Objectivity

Jim Lehrer and CJR's Liz Cox Barrett:

[Liz Cox Barrett]: How do you approach reporting what a public official has said something that is blatantly untrue?

[Jim Lehrer]: I don't deal in terms like "blatantly untrue." That's for other people to decide when something's "blatantly untrue." There's always a germ of truth in just about everything ... My part of journalism is to present what various people say about it the best we can find out [by] reporting and let others -- meaning commentators, readers, viewers, bloggers or whatever ... I'm not in the judgment part of journalism. I'm in the reporting part of journalism. I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four. Sometimes they're going to come up with five. Best I can do for them is to give them every piece of information I can find and let them make the judgments. That's just my basic view of my function as a journalist.

LCB: That goes beyond presenting a claim and several counter-claims that appear to call into question the original claim?

JL: That's part of it. Absolutely that's part of it. I mean, if somebody says -- doesn't matter if it's the president or who -- if somebody says, "It rained on Thursday," and you know for a fact it didn't rain on Thursday, if the person was of a nature that you felt you should quote him, "It rained on Thursday." Second paragraph, third paragraph -- or in television terms second or third sentence -- you would say, "However, according to the weather bureau it didn't [rain Thursday]." But you don't call the person a liar. The person who would call that person a liar would be the person who'd read that story and say, "My god, Billy Bob lied." But I'm not doing that. I'm providing the information so that the person can make their decision. People might say, "Well the weather bureau has lied. Or I was out that day and it was raining ..."

[...]

LCB: Is there any place for writing, "Billy Bob said it rained Thursday. The weather bureau said it didn't. I was out that day and I say it didn't."

JL: I would never do that. That's not my function to do that.