Reportage Medialog

Time has decided to hand over reporter Matt Cooper’s notes in the Palme affair, even though Cooper himself has indicated he is willing to go to jail rather than testify before the grand jury. Cooper yesterday said he understood that the individual journalist and the company had different obligations.

Adam Liptalk’s NYT report calls the case the “gravest legal confrontation between the press and the government in a generation”. He continues:

The announcement by a major news organization that it would disclose the identities of its confidential sources in response to a subpoena appears to be without precedent in living memory and suggests a turning point in the relationship between the press and the government. The news media have been under growing pressure and scrutiny over issues of accuracy, credibility and political bias.

The press has traditionally argued that it needs confidential sources to ensure that the public is fully informed. That interest is outweighed, recent court rulings have said, by the needs of the judicial system for evidence.

It is interesting that the commentary is turning on the differences between good corporate and good individual citizenship and the notion of protection of assets. This is seen in two quite contradictory ways as is indicated by these different legal perspectives in the NYT report:

Zachary W. Carter, a former United States attorney in Brooklyn, said that media companies and their reporters have different obligations.

James C. Goodale, a former general counsel of The Times Company and an authority on legal protections for reporters, said news organizations have sometimes claimed ownership of reporters’ notes - in order to protect them.

“It has always been thought to be beneficial to the reporter to have the institutional press on his side,” Mr. Goodale said.

Mr. Goodale added that he disagreed with Time’s decision.

“A public company must protect its assets even if that means going into contempt,” he said. “It has an obligation under the First Amendment to protect those assets, and it’s in the interest of shareholders to protect those assets.”

Time’s Editor in Chief phrases it differently in his comments to the Washington Post:

“As much as I’m a staunch defender of editorial independence, I don’t believe there’s anything in the Constitution that says journalists are above the law,” he said. “The alternative to complying would be a kind of anarchy.”

Pearlstine said, “those of us in the news business are constantly pointing fingers at others who act like they’re above the law. We can’t now assert that we are.”

The Time statement said: “We believe that the Supreme Court has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society. It may also encourage excesses by overzealous prosecutors.

“Although we shall comply with the order to turn over the subpoenaed records, we shall continue to support the protection of confidential sources,” the statement continued. “The same constitution that protects the freedom of the press requires obedience to final decisions of the courts and respect for their rulings and judgments. That Time Inc. strongly disagrees with the courts provides no immunity.”

As the NYT report indicates this is a “generational” conflict. It has as much to do with the state of the media, and the current political environment as it does with the constitutional issues involved. It is a very sobering moment.

Yesterday I said that Miller and Cooper serving jail time would immediately admit them into the pantheon of journalistic mythology. Today the story turns darker and Norman Perlstine finds himself in danger of being relegated to the hell of editorial villains.

The biggest media story at the moment is the prospect of Judith Miller from the NYT and Matt Cooper from Time going to jail for refusing to reveal their sources over the Valerie Palme incident. There are many complexities to this case but it comes down to a standard issue of journalists having the courage to protect their sources no matter what. Howard Kurtz has a good round-up of some of the key reactions. He also makes the key point that this is also a public relations issue for journalists and one that they are not necessarily winning:

In terms of public opinion, of course, this is a terrible test case for journalists. The Plame leakers are not exactly Mark Felt, and fairly or unfairly, Miller and Cooper are seen by some as protecting high officials who carried out a tawdry act of revenge. Their response is that journalists must keep their word when making a pledge of confidentiality and can’t pick and choose according to how sympathetic the sources are. But this remains a tough sell, PR-wise, even though neither of them would be in this situation had Novak not published the leak. And the general public dissatisfaction with journalists using so many unnamed sources, which some major news outlets are now trying to reduce, doesn’t help.

One of the ironies of this story is that this is not the first time that Judith Miller has got herself into trouble trusting sources. She was a key culprit in the NYT’s coverage of the WMD issue and her mistakes largely resulted from her not properly scrutinising the reliability and secondary motives of her Iraqi sources. For a good over view of Miller’s career and an analysis of her role in the WMD saga see here. She copped a lot of flak for her WMD reports but if she sticks to her guns and does jail time she will win the ultimate journo brownie points and her heroic stand will become part of the standing mythology of American journalism while the WMD incident will probably fade into the half remembered past.

The Washington Post’s report of a Bush press conference reports the president absolutely on-message with his chorus of “we will not surrender”. It begins:

President Bush said yesterday that “cold-blooded” killers will fail in their attempt to drive the United States out of Iraq prematurely, as he defended the administration’s war strategy and its policies for secretly detaining hundreds of alleged terrorists around the world.

But the war strategy is not really the subject of the report. As with much political reporting it is a fascinating mix of obsequious stenography, adversarial murmurs and transparent reflection on political process. The key paragraph is not about what is happening in Iraq it is about what is happening in Washington:

The president’s short-term solution to ease the public anxiety is to spend more time talking about the mission and his vision for victory, aides say.

While this seems to carry an implicit criticism, the demands of objective journalism demands that the journalists give him a platform to do exactly that.

The press conference was held after Bush met with a delegation from the European Union and the report moves back and forth between issues relating to the war and issues such as world poverty discussed with the delegation. The final question concerns Guantanamo Bay.

Pressed by a European reporter, Bush showed no signs of backing away from his policy of detaining alleged terrorists at a U.S. military installation in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at secret facilities in other countries. “The fundamental question facing our government is, what do you do with these people?” he said. Bush, who recently raised the possibility of shutting down the prison in Cuba, shifted gears somewhat yesterday when he staunchly defended the detention center and repeatedly urged reporters to view conditions there firsthand.

“We want to learn as much as we can in this new kind of war about the intention, and about the methods, and about how these people operate,” Bush said. “And they’re dangerous, and they’re still around, and they’ll kill in a moment’s notice.”

It is of course instructive that it was a “European reporter” who asked the question. But what is equally instructive is that the report ends just as it began with choice examples of Bush’s dehumanising rhetoric which is undoubtedly a key part of his “short-term solution to ease the public anxiety”.

The report’s lead opens with reference to “cold-blooded killers” and wraps with “these people” who will “kill in a moment’s notice.” Both statements are rhetorically strong and have a natural attraction as “lead” material but the continual reporting of these kind of statements ends up giving Bush a free ride.

It could be argued that the reporter by foregrounding the strategy issue and by noting that Bush is facing criticism has done his best to temper the statements. But in this “new kind of war” where politicians are deft at delivering rhetoric rather than content journalism needs to rethink its rules of engagement.

Reuters.com reports on a new survey which confirms earlier surveys about the move towards online news readership. I suspect the figures for Australia would be reasonably consistent:

Nearly one-fifth of Web users who read newspapers now prefer online to offline editions, according to a new study from Internet audience measurement company Nielsen//NetRatings.

The first-time study from Nielsen//NetRatings found that 21 percent of those Web users now primarily use online versions of newspapers, while 72 percent still read print editions.

The remaining 7 percent split their time between online and offline editions. Comparable historic statistics were not available.

“A significant percentage of newspaper readers have transferred their preference from print to online editions,” said Nielsen//NetRatings senior media analyst Gerry Davidson.

Interestingly it is still the big newspaper sites like NYT and USA Today which top the list of most visited sites. I wonder if this allegiance will drift towards the aggregated sites like Google News over time.

Interesting point about the use of anonymous sources across disciplines, from a post-deep-throat analysis by the Houston Chronicle’s Craig Hines:

At a recent National Press Club forum on the use of anonymous sources, Mark Feldstein, a former investigative reporter who is now director of the journalism program at George Washington University, pointed out journalists are not unique in sometimes relying on anonymous sources. He cited police and anthropologists.

“Transparency is always better,” Feldstein said. That desired condition reaches its journalistic apogee when an accurate source is named and fully identified. But use of anonymous sources is “a perfectly legitimate methodology,” Feldstein said. The question is, he added, how are such sources used.

Citizen Journalism is becoming a buzz word particularly in the blogsphere. It has its pedigree in the more formal theories of “public/civic journalism” but the two terms have now become almost synonymous in public usage.

Steve Outing on Poynter has just posted a very good description of the different kinds of citizen journalist projects that are currently being undertaken. What is fascinating is the diversity of projects and the fact that many mainstream media organisations in the US are experimenting with either ad-on or stand alone citizen journalism projects.

Dan Gilmour, technology blogger and author of book We Media, has been one of the key promoters of these new ideas. His whole book is online and is worth looking at. Here is one key section from the introductory chapter:

In The Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel take a similar view: “This kind of high-tech interaction is a journalism that resembles conversation again, much like the original journalism occurring in the publick houses and coffeehouses four hundred years ago. Seen in this light, journalism’s function is not fundamentally changed by the digital age. The techniques may be different, but the underlying principles are the same.”

What is emerging is a new media ecosystem, where online communities discuss and extend the stories created by mainstream media. These communities also produce participatory journalism, grassroots reporting, annotative reporting, commentary and fact-checking, which the mainstream media feed upon, developing them as a pool of tips, sources and story ideas.

Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon.com, explains, “Weblogs expand the media universe. They are a media life-form that is native to the Web, and they add something new to our mix, something valuable, something that couldn’t have existed before the Web.

Gilmour describes the key principles of citizen journalism as:

• My readers know more than I do.

• That is not a threat, but rather an opportunity.

• We can use this together to create something between a seminar and a conversation, educating all of us.

• Interactivity and communications technology in the form of email, weblogs, discussion boards, websites and more make it happen

It is interesting that smh.com is adding more regular blogs from various journalists. However only Margo Kingston’s webdiary could be considered an example of citizen journalism. Webdiary is in fact a pioneer of this kind of journalism and Margo has an incredible commitment to working directly with her readers - many not at all of her own political persuasion - to engender real participatory discussion.

Louise Krasniewicz, an American media anthropologist gave a fascinating keynote at the recent Melbourne University Superheroes conference Titled “True Lies Superhero: Do we really want our icons to come to life?” it rehearsed many of the themes from her great book Why Arnold Matters? She has been studying Schwarzenegger as a cultural icon for over 20 years and has some fascinating insights into his recent emergence as politician. (For more information check out her Arnie hypertext project).

She made the point that even the serious media was obsessed with merging the movie characters Arnold has played, his movie star persona and his emergence as a politician in coverage of his campaign in the Californian recall election. They did this by relying on easy recourse to “Governator” imagery and commentary. This is still the case, as she showed with a recent clip from a California daily on the governor’s falling poll ratings. After 12 months in office this story - which has nothing to do with movie star Arnold - is still illustrated by a Terminator still.

An article in this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald showed this very clearly and even imposes the action man figure into local NSW politics.

What can NSW learn from Arnold Schwarzenegger? When it comes to energy it may be a fair bit. After booting out the Democrat governor Gray Davis for taking California’s energy system to near collapse, The Governator stormed in and has begun the essential rebuilding of the state’s electricity system….With the focus and vigour of his most famous screen character, Schwarzenegger recently made public a 10-point plan for a modern 21st century energy system. Some in the old guard urged him to focus only on supply oriented alternatives for keeping the lights on in the country’s biggest state. However, his plan relies on a combination of new and old, of supply and demand.

The story is actually about the success of sophisticated multiple rate devices which encourage consumers to use cheaper energy during off peak periods but what is fascinating about the piece is the portrayal of governor Schwarzenegger as an action hero: it’s all about his kinesthetic body: he “booted out” Gray Davis then he “stormed in” and started “rebuilding”. The inescapable paradox of this language comes in the next sentence which explicitly references “the focus and vigour of his most famous screen character”. What was the result of this Terminator like vigour: a ten point plan, which is not an action response but a typical bureaucratic response. So while we are treated to an image of the heroic Schwarzenegger doing something new this action sequence masks his actual response which is typically cautious and orderly.

The other fascinating thing is that this op-ed piece is written by someone who has an interesting pedigree herself: “Cathy Zoi is group executive director of Bayard Capital, a private investment group. She was previously chief executive of the NSW Sustainable Energy Development Authority and chief of staff of Environmental Policy in the Clinton White House.” The Bayard group is now running a trial of the metering devices in NSW. So while this is situated as an op-ed piece on policy options from a former government policy advisor it is essentially using the Arnie factor as a celebrity endorsement for a scheme her company hopes to convince the NSW government to take-up.

Both Zoi’s position with the group and Bayard’s involvement in NSW are mentioned in the article and the connection is there to be made by careful readers. But like the contradiction between the imagery of the governator and the reality of his political actions, the blur between Zoi as policy wonk and policy salesperson are also blurred by this kind of journalism

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz on Deep Throat and Shallow Journalism:

The revelation also serves as a reminder that sources may have complicated motives for whispering to the press. Felt may have worried about the FBI’s integrity but he also may have been resentful, as the bureau’s No. 2 official, at being passed over for the top job, and according to Woodward he came to detest the Nixon White House. Inside sources rarely have clean hands.

Three decades later, the use and abuse of unnamed sources is rampant, especially in Washington, and the media all too often protect those with partisan agendas. It’s a long road from Felt telling Woodward to “follow the money” to a Bush adviser telling the New York Times that John Kerry “looks French.” But such potshots have become routine in daily reporting.

The CJR daily blog makes an interesting comment on the way the revelation of Deep Throat has been covered in the blogsphere:

Comment on the story in the ’sphere is, well, lackluster overall — perhaps not a surprise given that it happened before 2001, which seems about the outer limit of many bloggers’ institutional memory. The Don Wood Files sticks close to the big, fat yawn meme by commenting that “Hal Holbrooke played Deep Throat in the great movie ‘All the President’s Men,’” and noting that both Holbrooke and Felt had “great hair.”

However there has been some excitement amongst the younger generation. The Washington Post reported on a very excited 17 year old who lives in Mark Felt’s street who was very excited:

“I was, like, ahhh! I just screamed. I don’t know, it’s just something I’m excited about. People think I’m crazy. I am into music and movies, but, I mean, history is my thing.”

And here it is, “history!,” right on Redford Place, just a few blocks from her home. She wanted Felt’s autograph in her copy of “All the President’s Men.” She would knock on the door and say, “Hi. My name is Laci Moore. I’m an AP student from Piner High School and I’ve been studying Watergate.”

And she did it, though to no avail. Felt’s grandson told her to come back after all of the hullabaloo had died down.

David Brooks on the NYT op-ed page has a very strange self-helpish approach to the whole story focusing on the Woodward’s account of his first meeting with Felt and reading it as: nervous young man overcomes shyness to achieve great things.

For that is the purpose of Watergate in today’s culture. It isn’t about Nixon and the cover-up anymore. It’s about Woodward and Bernstein. Watergate has become a modern Horatio Alger story, a real-life fairy tale, an inspiring ode for mediacentric college types - about the two young men who found exciting and challenging jobs, who slew the dragon, who became rich and famous by doing good and who were played by Redford and Hoffman in the movie version.

Woodward was nervous once, like you.

I think older people and journocentric media junkies overestimate the way the myth plays today. I showed some scenes from All the President’s Men in a recent class of journalism students and only a handful of them had ever seen the film in spite of its supposed importance and ready availability on DVD.

I think there is a lot still to unpack about the Watergate myth. It is definitely still a touchstone moment that students bring up in class from time to time. Sometimes it is alluded to as part of a why-journalism-matters discussion but more often it is used in defense of anonymous sources. When talking about sources students usually have no idea about the relatively rigorous way anonymous sourcing was confirmed by the Post.

Michael Schudson’s analysis in Watergate and American Memory is still one of the best. He argues that there is a myth off Watergate in journalism and a myth of journalism in Watergate. He convincingly critiques the myth of journalism created by Watergate. He asks three critical questions:

• Did the press as a whole act courageously to keep power in check?
• Was the press unaided in its campaign against the evils of Watergate?
• Was the press unbiased and driven only by the public good?

His answer to each of these questions is a reasonably convincing no: The Post and a few other papers largely acted alone; it was really the courts and Senate that brought Nixon down and there were plenty of other motivations such as a general climate of press antagonism to Nixon and rivalry between the Post and the Times which at least in part motivated the reporting.

However he concludes that this in some sense doesn’t matter:

It does not matter because the Watergate myth is sustaining. It survives to a large extent impervious to critique. It offers journalism a charter, a reason for being large enough to justify the constitutional protections that journalism enjoys…While a tradition of muckraking precedes Watergate, Watergate gave it flesh and blood (Woodward and Bernstein) as well as an unforgettable knock-out-punch triumph (Nixon’s resignation) however unfairly attributed to journalism…Watergate, at least retrospectively, could be widely accepted as a triumph not only of American journalism but of the American system of a free press.

Schudson wrote this in 1993, and in the light of other mythical events in journalism post September 11 Schudson’s strident tone seems questionable. The power of the myth has been blunted by recent events such as the weapon’s of mass destruction fiasco and the constitutional protections of American journalism seem less and less secure.

Interesting op-ed piece by Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in the Miami Herald (free registration required) about the ongoing plagiarism controversies in US journalism. He makes the interesting point that one form of serioous intellectual theft that is often unacknowledged is institutional:

Respect for precedence — acknowledging work that preceded and materially contributed to your own — gives us a handle on the worst form of intellectual theft in journalism, which is practiced not by individuals but by institutions. It’s when whole stories reported by smaller organizations are appropriated, re-reported and published by market-dominant media, which never mention who broke them.

Here, I think the public suffers. How important information comes to light is itself important information. If lesser news outfits ferret out hard-to-get scoops we should know that. We might support smaller media more generously, and the upshot would be stronger, richer and more-diverse information sources.

And just so I can post this with a clear conscience I got the link from the always interesting Daily Briefing on Journalism.org!