It would be a huge, huge improvement. There are a lot more people willing to mislead and obfuscate than willing to flatout lie.

I don't think it would be any more subject to yellow journalism than the current standard is. Also, is there anything inherently unjournalistic-standardish in that lede example?

LB is right. Also, I have an impression that the British media, particularly the BBC Today Progamme, do this sort of thing as a matter of routine.

Wouldn't hack-facts overwhelm real-facts?

Not universally, and that's what matters. So a few more papers turn into a printed Fox News. Readers will sort that out.

Readers will sort that out.

This is a running gag now, right?

This is a running gag now, right?

There's a reason you call him Timbot, isn't there?

You're skeptical that they'd get facts right as opposed to what goes on now?

5: No. They have in the past. See "TNR: A Biweekly Guide to Not Cutting Your Own Throat."

That's definitely not standard. I'd expect to see that lede end with further description of the administration's claim, then a quote graf, then the graf explaining that it is widely believed that Iran's civilian nuclear plants are a front—then, finally, the graf that says, "But international observers say that the Bush administration's claim is inaccurate, noting that Iran has never boasted publicly any nuclear ambitions it may harbor", or something.

5: If the convention is to state facts clearly upfront, yeah, I think reasonably aware readers will be able to figure out who lies and who doesn't pretty fast. Shading the truth, tone, and so forth are hard to sort out for. Flat lies are much easier.

9 to 2.

re: 3

Yes. Newsnight and Today, in particular, will do that a lot. The US media does seem incredibly servile [although my impression as a Brit whose never been to the US is obviously going to be pretty selective].

Interviewing, rather than headline writing, though, is where the BBC is at its most savage.

9 - Huh. I didn't realize journalism was so prescribed. Do you mean "standard" as in "every article for the past seven years has followed this pattern because they're all shills for the Bush Administration" or "standard" as in "you would be taught this pattern in journalism school"?

Interviewing, rather than headline writing, though, is where the BBC is at its most savage.

I also have an impression that Jeremy Paxman once described the proper relation of journalist to politician as dog to fireplug, but I have not been able to find a source.

Yep, 10 is correct. To the layman, much of the craft of modern journalism seems to be being able to couch equivocation and misdirection in language sufficiently obfuscatory to maintain credibility. To use the canonical example, "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ" is much easier to pass off than "Earth Is Flat."

re: 14

Yes, he also said (quoting someone else) that the number one thought in his head when interviewing has to be "why is this lying bastard lying to me?".

And I for one think it would be enormously beneficial for reporters to call a spade a spade in the lede. It's not really going to come up so often: I don't think egregious public lies are all that common even under the Bush administration. But Dick Cheney's claims demand coverage that points out first and foremost that he is lying. They're fairly simple lies he tells, similar to Bush's incorrect line about Iran. And the SBVT campaign was of course aided and abetted by the fact that journalists were discussing it first and foremost as a groundswell effort rather than coordinated lies.

Le monde is pretty good, as is le point. Liberation occasionally has interesting items, but leans so far left that their European reporting is boring; I find the Guardian similar that way (i.e., may have novelties about the US, but not interesting for home country news). Spiegel has an english edition, all have RSS.

13: Both? I didn't go to j-school, so that's mostly my impression as a reader, but also my experience in part as a writer who does some news. But then, I don't write news news so some conventions I am very familiar with don't apply, I suppose.

re: 18

I don't think the Guardian really leans that far left, at all. It may seem that way compared to much of the tabloid press, and the Daily Mail in particular, but the Guardian is a paper of the soft centre-left at most.

This is all well and good, but who will fact-check the journalists themselves? That seems to be the central problem with the style of writing Yglesias praises.

Jeremy Paxman once described the proper relation of journalist to politician as dog to fireplug.

If you've never seen the video of Paxman tormenting an evasive junior minister by asking him the same question 14 times in a row, you owe it to yourself to do so. If only our White House press corps had the chops to try this.

This is all well and good, but who will fact-check the journalists themselves? That seems to be the central problem with the style of writing Yglesias praises.

Why oh why can't we have a better editorial corps?

"why is this lying bastard lying to me?"

I love Paxman. And I'm extremely annoyed that the BBC appear to have cut off the non-UK world from the iTunes podcast of Newsnight.

re: 22

He wasn't a junior minister. He was the Home Secretary. I don't know what the analogous position is in the US.

re: 20:
This is because you live in a land of beautiful unicorns and a functioning Left.

If only our White House press corps had the chops to try this.

But then the politicians just wouldn't appear on that show, and some hack would get the interview.

Blame the public; always the public.

He wasn't a junior minister. He was the home secretary.

I stand corrected.

21: The thing is, that style is easy to fact check -- say, in the quoted example, if the article were false, and Iran had actually publically claimed to be seeking nuclear weapons, then any other media entity could dig up the public statement and call the article a flat inaccuracy. Factchecking a misleading tone, on the other hand, is impossible.

It has to be said that this is rather an extreme case. It is, or used to be, rare for a prominent public official to lie quite so shamelessly. Most cases are going to require much more scrutiny on the part of the journalist or editor. How should a J report Giuliani's recent Laffer curve claims? It's pretty clear Giuliani was talking out of his ass, but Js may be understandably reluctant to assess even slightly more complicated questions of economics. I expect Js and editors to contradict the President when he claims that Hussein wouldn't let the inspectors in, but once you get into more complicated issues you're going to wind up slicing salami sooner or later.

But then the politicians just wouldn't appear on that show, and some hack would get the interview.

True of the Sunday morning type shows, but I'm thinking more of the WH press gaggle type events. If enough senior correspondents would simply repose the previous, successfully evaded question, it could be established as a social norm that the press will not move on to another topic until the question has been answered or the spokesperson explicitly refuses to answer it.

The press corps has actually gotten a little better at this since Bush's popularity has declined, which is probably a major reason that Scott McLellan's tenure was notably less successful than his predecessor's.

The Daily Mail is pretty anti-gay, right? They support that law which bans schools from promoting homosexuality or whatever.

I ask, because Friend M went to Venice for her boss's birthday party for three days. It was just him and 200 of his closest friends.

I said that I had no idea that [particular business] was so lucrative. She said, "His family owns a British newspaper chain." I asked which one, and she said, rather sheepishly, "The Daily Mail. I said, "The Daily Mail?!!!? She said that she hadn't known it when she started working for her firm. Anyway, her boss is very, very, obviously gay. She thinks he lives here, because his partner is here.

I don't know what the analogous position is in the US.

There really isn't one. Ordinary policing is devolved to the states in the U.S.; the other stuff -- immigration and such -- is now Dept of Homeland Security, whose Secretary is probably the nearest analogue.

How should a J report Giuliani's recent Laffer curve claims?

"G. stated that lowering tax rates would generally raise tax revenues. This claim, dating back to the Reagan era under the name of 'supply-side economics', is generally not supported by mainstream economists, including advisors to other Republican Presidential candidates like Greg Mankiw, who was quoted recently as saying 'Supply side economics is stupid.'"

That one's pretty clear -- there are going to be judgment calls when you get more complicated, but that one you could factcheck right up front.

If enough senior correspondents would simply repose the previous, successfully evaded question, it could be established as a social norm that the press will not move on to another topic until the question has been answered or the spokesperson explicitly refuses to answer it.

Maybe, or the MSNBC reporter would be pushy and then suddenly none of the MSNBC shows would be able to book guests from the administration, which seems a more likely outcome.

Most cases are going to require much more scrutiny on the part of the journalist or editor.

I think the trick here is more in story selection than in composition of the story. That the NYT is still, after all that has gone on, giving front page placement to obvious political spin such as this is a travesty, no matter how many critical subordinate clauses are written into it.

34: Aha! You're citing Mankiw now. Shorter LB: "Opinions on Shape of Laffer Curve Differ."

37: But the point is that you can't find a respectable Republican economist who's going to say Rudy was making sense. All the non-crazy economists are on the same side of this one. So you can, actually, appeal to 'mainstream economists' generally, and support from the Republicanest among them.

39: Fair enough, I take your point. I assume you could see how this would be more difficult when evaluating non-batshit positions, though.

Sure -- it only works for the truly batshit. Luckilly, we're talking about Rudy here.

The style Ogged is skeptical about was once pretty common. We've seen a steady, deliberate zombification during the last several decades. Any reporter and any publication has to decide where they draw the line with regard to fact-checking, but doing no fact-checking at all is the worst choice.

The story you see isn't the one the reporter wrote. The rewrite people can change the opening, change the conclusion, bury the lede, insert paragraphs, or delete paragraphs, and they write the headline. I presume that the best reporters fight for their stories, while others just give up and write to the house style.

I think that the faux-objective style probably traces at least back to WWII. The Times has set the standard for a long time, and there are some things they won't write -- they like to report / decide the consensus conclusion. Since 1980 the media have been under intense pressure from the right, and they've caved in, but the Times for example is just trying to report the new consensus. The hard right has also learned that they can get away with lying.

From time to time you will read something by a top reporter contemptuously explaining that the brain-dead way of reporting is the best, most professional way. Apparently the J-schools are pretty well ruined.

I didn't get a lot of sympathy last time I said this, but the problems are deliberate management policy, presumably motivated by some eclectic neo-liberal / neocon ideology shared by owners, management, and advertisers. It's not equal-opportunity stupidity -- the media range from centrist to hard right, with the centrists being counted as "liberal".

re: 32

Yeah, it's a reactionary evil rag.

Someone invented an automatic Daily Mail headline generator.

http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

Not putting Administration sources on TV sounds like a feature.

42:

Does Feminism Strip House Prices of All Dignity?

I'm thinking yes.

42: Oh I knew that it was pretty reactionary. Peter Hitchens writes for it, right? I just think that this particular bit of reactionary opinion is hypocritical, given that one of its scions is gay. This kind of reminds me of the moralizing of American Republicans.

I didn't get a lot of sympathy last time I said this, but the problems are deliberate management policy, presumably motivated by some eclectic neo-liberal / neocon ideology shared by owners, management, and advertisers.

I don't remember "presumably" in your last iteration of this claim.

Maybe, or the MSNBC reporter would be pushy and then suddenly none of the MSNBC shows would be able to book guests from the administration, which seems a more likely outcome.

I see a glimmer of hope for the Democrats in this. Edwards said he wasn't going to debate on Fox News, and he made it stick. Unilateral disarmament by the Dems may be ending.

If Republicans are going to punish media for seeking the truth, the absolute minimum the Dems can do is punish the media for bullshitting.

I think some of this is a mass media artifact. If you're trying to appeal to everyone, despite the fact that different groups have very different understanding of the facts and how one evaluates the facts, you're going to publish mush as the negotiated middle.

I never claimed knowledge of inner workings of management, but the "shit happens" explanation drove me up the wall. It's like Sulzberger and Graham are these amiable vegetables who have no interest in the news, and just sign paychecks.

The one piece of not-widely-known information I do have is that both Graham and Sulzberger chair both the financial and the operations boards of their respective operations. I thinkt that the autonomy of journalism has been lost that way, especially to the extent that the two are publicly traded corporations.

presumably motivated by some eclectic neo-liberal / neocon ideology shared by owners, management, and advertisers.

No sympathy from this corner this time, either. Fact is, until liberals learn to boycott bullshit media sources (the way the right wing has learned to boycott fair ones), then the businessmen who run these organizations are going to have no incentive to change.

In addition, it's pretty clear that nobody in Sulzberger's social circle vilifies him appropriately for his newspaper's egregious screwups - but you know he catches shit for being "liberal" all the time.

There are forces brought to bear on media folks, and the answer is countering that pressure. As I say, I'm a big fan of Edwards, if only for this.

48: I think that's an outdated media critique - applicable in 1975 maybe, but not today.

Fact is, the mushy middle in this country is considerably to the left of the media. Where would the discussion of impeachment be, for example, if the media really reflected the average values expressed in the polls. Hell, where would discussion of impeachment have been 10 years ago if it had reflected the average values that Americans expressed in polls.

In what venue could Cheney even show his face if the values of Middle America ruled?

The media has taken a very strange, disquieting turn, but the American people aren't completely taken in, not yet.

Fact is, the mushy middle in this country is considerably to the left of the media.

Not the mushy middle of the elite--not in 2002, in any case--which is what a paper like the NYT or WaPo aims for. As for other media--I'd bet ogged's remaining kidney that lots of Dem/lefty types take themselves out of the cable news demographic by listening to NPR or watching PBS.

Tim, the "mushy middle of the elite" and "Graham and Sulzberger" are not two different things. They're whole and part. What I've been saying is that Graham and Sulzberger, like the rest of the mushy middle of the elite, are centrists at best, and that the deficiencies of their newspapers come from that. People need to quit puzzling about why this shit is happening.

PF, I think that we agree, except that I'm pretty sure that Sulzberger's circle of friends is made up of people very much like him.

but who will fact-check the journalists themselves?

I dunno. Coast Guard?

53: And I guess I should add, the mushy middle of the elite is to the right of the mushy middle of the electorate. "Centrist" really means "center-right", granting that the elite are not redneck Christians on social issues.

31.--The press corps has actually gotten a little better at this since Bush's popularity has declined, which is probably a major reason that Scott McLellan's tenure was notably less successful than his predecessor's.

Right, but Ari Fleischer was like the Nureyev of spin. I sometimes even catch myself feeling nostaglic for his sociopathic brilliance.

Speaking of the sycophantic press, have y'all heard the latest from poor Bob Novak?

Yeah, there isn't any analagous position to the Home Secretary. Suffice it to say that it's the second most senior cabinet position after Chancellor of the Exchequer.

All that said, I think Today's approach has almost as many flaws as the conventional US approach. Humphreys in particular is confrontational for the sake of being confrontational, to the extent that he often misses the real story. Newsnight is better on average, and far better than any US show I know, but Paxman has become something of a self parody. It would be just as good if not better without him.

I like Humphreys, but I take your point. Edward Stourton is good. (I was going to write "quite good", but then I thought that that has a different shade of meaning in English English, so it wouldn't be right to use the phrase to describe British people to an audience which includes Britons.)