Patterico's Pontifications

5/24/2006

THE TRANSPARENT NEWSROOM

Filed under: General — Evan Maxwell @ 12:24 pm



Posted by the technologically challenged guest blogger, Evan Maxwell

(Patrick and I have been going back and forth about my inability to successfully link with other Web pages in my posts. I’ll try to end run that problem by cutting and pasting a link at the end of this post.)

We hear a great deal nowadays, particularly from professional journalists, about the need for “transparency” in public life. If I have a bone to pick with my former colleagues, it’s this: the standard late 20th Century newsroom is about as transparent as your average concrete block.

My interest was piqued by the piece in Editor & Publisher, the newspaper trade mag, about a flap brewing at the Toledo Blade, which won a Pulitzer this year for the “Coingate” stories about campaign financing irregularities inside the Ohio Republican establishment. It seems that a Blade reporter (not a member of the Coingate team) has been suspended for sending an anonymous letter to the Pulitzer Committee. The letter alleged ethical irregularities involving a political reporter who knew about the problems months before they became public knowledge. If I read a somewhat turgid piece of reporting from E&P correctly, this political reporter did nothing with his knowledge.

The point I would make is this: there are hundreds of such ethical issues floating around inside the walls of the nation’s newsrooms. There always have been and there always will be. But seldom do such newsroom issues bubble to the surface of public life. Why? Because the one thing that journalists are loathe to do is cover themselves and their colleagues in a public way.

It isn’t merely a matter of professional courtesy. Newsmen of my generation (slightly Pre-Watergate to the end of the 20th Century) were warned time and again that a good reporter makes sure he or she “doesn’t become part of the story.” By that is meant that journalists can examine the activities of others with impunity but they should never find themselves in a position where somebody examines them and their activities.

This once-unchallenged rule meant that the great unwashed public was never invited inside the story to see how it was put together. They were never allowed to see what kinds of personal and/or political judgements were being continuously made in the journalistic process of gathering, writing and displaying the news. They were never privy (a choice of words that is deliberate) to the inside story of the story, even though that inside story was often as fascinating as the public one. As a result, most of the public never realized that journalism was a messy process, not unlike the processes of legislating and sausage-making, to use Mark Twain’s elegant simile.

I am an old fan of “process.” Even though I turned in my press card twenty years ago, I am still fascinated by what I believe is the fundamental purpose of journalism, the exploration of the way things happen. I suppose that’s why I’m now out of the business of daily journalism, which seems to have become absolutely enamored of discrete facts shorn of their natural context. My fascination with process is the reason I think it is crucial that public-minded citizens should pay attention not only to what they read but to how they came to read it. Facts are gathered or ignored, leaked or suppressed, headlined or downplayed. Those choices are human and commonplace but they shape the landscape of public life in critical ways and to claim otherwise is to reality.

I am pleased to note that the process of journalism has become more transparent, more amenable to examination, both by the press itself and by other forces in public discourse. There are newspaper ombudsmen and women on nearly all the major papers. Howard Kurtz does yeoman work on CNN. Alternative weeklies kick the sacred cows of powerful dailies and television stations on a regular basis.

Then, too, the Web is absolutely critical in today’s dialogue. Just look at Memogate if you doubt me; just look at what disclosure of “sock-puppetry” did to the reputation of a highly-regarded Pulitzer Prize winner named Mike Hiltzik.

Journalists used to think they were somehow above the fray, Solons judging and condemning, folk poets sitting on a rock watching and reporting on clan battles but strangely, miraculously uninvolved in the outcome.

Well, they are in the fray and always have been, whether or not they want to admit it. Reporters, editors and publishers have become “part of the story” and they will remain so forever because there are lots of people who watch journalists with the same avidity that journalists watch everybody else.

And that is as it should be.

(Here’s the link to E&P in the old cut and paste method: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002574766. Sorry for the glitch.)

UPDATE FROM PATTERICO: Here is the link.

21 Responses to “THE TRANSPARENT NEWSROOM”

  1. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002574766.” Let’s see if Mr. Maxwell’s link work this way (with trepidation being cybernetically challenged too).

    nk (956ea1)

  2. Nope, guess not.

    nk (956ea1)

  3. test

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  4. OK, that worked, but it’s not intuitive. The ‘link’ button doesn’t provide the closing tag, just the opening tag.

    Oh, I see, then there’s a /link button which appears. OK, so the process is this:

    click ‘link’
    type the URL in the nice little message box which pops up
    then type the actual text on top of the link
    then click ‘/link’

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  5. “We hear a great deal nowadays, particularly from professional journalists, about the need for “transparency” in public life. If I have a bone to pick with my former colleagues, it’s this: the standard late 20th Century newsroom is about as transparent as your average concrete block.”

    We hear it a lot from private citizens too. Their lives aren’t transparent either.

    But I, like everyone else, am interested in knowing more about, for example, why the NYT hung on to the NSA story for as long as it did. I am, however, more interested in the NSA hanging on to it than the NYTimes. Ultimately, its the NSA doing the stuff, not the NYtimes.

    actus (6234ee)

  6. nk, your broken link inexplicably has a period at the end of the url. if you yank that out, it should work.

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  7. Thanks to aphrael here’s Mr. Maxwell’s now clickable link to Editor & Publisher: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002574766. And aphreal’s test in his comment #3 had also already fixed it.

    nk (50d578)

  8. Jeff Jarvis blogs about a conference on opinion, news and transparency, here, here and here.

    Snippets:

    Hugh Hewitt says people want to be able to navigate about fixed point and big media doesn’t reveal those fixed points. He said he spoke to a class at Columbia and asked a list of questions about issues and with one exception they were all on the hard left. “You’re all going to deny that it matters to your audience but that’s why you’re losing your audience… If you’re not going to tell your audience they’re not going to trust you.” (NYT deputy managing editor) Landman objects and says they are not losing audience. Merrill Brown says he will not let “the spin of the newspaper industry go unchallenged.”

    . . .

    “Peter Hart of FAIR says that the background of personal stances does not matter next to the product itself.

    “Hugh Hewitt says, as a lawyer, that this is contrary to the standard of evidence. In a trial, an expert must give their background so the jury may judge what they say. “Journalism wants nothing of those rules of evidence. They don’t want confrontation…. Mainstream media is so removed from the rules of evidence” that they are losing credibility.

    “Jim Brady answers the metaphor says the one person in the courtroom who’s not questioned is the judge. Nice touch. The implication is that journalists are the judge. I say that’s not the case. The public is the judge.”

    Bradley J. Fikes (e619fc)

  9. “We hear it a lot from private citizens too. Their lives aren’t transparent either.”

    Private citizens (except reporters) typically are not splashing other people’s lives and actions on the front pages of newspapers or on television and radio for accolades or condemnation, either. I don’t believe the point of the piece was to examine, say, who sleeps with who, at the local rag, but rather, how the opinions, beliefs, and contacts of reporters and editors shapes what they will and won’t publish.

    “But I, like everyone else, am interested in knowing more about, for example, why the NYT hung on to the NSA story for as long as it did. I am, however, more interested in the NSA hanging on to it than the NYTimes. Ultimately, its the NSA doing the stuff, not the NYtimes.”

    It depends on which “stuff” you are talking about. I’m wondering why more newspapers aren’t publishing stories about how the telephone info the NSA collected is perfectly legal and certainly not as intrusive as info collected by marketing companies, the IRS, or even your local elementary school. Or let’s ask the NYT why they aren’t clammoring for an investigation of Mary McCarthy and Dana Priest’s connections.

    sharon (fecb65)

  10. “I’m wondering why more newspapers aren’t publishing stories about how the telephone info the NSA collected is perfectly legal and certainly not as intrusive as info collected by marketing companies, the IRS, or even your local elementary school.

    The legality of what the NSA did is very much in question, that’s why. The question being, does the president have the constitutional authority, in the name of national security, to secretly authorize such information gathering outside of the court process set up to handle such requests?

    Bradley J. Fikes (e619fc)

  11. “Journalists” are people who live in glass houses, but insist on the throwing of rocks from the inside of the glass house.

    Also, many “journalists” can’t reason their way out of a paper bag without making leaps of faith and unethical shortcuts. They have a propensity to broadcast their ignorance as fact. Liberals use these “opinions as fact” to attempt to bolster their fallacies. Ergo, the culture war is upon ut.

    PCD (6aa617)

  12. BJF, I don’t question the NSA program’s legality. Collecting phone records so patterns of terrorist communication can be identified is a no brainer. I would question those who obstruct such common sense measures to fight terrorism.

    Black Jack (d8da01)

  13. Black Jack,

    “Collecting phone records so patterns of terrorist communication can be identified is a no brainer.”

    If the president’s plan is as common-sense as you think it is, the courts authorized by law for such a purpose would have no trouble granting authorization.

    “I would question those who obstruct such common sense measures to fight terrorism.”

    I would question those who don’t think it’s necesary for the president to get authorization from the courts.

    Bradley J. Fikes (d61e91)

  14. It depends on which “stuff” you are talking about

    The story.

    I’m wondering why more newspapers aren’t publishing stories about how the telephone info the NSA collected is perfectly legal and certainly not as intrusive as info collected by marketing companies, the IRS, or even your local elementary school.

    Because its not so true that its ‘perfectly legal.’ I’d say it may be more intrusive than some other data collection — specially since the data collected by the IRS is (strangely enough, like the phone records) protected by statute.

    And yes, newspapers should be reporting on the disastrous approach we in american have to data protection. On how we have a ridiculous sectoral case-by-case approach rather than comprehensive data protection.

    actus (ebc508)

  15. On the other hand, we have a great example of congressional courage in defense of (Congress’) privacy rights:

    WASHINGTON – House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused the Justice Department Thursday of trying to intimidate him in retaliation for criticizing the FBI’s weekend raid on a congressman’s office, escalating a searing battle between the executive and legislative branches of government.

    “This is one of the leaks that come out to try to, you know, intimidate people,” Hastert said on WGN radio Thursday morning. “We’re just not going to be intimidated on it.”

    Bradley J. Fikes (d61e91)

  16. BJF, the courts are there to supervise efforts to listen in on the content of phone calls, not to make note calls take place, and what numbers receive those calls. Such content free data collections fall outside any need for court authorization.

    In an age of terrorism, it would be self destructive to allow bogus privacy concerns to limit our ability to identify those who would plot to slaughter us. NSA’s data collection program is simply the right thing to do, our enemies are using electronic communications to plan mayhem and destruction, we have the technology to identify them, and we would be bloody fools not to use it.

    Black Jack (d8da01)

  17. “The story.”

    The NSA was doing the story? No, the NSA was collecting the phone numbers dialed and received. And if you think that’s more intrusive than, say Microsoft’s invasive software or the census bureau having reams of information on you, your neighbor, and everybody on your block, well, let’s just say we have different ideas of what’s worth protecting. And this doesn’t even touch FBI files used by certain Presidents to try to get dirt on their enemies. *ahem*

    “And yes, newspapers should be reporting on the disastrous approach we in american have to data protection. On how we have a ridiculous sectoral case-by-case approach rather than comprehensive data protection.”

    I hope you would also agree that newspapers should show consistency in supporting the investigation of ALL leakers, not just those that newspapers despise. At taxpayer expense, of course. Now THERE’S a story worth printing.

    sharon (fecb65)

  18. And if you think that’s more intrusive than, say Microsoft’s invasive software or the census bureau having reams of information on you, your neighbor, and everybody on your block, well, let’s just say we have different ideas of what’s worth protecting. And this doesn’t even touch FBI files used by certain Presidents to try to get dirt on their enemies. *ahem*

    Well, its not just the intrusiveness. Data protection is about more than just it leaking. Census data is de-identified, and protected by statute. So is telephone data. I get mad when these statutes are violated by, say, breaching the protections of IRS data. Same with phone data.

    But I think the story the NYTimes sat on was not the phone records one. But the warrantless wiretap one.

    actus (6234ee)

  19. “BJF, the courts are there to supervise efforts to listen in on the content of phone calls, not to make note calls take place, and what numbers receive those calls. Such content free data collections fall outside any need for court authorization.”

    Creative interpretation, to be sure, but you give no source for this extraordinary claim.

    “In an age of terrorism, it would be self destructive to allow bogus privacy concerns to limit our ability to identify those who would plot to slaughter us. NSA’s data collection program is simply the right thing to do, our enemies are using electronic communications to plan mayhem and destruction, we have the technology to identify them, and we would be bloody fools not to use it.”

    “Those who would plot to slaughter us” . . .”Simply the right thing to do” . . . etc. Cant slogans and a contemptuous dismissal of privacy concerns are not arguments. They are attempts to evade discussing some serious questions. Namely, does the president have to obey the law even when he doesn’t want to? And if his program is so self-evidently necessary, why does the president try to keep it from independent review?

    Bradley J. Fikes (e619fc)

  20. Creative interpretation, to be sure, but you give no source for this extraordinary claim.

    Smith v. MD says you have no 4th amendment protection in the numbers you dial. But there are statutes that govern this.

    actus (ebc508)

  21. Thanks for the reference. Another thing to consider that any attempt at catching terrorists by data-mining will inevitably yield a large number of false positives, if the algorithm is tuned to be certain all who exhibit terrorist characteristics are caught. It’s a characteristic of any test designed to identify a very few people in a large population, such as those with HIV. There are 600K HIV positive people in the US. Even a 99 percent accuracy rate means that an HIV test will wrongly identify 1 percent of the population, or 3 million, as HIV positive when they are not. Smaller populations, such as those planning terrorism, show this effect even more strongly.

    Bruce Schneier, a security expert, has written about this and other flawed approaches to security in his book, Beyond Fear. He’s on the Web, too.

    Bradley J. Fikes (e619fc)


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