单选题
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The newspaper must provide
for the reader the facts, unalloyed, unslanted, objectively selected facts. But
in these days of complex news it must provide more; it must supply
interpretation, the meaning of the facts. This is the most important assignment
confronting American journalism—to make clear to the reader the problems of the
day, to make international news as understandable as community news, to
recognize that there is no longer any such thing (with the possible exception of
such scribbling as society and club news) as "local" news, because any event in
the international area has a local reaction in manpower draft, in economic
strain, in terms, indeed, of our very way of life.
There is in
journalism a widespread view that when you embark on interpretation, you are
entering choppy and dangerous waters, the swirling tides of opinion. This is
nonsense.
The opponents of interpretation insist that the writer
and the editor shall confine himself to the "facts". This insistence raises two
questions: What are the facts? And: Are the bare facts enough?
As to the first query, consider how a so-called "factual" story cones
about. The reporter collects, say, fifty facts; out of these fifty, his space
allotment being necessarily restricted, he selects the ten, which he considers
most important. This is Judgment Number One. Then he or his editor decides which
of these ten facts shall constitute the lead of the piece (This is important
decision because many readers do not proceed beyond the first paragraph.) This
is Judgment Number Two. Then the night editor determines whether the article
shall be presented on page one, where it has a large impact, or on page
twenty-four, where it has little. Judgment Number Three.
Thus,
in the presentation of a so-called "factual" or "objective" story, at least
three judgments are involved. And they are judgments not at all unlike those
involved in interpretation, in which reporter and editor, calling upon their
general background, and their "news neutralism," arrive at a conclusion as to
the significance of the news.
The two areas of judgment,
presentation of the news and its interpretation, are both objective rather than
subjective processes—as objective, that is, as any human being can be.
(Note in passing: even though complete objectivity can never be achieved,
nevertheless the ideal must always be the beacon on the murky news channels.) If
an editor is intent on slanting the news, he can do it in other ways and more
effectively than by interpretation. He can do it by the selection of those facts
that prop up his particular plea. Or he can do it by the way he gives a
story—promoting it to page one or demoting it to page thirty.