All Blog Posts from Public Eye

A bad guy is dead. If you're a journalist, is it OK to cheer?

Not according to David Zurawik and Nick Madigan of the Baltimore Sun, who write that "some American news organizations yesterday covered the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with marked enthusiasm, verging on inappropriate glee."

MSNBC showed an image of the dead al-Zarqawi under the headline "terminated," with framing that suggested an Old West Wanted poster, according to the Sun. The New York Post's cover today features al-Zarqawi and the word "Gotcha!" There is a speech-bubble shown coming from the deceased man's mouth with the words "Warm up the virgins." Iraqi reporters reportedly broke into applause when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced al-Zarqawi's death in Baghdad.

"It's not our job in the news business to gloat," David Zeeck, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, told the Sun. "Our job is to deal with an event like this in a measured way."

Mainstream media journalists continually assert that they can report the news fairly and objectively – a contention that some critics consider untenable. Certainly, gloating and applause are not objective responses to any news. But they are human responses to what seems to be good news from the perspective of anyone who opposes terror. Should journalists suppress their jubilation and strive to keep their reporting objective? Or in a case like this is it all right to let their emotional response into the coverage?

Before you come to a conclusion, remember that this goes both ways: After Hurricane Katrina, many observers applauded reporters for displaying outrage over politicians' handling of the tragedy. If you want journalists doing their best to "feel the news at you," as Stephen Colbert jokingly put it, don't you have to be willing to support them feeling it at you in any situation?

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Perhaps predictably, my attempts to clarify the debate over objectivity succeeded only in confusing things so let’s take another crack at trying to make the original point. First off, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis is befuddled at being thrust into the debate over whether or not Rep. John Murtha’s call for a pullout in Iraq was newsworthy, particularly since he had not weighed in on it.



Fair enough but allow me to explain. Jarvis is one of the leading advocates for scrapping the objective model of news and we have tangled over this before. I felt that the Murtha debate was a prime example of the need for commonality, at least in what we can agree on as elements for public discourse. Thus, the pairing.



Jarvis had a sharp take on my argument that, barring any common parameters of just what news is, we risk a future where even what should be discussed cannot be agreed upon:

“First, Vaughn misses the point on the objectivity debate. It isn’t that with the death of the objectivity ideal — or the admission that it was a false idol — you must now slant every newscast. That’s what he says and that’s what is simplistic, in my view. Instead, I say that the ethic of transparency requires you reveal the biases you do have because your audience deserves to know them, so they can judge your judgments. Having done that, then, of course, you should still try to be accurate, truthful, fair, balanced, and all that. But to refuse to reveal a bias — or rather, call it a perspective — and to, indeed, hide it is a lie of omission. There’s no agenda worse than a hidden agenda.”

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Let me get subjective about objectivity for a minute. I got to thinking about it while reading some of the reaction to the launch of the Open Source Media project. Giving some unsolicited advice, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis had this to say:

“Stop trying to act fair and balanced; have a worldview and be proud of it.”

It struck me that Jarvis had almost the exact same advice for PE when we launched our efforts here, writing at the time:

“Try this on for size: I think there’s no such thing as an objective blogger. Or you’re probably not blogging. You’re probably not talking with people, eye to eye. We’re about to kill the myth that journalists can be thoroughly objective; let’s not start trying to accrete that artificial ethic to blogs.”

Looking back at some of the stories and topics we’ve take on, I think most readers would come to the conclusion that PE has established a voice and a worldview. I also think a strong part of that worldview is a respect for the truth – or at least a search for the truth. But that process is messy and many times does not lend itself to easy or clear-cut answers. And some give no quarter to the real truth no matter how clear it is. The past week provides a great example of what happens when worldviews collide.

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Thanks to BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis, the reaction to Public Eye within the blogosphere has begun to trickle in. In his pre-launch profile of our endeavor, Jarvis expressed some concerns and questions of his own and asked fellow bloggers to weigh in with their advice or opinions. And weigh in they did.


The most popular subject by far concerned “objectivity” and “opinion.” When meeting with Jarvis, and in a variety of other interviews, I have sought to differentiate PE from the more traditional role of an ombudsman. The reason: We envision a more robust, dynamic and conversational dialogue — less “big J” journalism theory and more practical realism. In trying to emphasize that difference, I told Jarvis that this blog won’t be “opinionated.” Here is part of his response:

“Try this on for size: I think there’s no such thing as an objective blogger. Or you’re probably not blogging. You’re probably not talking with people, eye to eye. We’re about to kill the myth that journalists can be thoroughly objective; let’s not start trying to accrete that artificial ethic to blogs.”

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