In a column reviewing the NY Times’ faulty coverage of WMDs in Iraq, Times’ Public Editor Daniel Okrent outlines a number of ‘institutional’ problems that plague news reporting:
* The Hunger for Scoops
* Front Page Syndrome
* Hit-and-run Journalism
* Coddling Sources
* End-run Editing
While all five of these problems exist also in reporting on Israel, Okrent’s ‘Coddling Sources’ seems most clearly relevant:
There is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous source. There is often nothing more necessary, too; crucial stories might never see print if a name had to be attached to every piece of information. But a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth. That automatic editor defense, “We’re not confirming what he says, we’re just reporting it,” may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it’s worse than no defense. It’s a license granted to liars.
The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source – the offer of information in return for anonymity – is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed.
Indeed. So why is Saeb Erekat, a named source who turned out to be baldly lying about Jenin, still considered a reputable spokesman by news outlets? Why were unnamed Palestinian sources granted broad legitimacy regarding the supposed Gaza ‘massacre’ on May 19 (which turned out to be nothing of the sort)? And when was the last time an unnamed Palestinian source who ‘breached the contract’ of truth was exposed for this in follow-up stories?
Analyst Joshua Muravchik makes a similar point in his book, Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising:
Journalists seem to follow a canon that says when two sides are fighting, it is their obligation to report equally and with equal credence what is said by each. But the quality of the information provided by the two sides in this conflict is highly asymmetrical. By this I mean simply that the Palestinians repeatedly lie. It starts with Arafat and goes down to his many deputies. It seems even to reach…man-in-the-street interviews, such as the Jenin resident who claimed [falsely] to have watched Israel bury ten bodies under a building.
Given this, media objectivity cannot be achieved in this conflict by simply quoting Palestinian officials or local ‘eyewitnesses,’ unchallenged. Okrent would seem to agree.
