You may already have read Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi's e-mail to friends about "the situation" in Iraq. If not, you should.
Journal editor Paul Steiger defends Fassihi's right to make personal observations about the war, noting, "Ms. Fassihi's private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness."
The defense is proper, but there's something very odd about describing the e-mail as Fassihi's "opinions." To the contrary, 99.5% of it is not opinion at all but statement of fact based on Fassihi's reporting. I found only one sentence I'd call opinion: an Iraqi tells Fassihi that if Saddam Hussein were�allowed to run for president, he would win, and she says, "This is truly sad."
There is only one other sentence some people might point to, and probably what Steiger had in mind: "The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle." But that comes at the end of the long message, and would more accurately be called a fair conclusion based on all the reporting that comes before it.
The problem here is the modern journalistic notion of objectivity as a matter of "presenting all sides" rather than faithfully reporting the truth. Fahissi, through obviously careful observation, has determined what the truth is and feels free to tell her friends in a way that she can't tell her readers, because her editors will call it opinion. In print, she'd have to have an equal number of official lies and evasions to balance out what she's actually learned.
Fortunately, critics have started to rebel against this he said/she said model of objectivity. None have eviscerated it as shrewdly and effectively as this Daily Show parody of the Swifty controversy.
