Embedded truth

This study from Indiana Unversity was well-designed and meticulously researched, but because it started from a faulty premise -- that "objective" reporting is the greatest journalistic good and anything less is somehow faulty -- it naturally reached the wrong conclusion. The study focused on field reports by CNN TV journalists early in the Iraq War, 64 by embedded reporters and 46 by non-embedded reporters. Julia R. Fox, one of the directors of the research, said before going into the study, she "shared the concerns of others" that embedding journalists could lead to less-than-objective reporting. But not to worry:

"They were getting close to the troops, they were getting to know them -- their lives were on the line with theirs," she said in an interview. "In some cases, they were a part of the story, but it was mostly in an eyewitness fashion. They were not giving their values, opinions and beliefs.

[. . . ]

"We determined not only that their objectivity was not compromised by the situation, but more broadly that we believe we need to rethink the definition of objectivity," Fox said. "Reporters don't necessarily have to be removed from the story to be objective."

Heaven forbid that, when America is in a war, journalists "lose their objectivity" by "getting close to the troops" and "getting to know them." If that happens, people might actually think that American reporters were on the side of America, and God knows what that would do to the profession of journalism. When Fox says that perhaps it's time to "rethink the concept of objectivity," she doesn't mean admitting that it is a futile effort. She means acknowledging that perhaps objectivity might be possible "without removing the reporters from the story." Even if the reporters use the naughty "I" word because they're in the thick of things, that doesn't mean their reports are laced with the own person values and ideologies.

The most complete picture -- as the report of the study gets close to saying at the end but doesn't embrace -- is provided by a combination of reporting, from those who are embedded and can give first-person accounts, and from those removed from the situation who can look at the overall picture.

To tell the truth, I'm not really clear on what these people mean by "objective reporting" (and I'm not sure they are, either), since they approvingly cite the work of Edward R. Murrow, who was "a witness to history" and "indicated he was moved by what he saw" at the 1945 liberation of Nazi concentration camps.

All this from the university that gave us Ernie Pyle, the most famous embedded journalist in American history. But that was a different war in a different time, and perhaps we were a different people.