PressEthic

The reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle who covered the newspaper's building recent run-in with a Molotov cocktail have a sense of composure that would be the envy of an ancient Stoic. In an article that appears in today's paper, Leslie Fulbright and Marsha Ginsburg wait until the fifth paragraph to fully explain that the newspaper's building was hit by a Molotov cocktail during an anti-war rally, and even take pains to show that the march was "mostly peaceful."

If a similar incident occurred at the New York Post, the headline would scream something like "ANTI-AMERICAN TERRORISTS ATTACK THE POST – REPORTERS HEROICALLY SURVIVE."

All joking aside, it makes one wonder how a blog or other news source would handle a similar incident. It speaks to the ethos of the newspaper industry that an attack on its own building was buried into a larger story of an anti-war march, in an interest to tell the public the full story.

Blogs may fault newspapers for writing without personality in an authoritarian voice, but that voice has endured in newspapers for a reason. When there are events that deal with violence and destruction, the authoritarian voice allows for critical distance in a way that blogs cannot match. It is for this reason that newspapers are the print media that many first turn to after acts of violence or terrorism occur. Opinion and personality may drive daily web traffic, but they don't necessarily give the news.