There is no feeling, I can now confidently report, quite like being woken from a nap, still half mired in a dream of dissolution, by a friend who reports, "You know that comment you made on my blog last week? Maclean's just linked to it with a rebuttal."
Oh, I thought, and for about another six subjective years that's all I thought. Oh. Eventually Sasha and I agreed that it might be a good idea to screen my comment for a day or two until I'd figured out what on earth to think next.
I'm flattered by Erin Millar's response. Frankly I'm flattered that she even noticed what I wrote last week -- and also a little embarrassed. She didn't deserve to be dismissed so haughtily, or to be compared to the American right-wing science media. I'd have been quite hurt if anyone accused me of such a thing, and I hope she also reads that I'm sorry for the hurt I undoubtedly caused her.
Have you ever ranted loudly to your friends in a crowded restaurant, only to have someone walk over twenty minutes later and say, "Excuse me, but I'm the person you were just ranting about, and I'd like to take issue with some of the things you said?" That's about the position I'm in right now. I want to take responsibility for my words, but I also want to contextualize them as a late-night, end-of-the-work-week1 rant, which I never imagined would draw Ms. Millar's attention.
I'll stand by the philosophical point I raised in my post, that journalistic neutrality is too often interpreted to mean presenting both sides of every issue equally, instead of making an impartial judgment between them ... but honestly, Ms. Millar's original article was not a great example of it. I may have started out by expressing disappointment with her article, but I quickly segued into criticisms which ought to have been leveled much more squarely at contemporary journalism as a whole.
For every genre of writing has its formulas, the structural cliches into which a writer will fall if they stop paying attention even for a moment. I believe that this false neutrality has become enough of a formula within the genre of investigative journalism that anyone writing in the field is likely to fall into it from time to time. This is one of the ways that disorganization tends to manifest among investigative journalists, just as in the field of science fiction, it tends to show up as stock villains and derivative aliens. It takes not only a very good writer, but also a consistent lack of deadlines (and since when has journalism had that luxury?) to avoid formulaic writing day after day. I certainly couldn't do better.
I'd been wondering for a while just what had been bothering me about the rhetoric of investigative journalism in recent years. 'Twas only while commenting on Ms. Millar's article that I finally figured it out -- not because she flagrantly abused journalistic neutrality, but because she let just enough of the genre conventions slip through.
And now I'm going to stop commenting again, lest this message also turn into a rant.
Re: Maclean's responds
There is no feeling, I can now confidently report, quite like being woken from a nap, still half mired in a dream of dissolution, by a friend who reports, "You know that comment you made on my blog last week? Maclean's just linked to it with a rebuttal."
Oh, I thought, and for about another six subjective years that's all I thought. Oh. Eventually Sasha and I agreed that it might be a good idea to screen my comment for a day or two until I'd figured out what on earth to think next.
I'm flattered by Erin Millar's response. Frankly I'm flattered that she even noticed what I wrote last week -- and also a little embarrassed. She didn't deserve to be dismissed so haughtily, or to be compared to the American right-wing science media. I'd have been quite hurt if anyone accused me of such a thing, and I hope she also reads that I'm sorry for the hurt I undoubtedly caused her.
Have you ever ranted loudly to your friends in a crowded restaurant, only to have someone walk over twenty minutes later and say, "Excuse me, but I'm the person you were just ranting about, and I'd like to take issue with some of the things you said?" That's about the position I'm in right now. I want to take responsibility for my words, but I also want to contextualize them as a late-night, end-of-the-work-week1 rant, which I never imagined would draw Ms. Millar's attention.
I'll stand by the philosophical point I raised in my post, that journalistic neutrality is too often interpreted to mean presenting both sides of every issue equally, instead of making an impartial judgment between them ... but honestly, Ms. Millar's original article was not a great example of it. I may have started out by expressing disappointment with her article, but I quickly segued into criticisms which ought to have been leveled much more squarely at contemporary journalism as a whole.
For every genre of writing has its formulas, the structural cliches into which a writer will fall if they stop paying attention even for a moment. I believe that this false neutrality has become enough of a formula within the genre of investigative journalism that anyone writing in the field is likely to fall into it from time to time. This is one of the ways that disorganization tends to manifest among investigative journalists, just as in the field of science fiction, it tends to show up as stock villains and derivative aliens. It takes not only a very good writer, but also a consistent lack of deadlines (and since when has journalism had that luxury?) to avoid formulaic writing day after day. I certainly couldn't do better.
I'd been wondering for a while just what had been bothering me about the rhetoric of investigative journalism in recent years. 'Twas only while commenting on Ms. Millar's article that I finally figured it out -- not because she flagrantly abused journalistic neutrality, but because she let just enough of the genre conventions slip through.
And now I'm going to stop commenting again, lest this message also turn into a rant.
1Yes, Wednesday is the end of my work week.