Perspective
–by Mike Murray
It’s a word we’re hearing more and more these days from media types. Perspective.
Narrative reporting is all the rage. It enables them — journalists insist — to better tell a story, to put events into context, to share perspective. But when journalists tell stories, they sometimes blur the line between fact and fiction. When they tell stories, they nearly always blur the one between fact and opinion.
Brit Hume of Fox News recently crowed that when he was deciding on a format for the Special Report’s roundtable discussion segment, he settled on reporters because “They’ll always tell you what they think.” And CNN’s Anderson Cooper somberly intoned some months ago in a taped promotion for his show that “You’ll always know where I stand. I promise.”
Katie Couric (formerly the “in the right place at the right time,” anti-Norville perkster at NBC’s Today Show) upped the ante a year or two ago. Not content to merely share her own take on events, she felt obliged to try to make up her viewers’ minds for them as well. After a staff reporter finished presenting the facts of a story, she took her audience to commercial with this: “What to think about that when we return.”
Remarkable. On what are supposed to be news shows, members of the media today believe it okay to blend opinion with fact. They believe it to be more than okay; they believe it to be noble. Why else would Cooper make such a sincere pledge to his audience? Why else would Hume brag about it?
And what else could account for Couric’s contention that it is reasonable for her to tell us “what to think?” Perhaps she believes us to be too busy to bother our pretty little heads. Or maybe she just considers us to be addle-brained. (I’ll resist the obvious kettle / pot joke.)
We are all entitled to our opinions. Those who work in the media are certainly entitled to theirs. But there are times and places for appropriate expression. And none of them exist anywhere near the proximity of news presentation. You want to “tell a story,” one that goes beyond the strict presentation of the facts? Do it in a column, in an Op / Ed piece — in a blog, even. Someplace, anyplace, where the audience understands that what is being presented is not empirical.
Because when the delivery of news is permitted to commingle facts with the views of its presenter, what results is not an offering of perspective. What results is an attempt — a veiled attempt — at persuasion.
No matter how uniquely qualified people working in the media believe themselves to be to tell their audiences “what to think,” such is simply not the case. Journalists are no brighter than the rest of us. Moreover, the J-schools where they prep are institutions of ideological indoctrination, and the news rooms from which they operate are places that tend to be skewed heavily in one political direction or another.
Regardless of how much data is at the disposal of those working in the news-gathering business (data which — more and more in this era of budget cuts — is accumulated via similar electronic methods employed by amateurs), passing it through the filters of personal and institutional bias reduces it to dubious quality. Simply put, the opinion of a journalist is not necessarily worth more than anyone else’s.
It disturbs me a little to be criticizing the media en masse; it is nearly always wrong to paint a group with one brush. There are many fine journalists who strive to be objective and professional. But their ranks are dwindling. The trend in the industry is troubling.
It also disturbs me to be making a case against perspective. Because properly applied, it is a wonderful thing. Who among us hasn’t been taught the lesson that we really can’t understand where someone else is coming from until we “walk a mile” in his or her shoes? No matter how hard we try, we cannot view all of the angles of any situation without help.
No matter your gender, race, birthplace, or station in life you simply cannot see all there is to see from where you stand — no matter how sincerely you try. We are each of us constrained by a limited vantage point. I was recently struck by just how limited my own is.
While being wheeled to the curb following a recent medical procedure, I engaged the friendly person pushing me in conversation. We chit-chatted about this and that. She told me a remarkable story about a dog she’d adopted. The poor critter had been deliberately shoved from a third-story window by someone who meant to kill it.
Substituting for a vacationing volunteer who had been caring for the recuperating mutt, the woman became attached and adopted it. She invited it into the pack of rescues already in residence in her home. Trouble was, the newcomer was so traumatized that it could barely function. It was even too fearful to approach food that had been placed in its bowl.
But the helping spirit of the woman was shared by one of her senior dogs: it worked overtime nurturing the skittish newcomer. It would, for example, bring mouthfuls of kibble, drop them down on the floor in front of the frightened creature, and encourage it to eat. Today the previously abused canine is well-adjusted. It happily follows its mentoring companion everywhere it goes.
I was touched by the story. And I was moved by the older dog’s compassion — mirroring as it did the caring ways of the woman tending to me. I asked her if it was emotionally hard for her to volunteer at the hospital. “Some days, sure,” she replied.
And then I offered this: “But it must be easier at times like these when people like me are happy and relieved to be going home.”
“Well,” she hesitated, “sometimes old people cry.”
Here is where my limited perspective let me down. I assumed the elderly discharges cried tears of joy at being released. Not so.
“Many of them have nothing to return to,” she continued. “There’s nobody at home to take care of them. So they want to stay here.”
I was saddened. And I was stunned, too. Not by what the woman revealed. That made perfect sense, after all. What shocked me was my own lack of understanding. What struck me was my own inability to see — without help — an alternate reality.
So certainly, considering a variety of viewpoints can be useful. If the motives of people working in the media were as pure as those of the compassionate caregiver at the hospital, we could comfortably trust them to “tell stories.”
Alas, I fear that such is seldom the case.
Copyright ©2006 Michael F. Murray All rights reserved.
