There has to be a better way

The New York Times seems to have reached a new level of obliviousness in its latest treatment of readers’ concerns, a Q and A with Executive Editor Joseph Kahn.

Patrick Healy (his title is “assistant managing editor for standards and trust”) sets things up by blending the readers’ words (he uses the word “synthesized”) into a mishmash that effectively cancels out contending views.

Healy: “Joe, most of our reader questions were about President Trump. Some on the left like our investigative stories digging into Trump’s business dealings and want more of them. Some on the right like our stories about Trump’s effectiveness and impact in office and want more of them. Some readers want us to call the president a fascist; others want us to portray him as a patriot. There’s a desire out there for us to referee the news. How do you navigate all of that?”

This gives Kahn a great opportunity to show that his concerns are on a higher plane than those of his readers. He begins by offering characterizations of their complaints that allow for virtually no complexity among them. 

Kahn: “Readers already have access to a vast amount of opinion and commentary on the internet that can validate their worldviews. That’s not our role.

“Our approach is to report deeply and thoroughly, surface facts and a range of perspectives on the news, help people understand the world and deliver accountability journalism on issues of public concern. Sometimes that means presenting people with information and ideas that challenge their own preconceptions and beliefs. We regularly scrutinize Trump’s questionable assertions of power and his disregard for democratic or legal norms.

“That kind of reporting is a more important service than applying labels.” 

There’s more, but you see the point. In the guise of responding to readers’ concerns, the paper offers a high-minded lesson about its unquestionable excellence. Apparently it is only the readers’ piteous ignorance of journalism’s highest aims that keeps us pecking away at the Times’ valiant work.

Armored against all self-doubt, the Times offers concerned readers self-justification cloaked as listening. It’s a sad state of affairs for our most essential news organization — and for all of us who rely on it.

We can’t quit hoping there is some way to light a candle of examination from within. Here’s one idea: Maybe in his next Q and A, Healy (remember that title?) could ask Kahn if readers ever raise concerns that he feels are valid. If so, might he give us some examples of how he has responded?

I am haunted by the deaths of the little girls at Camp Mystic. Absolutely haunted. Surely all of us are, so huge is this tragedy.

But I’m thinking in particular of my fellow former camp counsellors.

For two summers, I was a counselor at the Presbyterian Camp Montreat in the Smokies in NC. (Echoes — longtime camp, much beloved. Me, whose mother grew up in the Hill Country in Texas.)

I was 18 and 19 in my counsellor years. Sure, I was a veteran babysitter. But this was a whole different level of responsibility.

My girls were ages 8–10, mostly first-time campers. They needed so much.

Twelve little girls, used to 12 different night-time rituals that I could never have adequately summoned up. They wept. They feared. They quarreled. They’d lose a tooth and expect me to be the same tooth fairy that would have come to their home. They’d hurt themselves outside of infirmary hours, and I could only hope I was doing the right thing to soothe them.

Out there on the lake, as their canoeing instructor, it was me or nobody who’d keep them safe.

When it comes to summer camps — for all the beauty and power of the campfires and the songs and the sports and the woods and waters — we put very young people in positions of responsibility for very young children. I’m betting that most of us who had that responsibility feel a kind of latent anxiety about it to this day. An anxiety that is powerfully awakened by this tragedy.

I can’t quit running the reel through my mind. When did the water start coming in? How quickly? What did those young women do when their campers were threatened by a wall of water 20 feet high, with the strength of Niagara falls? What was within their power to do? What did they say to them? These little girls?