If I learned anything from marriage counseling, it was this. It’s always best to assume your partner’s complaints are not 100 percent wrong. Discovering what part of their complaint is true will benefit you, even if the relationship cannot be mended.
This presidential administration has had a fractious relationship with news media outlets that cover him. Editors and reporters struggle with how and whether fabrications uttered by the president should be conveyed. The president’s instinctive counterpunch has been to label us “fake news.”
Did you see what I did there? I used the word “us.” I included myself.
Beat reporters are trained to avoid such pronouns, except when quoting other people. We’re taught to paint ourselves out of the picture. Even columnists, who have the privilege of using first person singular pronouns, are generally discouraged from using “we” or “us” to refer to the larger enterprise of news gathering and news reporting.
We portray ourselves — hide ourselves, really — as dispassionate observers. And that’s fake. The truth is, most of us got into this business because we enjoy being steeped in the details of public life. Chasing corruption, mastering arcanum, collecting data, connecting dots — it’s not always fun for us, but we believe it’s honorable work.
We hide ourselves because we believe the story deserves your attention, not us. That’s good practice, as far as it goes. But detaching ourselves has subtle consequences. If we report that a falling tree made a sound where no one could hear it, we seem to be solving the ancient philosopher’s puzzle. But we didn’t solve it, because that’s not exactly what happened. We were there. We heard it. (The philosopher never contemplated whether a tree falling “off the record” makes a sound if no one hears it.)
When the passive voice seeps into our narrative, it keeps readers from seeing us and our process. In the worst cases, it gives readers inaccurate impressions. We shouldn’t allow grammarly conventions that deny our readers the most accurate account.
Take just one example: the phrase “could not be determined.” It pops up in news accounts all the time, usually as a coda at the end of a paragraph. If we pull back the curtain a bit, that phrase means different things.
The editors may believe additional information should have been obtained but the reporter failed to ask the necessary follow-up questions and sources couldn’t be reached for clarification before deadline.
The questions may have been asked and the source didn’t have an answer. Or they may have refused to answer. Or they may have answered, but only off the record. Corroborating that background information another way may have failed, or it may not have been attempted.
“Could not be determined” — in other, clearer words — has at least four different meanings: We didn’t ask; we don’t know; we can’t prove; we can’t say. What do each of those more accurate accounts have in common? “We.”
If we admit that President Trump is at least a little bit correct when he accuses us of being “fake news,” it will make us better and it will give readers a more accurate view of the world around them. Will our admission mend the rift between us and the president? That could not be determined.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.
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