Lemann on O'Reilly

Nick Lemann has 4,685 words on Bill O'Reilly in this week's New Yorker. At no point is the article presented as a profile, but that's how it reads. Until you reach the end and you realise that although Lemann has quoted O'Reilly a lot, it's always cited: it's a quotation from a book or a transcript. The absence of any visible first-hand reporting is striking.

Lemann does note near the beginning of the piece that O'Reilly

has called on his audience to shun several news organizations, including The New Yorker—whose specific sin was questioning the assertion, repeated frequently on “The O’Reilly Factor” during December, that the country is in the grip of a “war on Christmas.”

Would it have been too much to add, at that point, that O'Reilly therefore refused to talk to Lemann for this article? As it stands, we don't know what happened: it's possible that Lemann asked for an interview and was turned down. It's also possible that he asked for an interview but O'Reilly talked to him only off the record. It's also possible that he asked for an interview, spoke to O'Reilly briefly, and got nothing worth quoting directly. It's even possible that Lemann, approaching the article less as a profile and more in the spirit of media criticism, didn't ask for an interview at all. But a full explanation of what happened would have been worthwhile, I think, if only in the interests of full disclosure.

Normally, I wouldn't bother making such a minor quibble, but Lemann is dean of the J-School at Columbia. One holds him to a higher standard.

Posted by Felix at 13:48 EST