The other day I agree with a reader who suggested that I should stop just posting looney leftwing and nasty email. While this stuff is very popular with readers and I only post a very small fraction of it, I still think it’s a fair complaint. So, except when the humor or sociological factor is paramount, I’ll try to have a more fair and balanced approach. Since I posted a nutter’s email, here’s a more thoughtful one taking Greenwald’s side:
Subject: You missed the point of Greenwald’s critique
Mr. Goldberg,
That point being, with respect, that you can’t just sneer at Priest’s reporting–you have to make an argument against it, just the way she made a copious argument documenting the problems at the Veteran’s hospitals. And saying she has an agenda, again, is a mere assertion–you have to support that by saying what the agenda is, and how it has undermined her reporting to the detriment of her readers. Saying “other people” think so, of course, doesn’t work either. Who? And what, exactly do they say–how powerful are their arguments against her? And one letter from a soldier you know contradicting hours of reporting is certainly interesting, but it is also what the definition of the term “anecdotal.”
You’re practicing a very vulgar form of the sociology of knowledge where everyone’s argument is automatically tainted by the sociological/ethnic/ideological origins of the writer i.e. I couldn’t convince you that the sun rose in the morning, and set in the evening, if you distrusted my political “agenda.” But the argument should speak for itself–pretend you didn’t see the byline, and measure it by whether you find it internally coherent, supported by evidence, plausible, and carefully argued. Exactly what we teach college students reading great writers from Marx to Freud to Rousseau to Burke.
Unless you’ve got a good reason to doubt her reporting, it, in fact, looks exactly like what Greenwald’s alleges: You are simply incapable of straightforwardly accepting a powerful argument that contradicts your pre-determined assumptions without desperately looking for some way to undermine it. By all means, if you got a strong rebuttal, make it–but vague accusations aren’t a strong rebuttal. Nor even is one soldier’s letter. And the introduction of Geraldo as the antidote to a serious, investigative reporter is, as you almost conceded yourself, risible. Yes, some people have lost the credibility to be respectfully heard within serious intepretive communities.
Me: Now, as I did tell this reader I think is all profound b.s. on too many levels to recount here, but it’s offered with some intelligence and good faith. I don’t read Greenwald near enough to cite examples, but I’m deeply, deeply skeptical he follows this high-minded standard. And moreover, I think it’s a bad standard. It’s elitist and establismentarian in that it suggests simply because someone has a biline in the Washington Post I should automatically trust it. With almost every news story I read, I have a wait-and-see attitude because the MSM gets so much wrong, a point no serious person can now dispute (again, this is 2007 right? Blog-readers know these things, right? Memogate? Katrina? these things ring a bell?). If I wanted to post a long essay on Dana Priest, I would have, but honest observers understand that wasn’t my intent.
This reader also tips his hand when he calls Priest’s reporting an “argument.” Objective reporters aren’t supposed to be offering arguments, now are they? That’s what opinion journalists do, which is one reason why I think good opinion journalism is better than most “objective” reporting. Opinion journalists make arguments and they’re honest about where their biases reside. Objective reporters make arguments and then hide behind their shmancy bilines and awards and the mythology of objectivity and say they’re just reporting the facts. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have non-argumentative, fair-minded reporting. Democracy needs it very badly. But smart news consumers — and smart journalists themselves — understand that there’s always more to the story.