It’s rare that I would point something out as bad journalism (with so much to read, why discuss bad reading?), but I have a piece this morning that serves perfectly to illustrate some of the crap that’s out there and why a shake-up in how we look at journalism isn’t a bad thing for democracy.
The piece goes awry from the start, with a headline that far outpaces the value of the story, “Holder has a long to-do list at Justice,” featured in USA Today and written by Kevin Johnson. First, no to-do list is discussed, save for an amorphous restoring integrity to the office. The piece actually is a “let’s name five things he’s done that I’m going to suggest signal a change in tone at the Justice Department,” and then ask a couple of people what they think of some of those alleged changes.
The piece doesn’t reflect any of the nuance that any good pieces about any of those five things — Guantanamo; waterboarding; politicization of DOJ; Sen. Stevens’ prosecution; and Holder’s race speech — have discussed. I actually feel like someone who reads this article might lose some knowledge they had even from a casual reading of more nuanced articles by getting the impression that there is no argument about these actions. On each of these issues, people from the left and the right have questioned the new Administration, but the USA Today piece hews to a simplistic “Democratic support and Republican challenges” mode of quotes.
Then, even when an alleged neutral voice is given space, no explanation of the people’s affiliations are given to help the reader understand why this person they’ve never heard of before might be saying this. It’s not that they are biased, but we have no clue. For example, “Bruce Udolf, former chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in South Florida” is quoted as saying that he “felt betrayed” by the politicization of the Department. Why not tell your readers some relevant facts about him that might explain his reasons for why he would feel this way? (Here are a couple: He was a Democratic candidate for Broward County Sheriff in 2008 and appears to have given, among other Democratic donations, $1,000 to Obama in Q1/2008 and $10,000 to the DNC in Q1/2004.) The only other “neutral” quote is from a voting-rights group, the Campaign Legal Center.
Fake simplicity to fit a pre-ordered format. The reason why some newspapers’ problems are of their own creation.
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political writer at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found