From the WSJ Opinion Archives
BOOKSHELF
Reporting
In the Cause
Of Liberalism
Newsman Daniel Schorr prides himself on being a left-wing SOB.
World-famous newsman Daniel Schorr has a great résumé. The last of the original "Murrow Boys" still actively working, he's earned a steamer trunk of prestigious awards, including several Emmys and a Peabody. On a first-name basis with dozens of world leaders over the years, he can claim more scoops than Baskin-Robbins. But only one thing truly distinguishes him from the other great journalists of the 20th century. Mr. Schorr is a victim of anti-Semitism at the New York Times.
In his well-written and often entertaining memoir, "Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism," Mr. Schorr reveals that his lifelong dream of working for the Times was foiled by a "freeze on the hiring of Jewish correspondents" in 1953. Mr. Schorr, already a respected European stringer for the Times and other publications, had been promised a job at the Gray Lady. But then it was decided that "the disproportionate representation of Jews on the staff" might hamper the Times' coverage of "some future Middle East war." Mr. Schorr writes that his dream "had been blocked by an anti-Semitic aberration" executed by two reluctant Jewish editors.
So there you have it. One of the great dashboard saints of American liberalism claims it's bigotry to hire or fire on the basis of ethnicity. So, what does Mr. Schorr think of the "outreach" mania now reigning in newsrooms across the country? After all, the Times was a pioneer of what is American Society of Newspaper Editors policy today. Surely some fellow tribesman somewhere has been deprived of a job at CBS or CNN, or maybe at Mr. Schorr's current employer, NPR, because it was felt that the right Jew-to-Asian-to-black-to-male-to-female-to-gay balance hadn't been reached.
If you're curious about what Mr. Schorr thinks his assertion of anti-Semitism at the Times implies about current practices, you'd better ask him on his book tour, because you won't find it in his book. Indeed, Mr. Schorr has a maddening tendency to take little bites out of intriguing episodes and then move on without chewing on their significance. When he expresses an opinion, it is measured and careful. But he is careless and unreflective when he peddles what only the most nostalgic and ossified liberals could consider "facts." It's as if it never occurred to Mr. Schorr that someone might challenge him by asking, "What do you mean the New Deal was underfunded?"
Mr. Schorr's treatment of the Cold War is typical. His first big Washington assignment was to cover the McCarthy Army hearings for CBS radio. He more or less traipses through the whole affair in two paragraphs, saying "Joseph Welch became our hero when he challenged McCarthy's persecution . . . saying 'Have you no sense of decency, sir?'" There's no hint that the entire period was any more complicated than a single sound bite, despite mounds of scholarship he is surely aware of.
His lengthy reminiscences about the Soviet Union are even more frustrating. Mr. Schorr criticizes Americans--such as John Foster Dulles--who "moralized" about the Cold War. Meanwhile, he seems oblivious to the fact that his own experience as a Moscow correspondent offered plenty to moralize about. He admits he's largely to blame for a friend being sent to a Soviet prison after Mr. Schorr "stupidly" agreed to deliver his anti-Communist letter to a Newsweek writer. He also blames himself for a young student's banishment to Siberia. More broadly, Mr. Schorr covered various Khrushchev-inspired invasions throughout Eastern Europe, and yet he maintains a great fondness for Khrushchev. Nowhere does he show any self-doubt that maybe he was too soft on the Soviet Union. In fact, the moral of the story of Mr. Schorr's jailed Russian friend is that when the man finally comes to America he finds it "not as wonderful as he had thought."
But it is Mr. Schorr's domestic career that reveals how so many journalists see the relationship between reporting and liberalism as one of means and ends. Mr. Schorr takes enormous pride in the fact that lots of politicians called him a "son-of-a-bitch," mentioning it so often that "S.O.B." should be in the index. Indeed, he seems convinced that his integrity and objectivity are confirmed by the fact that he annoyed LBJ and Nixon both. But he wasn't an impartial, equal-opportunity S.O.B. Rather, his Nixon and LBJ reporting was always from the left.
When Mr. Schorr reports that Johnson spent too much money on a "mindless war" in Vietnam rather than the noble "war on poverty," President Johnson phones at midnight to tell Mr. Schorr he's a "prize son of a bitch." Later, Mr. Schorr boasts that his early reporting on Nixon "reflected the generally progressive" policies of the Nixon administration. But when the creator of the EPA and affirmative action showed his "hostility to social betterment," Mr. Schorr turned on him. Similarly, Mr. Schorr butts heads with his New York bosses when his edgy reporting on poverty upsets their "suburban" sensibilities. In other words, a good journalist is a (good) son-of-a-bitch when he pushes from the left. Period.
Mr. Schorr reveals that he lives on a block in Washington that is a "Who's Who" of liberal journalism, from Judith and Milton Viorst to Elizabeth Drew and Seymour Hersh. "Staying Tuned" offers an endless string of conventional liberal clichés that would pass as probing, "independent-minded" insights only at a barbecue with his neighbors. And that's a shame because Mr. Schorr obviously has the intellectual and writing chops to have penned a more thrilling memoir by actually defending his opinions. Instead, we are left with a book in which Mr. Schorr cannot even see that they are opinions in the first place.
Mr. Goldberg is editor of National Review Online.
