Friday, June 18, 2010

Journalistic Judgment

Andrew Sullivan approves of this headline:
Patricia Lesko's bid for Ann Arbor mayor gaining support, despite false campaign messages
No MSM-style equivocation - but a clear factual statement that a candidate has been lying, complete with evidence of her fabrications. Why can't the NYT do this?

It's true that if Times reporters want to highlight manifest lying or absurd posturing they have to do so with a bit more subtlety.  As Isabel Kershner does today, writing of the latest Israeli culture war, a Supreme Court ruling that ultraorthodox Ashkenazi cannot self-segregate their children in a Sephardic majority school:
But on Thursday, most ultra-Orthodox were united in protest against what they see as the state’s meddling in their religious affairs and in their conviction that the religious law of the Torah — or at least their interpretation of it — transcends that of any Israeli court.

Men in black coats and hats filled an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, blocking main roads and hailing those going to prison as if they were holy martyrs.
As if!  The article, notwithstanding, is scrupulously fair and factual. (As, it would seem, is the AnnArbor.com article by Ryan Stanton. The comments are many and on balance verify his reporting.)

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