Just a Journalist by Linda Greenhouse

    Linda Greenhouse questions why the media have thrown neutrality to the wind. In the first decade of the New Millennium, the newspapers were careful not to outwardly criticize George W. Bush, but now they are openly lashing out at Trump. She recounts the time that she came out and said exactly wat she was thinking – that Hugh Carey was the greatest public servant, and that Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay violated the rule of law – and ignored everyone who might accuse her of bias. I say to myself, how can it be biased to state the facts?

    When it comes to the reporters airing the views, she uses the New York Times as an example. First, the Times didn’t mince words when it came to labelling Trumps views as lies. First there was the claim that Obama was born in Kenya, then the one about the illegal alien voters, and finally the Times reported on Trump (grudgingly) retracting his claims. Greenhouse quotes Thomas E. Patterson, a Harvard, accusing the press of deferring to those in power. I won’t say I agree, but a politician can always refuse interviews with the New York Times if they give him bad press. Then there’s the law that required abortion doctors to have hospital privileges, struck down by SCOTUS in 2006. The media were clear that the law had absolutely no use, and that it was nothing more than a backdoor restriction of abortion. Whatever the Texas politicians claimed, the press were not buying it.

     Greenhouse recounts other scandals – like Senator Thomas Dodd and his misuse of campaign money – where every reporter made it clear that they weren’t interested in the Senator’s explanation. Sure, they’d print it, but the readers could tell that the writers weren’t buying it. I also recount a few from my own memory, such as the 2003 Jayson Blair debacle, where the New York Times thrashed him in the Sunday edition (no neutrality there.)  Go back a few more years, and the newspaper attacked Governor Eddy Edwards of Louisiana for taking bribes. The press were not forgiving.

    There is, however, an instance of bias that many consider unbecoming of journalism, and that is the Duke Lacrosse Case. It was back in 2007 – let’s not forget it anytime soon – and the New York Times jumped on the bandwagon, publishing studies of out-of-control athletes and coaches who enable them. They had me convinced, I admit it, I was fooled, until the case unraveled. There was clear bias in the reporting, and I have to wonder if maybe that was the beginning of the end of neutrality?