Editors, I know we're always right, but...

Doug Frantz, an LA Times editor, recently killed an A1 story about the Armenian genocide on the basis that the reporter was Armenian American and thus had a conflict of interest with the subject. The writer, Mark Arax, says that no factual errors or glaring imbalances could be found in his story, and he believes that Frantz killed the story because of an allegiance to Turkey, where Frantz had live and worked as a journalist for many years. As much as Frantz’s accusation of inherent bias seems unfounded, it’s terribly unsurprising.

It’s not quite as absurd as having a debate about whether the slaughter of one million Armenians was really “genocide,” but it is a logos I see cropping up a lot lately: connections between subject and reporter automatically mean “conflict of interest.” OK, let’s play Frantz for a while: "No Armenian American reporter shall report on events related to Armenia. No American Indian reporter shall report on issues related to American Indians. No African American woman shall report on issues related to either African American females or female African citizens.. No one with a criminal background shall cover cops or courts." See where this leads us?

Deities forbid we run a story written by someone who has a lifetime of experience with the subject. No, then the writing would have an attitude. Attitude? Perspective? For shame!

Of course there are genuine cases of conflicts of interest – covering your sister’s killer’s murder trial, covering the city council when your dad is the mayor, etc – but I struggle to imagine a case in which such a conflict would arise from ethnicity (or gender, or race, or socio-economic status, or religion.) It’s more dangerous in fact to assign someone with seemingly no connection to the subject, because it allows that reporter’s bias go unchecked – She’s not Armenian or Turkish, so she can’t have a political agenda... The success (in ratings, if not in real journalism) of Fox News can be linked to the public’s craving for news with attitude. There’s nothing wrong with smart reporting that has an attitude – as long as it is disclosed. (Fox’s problem is that the journalists have to be smart and they have to recognize and embrace their attitudes as such, not ignore them or pretend they are “fair, balanced.” )