Kudos to Deborah Howell, the ombudsman for the Washington Post for getting the question right.
Howell wrote in response to a recent appearance by one of the WaPo’s reporters, Dana Milbank, on Keith Olbermann’s television show. Milbank came on to discuss the Vice President’s recent hunting accident and showed up dressed in an orange vest and orange stocking cap.
Milbank’s joke was pretty lame and that he used the wrong props (hey, hunting gear ain’t crossing guard gear and there’s a big difference between the two) and, to a lot of folks including me, it was in bad taste. But making jokes in bad taste isn’t illegal, and it isn’t even something I’d want to call someone on the carpet for doing.
The problem, as Howell correctly identifies it, is that Milbank is a news reporter, and a rather prominent one. His role isn’t to go on television and lampoon elected officials or even to deliver his opinions. His job is to report the news and to guard his objectivity so that he’s the most effective journalist he can be.
Unfortunately, the newspaper allows Milbank to play the roles of reporter and opinion writer pretty much when the mood strikes him, which takes away from his role as a reporter greatly. It’s tough for people to see him as objective, and rightly so, when they see him yukking it up with Olbermann on his show. He’s either a clown or he’s not. It’s deceitful to label him as one thing one day and the other thing on another without bing very clear which role he is playing for the newspaper when.
That’s exactly the point that Howell makes and I applaud her for making it. If reporters want to step away from reporting, there’s nothing to stop them, but they should be clearly labeled by their employers as no longer news reporters. That way, the public knows whether they’re getting facts or someone’s opinion.
