This is why some people in the mainstream press fear greater transparency — they’re worried giving the public more details about how we go about our business will just give partisan critics more ammunition.
For example, this NYT story briefly included the line, “need some quote from supporter” prefacing a few lines from a detractor. Powerline has screen grabs:
Even as his own voice faded away, his views on the sanctity of all human life echoed unambiguously among Catholics and Christian evangelicals in the United States on issues from abortion to the end of life.
need some quote from supporter
John Paul II’s admirers were as passionate as his detractors, for whom his long illness served as a symbol for what they said was a decrepit, tradition-bound papacy in need of rejuvenation and a bolder connection with modern life.
“The situation in the Catholic church is serious,” Hans Kung, the eminent Swiss theologian, who was barred by from teaching in Catholic schools because of his liberal views, wrote last week. “The pope is gravely ill and deserves every compassion. But the Church has to live. …
In my opinion, he is not the greatest pope but the most contradictory of the 20th century. A pope of many, great gifts, and of many bad decisions!”
Among liberal Catholics, he was criticized for his strong opposition to abortion, homosexuality and contraception, as well as the ordination of women and married men.
Now, to me, this just shows the Times’ admirable committment to fairness, balance, etc. But John Hinderaker says it shows the Times “had its criticisms of John Paul’s papacy ready to go, but apparently went looking for something good to say about the Pope at the last minute.”
Eesh – can you imagine Hinderaker’s reaction if the editor had wanted reporter Ian Fisher to find a detractor??
Later, the Times added these positive comments to the story:
“This pope will have a place in history,” Giancarlo Zizola, an Italian Vatican expert, said on Saturday after his death. “Not just for what he is glorified for now, for attracting the great masses, as a sporty pope – this won’t last. Not even the fall of Berlin Wall, the defeat of communism, because he himself said it would destroy itself.
“But he will be remembered for the seeds he laid,” he added. “He will be remembered for his great favoring of dialogue between different religions, for the culture of peace and the courage to speak against wars. For having saved the values of the West from the West itself. And the human form he gave to the papacy. It is not negative or positive: it is a complete pontificate.”
Huh. Well, anyone who thinks the Times is engaged in Pope-bashing should read this beautifully-written, enormous story by Robert McFadden.
Traveling widely – through Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia – the pope electrified vast crowds with a populist blend of showmanship, evangelism and impassioned appeals for human rights, peace, disarmament and justice for the poor and the oppressed.
On that first papal visit to Poland, he scolded the officially atheistic Communist government for treating people “merely as a means of production.”
He went to Brazil and chastised the military junta in power. “Violence,” he said, “kills what it intends to create.”
He went to Ireland and confronted zealots of the Irish Republican Army and their Protestant foes: “On my knees I beg you to turn away from the path of violence and to return to the ways of peace.”
He went to Japan and mourned: “To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war. To remember Hiroshima is to commit oneself to peace.”
He went to Auschwitz and asked, “How far can cruelty go?”
And he went to the United Nations in New York and spoke to world leaders of peace for “all the men and women living on this planet.”
Other bloggers weigh in here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
They mostly seem to share Powerline’s snarky take, that somehow Fisher “couldn’t find” anyone with anything good to say about the Pope. I guess President Bush didn’t count? Or Michael Walsh, the British biographer? Or Caeser Aturi, a priest from Ghana and the first person quoted in the story, who said, “I have looked up to this man as a guide, and now it is like a star that has suddenly disappeared.”
I imagine an editor wanted simply wanted some additional positive comments. Why is that such a big deal???
You make some excellent points. Hmmm…. who among us Bloggers hasn’t made a typo or other error in haste, only to hurriedly log back in to edit his or her post? Could that have been just an editor’s notation to place a positive quote in that space?
The fact that it went out unfinished isn’t the problem. But look at the narrative of the story: positive quote sandwiched between neutral framing sentence and several paragraphs of negative analysis and quotation: “decrepit, tradition-bound papacy…barred by [sic] from teaching in Catholic schools because of his liberal views…The situation in the Catholic church is serious…not the greatest pope…many bad decisions!…Among liberal Catholics, he was criticized…”
You write the story with a negative mindset, then you (or your editor) notice just how negative it reads, so you add balance by adding a positive quote for appearance’s sake – but that’s only superficial balance and doesn’t mean the writer approached the story from a neutral viewpoint. Seeing “need positive quote here”, rather than the quote itself, just makes this structure a bit clearer to the casual reader.
And pointing out that the NYT also has stories that aren’t as negative is no argument that this story is balanced or fair.
I think the 10:33 commenter is right. It’s certainly unfair to judge the Times’s overall coverage from this one article. But there’s a fair question about whether the editor here (or the writer making a note-to-self) was really looking to publish a balanced treatment of the event or was, on the other hand, looking to perform a CYA cosmetic job on an article that nonetheless would promote a particular point of view. Merely knowing that a positive comment was called for doesn’t resolve that question; a review of the entire piece is required, and opinions are likely to differ. But to say that the call for a positive quote conclusively evidences a quest for real balance is to say that journalists (unlike everybody else) never try to get away with putting lipstick on a pig and calling it Shirley.
Knowing a little about how this all works, I’m guessing it was a note from an editor that was made in the “comments mode” of the story text and somehow made it into the web version.
The 10:33 commenter is correct that McFadden’s story (meant to encompass the pope’s legacy) doesn’t mean Fisher’s is fair. Still, I thought it was. Sure, there’s some criticism in there, but overall it’s a pretty positive piece. I do agree that it needed the comments from Zizola.
(and FYI – looking at the latest version, the word “decrepit” is gone and the line is just, “John Paul II’s detractors were often passionate as his supporters, criticizing him for what they said was tradition-bound papacy in need of a bolder connection with modern life…” I guess I’d have to read up on the pope’s detractors to judge which is more accurate.)
Of course that was an editor’s notation.
I’m the editor of a suburban Dallas weekly, and also assistant managing editor of our five-newspaper group.
However, at a major daily, the communication between hardcopy and online editorial staff often isn’t flowing that freely.
I’m sure that what happened was, somehow a preliminary version of the hardcopy story that was getting knocked into shape was supposed to be sent to somebody at the online news editor’s desk, and an unedited version was sent.
Still, if the story wasn’t that long, you would think somebody on the online side would have caught it.
When Aljazeera can manage to have a more respectfull story on the Pope than the NY Times, we really have to start questioning whether the NY Times has become so out of touch with the world, that Jihadi TV is a better source of news.
The story is odd as it looks to be an opinion piece. I have’t seen the original except for that screenshot from Powerline, but I think there’s some indication it’s an opinion piece there. If it’s not, well then it probably should be to say the least.
The fact that the story ENDED UP “fair” (albeit with some major omissions) is not an excuse for what happened. What clearly happened was, the Times started by showing its true colors – capable of writing an article for which only “a positive quote” would have provided sufficient “balance” – then ended up contriving “balance” only through the use of material attributed to a qualified source (rather than their own editorialship). The question never asked was, was[n’t] the entire “need quote from supporter” approach wrong-headed to begin with?
To my mind the fact that the Pope not only “scolded Communists” but instilled backbone in the people of Poland (through deliberate acts not mentioned in the article) to stand up to the Communists – and eventually topple them from within – is not a small detail: it’s kind of “the point” really. Yet it is omitted from the article in its entirety. Similarly: the fact that he apologized & asked for forgiveness for the treatment of Jews by Christians throughout history is not a small detail either; it’s at least as historically significant as his “strong opposition to abortion, homosexuality and contraception” (which any observer of Catholicism would readily admit is the equivalent of the sun rising in the East). Incidentally it’s nowhere to be found either. Huh?
Clearly apologizing to world Jewry – an act never before undertaken by any papacy – is equivalent to the sun rising in the West. Ditto for overthrowing Communism almost single-handedly at the height of its power (for which Stasi archives reveal he was targeted for assassination). And this warrants nary a MENTION in the entire “redux” article? Revealing.
It’s kind of like taking the meat out of the shepherd’s pie and replacing it with coal tar: the crust is still there, and it still looks like a meal, but the theme is badly askew – and the meat’s not in it either (the faux adulatory cop to the “culture of peace” and “saving the values of the West from the West itself” notwithstanding).
Well, everyone’s going to have their own views on what’s the pope’s most important legacy. I’m sure Jewish folks think one thing, conservative Catholics another, and liberals something entirely different. Fisher’s story was the breaking news story. McFadden’s story, here, went into great detail on the pope’s history with Jews.
I don’t understand your second paragraph. “Omitted from the article in its entirety?” Did you read it? Fisher’s article said the pope “encourag[ed] his fellow Poles and other Europeans to reject Communism. Many historians believe he deserves part of the credit for the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.”
I can explain the second paragraph: Ian’s been tinkering with his story. What I saw looked nothing like what you saw.
As to what you saw: Recasting the Pope’s strategic undermining of the old Communist order as “encouragement” – and Giancarlo Zizola’s parroting of the Pope’s own modesty (“he himself said it would destroy itself”) – misunderstands and undersells both what the Pope attempted and what he achieved.
The Pope’s strategic undermining of the old Communist order included (1) his intellectual work (philosophical writings challenging the central tenets of Communism, which went back to his days in the underground & continued forward), (2) his strategic support of Eastern European freedom movements like Solidarity (which the founder admits had negligible following until the Pope stepped in), and (3) his winning of hearts & minds in the Third World (clearly the open front in the battle against global Communist hegemony). All were necessary and key to thwarting the Soviet Union at [what we often fail to realize was] the height of its power and ascendancy.
None of the Pope’s efforts would have worked by themselves; with plenty of 3rd-world recruits to rely on, Eastern Europe was not the lynchpin to the Communists’ stranglehold on the world it had once been.
Yet your excerpt from the Times mentions only the second. And recasts that activity as something else: “encouragement”. Also: attributing the weakened charge to “historians” (this was after all a “news” story too) has the superficial appearance of respect, yet patronizes the Pope and reveals the Times’ unwillingness to stand by their own [mis]characterization in any way personally. (Good idea. 😉
As others have pointed out, the fact that this is the article people will read – as opposed to the in-depth article by McFadden (which many more won’t, let’s be honest) – makes it all the more important that such tidbits are not swept under the rug. That they were, and that Fisher appears to have been oblivious to the Pope’s real legacy as a historical figure, is the entire problem in a nutshell.
(Yes, I’m aware of sourcing rules. That still doesn’t excuse or explain what he did.)