Levinson on Greenhouse

Sandy Levinson has an interesting post on a speech made by New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse and the reactions it provoked.  Greenhouse, receiving an award from her alma mater, delivered a speech in which she made a variety of impassioned remarks "about our generation . . . about the culture of the times."  Along the way, she said that her generation was

. . . not doing a better job. We had not learned from the old mistakes. Our generation had not proved to be the solution. We were the problem.  And of course my little crying jag occurred before we knew the worst of it, before it was clear the extent to which our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let’s not forget the sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last years have been dispiriting is an understatement.

Greenhouse also discussed the sense of "fences" lowering in women's lives over the past few decades, adding, "As I look toward the next chapter in my life, I feel a growing sense of obligation to reach across the absurd literal fence that some of our policy makers want to build on the Mexican border and to do what I can to help those whose only offense is to want to improve their lives."

When these public remarks were more widely aired, Greenhouse was publicly scolded by the Times's public editor, Byron Calame, who argued that her remarks violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Times's policy barring reporters from expressing views on matters within their purview that "go beyond what they would be allowed to say in the paper" -- in effect, stating opinions.  Greenhouse responded to a query from Calame by saying she "considers her remarks at Harvard to be 'statements of fact' -- not opinion -- that would be allowed to appear in a Times news article.

Levinson criticizes the scolding, arguing, among other things, that "the Greenhouse comments easily fall within 'statements of fact,'" that it is absurd to suggest that Greenhouse crossed any kind of line, and that Greenhouse's editors failed to stand up for her out of "fear and trembling" as a result of a relentless attack [on it] from what is in fact a vast right-wing conspiracy that is intent on enforcing its own version of political correctness."  He wonders what chilling effect the Times editors' silence on the occasion of Greenhouse's rebuke will have when junior reporters are "asked to offer their candid opinions about what they see around them."  He acknowledges that Greenhouse is a friend and praises her work in the paper.

I have no quarrel with Levinson's praise for Greenhouse's work.  Moreover, reasonable people may differ about whether the Times should have such a policy in the first place.  Some people argue that journalists should be able to say what they want when they are off the clock.  Others argue that such policies serve newspapers' attempt to be seen as "objective," and that because journalistic objectivity is itself a myth, those policies that subserve it are also wrong.  My own view is that whether or not objectivity is an achievable goal for newspapers, newspapers are free to treat it as an aspirational goal.  Moreover, newspapers are free to enforce policies that they believe help burnish their credibility, both with the public and with the official and unofficial sources on whom they report.  I am sympathetic to the commenter to Levinson's post who observed that "[o]ne needn't always be objective in her [personal] life to be objective in her professional analysis" -- although I'm not certain why that commentator described conventional views about objectivity as "heterosexist" -- but I think newspapers are entitled to take stronger prophylactic measures if they choose, even if that means telling a reporter that he or she is not entitled to state personal opinions in public.

What startles me, though, is Greenhouse's curt and dismissive response to Calame, suggesting that she had merely engaged in "statements of fact," and Levinson's view that her comments fell easily -- not barely, or reasonably, but easily -- within that category. 

Do you agree, dear readers?  And what if she had made the following remarks:

My tears dried up, however, when I realized the strides that our generation had made.  And that became even clearer when I reflected on our President's signing of a bill that would permit interrogation of terror suspects, potentially saving many lives, while still offering a set of rules addressing and cabining the forms of permissible interrogation.  And let's not forget the renewed respect for unborn lives, the resistance to sexual license, and the belief that Christians are not banned from participation in the public square....As I look toward the next chapter in my life, I feel a growing sense of obligation to resist the absurd influx of people over a non-existent "border" that some of our policy makers want to erase, and to do what I can to help those jobless American workers whose only offense is that they are willing to respect the immigration and employment laws of their own country.

I'm not asking whether you agree more with the first, actual set of Greenhouse's remarks than with my fictional version.  As it turns out, I'm more sympathetic to the first set of hyperbolic remarks than the second, but that's beside the point.  I'm just curious: Are the second set of remarks also "statements of fact?"  Do Greenhouse's defenders agree that they would be no more objectionable than the first set?  And that neither set would raise questions about a reporter's objectivity?         

   

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