Editor’s note: This op-ed is by award-winning journalist Telly Halkias. It first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Dear Dr. Wallack:
I would like to congratulate you on your appointment this past year as chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, and thank you for the hard work you’re putting into Vermont ’s latest attempt at health care reform. It’s truly a cause for the people.
Recently, your letter to the editor of the Bennington Banner (“Challenging a columnist’s ‘facts,'” Feb. 1, 2012) caught my eye. In it, you responded to an op-ed (“Suppositions on Green Mountain Care,” Jan. 28, 2012) by Don Keelan, a longtime columnist.
While contesting his assertions, you also chided Mr. Keelan by opening and closing your letter with the suggestion that he might have penned a spoof, and that his points were meant to be jokes. Furthermore, you took the Banner to task for content on its opinion pages. I’d like to consider your first point before tackling the second.
Given your stellar reputation and credentials, your berating of Mr. Keelan surprised me. He gets plenty of that in Bennington County to need any more from Montpelier. Many readers, though, challenge his columns on their merits. To be fair, the middle part of your letter did exactly that, and your substantive points were all well taken.
However, to call Mr. Keelan’s piece comedy was gratuitous given his habitual use of literary devices and sardonic humor. Even his column’s title included the word “suppositions,” forecasting what was ahead.
While falling short of ad hominen status, your swipe nevertheless put into question all those who debate him, as if we can’t recognize satire from analysis. I count myself in those ranks, because as a political independent, I don’t carry water for liberals or conservatives. And it’s no secret Mr. Keelan is as firmly planted in one of those camps as you are in the other.
But past all the ideological debates of health care reform, a careful reading of his column brings up some journalistic matters worth reviewing.
First, there is a distinction between opinion commentary and news reporting. Mr. Keelan’s work falls into the former; as such, he is bound by different standards of transparency, accuracy, objectivity and verification. His responsibility is to offer perspectives in a forum where citizens can freely debate their contentions and claims. In fact, your letter to the editor was part of that process, a sacrosanct right we cherish as Americans.
Next, whatever you think of his “facts,” Mr. Keelan fulfilled his writer’s obligation by stating metaphorically not once, or twice, but three times that his “sources” weren’t “wholly reliable.” Then he warned us there could be “suspect” data in his health care rundown, and conceded how the “unknown” was “disconcerting.”
Those of us reading the column got it, but that didn’t make it a joke. Mr. Keelan did his due diligence and communicated his point. We don’t have to agree with him, or emulate his methods. But past that, he owes us nothing.
Finally, your implication that the Banner was remiss in its duties – ostensibly because it ran a commentary you considered factually wrong – suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of American newsrooms and American journalism.
At small dailies where reporters and editors are doubling and tripling down on additional duties, they still get the facts right in news coverage almost always. But short of apparent libel, it’s not their job to police opinion columnists, or dictate literary styles — even for those, like Mr. Keelan, who often clash with a paper’s editorial positions.
In fact, unlike some publications in Vermont which mute certain viewpoints, the Bennington Banner has a long tradition of offering its audience the most local columnists of any newspaper of its size in the state, and their opinions cover a vast expanse of ideologies. Asking its editors to monitor commentary with all the needed disclaimers intact, whether concrete or intangible, is tantamount to censorship — something Americans don’t take to very kindly.
Dr. Wallack, there is a long road ahead for health care reform in Vermont and the U.S.; we may be looking at historic changes or a collapse of our efforts. But whatever occurs, you can be certain that soon enough, just as in the gay marriage debate, the national media will swoop down on us — especially on the Green Mountain Care Board.
When that happens, you will have my undying empathy. And you might wish the likes of Don Keelan from tiny Arlington in Bennington County are all we had to deal with.
With deepest admiration and respect,
Telly
