In Progress

The New York Times has a set of blogs with commenting enabled, with some having a limited time window for response, and some unlimited. I often read posts, and for the first time, was prompted to respond to this one this week. It was, for the most part, an interesting response by Robert Mackey to a recent interview on The Daily Show with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani. From the post:

Last week, for instance, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that the Pakistani military had passed out leaflets to citizens equating the Taliban to Pakistan’s real enemies, namely: “Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.”

One of the early comments on the post pointed out:

Mr. Mackey’s article is mainly on point, but there is a major misrepresentation at the end.

“The only shame is that Mr. Stewart didn’t have a chance to ask Mr. Haqqani how the anti-Taliban leaflets the Pakistani military passed out last week fit into this plan. As the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported last Friday, those leaflets informed the population that Pakistan’s real enemies are ‘Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.’”

The three words that come before “Jewish” in the article are critical- “The same as”. This isn’t about spreading hatred of Jews, although it sadly does to an extent. This is about promoting anti-Talibanism by channeling anti-Semitism. It’s hard to know if the ends justify the means, but it is well intentioned.

In a welcome feature, the blogger-author of the post responds to comments directly, so the comment was followed by this response:

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: The words “The same as,” referring to the Taliban, do not change the meaning at all of who is identified in the leaflets as the enemy of the Pakistani state.

I read this comment and felt it required some back up, since the author rejected the idea entirely. After reading that there were those three words omitted, I felt that my interpretation of the quote and author had changed–specifically, I thought the omission of the words changed the emphasis of the sentiment to be directly about inciting anti-Semitic sentiment rather than drawing on it. I responded to his rejection of the quote and stated this:

I highly encourage you to reconsider your response and give higher regard to accuracy in reporting. In my opinion, you made the quote more inflammatory by removing those three words.

Because I quoted his rejection that the meaning was changed, he responded:

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: Your reading is simply incorrect — will have to explain how you think the meaning is changed. The original document said that the Taliban are “The same as the Jewish forces” that are the enemy of the state. So that means that the document is in fact saying that “Jewish forces” are the enemy of the state. The quote and its meaning are correctly rendered in the blog post above.

I realized that I had focused on meaning when really the change was in importance and emphasis. To me, this is an issue because it reflects that the author of the pamphlets is not inciting anti-Semitic sentiment but rather drawing on it. The author is not actively negative but rather,  operating in a negative environment.

My second comment, clarifying my position and trying to explain that the issue was about nuance in journalism rather than “just the facts” did not get published. Not only no response, but no airing in the public forum.

You may agree or disagree with my position about whether this is an important issue, it is a sidenote to some of the other issues more prominently featured in the post. But I noticed this comment after mine (line breaks edited for brevity):

curious, you refuse to publish any three of my comments. why? nothing offensive there, just hard questions.

while in all the other posts, you simply restate your claim that the removal of those three words makes no difference in the understanding and possible interpretations of the sentence. you won’t post my comment because i point blank ask you why you removed these three words, done in a fully conscious manner, as is by now obvious.

why won’t you answer? is this blog/section of the nyt so really biased? what’s your editor’s name?

The author responded with:

Your previous comment was exactly the same as others by people who misread the blog post. We do not always publish comments that echo other comments, and there is a limit to how many times we can point out that the part of the quote not cited did not in any way change the meaning of the part that was cited. It is simply a fact that leaflets distributed by the Pakistani military in recent days have warned against “Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region.” Saying that the leaflet said that the Taliban are “The same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region,” does not change the meaning of the rest of the statement one iota. People are free to disagree with what we report but we cannot give unlimited space to people who misunderstand what we report or make false assertions.

To me, there are several issues here that relate to democracy and transparency in journalism.

First, the New York Times chooses whose comments to publish. To a certain degree, this is as I would expect, in terms of foul language, hate speech, and irrelevance. But repetition? Repetition can be an important reflection of validity, and more than validity, reflect a larger group dynamic that at least deserves to be noted in the public sphere. By picking and choosing comments, NYT doesn’t allow for this group dynamic to be accurately represented, but casual readers who don’t know this policy, will likely not realize it. I certainly didn’t realize they sifted and selected to such a granular level.

Second, the author deflects critical questioning of his tactics by focusing purely on accuracy and ignoring questions of nuance and interpretation. I believe this is a traditional cop-out of journalists. In pure reporting, journalists often take cover by citing accuracy, even though there is a constant editing and filtering process in terms of which facts make it in and which don’t. But this blog post is all about adding context and making for a richer big picture about Pakistan and its relations with the world. To make them seem like Pakistan is an actor in inciting anti-Semitism rather than a more passive enabler is, to me, significant. It is inflammatory, if subtle. I believe these issues deserve as much judgment-withholding and noncommital positions as possible to keep bias (which is an unavoidable part of reporting) to a minimum.

I think this is one reason why people have grown to appreciate personalities who aren’t afraid to inject their opinions and bias into their delivery, a la Olbermann, Madow, the Fox news stable, etc. At least it’s a more honest approach in admitting that all reporting is biased and subjective. There is absolutely no way to present all the facts without a systematic editing process to turn facts into a narrative.

The New York Times holds on to the idea that facts and accuracy are all there is to make for an objective, unquestionable report that is above challenge. This idea of the authoritative voice is perhaps attractive, but it is also outdated and can be dangerous. And this is their weakness in a postmodern world, where we just know that there is no such thing as a report that cannot be questioned or interpreted according to subjective viewpoints.

Posted on May 17th, 2009 by DeepthiW
Filed under: Media, Politics, Uncategorized