8:54am | Read the stories run yesterday by the Long Beach Post and the Press-Telegram concerning the arrest of Occupy Long Beach member George Diller in Lincoln Park, and you get two sides of the story. And after comparing them, you couldn’t be blamed for believing that somebody must be lying.
That is not the diplomatic way to describe the conundrum we find confronting us when we see how wildly the LBPD and OLB accounts diverge. But it’s plain to see that if one is true, the other is a fairy tale. Check for yourself:
LBPD: Diller refused an officer’s order to get off the phone and cursed at the officer, then twice tried to kick the officer, then “hook[ed] the officer’s elbow with his own arm, then pulled the officer on top of him,” then continued to fight even when a second officer came to assist, then tried to stand up, at which point one of the officer’s put Diller in a chokehold, which caused Diller momentarily to lose consciousness, after which he tried to spit at the officers.
OLB: Diller was seemingly too slow in getting off the phone in the opinion of Officer Brad Dinsdale (who “has been abusive in the past” to OLBers), and so Dinsdale wrenched Diller’s arm and pulled him to the ground, then put him in a chokehold and held him there 30 seconds beyond when Diller became unconscious, then hit Diller in the head, and then picked him up and dropped him to the ground — all this even though Diller not only offered no resistance but went as far as to say he wasn’t resisting.
You can’t help but notice two things about these accounts: each one is extreme, placing all wrongdoing completely on the other side; and the variance between the two cannot plausibly be accounted for simply by differences of perspective.
But how do we determine where the truth lies?
I tell you frankly that I cannot point you in the right direction. I did not witness what took place Tuesday morning. I have never met — nor to my knowledge even seen — Officer Dinsdale, who for all I know may be every bit as bad as OLB says he is, or is a model officer who did the best he could in a bad situation and is now being slandered.
All I could do was gather as much information as I could: I spoke with people who were there, looked at photographs, obtained arrest information and a copy of the complaint that was filed, confirmed that Diller was taken to the hospital.
Tracy Manzer, the author of the Press-Telegram article, can’t point you in the right direction, either. Like myself, she did not bear witness to the event, and it seems the entire content of her article is the account given by LBPD Public Information Officer Nancy Pratt — another person who was not present.
The phrase journalistic objectivity has a nice ring to it. But so does Santa Claus. Well, I’m here to tell ya, boys and girls: neither one exists.
We journalists are just like everybody else: our subjectivity is inescapable. We may be in error even regarding events to which we bear direct witness. More perilous yet, the majority of our reportage employs or even relies upon the accounts of other subjective souls. People tell us things, and we report them. Was Diller smoking when the police approached him? Everybody concurs that he was, so there seems no credible reason to doubt it — but Manzer and I don’t know that fact like we know we like chocolate. We’re just passing along the information we’ve received.
‘Subjective’ does not necessarily denote bias; rather, it contrasts with ‘objective’: limited rather than omniscient, shaped by history rather than swinging free of it, idiosyncratic rather than universal. We are always subject to the limits of ourselves.
A diligent reader (viewer, witness, etc.) should keep this in mind about herself and every other person who’s ever lived — police or protester, journalist or journeyman. Witnesses lie and get things wrong. Protest groups demonize the police. Police cover for each other.
But the opposite cases are out there, too — earnest and reliable witnesses, protesters who consider officers on their merits, officers who would sooner turn in their badge than sully the ideal of protecting and serving by being complicit with police misconduct.
At our best, journalists present the information available to us in such a way that you have a clear view of how things look from our vantage point — a view so clear that you can draw your own conclusions without interference from ours, because we haven’t put ourselves between you and the information we’re presenting (or at least when we do, we’re being intentionally transparent about it).
Part of that process is freely admitting our limitations and the mistakes that may arise from them. As a case in point, one commenter on my story, “rickatsea,” gave me a spanking I deserved:
I take issue with the article when informed the so called victim was a vet for any war. That has nothing to do with the issue.
He’s right. This superfluous detail made its way into my story because this was mentioned several times in the witness accounts I heard — what you might call a color in their collective narrative. But it’s a color that is not germane to the picture of what transpired. My apologies for including it.
What I can’t apologize for is for my story’s being so one-sided, since Nancy Pratt, the PIO who supplied the Press-Telegram with the LBPD account of events, refused to supply that account to the Long Beach Post.
Pratt has her reasons for sharing this information with the Press-Telegram but not the Long Beach Post, just as Manzer has her reasons for not including any account of Diller’s arrest but the LBPD’s. Those reasons have everything to do with subjectivity.
“There were multiple witnesses interviewed,” Manzer quotes Pratt as saying, “several of whom supported the officers’ statements.”
Is that true? Apparently Manzer doesn’t know, since it doesn’t appear she spoke with any witnesses. Presumably Pratt doesn’t know, either, because PIOs don’t generally take witness statements. And certainly I don’t know, because the only witnesses with whom I’ve spoken are OLBers whose statements conflict with the LBPD account.
This is what happens when three little, subjective persons in this big ol’ world endeavor to tell the public about an event none of us witnessed.
And you, John Q., get to put the pieces together however you will.