'Journalism Lite' at the New York Times
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a piece in the Sunday Review section by Danny Hakim entitled “How Did Hungary’s Election Become a Circus?” From the headline, it sounds like it could be neutral, but it’s far from it.
The writer, quoting opposition and opposition-leaning sources, suggests that the governing parties unfairly dominate the political advertising market, particularly for campaign billboards and posters.
This is an outstanding example of what I referred to in my New Year’s post as “journalism lite.” This time, it comes from the illustrious New York Times.
At the end of the article, we learn from the Times that “Anita Komuves contributed reporting from Budapest.”
Would that by any chance be the Anita Kőműves who is a staff reporter at Népszabadság, which remains one of Hungary’s most prominent left-leaning and largest circulation daily newspapers? It was the Communist Party’s mouthpiece back in the good old days and, still today, the Socialist Party’s so-called Free Press Foundation (Szabad Sajtó Alapítvány) has significant ownership share.
Does anyone else see a problem with that? A correspondent for the NYT, who does not speak any Hungarian, comes to Budapest to do a story on the Hungarian election campaign and drafts a reporter from the Socialist-owned newspaper to "contribute" reporting. That likely means that she helped out on a range of things that could include research, fact-checking, perhaps arranging meetings and interpreting or more. So much for balance and objectivity from America’s newspaper of record.
Then there’s the problem with the fundamental details of the story. Hungarian civic groups, what the Times correspondent refers to as “Hungary’s own version of ‘super PACs’”, are indeed politically active, but there are many such civic groups in Hungary, on both left and right, and any of them can buy ad space.
Furthermore, there’s a lot of space available for political posters that remains empty. Have a look at this photo I took just yesterday in downtown Budapest.
Empty poster space. Text reads: "Only for campaign purposes." Source
For anyone inclined to have a hard look at what the new electoral laws do to political advertising during elections, it’s hard to show how they favor one side or the other.
But according to the rules of ‘journalism lite’, it seems few correspondents can be bothered with balance and taking a good, hard look. If it’s about Hungary, it’s apparently alright to file a story so slanted in its sources that it would never get by a decent editor if it were about their own domestic politics.