For those who’ve missed earlier installments of this missive, here’s the basic argument: Journalists fail miserably when they treat news stories as vehicles for their own opinions. That’s why the “great editor in the sky” created columns.
You know a piece of journalism is especially shoddy if there’s no attribution. In other words, the writer never answers the question, “Says who?” For example: “This is the worst administration in the history of the free world, says (a State Department career employee/U.N. bureaucrat/Brookings Institution wonk/Democratic strategist/angry guy I met at Burger King/illiberal blogger/my editor/my next-door neighbor/all the people I drink beer with after work).
Today’s candidate for the “Says who?” award is Newsweek‘s Michael Hirsh. Consider this paragraph from his cover story:
Who calls the Hamas takeover a “death knell for Israeli-Palestinian peace”? Who called Iraq a “quagmire”? (Does anyone even know what a quagmire is — beyond its utility as a synonym for the Vietnam War?) Who called this a “historic rebuff”? And so on.
Perhaps Mr. Hirsh simply lost his cool for a paragraph. Let’s look at the next one:
Who says Fatah’s defeat could “inspire Islamist radicals”? Who says Hamas knows an “uptick in rocket attacks” would yield a “harsh response”? Do you get the impression Mr. Hirsh didn’t actually talk to anybody with any expertise on this subject?
What’s inexcusable about this sourceless “news” is that Newsweek should be able to find people to stand behind these assertions. Surely there’s some source who’s willing to be quoted or paraphrased expressing these sentiments. Those sources enable the reader to determine whether the information has any value.
My favorite line in Mr. Hirsh’s piece is this one: “Let’s face it: Americans have always made crummy imperialists.”
To that, I add: “Let’s face it: Writers with no sources have always made crummy news stories.”