Sunday November 27, 2022
Occasionally, The Guardian lets its hair down and writes about itself.
A newspaper doesn’t get to be rated the U.K.’s “most trusted” newspaper by navel gazing. Although The Guardianlags behind, say, the Sun or the Daily Mail in total circulation, it ranks above any other British paper for the quality of its research and reporting.
But occasionally, it lets us peek into its internal workings.
Recently, Sophie Zeldin-O'Neill, The Guardian’s deputy membership editor, wrote in an e-newsletter that Donald Trump's announcement of running for the presidency in 2024 “renewed a debate about how to responsibly cover him without unwittingly providing the coverage he so expertly manipulates.”
She likened it to “walking a tightrope.”
“We will have no hesitation to call a lie a lie, or indeed a liar a liar, even if they are a former US president," said Paul Harris, head of news for The Guardian US. "Trump's announcement of his 2024 [candidacy] was big news. His fifth rally where he plays the same old tunes and elevates the same old lies, is not – no matter what strange thing he might say in order to generate interest.”
David Smith, The Guardian’s Washington-bureau chief, advocated a “truth sandwich” approach: “Explain the reality, then quote Trump, then explain the reality again.”
Feels like manipulation
I found the “truth sandwich” concept disturbing. Because it sounds as if they’re setting up a situation to make Trump look ridiculous. (Which is not difficult, I must say.)
But the concept runs counter to my instincts as a reporter, learned long ago.
I saw my job as being the pipeline, not the petroleum. I interviewed people I assumed were authorities on a subject. Professors, perhaps. Senior police officers. City councillors. Social workers.
Then I edited those interviews to make as clear as possible what they were trying to say. Because they didn’t always say it clearly. Some corporate executives and politicians could be remarkably inarticulate -- and sometimes they wanted to be.
It wasn’t my job to correct them. If they bent the truth, my job was merely to clear away the obfuscation and mumble-speak so that no one could miss their meaning.
I have to recognize, though, that this was before a time when a lie could go viral. When a single inaccurate assertion could go without contradiction to 7.62 billion smart phones.
Unsubstantiated superlatives – something Trump excels at – repeated millions of times take on a patina of obvious truth.
Why order matters
So how should a newspaper cover assertions that are ignorant, misleading, or blatant lies – regardless of who says them?
In today’s media tsunami, ignoring them gives them credence; focusing on them spreads them wider.
Hence The Guardian’s proposal for a “truth sandwich”.
Yet that begs a question – is the primary news what a person says, or is what the person says supporting evidence, the documentation that proves the thesis?
That may sound like academic question. It’s not.
Perhaps it’s easier to grasp if I put it in an entirely different context. So….
Fact: after four successive years of drought, 50% of Somalia’s population face starvation.
Quote: In the Bible, Jesus says, “The poor you will always have with you.”
If Jesus’ words get priority, then starvation in Somalia becomes little more than an illustration of an eternal truth. You will never eradicate poverty. Why bother trying?
On the other hand, if seven million people facing starvation get priority, then the quotation from Jesus comes across either as a callous disregard for human suffering, or as an admission that humans have never properly dealt with endemic poverty. Never.
See how the order of items can affect your reaction to them?
Reader expectations
Even journalists themselves are often unaware of how their presentation of facts pre-determines a reader’s response.
Typically, readers expect journalists to summarize the “news” in their own words, and then support it with a quotation from someone who, presumably, knows the subject dependably.
The “truth sandwich” violates that principle.
Do all readers have the sophistication to deal with a news story where the illustration – the ham in the sandwich – doesn’t mesh with the news that wraps around it?
It’s like pairing two-plus-two ‘rithmetic with Schrodinger’s Uncertainty Principle. Will readers get it? Or will they invent a distorted reality within which conflilcting elements somehow make sense?
Like a conspiracy theory, perhaps?
I hope The Guardian doesn’t turn its “truth sandwich” into a formula for covering difficult subjects.
Keep it simple, Guardian. Keep it straightforward. Keep it honest.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
I guess there’s not too much to say about the crisis of over-population. So two of the letters I received about last week’s column were recommendations of books that might cast additional light on the subject.
Dawne Taylor suggested Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Canadian authors Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. “Gives a somewhat different perspective from the usual pessimistic one -- and different than the UN projections of population growth.”
Ted Archibald: “I am just finishing up an e-book that I recommend to you: by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen, available on Kindle, https://www.amazon.ca/Inconvenient-Apocalypse-Environmental-Collapse-Humanity-ebook/dp/B09RFHY1CN
“The authors read the science and conclude that there will be a major climate apocalypse/collapse. Much of their writing deals with what will happen to the remaining populations, a future of FEWER AND LESS.”
Vera Gottlieb takes a pessimistic view: “The global North/white race continue to decimate others with the sole purpose of attaining financial superiority at any cost. It might not be called ‘genocide’ or ‘holocaust’ but the end effects are the same: whitey’s domination in the belief that all other races are inferior. This, in my view, is a form of ‘deciding’ who lives and who doesn’t.”
Jane Wallbrown wrote from India, where the population is growing faster than China’s: “Are there really people who believe that God is in charge of overpopulation or decline?
“I have been somewhat -- I guess the word is shocked -- at the number of abortions Indian upper class women have...Married women. They take the [abortion] pill and are under the weather for 2 or 3 days. Some believe that the birth control pills are bad for them, yet taking a pill and aborting is better?
“My daughter-in-law’s circle of professional families are all limiting their families to one.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns