al-Yahoo Watch: News Consumers Need Warning Labels, Too

[Updated, scroll down]   The headline: 

25 U.S. troops killed in Iraq Saturday

I have my home page set to Yahoo because I use Yahoo e-mail, and there are two things about  Yahoo’s home-page headlines  that I’ve noticed and meant to start picking at  for a long time.  One is the tendency for the headlines to  emphasize only negative developments in  Iraq, chiefly casualties.  This headline, for example, could  just as well have told us  that Mookie Sadr, under pressure from Iraqi forces, has decided to end his boycott of the Iraqi Parliament, a sign of military weakness that should not lull us into giving this tick crawl back up our ass again.  I shouldn’t have to feel compelled to say this, but balanced news is more valuable than skewed news.  Since no war has never been without casualties, and since we’ve never had a sustained war with fewer casualties than this one, or perhaps as much at stake, the accomplishments gained through that sacrifice (as well as the absence thereof, sometimes) are also relevant.  The deliberate presentation of an unbalanced picture, probably by some anonymous Yahoo staffer, is the sort of lie that goes beyond simple libel.  The other issue they’ve studiously avoided:  what we if actually do what all of these headlines seem meant to inspire?  Sometimes it’s the answers we already  know that we try the hardest to avoid.

The other is a question that I suspect plenty of people will not want to touch:  who are the people who are writing our news?  Since the obvious idea here is to sadden those of us who will be thinking about the families of these soldiers and Marines, I have to ask myself whether “Bushra Juji,” who wrote this story,  writes it as he did because he’s  inconsolable about the loss.  I wonder how many of our dispatches during World War Two were written under by-lines like “Hideo Kawanishi” and “Heinrich von Stumpff.”  I really don’t know a thing about Juji, of course, including his nationality, background, or political affiliations.  In fact, that’s just my point.  He may a true professional, or he could be an alumnus of the Ba’athist Information Ministry or an Indian Maoist with instructions to plants himself into a major wire service  and deliberately slant the  news coverage that will be read by millions.   I know, I know, couldn’t happen  ….

Incidentally, if anyone knows whether “Police  Captain  Jamil Hussein” exists this week, I’ve lost track.

Among the many Iraqi stringers, there are Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, and  very possibly cousins and brothers of terrorists and militia members whose agendas will differ amongst themselves (this Michael Yon piece  adds fuel to the sectarian  question; start about halfway down, then go back and read the whole thing).   But my point here isn’t to speculate about what Juji is up to, or who wrote the headine for his story, but to humbly suggest  make two suggestions — one simple and one not so simple.   

First, headlines  should strive for balance and a hint of the further edification within the story, and a diary of statistical obituaries fails both tests.  Whoever is writing Yahoo’s headlines ought to find other work.

Second,  news services should tell us something about the  journalists who write our news:  their years of experience, employment history, special abilities  or languages spoken fluently, past  political contributions and affiliations, and work for campaign and political staffs.  Better yet, they should present a list of  links to their previous work, which would also mean that a body of blogs will arise to rate them.   Each one should have his own  Web page.  Mind you, I’m advocating a voluntary industry standard here, not anything administered by the government.   It seems not to be too much to ask of those in the business of giving us information, and in several cases that come to mind, the readers would probably be impressed. 

And given how little trust many of give journalists whose records we don’t know anything about, might this not be a way to rebuild the esteem of the profession?  The professionals do not deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the hacks among them, but that’s happening.

On the other hand, ask yourself how many journalists with major media organizations have gone into the field and reported from where the real fighting is happening, like Michael Yon is doing.  I can’t think of one, and readily concede that this could be because I’ve turned to other sources for my news, sources that  think reporting this war goes  deeper than  giving us  a diary of blasts heard from,  and press releases issued in,  the Green Zone, plus whatever the Iraqi stringers add to that.  That’s why  I  given the alternative,  I would read a Michael Yon dispatch every day and fill in the gaps  with  the work of those who  do much less for more  pay.  I know what Yon’s predispositions are, and I can rely on him to report the bad as well as the good.

Update:   Let me give you an example, but first, some context.  Regulars can skip the next paragraph.

One of my core believes is that  the protection of innocent life and liberal values sometimes requires you to destroy people who refuse to coexist with them.  Unless you’re a new reader, you’ve picked up on my  belief  that Kim Jong Il’s mass murder of own his people ought to be at the center of how our policymakers deal with him and formulate a response to his creation and sale of weapons of mass destruction.  I’m not ignorant of  the fact that on this subject, I’m a fire-eater:  I believe the Bush Administration’s North Korea policy has been mostly wimpy and rudderless  beneath its tough talk.  I  believe that we’ll have a nuclear crisis as long as Kim Jong Il lives, and to me, that compels us to find the least risky way of seeing to it that he does not live.   I advocate training and arming a North Korean resistance movement — not because I think it’s likely that one could  march into Pyongyang anyone soon, but because  it could destabilize the ruling political system, break down the system of  isolation, and upset its diplomatic relationships, economy, logistical lifelines,  and internal power dynamics.  Talks  may have cosmetic value in the greater  political struggle, but talking peace means only so much when you’re talking to people who don’t value human life, don’t keep their word, don’t let nosy foreigners do inspections on their turf or the thousands of tunnels under it, and don’t even place much intrinsic value on peace itself … and most importantly, don’t fear you.  I also think that if the regime lasts for a few more years, unless war breaks out first, others will start to call for the same thing openly.  Finally, I hope that the regime’s leaders should face trial for what they’ve done to their own people.  One thing I suspect no one will ever call me is “moderate,” and I wear that comfortably.  I say that — as I urge others to — so that you can put the views that follow into some context.

A while back, some conservative bloggers picked up on an L.A. Times story, in which a representative of the North Korean government was interviewed.  The report did not mention what the person interviewed worked for the North Korean government, although a reader with knowledge of the subject might have inferred it.  There was no direct criticism of the government’s human rights record in the story; the reporter pretty much let the interviewee speak for himself.  A subtle reader might say that she just asked questions and  let “Mr. Anonymous” talk through his ass, since his responses were hardly effective.  You’ll need the L.A. Times archive to get the piece in its entirety, but a  portion of  it is archived on this page, about a third of the way down.

The blogs were ferocious in their attacks, as I have been at times when I though the target was deserving.  Even the normally  meticulous and sober Power Line called her “Durantyesque.”   Reading just that one story,  and knowing how  many journalists  have minimized North Korea’s evil, the criticism was  somewhat understandable. 

(It’s no secret who those  journalists are,  because a hack   and ex-UPI reporter named Chris Nelson wrote a “confidential” field guide  for the South Korean Embassy and then accidentally published it, unintentionally doing news consumers a great service.)

In this case, however, the  criticism  was misplaced.  The reporter was Barbara Demick of the L.A. Times, who stands out among her peers for excellence and persistence in  reporting what is reasonably knowable about  conditions inside North Korea.  That is particularly true of the human rights story and the plight of North Korean refugees.  Demick had an excellent response to the Power Line post, and to a reader who called her an “idiot.”   Demick has tried to tell  one of the most important stories of our time, which is also one of the most difficult to tell.  Demick is one who practices her profession with honest dilgence, along with Jasper Becker, Bradley Martin, Choe Sang-Hun, Don Kirk,  James Brooke, Claudia Rosett, Melanie Kirkpatrick,  Donald MacIntyre, David Sanger, Brian Lee of the Joongang Ilbo, and others I’ve intentionally decided not to name. 

Incidentally, I also suspect I have a pretty good idea of how these various reporters think about the political issues, and believe  I’ve pretty much hit the entire ideological spectrum there.  Fortunately, the Korea story has few enough reporters so that you have a pretty good idea of what you can expect from each reporter as a consumer.  Knowing that allows you to consume their work within that context, and to know what you can trust.  If there was a Barbara Demick page on the L.A. Times site, and if that site were linked at the bottom of her stories, some of us might have put our  criticisms into context, and as a result, we would have been more fair.

Lacking that, we act on what we know, and what we know is that too often, we’re not hearing the truth from professional journalism, which causes us to wonder why not, and tempts us to overgeneralize.