183. Why is courtroom reporting so bad?
Every lawyer knows how wretchedly our mass media covers the courts. On the relatively few occasions when the newspapers cover one-third of the government - leaving to one side celebrity murder trials - they do so in a way that often makes it difficult for lawyers to understand what happened. I don't mean using the "incorrect" terminology. Frequently you can't even tell who was seeking what relief, or what legal point was at issue, or even what the judge actually ruled.
I don't think it's primarily a problem of reporters not understanding what they're seeing, although that's part of it (and crime and courts is traditionally a rookie's beat). Most of the time, what goes on in a criminal courtroom isn't difficult to understand. Even the most "difficult" issues usually boil down to something as straightforward as: Should the jury be allowed to hear this evidence, or not?
The problem, I think, lies not with the law but with the newspapers.
The August 26 Economist's cover story asked: "Who killed the newspaper?" Oddly, though, the accompanying leader and article didn't name the culprit: The Columbia School of Journalism. Wikipedia provides a nice potted bio of the school, but the gist is conveyed by the title of this book: The School of Journalism in Columbia University: The Book That Transformed Journalism from a Trade into a Profession.
The Columbia Journalism School was founded in 1912. The number of daily newspapers in America hit its all-time peak in the next couple of years - either in 1912 or 1919, depending on which website you believe. It's been downhill ever since. I don't think that's coincidence.
Over at the wonderful Gall and Gumption, Kia Penso writes (or wrote - I'm way behind on this):
As Kia, a journalist who's written for both American and Caribbean papers, goes on to explain, the view of journalism as a priesthood - or even as a profession as opposed to that contemptible thing, a trade - is an invitation for the reporter to take himself seriously. Very seriously:
The journalist is a Promethean, tragic figure, who fetches back the objective news at the risk sometimes of having his own guts ripped out. (O! Tragic hero journalist!) To illustrate this point the priest of the church of journalism will tell a story or two. At least one of them, strike me blind if I lie, will feature 1) a starving African orphan or 2) the parent of three children who died in a fire. What? You are against orphans? I might have guessed.
Anyone who criticizes the journalist in pursuit of objective news is a Rube - and (great phrase) "categorically irrelevant."
The Columbia Journalism School teaches its students that there is only one way to do journalism right. All good journalism is the same. It's objective. It tells both sides. It lays out the facts for the reader to decide.
But if all good journalism is the same, why would anyone read more than one newspaper? And, indeed, most Americans don't. Evening newspaper circulation dropped by three-quarters between 1960 and 2004. I'm sure the number is even lower today. There is simply no reason to read an evening paper that's exactly the same as the morning paper.
To blame radio, TV and the Internet misses the point: those other media are more attractive because they offer variety. Not just variety in the sense of sound and pictures, though of course that's part of it, but variety in the sense of other points of view, other ways of telling the story, something beyond the deliberately gray, oatmeal-like texture deliberately cultivated by the priests of print journalism.
"Objectivity" sounds great, but unless you're God, you can't achieve it, and ever since Job people have been wondering about Jehovah's objectivity, too. In American journalism, "objectivity" means "presenting both sides", which of course presupposes that there are - always - two sides. The best illustration of this principle in action is the experience of Deborah Lipstadt, the historian who called David Irving a Holocaust denier, only to be sued by him in English court - and win, because truth is a defense.
Anyway, let Deborah Tannen tell the story:
Which exposes the fallacy at the heart of the cult of "objective" journalism: that there is no truth. There are only arguments pro and con. So if one scientist denies the evidence of Greenland ice cores, while 999,999 accept the evidence, then we have a scientific debate about climate change.
This is the model of journalism that reporters bring to the courthouse. So now imagine a reporter determined to "get both sides" reporting on lawyers arguing in court. The problem for the reporter is that he or she must present both sides' arguments "fairly", giving equal space to them and treating them as equally valid - giving the objective facts for the reader to decide.
But, of course, the whole point of courtroom hearings is precisely that the two sides are not equally valid. So on the one hand, you have lawyers who are skilled at making their points seem plausible; and on the other hand, you have a reporter trained to believe it's his quasi-religious duty to reject the idea that one side is right, or more right, than the other. And so the article begins in incoherence even before going through the editorial process of dumbing-down for readers who are presumed incapable of understanding the way their government actually works.
And that's why courtroom coverage in our newspapers is, when it's not actively misleading, such a soggy waste of time to read.
Sunday, October 15, 2006 at 01:23PM in Covering the courts
Reader Comments (1)
I'm so glad you mentioned the Lipstadt book. I devoured it a few months ago and all I could think was, "This is how it's done." Wonderful book, and very much to the point, now that you mention it.