Thinking About News
Den Beste links to a Helle Dale op-ed in the Washington Times and writes the following:
The WashTimes (which is owned by the Moonies) is like Debka; I don't believe anything I see there until I've seen it confirmed somewhere else, and so far I haven't seen this anywhere else.I'm being a little unfair to Steven because it looks like I'm singling him out, when really I've been seeing these sorts of prefatory comments about Washington Times articles for a while now from all sorts of people. Usually, the implication is either the one made here -- that the Moonies own the paper and therefore exercise virtually complete editorial control over both news and editorial content, or the paper is openly conservative, and therefore everything is prints is somehow suspect.
I do think it's fair to suggest that the Washington Times probably isn't going to be one's most reliable source of news coverage or opinion on matters directly related to the Moonies (as a complete aside, I saw Tony Blankley address the issue of the Moonies' influence on C-Span a while back, shortly after he assumed control of the editorial page, so these accusations are not new to the editors), for the same reason that CNN may not be the most reliable source of news coverage or opinion on Ted Turner or AOLTimeWarner. And surely the paper's political orientation does influence the content of the paper, much as Howell Raines's political orientation noticeably influences that of the New York Times. But intelligent people understand those influences, and should be able figure that out, especially since the Washington Times is effectively the nation's conservative paper of record. Indeed, one could make the case that in some instances, you might be more likely to see some information there first, since conservatives might be inclined to give certain columnists or editorialists there a heads up on breaking news (leaks).
Leaving aside the question of editorials (the article Den Beste links is a Helle Dale editorial on the op-ed page), is the Washington Times really that unreliable when it comes to news? That is to say, as unreliable as Debka (which is basically a gossip rag, although frequently gossip turns out to have some basis in fact)? I don't think so. Columnist Bill Gertz regularly breaks some big international stories that seem to hold up, and I tend to find Bill Sammon's stuff useful. And just a few days ago, I either read or saw someone from the Washington Post actually compliment the Times for beating them to the punch on some international stories. I know the World section is the first one I hit on the Times website each day.
Of course, I tend to be somewhat skeptical regarding all news sources. Knowing a media organization's composition and potential biases is part of the job of a careful reader. And for that reason, I read a pretty wide variety of news sources both for work and for play. Some are liberal, some are conservative, some are non-ideological but have more subtle biases, some have more reliable sections than others. I think it's useful to take into account all of those things when considering news reporting. Indeed, for the sort of work I do, it's fairly crucial, since it's sometimes impossible to get 100% verification on some little nuggets of information on some of the smaller countries (of the 115 or so) that we analyze -- meaning the analyst has to make a judgment on the quality of that information based on what he knows about the news source. THAT is when it gets tricky. But so far they haven't fired me, so I must be okay at it. :)
[Posted at 21:57 CST on 09/10/02] [Link]
