The fact and fiction of newspaper writing

A spokesperson for The Older Breed Of Journalists (TOBOJ), who offers her opinion on the basis of anonymity, claims to know the reason there are so many fiction writers on today’s newspaper staffs. Informed – and uninformed sources – tell us, No. 1, it’s easy to concoct fake news stories when facts aren’t checked and challenged. No. 2, book editors read fiction novels with an eye for credibility, whereas some copy desks – we think we’ve been told – don’t.

Back when TOBOJ practiced their craft – sources close to that generation tell us – there was this gnawing responsibility newspapers felt in response to the public trust placed in them.

There even was – we’re given to believe by undisclosed records – something called principle. It permeated the press, according to the unnamed spokesperson, guiding reporters and their editors in how to disseminate accurately and objectively the newsworthy information of the day.

“The Newspaper, Its Making and Its Meaning” was compiled in 1945 after a series of lectures by members of the staff of The New York Times to a selected group of Manhattan teachers. The small, red, white and blue book turned into a textbook on good newspapering.

A textbook for TOBOJ, that is, who agreed with the Times: “The relation of mutual respect and confidence between a newspaper and its readers is its chief asset, all that is precious in its good will.”

Of course, this was back when Pulitzer Prize winning James B. Reston was on the staff, and he believed that good reporters needed a “sincere conviction about their obligation to the people to get as near to the truth as possible.” Reston went so far as to say if the reporter had this conviction, “he can be trusted.”

TOBOJ people talked like that; they mentioned words like “truth” and “trust.” They abhorred having to run corrections because of erroneous news stories and adhered to the editorial edict that all quotations should be attributed and all sources should be named.

How ironic that The New York Times has had to apologize for fraudulent news stories carried on its front page under the byline of one of those contemporary fiction writers calling himself a reporter.

According to one observer – who asked not to be identified – the reporter was not schooled in TOBOJ but rather was allowed to file high-profile, hard-news stories based on unnamed sources.

Kind of like one last week about federal agents seizing Maine Department of Education files to investigate alleged misuse of funds. The commissioner claimed the audit was not unusual, but a “highly placed State House source who asked not to be identified” said otherwise.

Or like the follow-up story that quoted at length an unnamed federal official in Washington, D.C. Or like the Seymour Hersh article in the May 12 New Yorker that quoted an anonymous Pentagon adviser who shared his uncorroborated insight about the Office of Special Plans in regard to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Credibility? Therein lies the problem with the American public and today’s press. We in TOBOJ were taught by our predecessors – and our mothers as well – the proof’s in the pudding.