The "W's"

Who, what, when, where. Those are the main ones, you can add why, but it can verge in to subjectivity. At least that’s how I remember it from grade school.

I read the opinion pieces in The New York Times on Sunday. The thing is, I know they are opinion and that they have a bias. I can deal with that. Fox, the fair and balanced news source has a bias in its non-news programming. I can deal with that.

I’ve long defended the paper when it came to its reporting. It has broken big stories and consistently published accurate and literate articles about what is happening in the country and the world. The New York Times, for better or worse, is still close to the gold standard when it comes to reporting; but, it has suffered, by its own disclosures, some lapses in judgment, shall we call them. There was Jason Blair who concocted his stories. Kurt Eichenwald got overly involved in a story he wrote about a teenager ensnared in online porn. Judith Miller has played close to the line in her career.

A few weeks back, the Public Editor of the Times, Clark Hoyt, did a piece (you have to register to read it) talking about complaints by people who had been “interviewed” by Deborah Solomon for a regular feature called “Questions For.” As it turns out, Ms. Solomon did not accurately record either her questions or her subjects’ answers. Sometimes, she would make up a question to provide a basis for reporting an answer that had been given in response to another question. Other times she wrote an accurate answer, but prefaced it by a question that hadn’t been asked Then she would mix it up by writing the “answer” to two “questions.”

Well The Times has “addressed” the problem after having been outed. Mr. Hoyt wrote about it in this morning's paper. The Time’s solution? The feature now has a new caveat below the title: It says “'Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Deborah Solomon.’ That’s a signal, said Craig Whitney, the assistant managing editor in charge of maintaining Times standards, that ‘Questions For’ is ‘a little different from a straight news transcript.’”

Here’s the real kicker: “Q. and A. interviews can be ‘drastically condensed,’ without indicating where words were left out. But every word in an answer has to be what was actually said, and, in condensing, the speaker’s intent has to be preserved.”

So let’s get this straight. I ask a question. It’s good that I can’t make up the question anymore. You give an answer. It isn’t good that I don’t have to use that answer. I’m allowed to drastically reduce it. My only constraint is that in my eyes and that of my editors, we have to decide that what I make up preserves your “intent.” Oh, and I have to “digitally record” the interview so that I can’t “lose” it, so as to not be caught doing what I’m not supposed to do.

Is there such a huge problem with asking good questions that elicit interesting answers and writing them all down? Those “W’s” at the top of the post really aren’t such a bad thing. After all, I’m not at the level of The New York Times; but, I managed to convey what I think about what the NYT is doing wrong and at the same time accurately quote what the NYT said. Sixth grade stuff, it seems to me.