Baker is right. Warren Phillips, the man who made the Wall Street Journal what it is today, and whom I have had the privilege of knowing, also insisted on strict separation of reporting and commentary. It used to be an elementary distinction. The Times ought to try it.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Hmm …
… Wall Street Journal Editor Admonishes Reporters Over Trump Coverage - The New York Times.
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Or maybe, just maybe, Baker is wrong. Or at least neither right nor wrong. Customs change.
ReplyDeleteIt is used to be an elementary distinction that women stayed home, raised the kids and served their husbands. Let's stop pining for the good ol' days, shall we?
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ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget who owns the WSJ, please. Also, Ivanka Trump apparently parties in the same Southampton company as Baker.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't a custom. It is a journalistic principle. Reporting is reporting. Commentary is commentary. The commentary shoukd be based on reporting, but the reporting never deviate into commentary. Just the facts, as Joe Friday used to say.
ReplyDeleteI will politely disagree. Facts are never just facts. Ask three witnesses to a street brawl about what happened, and it's likely you'll get three different versions.
ReplyDeleteI'm perfectly happy to read the so-called facts mixed with commentary. The key thing is to read widely across the political spectrum and, ideally, from different countries. I wonder (or perhaps I hope) you underestimate the capacity of people to read critically and think analytically.
No principles are set in stone. They change.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that all reporting is by its very nature interpretative. The artificial distinction between facts and commentary is an example of categorical thinking.
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