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The Post's "Weird and Appalling" Ombudsman

Jack ShaferPosted Tuesday, April 10, 2001, at 6:06 PM ET

Writing his weekly column for the editorial page, Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler throws elbows and kisses at the paper's staff. But his sharpest work appears in an end-of-the-week internal e-mail memo that goes to all of the paper's reporters and editors. Getler almost always confines his internal comments to the Post itself, but last Friday he went off the reservation to fuss about a free-lance book review in the April 9 New Republic by Post national reporter Michael Grunwald.

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According to Getler, Grunwald committed the unpardonable journalistic crime of writing his own mind in his review of Michael Tomasky's campaign book, Hillary's Turn: Inside Her Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign. That Grunwald was qualified to write the review cannot be doubted: He covered the Hillary Clinton for Senate campaign for the Post. That Grunwald is a most excellent reporter and writer cannot be denied either. Even Getler concedes as much. What puts the starch in Getler's too-tight thong undershorts is the "prose and commentary" found in Grunwald's review.

From Getler's internal memo:

Prize-winning National reporter Michael Grunwald sure can write, and he can report, as well. But his prose and commentary raised the omb's eyebrows--and those of some staffers this week--when we saw his name paired on the cover of The New Republic with the headline "The Banality of Senator Clinton." Inside was a Grunwald review of a book by Michael Tomasky about the Clinton Senate campaign. Grunwald's piece goes beyond a review and is quite hostile in attitude toward Sen. Clinton. It starts: "My favorite weird and appalling moment of Hillary Rodham Clinton's weird and appalling campaign ..." Grunwald covered part of the campaign for The Post, and his name on the review describes him as a national reporter for TWP. Michael is a talented person, no doubt. But the credibility of the previous reporting, and the paper's guidelines for reporters which don't permit this kind of commentary in the paper, are put in question in a situation like this.

Getler subscribes to the old-school view that journalistic credibility rises whenever a writer suppresses what he thinks about the subject at hand and falls whenever he abandons the pure stenography of who, what, why, where, and when. The old-school fealty to journalistic "objectivity" helps explain why all too often Page One of the Washington Post reads as if somebody has unfurled a sheet of gauze over it, muffling the sights and sounds of the world. Reading the Post many mornings is enough to convince you that you've developed cataracts.

The perverse thing about Getler's old-schoolism is that neither he nor anybody at the Post would have looked askance if Grunwald had attributed the "weird and appalling" observation in his book review to somebody else on the campaign trail, somebody less knowledgeable or perceptive than Grunwald. The paper's ethical guardians wouldn't have flinched, either, if Grunwald had sourced the observation to a "highly placed Clinton campaign official." They wouldn't have taken him to task if he had successfully prompted one of his campaign sources with a leading question such as, "So, Bob, have you found the Clinton campaign to be weird and appalling?" Old-schoolism also prevents Getler from investigating Grunwald's weird and appalling claim, for which there is ample evidence in the review.

Having found Grunwald guilty of writing his mind for a journal of opinion, Judge Getler hands down this sentence: The review "put[s] in question" the credibility of Grunwald's previous reporting. Now, which reporting might that be? Grunwald's coverage of the Clinton campaign for the Post? If so, which stories? Or perhaps Grunwald's prize-winning (the David R. Bower Prize and the Edward J. Meeman Award) series on the Army Corps of Engineers? Is Grunwald's crime that he has an opinion, or that he expressed it? If it's the latter, Getler has his police work cut out for him. I've yet to meet a Washington Post reporter or editor--with the notable exception of Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.--who didn't decorate his sleeves with his opinions. If it's the former, then Getler should advise Downie to fire the whole newsroom and bring in industrial robots. No real journalism can be done until a reporter forms a hunch or two--opinions about how the world works, if you will--and tests them against the evidence. What journalistic cops like Getler should be on the prowl for is not Posties who hold opinions, but Posties who don't test those opinions.

If Getler still thinks that the publication of any commentary automatically nullifies a reporter's credibility, I await similar chastisement of the Washington Post's legendary double threat: twice-weekly pundit and political reporter David Broder.

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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large. Follow him on Twitter.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray

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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Daniel Horne does his best to put you off reading his Fray post by introducing it thus: "Warning: The following rant, much like Jack Shafer's "Pressbox" piece, is much ado about nothing. Don't waste your time unless you know any of the relevant players, or have nothing better to do. I know none of the players, but like Michael Corleone and other Fray contributors, I get very angry when people insult my intelligence." Of course, he fails totally: that intro in itself would be reason enough to read every word, but the post is also interesting and thus recommended.]

In his memo, Getler conflates the two Hillary Clinton-related articles that appear in this week's New Republic. He says that Grunwald's name is "paired on the cover of the New Republic with the headline 'The Banality of Senator Clinton.'" Grunwald wrote a book review, not the title piece, which was written by Michael Crowley. The fact that the New Republic has made both pieces the showcase of some kind of Hillary issue this week cannot be Grunwald's fault. In this, Getler exaggerates his very legitimate concern.

As to Shafer's main point that Getler is being unreasonable in chastising Grunwald for his journalistic moonlighting, surely Shafer understands that there is a longstanding journalistic tradition of objective reporting versus editorializing. If a journalist is exclusively a "reporter" for a prestigious national newspaper, he certainly jeopardizes his hard-won image of objectivity by writing a bald editorial review of a book on the very subject he covered for that newspaper. This, in turn, hurts the newspaper's even-more-carefully guarded image of objectivity.

As to the objection that journalistic "objectivity" is a fiction, I agree, philosophically, but image is everything, and the degree of objectivity is what is at stake. Everyone knows that Dan Rather has a political opinion of his own, but whom do you trust more to deliver reasonably unbiased reporting of the news, Rather or O'Reilly?

--Gary

(To reply, click here.)

While this little contretemps is mostly inside baseball that few people care about, it does point to a major problem in the news media: the myth of objectivity. American journalists always claim they are simply "telling the story," in an objective manner. What poppycock. The mere act of observing and describing an event or situation is inevitably affected by one's views and beliefs. For example, a simple description of a group of protesters in a news article as either an angry mob or boisterous crowd is more often than not colored by the views of the observing/describing party. The whole idea of objectivity in such matters has been appropriately skewered and dismissed by serious thinkers of all stripes.

Personally, I'll take the avowedly ideological journalism of The Nation or the National Review, or of the unabashedly biased British press, over the intellectually dishonest drivel that comes from Time, Newsweek, or the Washington Post any day

--Mark

(To reply, click here.)

(4/11)

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