“Why is it just so difficult to make the search for truth the highest journalistic value?” Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times Reporter Linda Greenhouse asked a packed Lewis Auditorium yesterday.

Greenhouse relied on her wisdom and experience as she spoke about the state of today’s news media, questioning the very rubric by which today’s journalists operate.

Adolph S. Ochs, the founder of today’s modern New York Times, laid out his goal for the creation of a newspaper that would “give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interests involved."Veteran mind: Linda Greenhouse, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, lectures in Goldwin Smith yesterday.

Greenhouse questioned the assumptions behind this principle and its aim to present all sides of the issue and then let the public decide.

“Can this operate in the world when many stories have many sides or only one?” she said.

According to Greenhouse, modern journalism faces a debate over “whether the ‘he said, she said’ format [of reporting] impedes rather than enhances the purpose of informing the reader.”

To illustrate her point, Greenhouse brought up the issue of waterboarding. While many believe this to be torture, according to Greenhouse, some do not. Thus, media outlets often use the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” This phrasing stems from the mass media’s “hypersensitivity to bias.”

“I think our current political climate has put the mainstream media on the offensive,” Greenhouse said. “They’re just desperately afraid of someone saying ‘you’re biased.’ Unless you’re Fox News, then you’re not afraid.”

Organizations like The New York Times, Greenhouse said, fear accusations of liberal bias.

But according to Greenhouse, the problem with presenting opposing views and treating every point equally is that some points may not be well-founded. Greenhouse worked on the Supreme Court beat for the New York Times, offering a somewhat unique point of view in that, in her opinion, few legitimate sources exist in opposition to Supreme Court decisions.

She pressed the point that the media must strive “to present the truth and not the facts . ... Facts alone don’t necessarily lead the reader to real understanding, and that’s, I think, the function of journalism in democratic society — to empower readers and viewers.”

Ithaca College student Melanie Ziegler disagreed.

“I personally think that definitely when it comes to journalism and newspapers, journalists should try to present things from more of a factual point of view instead of just giving their opinion and trying to push that,” Ziegler said. “There are plenty of sources where people can go to listen to people’s opinions; but if people rely on the media to give them their opinions, then I think that as a society we aren’t really going anywhere, we’re just kind of conforming to what one person believes.”

In the end, the context of the topic in question is crucial to the approach.

“My point is if all you do is ‘he said this’ and ‘she said that’, those are both facts,” Greenhouse said, “but you can end up completely not informing or misleading the reader unless you, the journalist, are using whatever intelligence you might have to determine where they’re coming from. You’re paid to use your critical intelligence, to do that heavy lifting.”

As for the fair and objective journalism of old, Greenhouse said, “It’s kind of a reflexive attitude that has outlived it’s usefulness but is still in the DNA.”

The modern perception of objectivity has become convoluted. In 1996 the Society of Professional Journalists dropped mention of objectivity from its codes. “The concept has become mangled,” Greenhouse said.

Many newspapers, including The Times and The Sun, have made an attempt to promote accountability and minimize subjective or questionable reporting by employing a public editor, whose job is to question any troublesome coverage.

“My view is it’s a bad idea because I think it sort of acts as catnip to a cat,” Greenhouse said. “It just attracts a lot of complaints that basically come out of antipathy toward the newspaper and that I don’t think have to be catered to.”

Greenhouse addressed a question from the audience regarding the future of print media — a major current topic for speculation.

“All the big print media are suffering at the bottom line from the fact that advertising has migrated away from print,” Greenhouse said. “Yesterday the Times announced another round of buyouts looking to shrink the newsroom staff by another 8 percent.”

Though Greenhouse is confident national newspapers like The Times will survive the current economic climate, local papers are the ones that are really suffering. She cited the Rocky Mountain Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, both forced out of print earlier this year.

“How do you enable good journalism to pay for itself?” Greenhouse said. “That’s the platform issue. There’s a substantial risk of a brain drain out of mainstream journalism if people can’t make a living out of it.”

The take-away message from Greenhouse’s talk was the need for a new perspective on the direction in which journalism is heading.

“We need a journalism of verification, not just a platform where anybody can say any old thing and assume it’s going to get right into the paper,” Greenhouse said.

“I hope I persuaded you today that there is another side to that story, one that persuades journalists to seek out not the facts, but the truth.”