A Reporter’s Telling Secret

A few days ago I received an e-mail from a friend asking if I’d be willing to add my name to a list of writers and artists supporting one of the two main presidential candidates. I was very tempted. Like so many others, I see this as an absolutely critical election posing a very clear choice. And I would be willing to be celibate for a year to see my candidate win -- the same one I was asked to endorse. At the same time, I’m a journalist, and journalists in this country traditionally don’t openly take sides on the grounds that doing so would endanger their “objectivity.”

Is this tradition obsolete? If I have strong views, why not declare them? Isn’t it less than honest not to? After all, my biases don’t go away just because I hide them from my readers. Such questions have become more urgent as the nation’s political debate grows increasingly partisan.

Seeking guidance, I tried to think of a writer I admire and to imagine what he or she might do in such a situation. George Orwell quickly came to mind. Would he have approved the use of his name? Goodness, I thought, he went to Spain to fight fascism! Measured against this, refusing to endorse a candidate seems remarkably lame. Yet, on further reflection, I recalled how disillusioned Orwell became with his own side in the Spanish war, and how later in life, though never wavering from his commitment to justice and equality, he became increasingly independent-minded and iconoclastic, zealously maintaining his freedom to write about hypocrisy and mush-headedness in whatever nook of the political realm he found it.

I further thought of some current-day journalists and the dust kicked up by their own political involvement. Dan Rather’s name popped up first. Long a bete noire for conservatives convinced he’s an unabashed liberal, Rather confirmed their suspicions when, in 2001, he spoke at a Democratic fundraiser in Austin, Texas. During the recent fiasco over CBS’ use of doctored documents, the right used this appearance to prosecute its case against him.

On the other side, George Will was roundly criticized after it became public that he had helped prepare then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for his debates with Jimmy Carter in 1980. As a regular on the nation’s Op-Ed pages, there’s no doubt about where Will stands politically, of course, but even so, his direct involvement with a candidate -- one he was simultaneously writing about -- left him tarred and slightly less trustworthy.

Where daily newspapers are concerned, the potential for trouble seems all the greater. Take an issue like abortion. Let’s say you were reading an article on the subject in this newspaper and you discovered that the reporter had contributed money to the National Abortion Rights Action League. If you opposed abortion rights, you would immediately grow suspicious, whatever the article’s contents. You might even feel that way if you were pro-choice.

So, yes, I have strong views, but I prefer to have readers judge my articles based solely on their contents, without having any extraneous political activities dragged in. Years ago, when I worked at the Columbia Journalism Review, the staff’s position was that, as critics of the press, we had to be like Caesar’s wife -- above suspicion. That’s not a bad rule for all journalists. Perhaps I’ll be accused of hypocrisy. Perhaps it’s true that the best way to counteract the biases we all have is to be utterly transparent -- and that the more readers know about us, the better they can judge our work. But the case I’m making is a practical one. The more unencumbered I am, the more effective I can be. And when I do my work, I’ll try, like any good journalist, to be, if not exactly objective (everyone has a point of view), as accurate and fair as possible.

That does not mean that I agree with Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of the Washington Post, when he argues that journalists, in the interest of full objectivity, should abstain even from voting. I regard voting as a basic civic right -- indeed, a duty -- that all Americans (even ex-felons) should be encouraged to exercise. But I’m not going to reveal whom I voted for. And I’m certainly not going to say which candidate I was asked to endorse.