21 years ago, in an article in the New Yorker magazine (and later in a bestselling novel), journalist Janet Malcolm wrote ‘The Journalist and The Murderer’, based on the story of non-fiction writer Joe McGinniss and his relationship with former doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, on trial for the 1970 murders of his two daughters and pregnant wife.
Malcolm’s opening statement was as follows:
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.
All journalists suffer moral dilemmas. But when Malcolm’s piece was serialised in the New Yorker in 1989, it caused a mass outcry. She argued that McGinness was forced into the conclusions that he made through the subject’s “lack of vividness”, which pressed the author’s hand into portraying facts in certain ways to make him appear to be a more interesting character. But that didn’t go down so well. McGinniss’s rebuttal was fierce, other journalists criticised her for being melodramatic and unfair; while some accepted that what she said was valid, begrudgingly accepting it as the “necessary evil” of the trade.
21 years later, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Malcolm’s thesis still stands. In the two decades that have passed, I doubt there are many who could have missed the declining respect the general public have for journalists and their profession. The phone hacking scandal was just one (albeit very large) symptom of a world that is no longer seen as a force fighting for good against bureaucratic evils. Instead, journalism is often seen as a web of deceit, tricksters, unnamed ‘sources’, invented stories and money-grabbing reporters who will stop at nothing to get the story they want, in the way they envisage it will appear. For those within the profession, obviously the above is unfair and untrue – for most of us. But Malcolm’s harsh thesis bears a certain amount of truth even today.
This weekend, Bloomberg journalist Michael Kinsley wrote a fantastic retrospective on Malcolm’s work. “For the record, journalists are snakes,” he writes. Kinsley takes the topic of anonymous sources, which he says is one of the weakest aspects of modern day reporting:
In the Age of Transparency, when government officials and business executives are supposed to fill out a form and put it on the Internet every time they scratch their behinds, why should journalists expect to be able to say simply, “trust us” when they report controversial information?
In search of some proof for this theory, Kinsley carried out some research on the content of the Washington Post and NY Times. He counted the number of times the phrases “requested anonymity” and “asked not to be identified because” appeared in the papers over the course of two weeks. Among the 22 examples he gives are: “because of the delicacy of the situation”, “because they were not authorised to speak on the record” and “for fear of retribution”.
Kinsley’s conclusion is that Malcolm was – and is – right. He says:
Journalism is about betrayal: betrayal of sources by reporters, betrayal of friends, colleagues, family members by sources.
In other words, modern day reporters are con men, conning others into saying things they shouldn’t, all for the sake of a story. Kinsley also points to a few other useful aspects of anonymous reporting: bluffing, exaggerating quotes (because nobody knows who’s said what), and even using the same source to represent many different viewpoints, all described in different ways.
Now I don’t fully agree with what he says. There are a hell of a lot of decent, honest, fighting-for-good journalists out there who wouldn’t touch anonymity or conning sources into saying things they shouldn’t with a barge pole. But for all the goodies out there, there are the tabloid (and broadsheet) baddies – those who have come to rely increasingly on anonymous sources, shaping stories to fit headlines or editorial demands, and eking stories out of facts where they don’t really exist – all for the sake of filling a few column inches with their byline.
By revisiting Malcolm’s world - “a film-noir nightmare of betrayals and broken promises” – Kinsley reminds of something important. Journalists need to retain their integrity. In a world dominated by inane celebrity gossip, tacky tabloids and kiss n tell shams, we need to make sure the trade doesn’t lose its soul. There is still a way to be ethical, accurate and break a phenomenal story without sensationalising it. Take a look at the MP’s expenses scandal, for example. This kind of journalism does exist; it might just take a little bit of extra work.
Journalism can still be a force for good. I fundamentally believe that. But if we’re not careful, it could descend into the snake pit of rumours and lies that some people already think it has become.
Tags: anonymous sources, Bloomberg, Janet Malcolm, journalist and the murderer, kiss and tell, Michael Kinsley, MPs' expenses, phone hacking scandal, snakes, tabloid
Recent Comments