In case you missed it, the Washington Post published an important article by Geoff Edgers about Katherine Needleman’s crucial advocacy against sexual abuse in classical music. Although I am glad for the focus that the article brings to this problem, I was disappointed by much of the framing in it. Below is a gift link to the article and my letter to the editor in response. I hope that you will read it.
Gift link: https://wapo.st/4nh3ETE
My response
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Why then, in a world where anti-vaxxers and climate denialists thrive to society’s detriment, would the Washington Post stick to a standard of false balance in pursuit of objectivity, when it has been proven repeatedly that presenting both sides as equally valid leads to misinformation? In the story on Katherine Needleman’s crucial advocacy against sexual abuse in classical music, Geoff Edgers gives space and thus respectability to Jonathan Carney’s new denial of wrongdoing without ever mentioning the huge power imbalance due to Carney’s position as concertmaster, nor does Edgers question why the new statement contradicts Carney’s previous admission of misbehavior. Edgers comes so close to the truth when he admits that Needleman’s tactics are more effective than traditional journalism, in part precisely because she does not subscribe to false balance: she simply treats sexual abuse as the scourge that it is. For full disclosure, Needleman’s work is a direct inspiration for my own project at https://we-had-no-idea.org/.
I am reminded of what late opinion editor Fred Hiatt told Karen Attiah (a Black journalist fired by the Post for decrying racism and violence): opinion journalism is not just about writing the world as it is, but as it should be. I also think of journalist Felicia Sonmez, whom the Post barred from covering sexual assault stories when she came forward as a survivor, in order to preserve “objectivity”. The Washington Post must address these recurring issues of sexism and racism, whose coverage has helped get us to the point where we are now. Just imagine: would we have a known sexual abuser in a White House if media treated sexual abuse with the gravity it deserves?