There is the all-important matter of attribution. It is standard practice for the news reporter to attribute comments or statements of opinion or belief to the person who made the statement. For example, "According to President Clinton, the cause of the failure of the conference was Arafat himself." If the reporter simply said, "The cause of the failure of the conference was Arafat himself," he or she is not reporting, they are editorializing. Now just because they report what Clinton said does not mean that they are biased or that they are lying. They are reporting a fact:   this is what Clinton said. Now, if someone contradicts that, the reporter will report that, too—and tell you who said it.

This is basic journalistic practice, and I never hear PBS or NPR news people departing from that practice.

When someone has a strong opinion about an issue, sometimes this can blind that person to what the reporter is saying, especially if they disagree—and they miss the fact that the statement is attributed to some source and is not necessarily the opinion of the reporter. Or of the news service he or she is working for. Or they fail to distinguish between who is a reporter and who is a commentator. If Daniel Schorr, for example, said, "The cause of the failure of the conference was Arafat himself," there should be no problem with that, because what Schorr says on the air is clearly labeled as commentary, or "news analysis," which is the same thing. However, you will never hear Dan Schorr say anything that flat-out. He would say, "In my opinion, the cause of the failure of the conference was Arafat himself."

As long as the reporter says, "According to. . . ." or the commentator says, "In my opinion. . . ." or words to that effect, to characterize the entire news service as "lying" is neither reasonable nor realistic.

Don Firth

P. S. Sometimes this sort of thing can go to extremes. I recall an incident on my first radio job. The station was "easy listening:" elevator music. With a two minute news and weather break at the top of the hour. Not brilliant radio, but it was my first broadcasting job as an announcer.

One afternoon I was reading the very brief headline version of the four top national news stories, freshly ripped off the AP wire service teletype. One of the stories gave the American casualty figures in Vietnam for that week (you don't hear anything about the weekly casualty figures in Iraq these days—except on PBS and NPR).

A few moments after finished the local weather report and started the next record, the phone rang. An irate listener. He was very upset—with me! How could I read those casualty figures and simply move on to the weather report without saying something about the death of these brave men? Without some sort of eulogy? Well, it seems his son was one of those figures, and in his grief, he had to lash out at something or someone. I was it. I was a cold, heartless, unfeeling son-of-a-bitch and he was going to have me fired! As far as he was concerned, my expressing my sympathy and condolences to him at that point was too late! I should, he shouted, have done it when I was on the air! And he reiterated what he thought of me before he slammed down the phone.

I knew that a) it would be out of place for me to say anything beyond matter-of-factly—but somberly—reading the copy I had in my hand; and b) for me to have made any comments on my own about the story would be editorializing, and would just get me into trouble with some other listener. I told the program director about it and he said, "Yeah, that sort of thing happens. Better get used to it."

If he's still around, I'm quite sure that grieving father still thinks I'm a cold, heartless, unfeeling son-of-a-bitch.