Go ahead, admit it.
You've fantasized about picking up your local newspaper one morning and seeing a screaming headline across the front page -- "Bush ruining America."
You've wondered to yourself why reporters just don't drop all that objectivity bullshit and say what they really think about Bush and the whole Republican cabal running Washington.
Linda Greenhouse, Pulitzer prize-winning Supreme Court beat reporter for the NY Times,
has done just that.
And she's taking heat for it.
In June, Linda Greenhouse returned to Cambridge, Mass., to be honored at Harvard. Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times, reminisced a bit about the 1960s idealism that defined her college years, and told an audience of 800 she had wept at a Simon and Garfunkel concert when she was struck by the unfulfilled promise of her own generation.
Greenhouse went on to charge that since then, the U.S. 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 -- [such as] the U.S. Congress."
She also observed a "sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last few years have been dispiriting is an understatement."
They are already lining up to question her ethics and her judgment.
There's this steaming load of pomposity:
Daniel Okrent was the Times' first public editor -- or in-house journalism critic. He says he is amazed by Greenhouse's remarks.
"It's been a basic tenet of journalism ... that the reporter's ideology [has] to be suppressed and submerged, so the reader has absolute confidence that what he or she is reading is not colored by previous views," Okrent says.
And this:
Sandy Rowe, editor of the Oregonian and a past chairwoman of the executive committee of the Pulitzer Prize board. Rowe praises Greenhouse's work -- but questions her judgment.
"If she or any other reporter stakes out a strong position on an issue that is still evolving both in society and before the courts, yes, I think that is problematic," Rowe says.
And it would be a bad thing if the NY Times made anyone think it might be liberal, right?
Sure, we all have our personal opinions, but the New York Times doesn't need its Supreme Court reporter to act like a columnist. The Times, a paper that I admire greatly in many ways, already gets accused enough of having a liberal bias.
One right-winger blogger delights that at least she's admitting her bias.
Is a person who feels that way going to give us "fair and balanced" coverage of the Supreme Court when they decide Hamdan? When the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program gets there? How about if there's a challenge to Roe v. Wade?
Obviously not.
And what does Greenhouse have to say about all this questioning of her judgment?
Two words: Tough shit.
Greenhouse tells NPR, "I said what I said in a public place. Let the chips fall where they may."
OK, so she didn't really say 'shit.' But she is basically saying "so what."
What is really interesting about this story is that Greenhouse's speech was more than three months ago and it is just now coming out in an NPR story.
Here is how The Harvard Crimson reported on her speech.
Linda J. Greenhouse '68, a Pulitzer Prize winner, addressed the grads-to-be at the Law School's Class Day, drawing from her experiences as a reporter covering the Supreme Court for the New York Times.
"I could tell you that rule of law is hanging by a thread stressed by law-free zones like Guantanamo Bay, Congress, or other places," said Greenhouse to raucous laughter. "I could tell you that the Supreme Court may be our last, best hope, but I'm a journalist who after all are not suppose to have opinions."
Instead, Greenhouse, who is also a former Crimson editor, instructed the future lawyers--some, as she noted, future Supreme Court law clerks--about the "10 Things I've Learned While Covering the Supreme Court."
So, is Linda Greenhouse in hot water?
The New York Times ethics policy bans political activism by its journalists and advises them not to say things on television they could not publish in the paper. But it doesn't appear to address this precise situation.
...
Top New York Times editors Bill Keller and Jill Abramson declined to be interviewed for this story.