One slow night on the news desk of my last full-time job in mainstream journalism, a fellow copy editor andI were killing time doing what corporate employees everywhere love to do: ridiculing our bosses and the stateof the business more generally.
Newsroom bosses love 'Documented Facts' because they provide a reflexive defense to charges of incompetence, bias, or unfairness. True facts make most editors nervous (unless, of course, they can be rendered as 'Documented Facts')
One slow night on the news desk of my last full-time job in mainstream journalism, a fellow copy editor andI were killing time doing what corporate employees everywhere love to do: ridiculing our bosses and the stateof the business more generally.
That evening, the subject was the standards that decision-making editors (that is, everyone above us, whichwas almost everyone) have for assessing the validity of "facts." We had always found amusing thejournalistic rules that determine which assertions about the world count as facts (and, hence, could beincluded in stories without much concern) and which get tossed into other categories, either to be eliminatedfrom stories or used only when highly qualified (allegations, speculation, opinions, etc.). That night, wedecided to draw up a tongue-in-cheek "hierarchy of facts."
We created five or six categories. I can't recall the whole list and long ago lost the chart we made thatnight, but I remember the top and bottom categories. Resting on top, in the most exalted position, was thecategory of facts to which journalists are most wedded, the facts editors like best: Documented Facts.
On the bottom were the facts that potentially cause the most trouble for journalists: True Facts.
Our point was simple: The way in which contemporary mainstream journalists gather facts about the worldprivileges those things that can be documented, especially from "credible" and"authoritative" sources. City Hall documents, jail logs, police reports, court files, legislativereports -- all provide Documented Facts.
For reporters, the key question (especially on a tight deadline) isn't necessarily whether the facts inthose documents are true, but whether the facts are in the document. If something was written down somewhere(or spoken in public by an official from one of those credible and authoritative institutions), then it is aDocumented Fact. If it turns out later that this Documented Fact was, in fact, incorrect, well, the journalistcan simply say, "I accurately conveyed the Documented Fact; I wasn't contending I knew for sure theDocumented Fact was True. But I knew for sure it was in the Document."
Newsroom bosses love Documented Facts because they provide a reflexive defense to charges of incompetence,bias, or unfairness: "Don't blame us; we just wrote down what was there." It's the model ofjournalist as conduit: Collect the facts, put them into accessible form, and push them through the pipeline tothe public. (Later, in graduate school, I learned that a number of sociologists had written books pointingthis out, making it, I suppose, a Documented Fact.)
The rules of libel law actually provide incentive for this approach by shielding journalists from liabilitywhen they use Documented Facts. If someone's reputation is trashed in the course of presenting DocumentedFacts, journalists are protected from having to cough up money for damages, as long as the trashing came froman official source and the account of the material was fair and accurate. That's a sensible rule; ifjournalists are to report fully on public business, they should be able to report on official documents andwhat public officials say without assuming excessive risk. But that mindset can inhibit journalists when theydeal with True Facts that don't appear in documents.
True Facts make most editors nervous (unless, of course, they can be rendered as Documented Facts). That'snot because journalists don't like truth. It's just that lots of True Facts take more effort to find and/ordefend than Documented Facts. It's a messy world in which there is often a lot of argument not only aboutinterpretation of facts but about the facts themselves. And given that powerful people and institutions canmake your life miserable if they don't like your assessment of the facts, it's easy to understand whyjournalists like to lean on Documented Facts.
The problem is, of course, that Documented Facts don't always lead to the truth. For months, U.S.journalists accurately reported the Documented Fact that Bush administration officials said that SaddamHussein was just about ready to drop a nuclear bomb on us or spray us with chemical weapons from drone planes.Dutifully, the U.S. media reported these Documented Facts, often on page 1. Bush said in his 2003 State of theUnion address that the British had learned the Saddam recently had tried to buy uranium in Africa. A Britishintelligence dossier had been cited by an authoritative source. Those were Documented Facts, duly reported.Unfortunately, those Documented Facts weren't helpful in getting at the truth (that the claim was based onforged documents and was part of a pattern of lies and distortions the Bush administration employed to buildsupport for the war).
Sometimes, when the administration tried to peddle Documented Facts that stretched the bounds ofcredibility too far, reporters would insert sentences to suggest that readers be skeptical. When the liesbecame too obvious to ignore, follow-up stories appeared, but never with the prominence of the originalreport.
Eventually direct challenges to these Documented Facts started showing up in the mainstream media -- butmostly after the war was over. For example, the Associated Press produced a point-by-point evaluation ofSecretary of State Colin Powell's claims in his Feb. 5, 2003, U.N. speech, debunking much of the allegedevidence on which the call to war was based. The story moved on the wires in August.
In this case, "better late than never" comes up a bit short as an excuse. The war is over (sortof). Correcting the record now is better than nothing. But those killed in the war remain dead. The project ofthe United States ruling the Middle East by force has taken another step forward. And the Iraqi peoplecontinue to suffer for it.
Why did journalists, who consider themselves the watchdogs on power, not pursue more aggressively the Bushadministration's lies and distortions about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and terrorist tiesbefore the war, when it might have been meaningful?
No doubt part of the explanation is the simple fact that, on matters of war, the U.S. press has never beenmuch of a watchdog. When it comes to war, journalism tends to "follow the flag," as CBS anchor DanRather once put it. After 9/11, the hyper-patriotism in the country has exacerbated that problem. Anothercrucial factor is that much of the Democratic Party signed onto the war. So, there was no real oppositionparty to provide Documented Facts for he said/she said style reports that journalists find most comforting(and easy to write), and journalists were timid in pursuing stories on their own.
(A footnote: Journalists' common acceptance of the ideology of patriotism and American supremacy also helpsexplain why certain Documented Facts -- specifically those that undermine Americans' dominant view ofthemselves as the guardians of justice in the world -- sometimes are of little interest to mainstreamjournalists. Take the Documented Facts that poured out of various U.N. agencies during the 1990s, detailingthe death and devastation resulting from the harsh economic embargo on Iraq. Because those Documented Factsbrought up the uncomfortable fact that the Clinton administration's insistence on maintaining the embargo waskilling hundreds of thousands of children and allowing Saddam Hussein to strengthen his grip on the country,U.S. journalists avoided them. When those Documented Facts did enter the news, they were subject to muchheavier scrutiny than Documented Facts that are churned out by U.S. agencies. Scrutiny is good, but should beapplied consistently.)
This is not to say that journalists never have tried to hold the Bush administration accountable in realtime. In October 2002 under the headline "For Bush, Facts Are Malleable," Washington Post reporterDana Milbank wrote about Bush's habit of, well, lying in public. Although Milbank used cautious language inthe story, that basic point comes through -- a point ignored by other journalists who continued to report theDocumented (but sometimes not True) Facts about Iraq that flowed from the White House.
The most embarrassing performance of U.S. journalists came on March 6, 2003, when Bush held a rare newsconference. With war clearly looming, and Iraq's alleged possession of banned weapons clearly the linchpin forjustifying war, 18 journalists asked questions -- but not a single one dared challenge the President. All thequestions took as a given that the Hussein regime possessed such weapons; all 18 ignored the fundamentalquestion that most of the world was asking at that moment.
Perhaps the saddest moment came when one reporter, pointing out that "the nation is at odds overwar," asked the President, "[H]ow is your faith guiding you?"
Bush began his answer by saying, "I appreciate that question a lot." Of course he appreciated asoftball question like that. If I were a President who was lying about my motivations and bucking worldopinion to press for war, I would appreciate questions that allow me to respond with platitudes.
"My faith sustains me because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength," Bushsaid.
Whatever one's belief about the efficacy of prayer, it should not be controversial that when the Presidentfrom the most propaganda-savvy administration in history finally appears for a news conference on the verge ofwar, there are better ways to use the moment than to pose a question asking about how his faith is guidinghim.
That night, U.S. journalists scurried back to newsrooms and did a fine job of relaying to the public theDocumented Facts from the Bush news conference. But they failed in a more important task. That night thewatchdogs didn't bite or even bark -- they heeled.
Robert Jensen, a professor of journalism at the Universityof Texas at Austin, is the author of the forthcoming "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim OurHumanity" (City Lights Books). His articles and essays are available online