Ventriloquismopathy

At the World Journalism Institute we teach students to avoid diseases such as Quotosis (piling up quotes) and Puffitis (doing public relations for a person or group). We need to add a bigger mouthful to the list: news page ventriloquismopathy (quoting a source to express what the reporter believes).

The Washington Post reported, “Donald Trump on Thursday expressed regret over causing ‘personal pain’ through ill-chosen words he has used.” The Post recognized this is a man-bites-dog story, calling Trump’s statement “an unexpected and uncharacteristic declaration of remorse for a candidate whose public persona is defined by his combative and bombastic style.”

What if Trump’s statement left some readers with a positive impression of the rogue candidate? Can’t let that happen—wouldn’t be prudent—so the Post ran extensive quotations about Trump from Hillary Clinton and then her campaign staff. First, from Clinton: “Donald Trump has shown us who he is. He can hire and fire anyone he wants from his campaign. They can make him read new words from a teleprompter. But he is still the same man who insults Gold Star families. …”

Since that might not be enough attack, the Post then megaphoned a statement from the Clinton campaign: “Donald Trump literally started his campaign by insulting people. He has continued to do so through each of the 428 days from then until now, without shame or regret. We learned tonight that his speechwriter and teleprompter knows he has much for which he should apologize.”

The attack went on, and others came today. One, under the headline “Trump’s ‘apology sounds like a non-apology,’” brought in “veteran campaign strategists and historians” plus “linguists and relationship experts” to attack Trump. Then we come to the editorial page, with a blistering attack labeled “The Post’s View”—but everything else in the newspaper is also the Post’s view.

At the Post (and other newspapers as well), news stories and editorial columns differ largely in style, not substance. I’d be glad to write out a prescription for Post political reporters who have had enough of ventriloquismopathy: Stop pretending to be anything other than partisan. Or, since you know that Hillary Clinton is as ruthless as Donald Trump is reckless, do as many anti-Clinton stories as anti-Trump stories.

One other thing to watch: a Los Angeles Times poll showed a big jump in still-small Trump support among African-American voters—from 2.5 percent on Aug. 11 to nearly 15 percent on Aug. 17. Time will tell whether that was just one poll’s statistical anomaly—or was it a response to the Milwaukee riots and Trump’s law-and-order reaction to them? When I lived in a mostly black neighborhood for 10 years, I saw that people of all colors feared anarchy.

By the way, in the latest Los Angeles Times poll, Trump suddenly is slightly ahead of Clinton.