Real Lives, False Debates

During my decades of journalism I have been alternatively amused and appalled by the sarcastic newsroom slogan: "A story too good to check out."

I've been amused by the battlefield sarcasm that comes from having a hot story lead fall apart under the bright lights of closer scrutiny. I've been appalled by journalists -- real or alleged -- who don't let the possibility of contrary facts get in the way of their narrative.

That's why I was bitterly disappointed by the failure of Rolling Stone, a magazine that I usually respect, to do what I have been told to do since my own student newspaper days: Get the other side of the story.

The magazine dug itself into a scandalous credibility gap by reporting only the alleged victim's side of a rape that allegedly occurred in a fraternity house at the University of Virginia.

The story kicked up enough of an uproar to compel the university to suspend all of its fraternities until the end of the year -- before the magazine retracted the story with a public apology.

The magazine needed to apologize for its obvious and astonishing failure to send the story's author back for comments from, for example, the accused frat brothers, the fraternity's leaders, and friends of the alleged victim.

The accuser reportedly set those limits on the story, including withholding her name, and astonishingly the magazine's editors agreed. If they were trying to avoid being inappropriately skeptical of an alleged rape victim's claims, they instead committed the error of failing to be skeptical enough.

Yet in the parade of horribles that has dominated national news recently -- including allegations of rape, torture, racism and police brutality -- journalists are not alone in their conspicuous reluctance to get the whole story.

Yale Law Professor Stephen L. Carter, an inveterate free thinker in his socio-political views, offers the Rolling Stone goof and the detainee torture report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as examples of what he calls "a malady that has become all too common: a reluctance to disturb the narrative."

Although he's a strong critic of "enhanced interrogations," also known as torture of detainees, he notes that the Democrat-led committee conspicuously decided not to interview the CIA officials who oversaw the interrogation programs.

Were committee staffers reluctant to open up a line of discussion that might lead to credible rationalizations for torture? Either way, by failing to talk to relevant CIA personnel, Carter wrote, the staff "weakened what was in most other respects a thorough and troubling examination of poorly conceived and poorly run program."

Carter called such omissions of opposing views, "a predictable and unhappy result of life in a swift and unreflective era." He may be right, but I don't think a predisposition to stick with one's preconceived notions is at all unique to this era. It only stands out as ironic in light of the endless flood of information that the digital age offers us to ignore.

Oversimplifying narratives creates false debates. Two opposing narratives are offered to the exclusion of other alternatives that may lead more quickly to a useful compromise, even if they fail to bring people to their feet or to the streets.

In this way we have seen the recent national uproar over alleged police brutality quickly polarize into hotly opposing camps with each side selecting versions of what happened that back their preconceived arguments.

In Ferguson, Missouri, for example, rage on the streets following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was barely dimmed by revelations that he may have ignited the whole ugly incident by resisting police officer Darren Wilson's lawful stop.

As a result, valuable attention may have been taken away from a case that ironically provided a more clear-cut argument for the protesters: the video-recorded chokehold death of unarmed Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, after he tried to talk police out of arresting him for the petty crime of selling loose untaxed cigarettes.

It is not a contradiction to believe that police conduct is a serious problem, whether a particular victim turns out to be petty lawbreaker or not. Or that problems like campus rape are very real, even if some media narratives are not.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.