Hi fellow Poynterites --
I'm curious as to everyone's thoughts on Mayhill Flower's surrepitious recording of Obama's speech at a closed fundraiser and all the defenses/criticisms that have sprung up afterwards.
It's providing a fine teaching moment (I'm having my students do an in-class debate discussing this episode, as well as the behavior of the ABC journalists during the debate.)
Here's my take. I'm not surprised by the "there are no rules; everyone has a role" defense being tossed around by Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and others. They have their talking points down pretty well by now. I worked with Rosen on getting NewAssignment.Net off the ground and have had some involvement with "citizen journalists." Overall, I think the jury is still out on whether the concept can work. There are moments when it does, such as the efforts by the Fort Myers News-Press. And, I agree with Mindy and I don't think that this is a time to be discussing "who is a journalist" -- lots of air has been spent on that in past years.
Here's the rub for me. Credibility is the one and only chip that journalists, citizens or otherwise, can bargain with. The behavior of journalists in recent years, thanks in large part to the demands of the 24 hour news cycle, has done little to build on that credibility. Not too much trusting going on out there.
What has always helped journalists in this regard is identification. Rule #1 in Journalism 100 is to identify yourself. That way people know that what they say and do is subject to reporting, recording and could end up on a blog, Web site, cable, etc. Fundamentally, identification comes down to fairness.
I'm not sure that happened here. Having read what Fowler had to say about the whole identification process, it's not even clear Fowler knew what the ground rules were going in, and certainly Obama's people thought Fowler was not acting in a journalist's role.
And, what about the role of Fowler's editor? Did the editor know about the murky waters surrounding identification? I recall working with one "citizen journalist" at New Assignment and explaining that submitting his story to the source for pre-publication approval was not a journalistic norm. But then we get back to the "no rules" thing.
So, when Rosen, Jarvis et al say the rules no longer apply, does that mean that identification is no longer needed? We can now all go skulking around trying to obtain meaty sound bites that we can immediately throw up on a Web site to gain a little notoriety? I'm not too sure that's a good thing. Saying there are "no rules" just seems a little simplistic and naive. Don't we need rules in order to be fair and balanced -- no matter how you define yourself on the journalistic spectrum?
Hope all is well,
Fox
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3 comments:
Hi Steve and colleagues:
First: Who said there were "no rules?" Maybe Jeff did somewhere, I did not. Nor does that express my attitude about this. What I said is "we're in uncharted territory." Do you disagree?
Here is the note I sent last week to my colleagues at NYU, who I figured would have some of the same kinds of questions Steve raises here.
Colleagues: As many of you no doubt know, the original source for Barack Obama's comments on "bitter" voters clinging to social issues was a post for OffTheBus, the pro-am campaign news site I started with Arianna Huffington. It's been quite a whirlwind since Friday when the report (by OffTheBus citizen journalist Mayhill Fowler) was first posted.
Yesterday I posted at PressThink an explanation for how the story came to be, and why we felt we were within our rights in running her account from a fundraiser that was officially closed to the press. I tried to think of every ethical question that would arise, and write something that a Journalism class could use to discuss and understand the incident in depth. That post is here: From Off the Post to Meet the Press
As co-publisher of OffTheBus my main concerns about running this story were three: first, whether we had the candidate's words correct. Mayhill Fowler had a tape, which was later posted, so we were ultra confident about that. I was also concerned that she had not gained entrance to the event under false pretenses or violated any agreement not to disclose. We were confident that she had not. She was known to the campaign, she had written about Obama fundraisers before and was invited by someone who knew she was a blogger for OffTheBus. She did not attempt to conceal her tape recorder and she witnessed many others taping the event with cell phones and home video equipment.
Since my post, we have gotten more confirmation on that point. In today's piece in the print edition of the New York Times, which also quotes from my post, an Obama aide (nameless) tells Kit Seelye that the campaign recognized how "from time to time, people do blog from events closed to the media." And in the SF Chronicle today there is this:
"Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Tuesday that while the San Francisco event was closed to traditional media, it was not off the record. The campaign has not denied or challenged Fowler's version of the event. Burton said there's an expectation now - even at private events - that everything will be recorded and posted."
So she was invited, she was known to be a blogger who wrote for OffTheBus, and the event was not off the record. My third main concern was that Obama's words not be sensationalized by us, that they be placed in some kind of thoughtful context, rather than stripped and mined for their tabloid value. You would have to look at Mayhill Fowler's
post to see how we did this. A Reporting 101 instructor would say we buried the lede.
Fowler actually had more context than most of the crowd there, since she had seen Obama campaigning in Pennylvania and reported from there. Her ears perked up at his "they get bitter" comments because she knew it was something he had not said before-- that is, she knew it was news. Other questions you may have are probably answered in my post, but if not feel free to email me. I wanted to assure colleagues that this was not an "anything goes" situation at all, that we took a lot of care with the post before publishing it, and that we have thought through the ethics of it as well as we can, given that we are living in "uncharted territory," as my post also says. The key passage is this one:
"Except for the headline, this is not how a professional newsgathering operation would handle the story. But a professional newsgathering operation would never put itself in the position that we bargained for when we started OffTheBus. Journalists, the pro kind, aren't allowed to be loyalists. But loyalists, because they're allowed to write for OffTheBus, may find that loyalty to what really happened trumps all. And that's when they start to commit journalism."
I would add that as far as I know no professional journalist has expressed any solidarity with Mayhill Fowler, who is now being investigated and defamed at a fever's pitch by enraged Obama supporters convinced she is a Hillary plant or a closet Republican sent to destroy their candidate. Her crime? Reporting what she heard and commenting on it.
---end note----
If you scroll down to the "After Matter" section of my post you can find lots of links and summary of the debate this incident has caused, including debate about "the rules."
Cheers...
Uncharted territory? Well, yes and no.
Professional journalists deal with conflict of interest issues regularly. So, no, this is territory that has been covered often over a very long period of time.
But, yes, this is uncharted territory in that a "journalist" paid to gain entry to an event as a partisan. And, that's really the bottom line here -- we can talk all about how Obama officials "knew" Fowler was a blogger but they really aren't going to come out and say anything about the conflict of interest here because of the blowback that would inevitably follow.
And, what was the end result of all this? Another example of "gotcha journalism." For all the altruism professed by "citizen journalists," the result here was more of the same sound-bite driven horse-race coverage that "citizen journalism" was going to cure.
chrs,
Steve
I hadn't formulated much of an opinion on this until reading the comment near the bottom of the Rosen post. "Her crime? Reporting on what she heard and commenting on it."
Fox and I have had multiple tussles over the concept of "citizen journalism," but I think even he might agree with me that telling what you hear and commenting on it doesn't constitute "journalism" as we teach it.
What would you have told your students to do in the same situation in which Fowler found herself?
Have you ever examined a work or personal situation in which gossip was in play? "I heard this, and this is what I think about it." My working-mom-ville is awash in it. It can be fascinating, but it tends to hinder understanding more than help it.
Fowler can do whatever she wants. But I fail to see how it contributed to the sphere of understanding this campaign or deciding to whom I will give my vote.
It was more akin to the minivan chatter on the playground. "Did you hear what so-and-so said? I think it's terrible."
That activity has gone on forever. Technology only amplifies it and extends its reach. It doesn't give it any more legitimacy than it ever had for some in the audience. Some of us rely heavily on interpersonal channels in our civic decisionmaking. Others rely more on a broad base of reported information coming from journalistic outlets. Fowler is more the former to me than the latter.
The issue is not what that distinction means to us but what, if anything, it means to the audience.
(And Fox, this is something we, in the Midwest, clearly understand ;0 )
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