The Times' 'Blazing Straddle'

An experimental column in which the Los Angeles Times invites outside critics to stomp vigorously upon a Los Angeles newspaper that willfully puts cartoons on the front page of its Opinion section.

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In the weeks leading up to today's election in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times has distinguished itself for its breadth and depth of coverage. The correspondents on the ground have shown admirable personal courage and professional tenacity in doggedly reporting one of the most dangerous and important stories of our time.

Wouldn't it be nice, then, if The Times completely unleashed these fine reporters and allowed them to tell us -- during the crucial period ahead -- exactly what they are and are not seeing? And even more important, what they're thinking? All of it written in the first person from ground level?

That's not to impugn what has been reported to date. But that reporting, like nearly all reporting in The Times, has been run through the usual sort of editorial food processor that guarantees the prevailing standard of "fair, balanced, objective stories." You know the routine: he said/she said; yes/but; the so-called blazing straddle of "objectivity."

As thorough as The Times' reporting has been, it often reads as if written by acrobats in pain -- skilled professionals twisting themselves and their copy into knots as they strain to "balance" what they are actually seeing with the sometimes fantasy-based spin of both Iraqi and U.S. officialdom.

We need go no further than an otherwise compelling Times report out of Baghdad a few weeks ago. It began with the assertion that although the election process was, indeed, going ahead, its "planners" still faced what were called "the nuts and bolts of holding a credible vote." Insurgents gunning down election workers and candidates, the latter campaigning only clandestinely, the polling stations still a secret, car bombs killing dozens a week -- these are mere nuts and bolts? Maybe to the U.S. Embassy -- but for the rest of us? Puh-leeze.

The Times, in an unsigned editorial a few days ago, spoke much more forthrightly of the same surreal circumstances surrounding this election, saying it could all prove to be a "disappointing farce" that could eventually "fuel a civil war."