August (2003). Voyage to Insight. CMJ Publishers and Distrib. pp. Page 70. ISBN 1891280406.

• Journalism largely consists in saying “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
  • G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown Shilling, Lilless McPherson; Linda K. Fuller (1997). Dictionary of Quotations in Communications. Greenwood Press. p. 120, Section: Journalism. ISBN 0313304300.

• When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
  • John B. Bogartto, New York Sun editor. Attributed in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 16th edition, 1992, p. 554.

• I do not care for the big ‘ideas’ of novelists. Novels are wonderful, of course, but I prefer newspapers.
  • Will Cuppy in Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (eds.), Twentieth Century Authors, New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1942, p.342.

• Experience has shown that newspapers are one of the best means of directing opinion—of quieting feverish movements—of causing the lies and artificial rumours by which the enemies of the State may attempt to carry on their evil designs to vanish. In these public papers, instruction may descend from the Government to the people, or ascend from the people to the Government; the greater the freedom allowed, the more correctly may a judgment be formed upon the course of opinion—with so much the greater certainty will it act.
  • Jeremy Bentham—quoted in Andrews, Alexander (1859). The History of British Journalism: From the Foundation of the Newspaper Press in England to the Repeal of the Stamp Act in 1855, with Sketches of Press Celebrities. R. Bentley. pp. Volume II, Page 179.

• Journalism is the first rough draft of history.
  • Generally credited to Philip L. Graham, as quoted in “Who Said It First? by Jack Shafer in Slate magazine (30 August 2010). Shafer indicates that the earliest incident of such an expression was long thought by many to be in an address by Graham to Newsweek correspondents in London (1963):

So let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.

• As quoted in Personal History (1997) by Katharine Graham, but earlier uses of such phrases by Graham have been found:

The inescapable hurry of the press inevitably means a certain degree of superficiality. It is neither within our power nor our province to be ultimately profound. We write 365 days a year the first rough draft of history, and that is a very great task.

• Address to the American Society for Public Administration (8 March 1953); published in Public Administration Review (Spring 1953), and even earlier uses of such phrases are known to have occurred and became part of journalistic vernacular in the 1940’s:

Newspapers, after all, are the first drafts of history, or pretend they are.

• Unsigned “Editor’s Note” in The Washington Post (16 October 1944)