Published September 25, 2025

Journalism requires a certain amount of editorial distance from the people you cover. If you parrot them with no critical thinking, you might as well hand them your laptop and let them write the story. Or give them a microphone and walk away.

Political coverage is bad about abdicating this responsibility. Sports writing is worse.

He’s not thinking about any game but the next one.
She’s never doubted herself.
He’s not afraid of dying.
The ankle isn’t bothering her.

Stop right there

Okay, you don’t know any of that. You can’t write it that way. You can report only that they said it.

He said he’s not thinking about any game but the next one.
She said she’s never doubted herself.
He said he’s not afraid of dying.
She told reporters the ankle isn’t bothering her.

If you think it’s important to prove a statement wrong, go for it, but only after discussing it with your editor, assuming you have one.

Why does this matter? Without that editorial distance, you’ve joined the team.

You also have to stop and think: Is what I’m about to write even newsworthy? He’s not thinking about any game but the next one is such a cliche, are you really going to devote part of your story to that? I promise you the coach has staff members hard at work preparing for several upcoming games at once, and will think about those games now and then.

These are sports examples, but I’m sure you can see how it would be a problem to write about politics or other topics this way.

The conduit

It’s a message the coach is trying to send to his players. Stay focused. More than anyone else I covered, Nick Saban was a master at this. He’d be answering your question in a normal tone of voice, only to rev up to high-volume faux anger, changing the subject to a point he wanted widely shared.

Saban knew that if he did that, his players would see the clip on the news. So would the fans. He knew how to play members of the media, often calling us “the conduit” between himself and the fans. Unsaid by him: He used us to talk to his players. Which, fair.

But reporters should know the dynamics of the game they’re unwittingly a part of. And they should know when what they’re doing makes them part of the team.

Les Miles, who followed Saban at LSU, once told us that when we came through the gates of the football practice facility, we were part of the team. Thank goodness a few reporters disabused him of that notion.

People say all kinds of things

The coach who said he’s not afraid of dying? He might be terrified but doesn’t want his players — or his family, or both — to know that. He’s possibly trying to help them cope.

That player who said her ankle isn’t bothering her? There might be contract negotiations underway, and the implications of saying the wrong thing publicly could be costly or even career-ending.

My point is you can’t state as fact what you don’t know to be fact. You can say only that they said it, all while evaluating whether it belongs in your story at all.

You are not inside their head, at least not to that extent.

An argument against my position is that if you drop “said” into a story too much, it can sound like a court transcript. My response is that if you don’t know how to observe editorial distance between reporter and subject without having it sound like a court transcript, maybe you’re in the wrong line of work. Or you need an editor.

You are not omniscient

Many writers want their readers to think they are all-knowing beings. They just know. And if the information proves wrong, they’ll be quick to blame the person who told them.

But they don’t want to give credit beforehand. They just know, you know? It’s from that murky land of voice-of-God reporting, and it’s something every reporter and editor should watch out for.

If you want to be part of the team, apply for a job on its website. And if you want to know every thought in your subjects’ heads, write a novel. It’s allowed in that world. Pretty much essential!

None of this should be controversial, but you’d be surprised, my dear reader.

With some things, you can make that leap somewhat safely. Other things? Not so much. A pro will know when it’s fine and when it’s not.

But these aren’t what most of us think of as examples of voice-of-God reporting, Carly. Maybe, maybe not, but people who employ them tend to keep moving the line.

Bottom line: We should clarify that this is what they say. People say things all the time that aren’t true. They say things to align with the “one voice, one message” edict from the coach. If we add “he said” and it ruins the magic, maybe it’s not that significant a piece of information.

This has been my killjoy moment of Zen for the day.

Note: editing to add this a month later …

You don’t know what Steve Sarkisian is focused on. You can’t say what he’s focused on. That headline implies that you do know. You don’t. The way his team struggled against Mississippi State — which still hasn’t won an SEC game at home in three years, or an SEC game at all since the 2023 season — it’s possible he’s distracted these days.

♥

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Brain image by NA_Studio via Shutterstock.