Minnesota governor (and potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012) Tim Pawlenty — the beneficiary of a glowing piece of New York Times stenography. Photo via flickr user marcn
True newspaper reporting is often criticized for striving for objectivity in its reporting, its effort to avoid focusing on or favoring one side or party or argument over the other. (This is not the case, of course, for Editorial Pages and Op-ed pieces, where are well-supported arguments and opinions matter most.)
Many people, including myself, believe that this idea of objectivity is impossible. (The late, great Hunter S. Thompson called objective journalism a “pompous contradiction in terms.”) In truth, reporters and editors are subjective in the stories they choose to report and not report, the sources they choose to interview and not interview, the photos they choose to print and not print and so on.
Yet sometimes a reporter will take the ideal of objectivity too far, in which they become a mere stenographer, dutifully recording what someone says, writing those words down without question and making that their story, without any evidence of critical thinking on the part of the writer.
A recent New York Times article on Minnesota governor (and possible 2010 Republican presidential candidate) Tim Pawlenty falls into this trap: It’s more stenography than journalism. Which makes it all the more surprising because it was written by Adam Nagourney, The Times’s chief political correspondent.
The article, “G.O.P. Leader Wants to Be More Than Opposition,” gives Pawlenty nearly 1,000 words in this country’s paper of record to essentially say whatever he thinks about his political future and that of the G.O.P. Carte blanche in the Gray Lady.
More on how sad this is after the jump.
Nagourney takes down all of Pawlenty’s musings — on Obama (”He’s has kept an up-tempo kind of positive outlook — even though I don’t agree with many of the policies he has taken.”); on the G.O.P.’s strategy to reestablish its influence (“Feeding off what they do wrong is not a strategy. We may get some tailwind from that, but it can’t be the central tenet of our strategy.”). But there are no mentions of Pawlenty’s positions or record as Minnesota governor; his intransigence in the Coleman-Franken debacle, refusing to approve Franken’s court-approved victory despite most Minnesotans wanting him to do so; his comments about Obama while campaigning for John McCain last year. Nothing to tell us more about this potential presidential candidate other than what he has to say himself.
A quick scan of the Comments section attached to Nagourney’s article shows that perhaps a few interviews with some Minnesotans talking about Pawlenty might’ve helped. Minimo from Minneapolis writes:
As a Minnesotan I have watched Pawlenty sit back, train for marathons, travel with McCain much of last year, make erudite comments and do nothing. He caters to the religious right – having religious events on state property and manages to sound fiscally conservative. He has no vision. There is no future plan for Minnesota; just one for Paaaalenty.
And George from Minneapolis writes:
Governor Pawlenty has done little good with his tenure in Minnesota. Before he was governor he made a deal as a member of the MN congress to override Governor Ventura’s balanced budget giving us a large deficit. He has never dealt with the budget deficits in a permanent manner as a good fiscal conserative should. We had a huge deficit in 2003 and we have one now. He was among those who put their own vanity before the good of the state. As governor he has not dealt with the fiscal issues that plague the state.
Granted, these are only two opinions from two anonymous commenters at nytimes.com. But they’re still indicative that not all’s rosy with Pawlenty’s time in Minnesota.
To be fair, given a New York Times reporter and free reign to say whatever I wanted, I’m pretty sure I could come across as a competent, thoughtful politician with higher aspirations in politics.
Now, I respect and enjoy much of Adam Nagourney’s reporting — his dispatches from the campaign trail were in-depth, shrewd and fairly written, I thought — and it’s possible more background info on Pawlenty could’ve been cut in the editing process.
Nonetheless, what we’re left with is a transcript of sorts with The New York Times’s masthead above it of an interview with Tim Pawlenty that doesn’t really tell us much about him other than what he’d like us to hear.
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Comments ( 1 Comment )
Excellent post i’m sure that i will come back here again
zaklady bukmacherskie added these pithy words on
May 21 10 at
4:47 AM
