Matthew Yglesias: He Said / She Said: [Mike] Allen[of the Washington Post] took issue with that characterization of what news writers are doing. He said that news writers are trying to present both sides' points-of-view, hence the 'he said, she said' quality to it, but that they're trying to present these points-of-view in such a way so that a discerning reader can tell who's right based on reading the story.
I tried then to revise my statement of the situation. A good news reporter, on my revised view, tries to 'lead a horse to water,' while a blogger is more likely to try and 'throw the horse in the lake.' He seemed happier with that restatement. And I think the restated view has some truth to it. Oftentimes, even though a story doesn't come out and say, 'so-and-so said such-and-such and he was lying,' it's pretty clear from reading the strory that so-and-so was, in fact, lying. Indeed, oftentimes it's only because it is so clear from the story as written that so-and-so was lying that I, as I reader, find myself annoyed that the reporter didn't come out and say so. I think, though, that a higher proportion of news writing really is pure 'he said, she said' than Allen seemed willing to say. At the same time, he's one of the better political reporters out there, so probably sees his craft more through the lense of how he practices it, than through how the lense of how others may do the job.
Last but by no means least, I think the 'horse to water' model to some extent suffers from a lack of thought about how, in practice, news stories get read. If you need to read something -- especially an A1 story that jumps to the inside -- all the way through to figure out what's going on, a very high proportion of readers aren't going to do that. They'll scan a few grafs and their takeaway will be 'aha! the parties are engaged in a partisan dispute.' Now how much can you plame newspaper writers for the fact that their readers are likely to be lazy and/or rushed as they read? I don't really know.
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