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Letters from the Editor in Chief

Tony Burman was Editor in Chief of CBC News until the summer of 2007. He was CBC's chief journalist, in charge of editorial content on radio, television and the internet. With more than 30 years' experience, he produced many award-winning news and documentary programs for both CBC-TV and Radio. He covered stories in more than 30 countries, including the Ethiopian Famine of 1984, the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

News, opinion and a fuzzy shifting line

Monday, September 25, 2006 | 09:53 AM ET

One of the most striking elements of our competitive 21st century media world is the growing influence of “personality” and “voice” in the way that daily news journalism is evolving.

In many cases, I think this has been a good thing. But is the line between news and opinion in mainstream news organizations becoming blurred?

This past weekend, readers of two respected North American newspapers — the New York Times and the Globe and Mail — had reasons to reflect on this question.

On Saturday, the editor-in-chief of the Globe expressed public “regret” that a controversial story by feature writer Jan Wong about the recent Dawson College shooting in Montreal contained “paragraphs [that] were clearly opinion and not reporting, and should have been removed from that story.… or put into a separate piece clearly marked opinion.”

On Sunday, the public editor of the New York Times — who acts as an ombudsman on behalf of readers — wrote that his newspaper’s new labelling policy introduced last week “to draw a clearer line between regular articles and opinion in its news pages” didn’t go far enough.

These organizations are dealing with a challenge that is evident throughout the media world. It is an issue that involves all major news organizations and their audiences, including networks such as the CBC.

In traditional news presentation — both print and broadcast — there has been an increase in the use of “opinion” as part of regular coverage. This is fairly common in Europe but not in North America. That is changing.

Some of the increase has been spurred on by the popularity of blogs and the internet’s widespread emphasis on personal points of view.

There are also competitive pressures, flowing from shrinking profits and growing challenges to woo audiences. Some networks and newspapers are focusing less on traditional journalism — involving costly bureaus and reporters — in favour of more entertaining and cheaper opinion shows and pieces. In other words, journalism on-the-cheap that celebrates hot air over hard facts, in my opinion.

In some cases, such as Fox News in the United States, there are also political and partisan motivations. Fox is the leader among conservative cable and radio networks that try to counter what they see as the “liberal bias” of the American mainstream media.

But even CNN can unabashedly blur the line between news and opinion. One of its leading anchors, Lou Dobbs, hosts a nightly “news” program that showcases his very firm personal views about major policy issues, particularly his loathing of American immigration practices.

The trend toward blending news and opinion has provoked a debate in many newsrooms. As long as the quest for some form of objectivity and fairness remains a goal, does this undermine the public’s trust of journalists? Or does it result in a more authentic reflection of reality?

This comes at a time when public attitudes toward journalists are already under attack.

The Pew Research group in the U.S. reported that in 1985, 56 per cent of Americans felt that news organizations usually got their facts straight. But by 2002, the figure had fallen to 32 per cent. In 1985, 45 per cent of Americans believed that news organizations were “politically biased in their reporting.” By 2005, the number had risen to 60 per cent.

Canadians traditionally show a higher trust in their news media, but that is no reason for complacency. The trends are clearly downward.

The prevalence of “opinion” in journalism is not the issue. By most measures, this helps audiences gain a better understanding of issues and provokes valuable response and reaction. And the debate here is not when opinion is separately presented on editorial pages or in programs that are intended as commentary.

The problem occurs when these opinions are unlabelled, or presented as part of straight news coverage.

That was the key issue this past weekend with both The New York Times and The Globe and Mail.

With The Times, the newspaper’s public editor, Byron Calame, felt that the paper should clearly label certain pieces on its news pages as “opinion” or “commentary” so that readers were never confused. He also felt that this labelling should apply to its website — which is “a huge part of the Times’s future, and expanding so rapidly that its approach to distinguishing between commentary and news is often being shaped on the fly.”

The CBC is hardly immune to criticisms of bias on a multitude of issues. And this often includes suggestions that a reporter’s opinion has influenced a piece.

We take these criticisms very seriously. In fact, I’m certain there is no news organization in Canada that spends more time investigating these suggestions than the CBC. When we make mistakes — and, yes, I know that we do — I hope we are doing a better job now in acknowledging them and correcting the record.

The fact is that the CBC does not permit its news reporters to express opinions as part of their journalistic role. But we do encourage “analysis” and “background” in the coverage of some stories, and we recognize that, in the eyes of many, there can be a fine line between “analysis” and “opinion.”

On the basis of what we hear from our audiences, and by observing the experience of other news organizations as they deal with these issues, we are continually reviewing our practices. And this certainly is the case here.

This discussion is now Open. Submit your Comment.

Comments

Richard Baxter

canada

The effect of Thomas Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science was to show that the perception of reality is shaped in part by the dominant thought collective ("paradigm"). It seems that what Burman describes here is a shift in that collective understanding, changing the underlying factors determining what qualifies as journalism: from "just the facts" to "how do you feel?" The result of this shift, he says, has been to increase scepticism among viewers, who may feel differently and might therefore infer a different meaning from the facts. I think it has also resulted in the rise of the "fundamentalist perspective" (viz. Fox), which views every perspective but their own as innately biased. (This is made worse when these groups are religious, as their perspective is then that given to them by God.) But, as I follow these columns, I wonder how journalists can combat this problem. In reference to this week's letter specifically: what is being done at the CBC to ensure that "the perspective" adequately reflects "the reality," and analysis is not being unduly swayed by opinion?

Posted September 26, 2006 03:02 PM

Louise Lauzon

Blogs should be considered in most cases as a form of entertainment, not to be taken seriously. In all fairness there are a few blogs on the CBC site that I try to read regularly.
There is much to be said for news outlets having their own reporters around the world, rather than having to rely on reporters from other news organizations. That’s where the opinions/views of the reporter sneaks into the report. The reporter that presents the facts, rather than his/her opinions/views will be trusted more than the one who says “in my opinion”. Most Canadian journalists present the facts, without blurring them with their point of views.
It is often thought in the US that the government controls the media, which leads to a lack of trust on the part of the public. Most Canadians trust their news media more than their politicians.
Some opinions are bound to become part of a journalist’s report. It’s human nature. Most of us in Canada do recognize the difference. It can sometimes have a positive influence on the readers or listeners and help change the course of events. Suppressing opinions is not the answer. When that happens, the public questions the reliability and the relevance of the news media

Posted September 26, 2006 03:23 PM

Chris

Vancouver

Opinion aside, what disappoints me about the news media is the lack of investigative journalism. Why doesn't anyone report on the fact that the warlords that plunged Afghanistan into civil war, killing thousands of its people, are the same people that the U.S., Canada, and Nato put back into power. Why doesn't anyone dig in and find out the true reason why we are in Afghanistan. Rebuilding...that's opinion. We want facts.

Posted September 26, 2006 04:43 PM

Patricia Robertson

Saskatchewan

Mr. Burman,

I heartily disagree with your uppity approach to the sacred role of news and information gathering. It seems to me that the CBC is looking down it's nose at print pundits and American networks. Wake up! We are in a new era where every blogger's opinions are given the same weight as professional journalist. It's time for the CBC to get current and start engaging their audiences instead of alienating us with preachy lectures from your website about fact-gathering and journalistic integrity.(This screed above was actually an opinion piece, right? Not just a finger-wagging lecture to Ryerson j-school students seeking future employment.)

The best part of CBC-TV The National's Neil McDonald's reports from the field are his opinions. He's the only reporter I trust to give a bullshit-free account of what he's witnessed.

Every seasoned journalist uses their own judgment when developing and producing a story. From the angle, to the selection of subjects to the summation, all of it is highly "subjective." Anyone can give an account of an event, it takes a real pro to interpret it and add depth. This is what the CBC should be doing more of in its coverage. In my opinion, the snoozy CBC could use more opinion-based journalism. It might just expand their audience.

And while I'm at it, why pick on print journalists at The Globe and Mail? Doesn't the underfunded CBC Radio frequently resort to "rip and read" from that very source? In that light, I think your castigation of industry "standards" is pure hypocrisy. Is that a fact or an opinion?

Patricia Robertson
Saskatchewan journalist and political pundit
www.laptofarmers.com

Posted September 28, 2006 11:49 AM

Brian Allardice

Perhaps the most potent source of "bias" is one that will rarely be perceived, namely the editorial choice of which stories to cover, and which to neglect. For example, each week Time and Newsweek are virtually identical, but pick up the Economist and you suddenly find yourself in a different universe, free of the constraints of the American consensus as to what is newsworthy. It is in this context that I give the CBC only indifferent grades. While certainly respecting such reportage as it does provide, I find its ommissions often glaring when compared with the breadth of coverage available in the European press. Of course one cannot do everything, but although I realise serious Canadian reporting is part of your mandate, and quite rightly so, perhaps in the rest of the world you might take a less Americo-centric view and look at the world with an independent eye.

Cheers,
dba

Posted September 30, 2006 02:21 AM