The Mechanic & the Muse

Doubting sources

"Of course, it's not uncommon for writers and their sources to disagree over how facts should be interpreted, especially in such emotionally fraught circumstances. In the course of reporting a long article or book, writers will talk to many sources and try to gain their confidence. In doing so, they may cast their research in the most favorable light or leave out the full scope of their project. When the project comes out, sources may feel they've been betrayed."

Motoko Rich of The New York Times buried that nut graf in a piece about a key source repudiating the central premise in a new book by Sebastian Junger, the best-selling author of "A Perfect Storm."

But it's worth the wait as Rich explores yet another book controversy in this season of de-Oprahed favorites. What is truth to the author and to a source? "In the course of researching the book, Mr. Junger discovered that the truth — or what he could learn of it — was much more elusive, and the book is a sort of journalistic meditation on doubt."

Beyond journalistic doubt, there's also the issue of getting things right. The story about "A Death in Belmont" points out that Junger has a history of accuracy problems.

Rich's observation is dead-on, and echoes New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm's excoriating lead from her book, "The Journalist and the Murderer." 

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

Taking on what she saw as author Joe McGinnis' betrayal of Jeffrey McDonald, a Green Beret doctor convicted of killing his family, Malcolm tarred journalists; although hyperbolic, and unfairly damming every reporter who ever conducted an interview, her tarring should make all of us look deep inside to ask, "Is she right about me?"

Rich's story is far less stinging. Even so, it resurfaces an important ethical challenge, especially for journalists who prefer painting news in black and white, all the while ignoring the grays that in most journalism dominates the spectrum of light that is reality.

It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delay-less

Came in from lunch and on our mega-screen in the Poynter lobby, MSNBC had a talking head with this caption running at the bottom of the screen. I know TV folks use the term Chyron for such video text inserts; I vote for a new term: footline.

In any case, it said "Delayed Reaction."

At first, I took it literally and waited for something that would explain what reaction was being delayed.

D'Oh. It was wordplay, a punnish reference to the resignation from Congress of former House majority leader Tom DeLay, Texas exterminator turned Washington power broker.

In print, I think I would have gotten the joke and wondered why I was slow on the uptake when Chyron editors were having fun with language. I couldn't hear the audio, which would have provided the context, just as a lead would in a newspaper, or for that matter, a web site.

But I'm burying the lead. If you want an intimate view of the deposed Delay, at  3:10 p.m. today, tune into newly-launched Washington Post radio to hear Peter Perl, who filleted DeLay in a Post magazine profile that revealed him so nakedly that House colleagues couldn't believe DeLay would let a reporter, especially one from the Post, get that close. Peter, who has had a distinguished career at the Post, just did what he always did, even in 1974-75 when he was my first bureau chief at the Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer: All the stuff that most reporters would regale each other with at the bar, Peter put in the paper. He earned the trust of DeLay and other subjects by immersing himself in their worlds, and then reporting what he saw and heard, without fear or favor.

You can hear him deconstruct DeLay @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/wtwpradio/listen.html

I guarantee it will be worth your time.