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Editor's Note: This is the second installment of Jenny Agnew's two-part article on Journalism and Ethics. Click here for part one.
The disagreement that exists over using press releases without attribution doesn’t compare to that surrounding food critics and anonymity. In its “Food Critics’ Guidelines,” The Association of Food Journalists recommends that “reviews should be conducted as anonymously as possible” but at the same time admits that “true anonymity is often no longer possible.” Those same guidelines, by the way, were recently updated—the first revision in many years—to help writers stay current on trends in food journalism in the age of new media.
Anonymity and restaurant criticism has been much debated both locally and nationally, and the title of Jeff Ruby’s 2011 Chicago Magazine article illustrates the warring factions: “Anonymous Restaurant Reviewing: Journalistic Gold Standard or Antiquated Parlor Game?”
Critics who argue that being made doesn’t change the dining experience may also claim that the whole idea of anonymity is outdated, perhaps like attributing press releases. Since this topic has been covered so much as of late, we’re more interested in stepping back and looking at the larger topic of criticism—whether or not it matters—and the related topic of objectivity in food criticism.
Thanks to social media, everyone’s a critic. Don’t like a product? Tweet about it. Had a great dinner at a new restaurant? Share your experience in your blog through the written word and photos. With so many amateurs offering their opinions, some argue that professional criticism has become obsolete.
Others question exactly what the critic’s role is: “helpful public servant or ‘ignoramus with iPhone’?” And there’s the question of how much a chef should care about criticism. Finally, for the last couple of years, chefs have turned the tables and rated the best and worst food critics (unsurprisingly, LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold was named the best for the last two years).
In the fall of 2013, The New York Times published a “Room for Debate” series, with 8 debaters, about arts criticism. One author, for example, makes a distinction between “true criticism” and reviews of the arts, while another suggests that professionals and amateurs aren’t so different.
In a related article published in The Guardian, the author wonders if theater critics can be objective, if a critic can be passionate about the subject while remaining professionally detached—a salient question for all criticism, including food criticism.
Josh Ozersky, writing for Time in 2011, weighed in on some of these problems by proposing a list of suggestions for how The New York Times can “redeem restaurant criticism” in the wake of Sam Sifton stepping down from the role. Ozersky, a James Beard Award winner for food writing, recommends (1) reviews by committee, (2) clarifying or getting rid of the star ratings, (3) ending the pretense of anonymity, and (4) eliminating “cheap shots” in reviews. In a simple yet compelling statement, Ozersky reminds readers of the food critic’s primary responsibility: “Let’s make no mistake here: the restaurant review is a service feature. Its purpose is to tell people whether they should or should not go to a place to eat there.”
The question surrounding objectivity and a critic’s function extends to relationships; if a critic is friends with a subject—a chef, for example—can that critic write objectively about that chef’s food? David Chang, chef-owner of the Momofuku empire, doesn’t exactly answer the question in an Eater interview, but says that although he was initially reluctant to befriend Peter Meehan when the latter wrote for the Times, the friendship turned into a collaboration on a cookbook and the food journal Lucky Peach.
But what if Meehan remained working at The Times and was friends with Chang? The answer to that question, conveniently for Chang, became moot when Meehan left the newspaper.
In another Eater interview, the UK’s Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner is asked about how much he interacts with chefs (“on a number of levels” was his response) and if he’s friends with any of them. He replied, “That preciousness has always slightly baffled me. I have friends who are chefs and I do go to the occasional party, but I’m not a massively reliable friend when it comes to chefs.”
Both Chang and Rayner effectively sidestep the question, leaving one still wondering if friendships between critics (and food writers) and chefs affect objectivity. Turning once again to the Association of Food Journalists’ Food Critics’ Guidelines, one finds a more definitive, yet still implicit and therefore murky, answer: “Critics should avoid functions that restaurateurs and chefs are likely to attend.” Further, the rules recommend that any interviews with chefs should be conducted by phone.
Of course, it would help to define what a friendship is—is it something superficial on Facebook? Or are there industry parties sponsored either by a publication or a chef in which mingling (and free food and drink) occurs on both sides? If a critic or food writer covers a friend, should that friendship be made transparent in the article in the same way some critics share that they were made by staff? Or should the writer pass the article on to someone else, noting a conflict of interest?
Still another area that crops up under the larger umbrella of objectivity is favoritism. One might argue, for example, that even though St. Louis has plenty of industry professionals to write about, the same popular chefs, restaurateurs, and farmers are covered again and again.
The symbiotic—some might even say parasitic—nature of the relationship between food publications and industry types becomes apparent after looking at social media. When a publication highlights a popular chef who has many followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook and that chef retweets or posts the article, the publication gains a wider audience in a seemingly win-win situation: good press for the chef/restaurant and more readers for the publication. If that chef or business owner happens to employ a PR specialist, the audience becomes even larger, which encourages publications to continue covering the subject for obvious reasons.
Further still, often a positive review or article is automatically construed as “good” writing; more readers must mean the piece was well written, right? Not necessarily. It sometimes means the popularity of the subject eclipsed everything else, including mediocre or bad writing.
What about someone in the industry who can’t afford the PR representative and is not yet on a publication’s radar? How does one garner attention as an unknown, especially if that attention is routinely paid to the same clique of individuals? The flip-side of the win-win for the already popular chef becomes a catch-22 for the unknown.
As we said before: we don’t pretend to have all the answers here. We do know that in a city like St. Louis, which has been experiencing a renaissance in all things food and has so many food writers covering that rebirth, surely there’s room for everyone—writer, critic and industry professionals, from the well-established to the up-and-coming alike. Whether or now that room is made—in an ethical manner—remains to be seen.
