I haven’t written a letter to the editor in a while, but as a journalist for many years who believes good journalism is integral to democracy, this subject is dear to my heart.
It is in response to a letter by Barry Dittler in the Friday, Feb. 26 issue of the The Garden Island. I don’t take issue with anything Mr. Dittler includes in the first two paragraphs of his letter. However, in the final paragraph he said something that is a misunderstanding about journalism that, unfortunately, he shares with thousands (perhaps millions) of others.
Mr. Dittler is upset that TGI ran an opinion piece from the Los Angeles Times that he says was biased. Here’s the problem: Opinion pieces and editorials are almost always biased. All such commentators in print or broadcast media have, and express, a bias. That’s their nature. Yes, it’s fair to expect them not to cherry-pick facts, but cherry-picked facts is partly what editorials and opinion pieces are all about. As in oral debates, the proponents of one side or another choose facts that support their side of the issue.
News articles and newscasts are a different matter. We should all expect these to give us the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts. News articles and newscasts are what provide us with the facts we need to understand what is going on in our community, our state, our country and the world. It’s the information we need to be good citizens and to make well-informed decisions and choices. It’s what we need to have a healthy democracy.
Like Mr. Dittler, many people think journalism is dead only because they don’t fully understand the distinction between news and opinion, and can’t always tell which is which. Here’s a little help. Generally, the first section of The Garden Island, except the page(s) marked TGI Forum, are expected to be non-biased news, presenting only facts. The Forum page (also known as Op-Ed or Editorial page) can be expected to be nothing but opinion. You can make the same distinctions in broadcast media: newscasts should be the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts, while guests who are brought on, and personalities who have their own shows are opinion-mongers.
Good journalism is not dead! It is just being drowned out by too much opinion and misinformation from unreliable sources. If you want reliable information, learn to identify what is news and what is opinion. If this were a diet, news would be your nutrients and opinion would be the junk food. Unfortunately, there is too much junk food around, and too many of us digest too much of it.
(Post script: Studies have shown that the least-informed individuals are those who rely on cable-news outlets, while the best-informed are those who get it from public radio (NPR) or newspapers. Network news broadcasts are somewhere in between. I would add that those who rely on unvetted internet sites are actually the least informed. But that’s just my opinion.)
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Vera Benedek is a resident of Kilauea.
