When Journalists Have Opinions (That Is, Always)
(AP)
We wanted to bring your attention to some related questions being raised at the New York Times. Byron Calame writes in his "Public Editor" column about Linda Greenhouse, the Times’ Supreme Court reporter, who four months ago gave a speech at Harvard in which she said that the government "had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, other places around the world, the U.S. Congress, whatever. And let’s not forget the sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism.”
The Times ethical guidelines require reporters not to express opinions publicly beyond what they would be allowed to write in the newspaper. "It seems clear to me that Ms. Greenhouse stepped across that line during her speech," writes Calame. "Times news articles are not supposed to contain opinion. A news article containing the phrase 'the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism' would get into the paper only as a direct quote from a source."
Greenhouse argued to Calame that she was expressing "statements of fact," not opinion, which would thus be allowed in a news article.
It's not, obviously, the strongest argument. But there are some serious questions to be dealt with here, some of the same ones now being asked of CBS News. Calame writes that "as the influential Supreme Court reporter for The Times, a beat that touches nearly all areas of public policy, Ms. Greenhouse has an overriding obligation to avoid publicly expressing these kinds of personal opinions." But is that fair? Isn't it possible for a reporter to express an opinion in a speech – or, in the case of the updated CBS News standards, a blog – and still churn out unbiased work?
