Becket Adams explains in a Washington Examiner column why he’s not angered by a recent plea to label the president’s comments “racist.”
We’ve said it for years: It would be better for everyone if journalists dropped the thin veneer of objectivity and wrote exactly what they mean.
It’d save newsrooms time, and it’d let audiences know immediately what sort of story and author they’re dealing with. If a journalist is convinced a certain comment is “racist,” then write that. Don’t insult readers with cute euphemisms and dainty phrasings.
The press’s commitment to using veiled, coded language in place of saying what it really means is a charade anyway, and it’s done in service of appearing above it all or emotionally detached from the issue.
What tosh.
Readers are not that stupid, and it is usually obvious what reporters really believe anyway.
We therefore applaud Columbia Journalism Review’s Pete Vernon, who wrote this week that, “It’s time for reporters” to label President Trump’s words “racist.” …
… We applaud Vernon and Pope not because we agree that Trump’s words are “racist,” but because we think it’s time everyone in the media put their cards on the table.
If a reporter thinks the president said something racist, then write that and reproduce what the man said. Let the reader decide whether the assessment is fair.
It’s clearly a judgment call if a journalist believes the president said something foul. That’s fine. It may be unfair, and it may be accurate. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s better to say it outright than rely on mealy mouthed formulations like “… in what some critics say were racist remarks” or “the president today used racially charged language.”
