Going for gold, coming up short

Journalists need to stop confusing accuracy with ethnic diversity issues

by Lynne K. Varner

The headline in the Seattle Times heralding the biggest win at the Winter Olympics was galling. It read "Hughes as good as gold" and its secondary counterpart read, "American outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in skating surprise." In the angry furor that ensued, mea culpas flowed in a steady stream from top editors to the scores of Asian Americans insulted that an American daily would imply the United States' sweetheart of figure skating, Michelle Kwan, was not American. That this implication came as the label "American" was unquestioningly bestowed on Kwan's competitor -- a white teen who won the gold -- infuriated them.

Now months later the furor has subsided. But I remain perturbed because I think we all missed an important lesson. By concentrating on the reaction of those insulted -- and making placating them our top priority -- we missed the obvious: the headline was factually wrong and we were guilty of not upholding the high standard of journalistic accuracy so often touted.

Newsrooms do this quite often. We cloak issues involving race under the smothering confines of diversity rather than under the scope of quality journalism where they belong. This is a mistake. It lowers the bar of credibility for those issues. Rather than a point of journalistic accuracy and integrity, the Kwan headline debacle receded to being just one more example to use during diversity training.

Why is this a problem? Because when we relegate an error to being merely the cause of hurt feeling by a minority group, we're not even giving it the dignity of being in the mainstream of journalistic mistakes. It becomes only a mistake because it pissed some folks off. Think about it. This goes beyond errors in copy to how and where we place issues in the journalistic context. Reparations becomes a black issue rather than a human rights issue that involves African Americans. (The former is a mistake that ignores the fact that reparations have been paid to many ethnic groups over the years including Jews and Japanese Americans.)

I understand that it is much simpler to apologize for hurt feelings than to apologize for poor journalism. Apologizing for the former means we don't have to be sorry for what we did, just sorry that someone got hurt as we did it. It also helps save our supersized egos. Call us journalists anything, insensitive or whatever, but just don't call us inaccurate.

In his book, "Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White," journalist, scholar and activist Frank Wu says it is still difficult for Americans to see Asians as fellow countrymen. In our age-old black and white paradigm, Asians are not seen as American, nor are they of that reigning ethnic group, African American. Thus, they become other; they are the perpetual minority. Wu is on point. That's why on deadline no one questions the accuracy of a headline that confers the title "American" on a relatively unknown white teen-ager over a well-known figure skating champion who is Asian American.

And my point adds up to this: when confronted, we concentrate on hurt feelings rather than our failure to do good journalism. Big mistake.

Lynne K. Varner is an editorial writer and columnist for the Seattle Times. She is also the Region 10 (Washington state, Oregon, California, Alaska and Hawaii) director for NABJ. Varner is a graduate of the University of Maryland. A journalist for 12 years, Varner has also has written for United Press International, The Washington Post and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She can be reached at lkvarner@aol.com

 

 

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