biasedreporter asked the community what it thought about coverage of the Schiavo story. I posted a comment, but then I got to expanding on it and thought I’d xpost the revised comment here for the benefit of those who don’t read that community.

The “coverage” of the story has been appalling. Again we have a case where the institutional press has allowed itself to be gamed by cynical politicians interested primarily in exploiting the Schiavo case for political gain.

The story here, if the press were doing its job, is about political grandstanding and what the GOP is doing away from the light of press scrutiny. A number of editorial types and lots of bloggers are getting it right, but so far the nation’s “reporters” keep dry humping along just like they did on WMDs, the “link” between 9/11 and Iraq, and gay marriage.

I keep coming back to this observation from a story late last year. Geneva Overholser isn’t some kind of hellraising outsider intent on tearing down the industry – she’s one of the more respected members of the journalism community (a former managing editor at the Des Moines Register, ed board member at the NY Times, ombudsman at the Washington Post, a chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, etc. – see more on her credentials here) so this quote is something of an A-bomb:

Geneva Overholser, the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in public affairs reporting, Missouri School of Journalism, Washington bureau
“This was the year when it finally became unmistakably clear that objectivity has outlived its usefulness as an ethical touchstone for journalism. The way it is currently construed, “objectivity” makes the media easily manipulable by an executive branch intent on and adept at controlling the message. It produces a rigid orthodoxy, excluding voices beyond the narrowly conventional.

“And it leads to a false balance of `on the one hand, on the other hand’ stories that make the two `hands’ appear equal even when factual weight lies 98 percent on one side. Objectivity’s most effective use today is as a cudgel in the hands of those who wish to beat up on the media” (Hartford Courant).

Meanwhile, Frank Rich, one of those aforementioned editorial types, nails the “God Racket” in yesterday’s column (thx to Frank Venturo and BellaRagazza for the link). The Times is like a lot of American newspapers in that it will be a lot better off – as will its readers – when it realizes that it needs to get its analysis and interpretation functions off the ed page and onto the front page. We already know the who/what/when/where of news by the time the paper comes out. What we need is a more up-front approach to why and how….