Liars, and What to Call Them

Should a newspaper ever call someone a liar, even if that someone is Alberto Gonzales? Clark Hoyt, The New York Times's newish ombudsman, doesn't think it should, at least not in its news pages. He also notes, approvingly, that the Times has avoided describing the furor over the firings of U.S. attorneys for political reasons as a "scandal."

It's hard to argue about "liar." That's a word you use to describe someone's character, not his actions. Even "lie" is tricky, implying knowledge of the speaker's state of mind.

But to shy away from calling the U.S. attorneys mess a scandal because it's "a loaded term" -- that's being overcautious. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Alberto Gonzales turns out to have been suffering from a previously-undiagnosed memory disorder that causes his authentic recollections to be replaced by fantasies. Would that not be a scandalous state of affairs?

The stem-cell debate is a controversy. An attorney general who either can't remember details of important government business or chooses to lie about them -- that's a scandal, however you cut it.

Journalists often find themselves caught in a middle-ground between what they know and what they can prove. The danger of printing more than you know is obvious: getting it wrong. The danger of printing less than you know is subtler but still very real. Saying that the FBI director "offered testimony that sharply conflicted with" Gonzales's, or that "[a]n accumulating body of evidence is at odds with" his accounts may sound crisp and damning to Times editors, but to the average reader it sounds like a lot of ass-covering, nuance-parsing journalese. "Oh, well," he thinks, turning the page, "if it's really important, I'm sure I'll hear about it on TV."