The Chronicles of Marna

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance told me why she was voting for Barack Obama. “The New York Times said John McCain wouldn’t live very long because he’s had skin cancer five times.”

“The New York Times has a liberal leaning,”I reminded her.

Here’s her verbatim reply: “There might be some bias in their Op/Ed page, but the news is just the news.”

My jaw dropped. “The news is just the news.” Was she really that naive?

“Journalism is dead,” a scholar friend of mine announced recently. He meant the cherished principles of journalism to present information objectively have been supplanted by political agendas. Journalists are humans and they have points of view. That’s their prerogative, but it’s not journalism. It’s sneaky.

Years ago I took a fiction writing class at Georgetown University with a reporter from the Washington Post. One evening he shared with us how reporters slant their articles without looking like they do. “It’s all in what you choose to include,” he said, “what context you put it in, and what you decide to leave out.”

Interesting.

Even the Freshmen in my college writing classes learn this from a project called “Reporting Information.” After they had each researched and written an informational brochure, one of the students reflected, “I’m amazed at how much you can influence your audience even when you’re supposedly only ‘presenting information’.”

I tried explaining this to my friend (the one who said “the news is just the news”), but I don’t think she heard me.

As readers, it takes a discerning eye and analytical curiosity to ask, where is the author leading me here, and why? Is it one sided? What information is missing? The obfuscation can be subtle, insidious, and in my opinion, dangerous.

“The New York Times used to be the paper of record,” a research librarian said to me. “I don’t know what it is now.”

Until we find out - - Buyer Beware.

Marna at householdbaggage dot com     householdbaggage.com

As we walked from the car to the tired-looking, institutional, pre-fab building (Was it once a parochial school? It had that reconstituted look), I imparted some hard-won wisdom to my beautiful, almost 18 year old daughter.

“One of life’s toughest lessons,” I began, “is that you can never get what you need at the DMV on the first try.”

There it is. Trying, but true. We were going to get her second learner’s permit. Her first permit expired while she was a foreign exchange student in Argentina, so she had to start the process over again. She planned to take the drivers’ test when she turned 18, but I wanted her to have several months of practice before then.

I gripped the manilla envelope of precious paperwork: her birth certificate, her social security card, and a copy of her first learner’s permit. I figured this was sufficient proof that she had taken the classroom portion of driver’s ed since she had to show a certificate of completion to get the first learners permit. Certainly, that verification would still be in the computer.

We tore off a ticket number, the kind you get at the deli counter, which informed us our wait was over an hour. With its severe configuration of wooden pews, the waiting room looked like a cross between an inner city bus terminal and some colonial elder’s last-stop-before-hell sub station. Why are these places always so dreary? This one, lit by harsh tracks of industrial flourescent lights, was also decorated with signs penned in black Magic Marker and taped to the wall. This was customer service at its finest: “We DO NOT accept credit cards.” “NO registration renewals at counter!” “You must show actual Social Security card, not a copy!” and the only redeeming one of the bunch: “Turn off cell phones.” Otherwise, I’d be surrounded by gumsnappers obliviously carrying on their jarring and trite one-way conversations.

Fortunately, my daughter and I brought books so we settled uncomfortably on the dug-out benches for our long wait. When finally the clerk called our number, I happily dumped all my paperwork on the broad orange counter. “We need a new learner’s permit,” I said.

“I need a certificate of completion from driver’s ed,” said the clerk.
“We gave that to you when we got the first learners permit,” I reminded her. “It should be in the computer.”
“I need the certificate itself.”
“I already gave it to you. We needed it to get this learners permit,” I waved the document hopefully.
“I need the certificate. You’ll have to get a copy.”
“That seems like a totally unnecessary step to me,” I replied, mistakenly trying to apply common sense to this situation.

Alas, even a tete-a-tete with the supervisor did me no good. I HAD to have that certificate. That meant several days of phone calls wrangling with another state office to get a copy of it.

I trudged off unhappily to my car, yet another victim of the DMV hangover. It’s part annoyance/part exhaustion/part frustration. It’s also 100% predictable.

Marna Krajeski

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