Should there be a license for journalists? And I don’t mean, as some wags might suggest, a hunting license for journalists. I mean an independent agency that certifies a reporter as being trained and ethical. Should journalists have something similar to state Bar associations or medical boards?
The argument in favor of such licensing is that the "blogosphere" is wholly unaccountable. If the local paper prints a libelous screed against you, there is at least a brick and mortar building to deliver the subpoena to. Newspapers assumed the responsibility of screening out unethical reporters if for no other reason than to avoid court costs. Now, anyone with access to a computer can write "news articles" and publish them on the world wide web.
The licensing would, of course, be mostly for the consumer’s benefit. There has been an explosion of news sites in just the last few years and blog hosting sites can make even the most uninformed writer at least look professional. It can be difficult enough sorting through the big, legacy media sites like Sacbee.com or CNN without ever getting to bloggers. Blogs are relevant however and even professional journalists no longer dismiss blogs as the last refuge of cranks and amateurs. In fact, most professional journalists maintain their own blogs now. But that’s the point: how does the reader separate the good journalism from the cranks and the amateurs?
Licensing would also help assuage the bruised egos of reporters who are tired of being lumped in with people who blog about their cats and guys who post 20 misspelling-filled pages worth of theories about the influence of the Freemasons in America. The fact of the matter is that "journalist" has become too big of a job category. It’s the same problem nurses face. A "nurse" could be anyone from the highschool dropout who empties the bedpans to the surgeon’s assistant who has almost as much medical school as the doctor under his or her belt.
The argument against a license is that, unlike a doctor or lawyer, being a journalist doesn’t carry any special privileges. A journalist doesn’t have any more access to public records than any other citizen and no one is arguing that they should. It’s unfair to add another financial burden (applicants pay to take the Bar exam) to people seeking employment in an already struggling industry.
There is also the question of who this sanctioning board would be comprised of and the inherent problem of "policing the police." Will a stodgy board prevent young talent from being seen? Will an unscrupulous board accept bribes to issue licenses to the staff of The National Inquirer? Will there be a reporter bold enough to risk his license by investigating the board?
For some reason, the idea of a sanctioning board for journalists rings a sour note. Despite the measure of credibility a license theoretically would bring, I think most journalists would try to avoid getting it. Reporters tend to naturally be anti-establishment types; it’s why they went to J-school. They’re better suited to scrutinizing and criticizing institutions than forming them. The idea of a license also feeds into the elitist attitude many reporters have toward feature writers. Who says writing about your cats isn’t legitimate? Jon Carroll does it all the time and he’s published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
I think reporters will have to build their credibility the old-fashioned way: by being credible. Writing with honesty and integrity, whether covering your cats or your nation’s government, is the path to legitimacy as a journalist.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Ethics of Lying
In the late 1970's the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper purchased and operated a seedy bar near the paper’s building. This was not, as one might assume, a concession to a Writer’s Guild demand that journalists be provided with a convenient place to drink their lunch. It was actually a prop in a sting operation to expose corruption among city licensing inspectors.
The reporters rigged the dilapidated tavern with hidden cameras and then staged as many code violations as they could dream up. They brought filth and maggots into the kitchen. They blocked fire exits. They draped bare electrical wire over exposed wooden beams. They sabotaged the plumbing so that all the drains emptied onto the basement floor. In short, they made sure that every code enforcement department would have something to cite them for.
As you might guess from the dateline of this story, the reporters found corrupt permit inspectors. Every single inspector in fact. The focus of the story became not that there was corruption, but how casual and routine the bribery was.
The expose’, which played out in a 25 part series, was brilliant journalism. Unfortunately, the story turned out to be as controversial as it was compelling. Many professional journalists felt that it was unethical for the reporters to misrepresent themselves. The story was eventually denied a Pulitzer Prize due to a campaign led by Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee that condemned the Sun-Times’ methods.
Is it acceptable for a reporter to misrepresent himself? Does Ben Bradlee condemn Upton Sinclair for accepting a job in a meat packing plant simply to research the conditions? Is it worth lying to catch liars? Is there an ethical way to expose unethical people?
I think the benefits of this kind of sting far outweigh the murky ethics. History has shown how effective undercover reporters can be. Sinclair’s The Jungle changed the sanitation and workplace practices of the entire meat-packing industry. Reporters aren’t supposed to sit at their desks waiting for a whistle-blower to call in; they’re supposed to chase stories and wrest the truth from the liars.
Today, television news magazines routinely employ hidden cameras and deceptive ruses to get stories. Unfortunately they seem to be influenced more by Allen Funt’s Candid Camera than Upton Sinclair.
NBC recently ran a hidden camera expose of HVAC repairmen. They rented a house with a working air conditioner and called technicians out to see if any would recommend unnecessary service or otherwise pad the bill. It’s a reasonable premise for a consumer advocacy piece, but it seemed more focused on humiliating individual technicians than investigating problems in the industry or flaws in regulating it. There was no consumer benefit other than the enjoyment of watching sleazy contractors squirm under Chris Hanson’s measured but insistent questions.
Speaking of Chris Hanson, his "To Catch A Predator" was perhaps the most notorious hidden camera, "gotcha-style" show. While child molesters are the least sympathetic creatures on Earth, it would be hard to argue that the show was anything other than entrapment for entertainment. Not to mention the ethical quagmire created by partnering with the vigilante group that lured in the suspects in and the police departments that arrested them.
ABC’s Primetime program runs semi-regular series titled "What Would You Do?" in which the producers use actors to stage bizarre little morality plays in public places. For example, cameras are set up to record two actresses, a woman and a young girl, pretending to be mother and daughter sitting in a café. The mother begins loudly and cruelly berating the daughter and cameras record how the other patrons react. Other scenarios have included a faked bicycle theft and an actress, made to look pregnant, getting drunk at a bar. After recording a few people’s reactions the show’s host steps out to congratulate the busy-bodies who engaged with the actors and rebuke those who minded their own business. A lesson more suited to North Korea than America in my opinion.
Reporters should not be punished for being sneaky and deceptive when the public good is at stake. The news media should respect the implications of this however and not use deception and hidden cameras simply to allow the audience to indulge in cheap schadenfreude.
The reporters rigged the dilapidated tavern with hidden cameras and then staged as many code violations as they could dream up. They brought filth and maggots into the kitchen. They blocked fire exits. They draped bare electrical wire over exposed wooden beams. They sabotaged the plumbing so that all the drains emptied onto the basement floor. In short, they made sure that every code enforcement department would have something to cite them for.
As you might guess from the dateline of this story, the reporters found corrupt permit inspectors. Every single inspector in fact. The focus of the story became not that there was corruption, but how casual and routine the bribery was.
The expose’, which played out in a 25 part series, was brilliant journalism. Unfortunately, the story turned out to be as controversial as it was compelling. Many professional journalists felt that it was unethical for the reporters to misrepresent themselves. The story was eventually denied a Pulitzer Prize due to a campaign led by Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee that condemned the Sun-Times’ methods.
Is it acceptable for a reporter to misrepresent himself? Does Ben Bradlee condemn Upton Sinclair for accepting a job in a meat packing plant simply to research the conditions? Is it worth lying to catch liars? Is there an ethical way to expose unethical people?
I think the benefits of this kind of sting far outweigh the murky ethics. History has shown how effective undercover reporters can be. Sinclair’s The Jungle changed the sanitation and workplace practices of the entire meat-packing industry. Reporters aren’t supposed to sit at their desks waiting for a whistle-blower to call in; they’re supposed to chase stories and wrest the truth from the liars.
Today, television news magazines routinely employ hidden cameras and deceptive ruses to get stories. Unfortunately they seem to be influenced more by Allen Funt’s Candid Camera than Upton Sinclair.
NBC recently ran a hidden camera expose of HVAC repairmen. They rented a house with a working air conditioner and called technicians out to see if any would recommend unnecessary service or otherwise pad the bill. It’s a reasonable premise for a consumer advocacy piece, but it seemed more focused on humiliating individual technicians than investigating problems in the industry or flaws in regulating it. There was no consumer benefit other than the enjoyment of watching sleazy contractors squirm under Chris Hanson’s measured but insistent questions.
Speaking of Chris Hanson, his "To Catch A Predator" was perhaps the most notorious hidden camera, "gotcha-style" show. While child molesters are the least sympathetic creatures on Earth, it would be hard to argue that the show was anything other than entrapment for entertainment. Not to mention the ethical quagmire created by partnering with the vigilante group that lured in the suspects in and the police departments that arrested them.
ABC’s Primetime program runs semi-regular series titled "What Would You Do?" in which the producers use actors to stage bizarre little morality plays in public places. For example, cameras are set up to record two actresses, a woman and a young girl, pretending to be mother and daughter sitting in a café. The mother begins loudly and cruelly berating the daughter and cameras record how the other patrons react. Other scenarios have included a faked bicycle theft and an actress, made to look pregnant, getting drunk at a bar. After recording a few people’s reactions the show’s host steps out to congratulate the busy-bodies who engaged with the actors and rebuke those who minded their own business. A lesson more suited to North Korea than America in my opinion.
Reporters should not be punished for being sneaky and deceptive when the public good is at stake. The news media should respect the implications of this however and not use deception and hidden cameras simply to allow the audience to indulge in cheap schadenfreude.
Friday, October 14, 2011
The unofficial, de facto column about Occupy Wall Street
What is "Occupy Wall Street?" Who are these people squatting in our public parks? What do they want? And, most importantly, should we give a shit?
"Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions." That somewhat vague proclamation is taken from the website occupywallstreet.org, which boldly proclaims itself to be the "unofficial de facto online resource for the ongoing protests happening on Wall Street," (The revolution may not be televised but it will be blogged, webcasted, tweeted, and posted on Facebook.)
The website includes a document called the "Principles of Solidarity," that has a bullet point list of ideas such as "Redefining how labor is valued" and "Empowering one another against all forms of oppression." I suspect that when OWS says that they are comprised of people of "all political persuasions," they mean that they welcome both communists and Marxists.
The website also explained that they were part of the "99%" of the population that does not have as much money as the richest 1% of the country. For some reason, this crowd uniting under a banner like that reminds me of nothing so much as outlaw bikers referring to themselves as 1%-ers. And OWS has not been without its mob-like moments. They recently staged a march to picket outside of "rich peoples’" homes. There is no political objective in doing something like that, it’s just a way to threaten and intimidate people that the anonymous, faceless, leaderless OWS movement has targeted as "the enemy."
The OWS crowd, for all their rage against "the rich" seem to have blinders on when it comes to some multi-millionaires. The perpetually designer-suit-clad and bling-drenched rapper Kanye West stopped by to offer support and mug for the cameras. No one seemed interested in taking him to task for his jet-setting lifestyle.
Documentary director Michael Moore, who has been known to use tax shelters for his film profits, showed up with much fanfare, as did fellow millionaire Susan Sarandon. Oddly, the OWS people didn’t challenge them about their wealth, nor did they picket outside of Moore and Sarandon’s mansions. Apparently there is such a thing as "good rich" and "bad rich."
The Occupy Wall Street movement also likens itself to the Arab Spring. This is fatuous. The men and women in the Middle East who are defying totalitarian regimes are risking torture and death to be free of oppression. Occupy Wall Street is risking discomfort to protest that a few people have more material wealth than most.
Probably the most damning thing one could say of Occupy Wall Street however, is that they are nothing more than the flip side of the Tea Party’s coin. OWS certainly does have some parallels to the Tea Party. They’re both an angry group of people who seemed to form a movement before they formed a goal. They both complain that the mainstream media presents them unfairly. Some wags have even suggested that the natural evolution of OWS members will be to grow-up, turn conservative and eventually join the Tea Party.
The OWS protesters probably won’t turn to the Tea Party any time soon but neither will they maintain their movement. They have no clearly defined goal other than vague platitudes about economic equality and social justice. They certainly don’t have a plan for how to implement their goals. This demonstration is a fad and the onset of winter weather is going to be the end of it.
"Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions." That somewhat vague proclamation is taken from the website occupywallstreet.org, which boldly proclaims itself to be the "unofficial de facto online resource for the ongoing protests happening on Wall Street," (The revolution may not be televised but it will be blogged, webcasted, tweeted, and posted on Facebook.)
The website includes a document called the "Principles of Solidarity," that has a bullet point list of ideas such as "Redefining how labor is valued" and "Empowering one another against all forms of oppression." I suspect that when OWS says that they are comprised of people of "all political persuasions," they mean that they welcome both communists and Marxists.
The website also explained that they were part of the "99%" of the population that does not have as much money as the richest 1% of the country. For some reason, this crowd uniting under a banner like that reminds me of nothing so much as outlaw bikers referring to themselves as 1%-ers. And OWS has not been without its mob-like moments. They recently staged a march to picket outside of "rich peoples’" homes. There is no political objective in doing something like that, it’s just a way to threaten and intimidate people that the anonymous, faceless, leaderless OWS movement has targeted as "the enemy."
The OWS crowd, for all their rage against "the rich" seem to have blinders on when it comes to some multi-millionaires. The perpetually designer-suit-clad and bling-drenched rapper Kanye West stopped by to offer support and mug for the cameras. No one seemed interested in taking him to task for his jet-setting lifestyle.
Documentary director Michael Moore, who has been known to use tax shelters for his film profits, showed up with much fanfare, as did fellow millionaire Susan Sarandon. Oddly, the OWS people didn’t challenge them about their wealth, nor did they picket outside of Moore and Sarandon’s mansions. Apparently there is such a thing as "good rich" and "bad rich."
The Occupy Wall Street movement also likens itself to the Arab Spring. This is fatuous. The men and women in the Middle East who are defying totalitarian regimes are risking torture and death to be free of oppression. Occupy Wall Street is risking discomfort to protest that a few people have more material wealth than most.
Probably the most damning thing one could say of Occupy Wall Street however, is that they are nothing more than the flip side of the Tea Party’s coin. OWS certainly does have some parallels to the Tea Party. They’re both an angry group of people who seemed to form a movement before they formed a goal. They both complain that the mainstream media presents them unfairly. Some wags have even suggested that the natural evolution of OWS members will be to grow-up, turn conservative and eventually join the Tea Party.
The OWS protesters probably won’t turn to the Tea Party any time soon but neither will they maintain their movement. They have no clearly defined goal other than vague platitudes about economic equality and social justice. They certainly don’t have a plan for how to implement their goals. This demonstration is a fad and the onset of winter weather is going to be the end of it.
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