OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The work, not the person

This newspaper boasts properly of a wall of separation between news and opinion. I speak as one of the few ever to crash into that wall and survive.

I'd returned from Washington in 1994 to write as an opinion columnist for the paper. A high-ranking state bureaucrat came to the newsroom late in the afternoon and wanted to speak with me.

He told me he'd just resigned, and why, and I said for him to hold it right there because I needed to turn him over to a reporter.

He said he'd only talk to me, probably because he knew from my public opinions that I'd be sensitive to his objections leading to his resignation.

He was aware of and appealing to my bias. He was angling for supportive commentary, not a news story.

I took exhaustive notes from my interview with him and went to a newsroom editor. I said I have these notes and I think it's a spot news story and I'll be happy to convey them to a reporter and explain them. The editor said it was a wild afternoon and deadlines were looming and he had no person or time to spare.

I knew how to write a news story--having done it on cigarette-smoked deadlines through my 20s and 30s. The fact is that I never felt as alive as when pounding out copy on a deadline. And I was a newspaper-war veteran.

I was thus conditioned to write today's news today, though, in this case, waiting until peaceful morning to tip the news side and offering the reporter the notes for independent confirmation would have been the way to go.

Alas, I chose the other way. I called to get the other side of the man's dispute and wrote a news story and shipped it to the desk.

The next morning I was surprised to see that my byline appeared on a news story on a news page. The newsroom editor had thought that leaving off the byline would be dishonest with the reader.

Everyone was well-intentioned, and everyone made a mess.

The Arkansas Times was calling to ask how and why I'd broken a seemingly hollow commandment. Displeased editors were huddled. I was told the publisher was aghast.

I remember asking, "Are you saying that, because I write an opinion column, the guy didn't really resign?"

Somehow I didn't get fired for the compound infraction of straddling the wall of separation and being flip about it.

The point was that readers had reason to wonder about missing context considering that the byline was of a man whose opinions they could turn a couple of pages and read.

That's a long story to laud the newspaper's guiding principle and acknowledge the importance of a serious newspaper's need to attend not only to the pursuit of objectivity but to the appearance of it.

So, I have long since written my last deadline news story. And that's just, appropriate and vital.

But, you know, I'm just saying: If I wrote one today, you could believe it even if you didn't always believe me.

A person of opinion--meaning a human being--can learn and apply the objectivity of the profession. Objectivity is not a natural human trait; it's a learned professional craft.

In my reporting days, I produced news stories damaging to a governor. He called me biased. Whether I was or wasn't--and I carried pretty much the same personal opinions then as now--the news stories spoke for their objectively presented selves.

So, I'm thinking of a context broader than a newspaper's professional integrity, one applicable to this so-called cancel culture.

It is that you should judge the work, not the person. It is that you should cancel partisan reports, not a professional craft and craftsman.

Don't insist that a young news associate of The Associated Press be fired because of her incendiary pre-hiring tweets when she was in college. If she is to be terminated, it should be for failure on the job, not Palestinian-sensitive opinions when in college.

That goes for more than journalism, and both ways. A furniture-making craftsman could dislike the look and function of a Shaker-style chair and yet build you a good one. A contemporary politician who, let's say, was pictured in black face in his college yearbook ought to be judged for his contemporary policies and positions on race.

What's the point of living if not to get better?

All reporting should be questioned, but the only reporting that should be rejected pre-emptively is the abominable form that is intentionally and brazenly blended with partisan bias for a marketing purpose in service to a business plan. I'm mainly referring to Fox, Newsmax, and MSNBC and maybe, though I hate to admit it, CNN.


John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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