Thoughts on "Temperament"

Loyalty Oaths

I found Freedman’s advice on loyalty oaths of particular interest, because it is one of the topics that always pops up in my mind when I think about the field of journalism. He uses as an example a beat reporter who spends an entire season with a sports team. I’ve often pondered how difficult it must be for a baseball writer (who can spend seven or eight months out of the year with a team) to straddle that fine line between having a personal relationship with the team and being a journalist with integrity. If you build a working relationship with the star left fielder and then criticize his relaxed views on steroids, you’re taking the risk that he may never give you another interview. Of course, if you let him off the hook for his opinions, readers may cast you aside as a frivolous apologist. I think it takes more skill than people realize to be in that delicate position.


Seeing A Story From All Angles

To paraphrase Lee Bollinger, whom Freedman quotes early in the section, perhaps the most important trait of a journalist is to set aside one’s own beliefs and to see all angles and points of view. I believe this to be true, but unfortunately, you don’t always find this approach in journalism today. I hate to pick on Fox News (okay, I don’t), but the reason that they’re not taken seriously in terms of journalistic integrity is that they report everything with a wild bias to one side of the political spectrum. However, the sad part is that it’s not just Fox that engages in this practice; some liberal outlets can oftentimes be accused of similar behavior. Whatever the political leaning, I feel that the reader or viewer is cheated when a story is covered with a particular bias. As Freedman says, sometimes it is not a two-way argument, sometimes fact wins out. But regardless of that, a real journalist should give the audience the full story every time, not just half.