Category: Media Morals

The feverish pace of developments in Murdoch-gate stirs emotional calls for a change in how journalists do their work, and in how society restrains unethical journalists. In the days ahead politicians and others will surely take the pulse of angry citizens and then propose “solutions” to the problems that caused the scandal.

The upside of the scandal for journalism is that people will take journalism ethics seriously. There will be public scrutiny of what standards are embraced by journalists and how they are enforced.  The scandal will give new life to the old debate about media power and concentration of media.

I welcome any public debate around strengthening journalism ethics.

The downside is that public faith in journalism will take another beating. Also, both earnest folks and opportunistic politicians will use the public anger to propose wide-reaching solutions, including laws aimed directly at inhibiting journalistic investigations. Such laws may prevent journalists from doing legitimate inquiries through the use of responsible methods.

In countries without a First Amendment, such as Britain, I fear that demagogues will use the force of public opinion to push through press laws that satisfy the mood of the public at this moment.

It is easy for many people to dislike a rich and powerful press baron like Rupert Murdoch.  Power, arrogance, wealth, and a willingness to crush competitors are not attributes that inspire wide public admiration.  But discussions about media reform should look past any personal feelings toward the Murdochs, and toward media barons in general.

Our proposals must look wider to the potential impact of any laws on robust, democratic journalism in general. Any proposal must delicately balance the freedoms and ethical obligations of the press. In this media-scandal climate,  talk of balance and nuance may well be lost amid the anger directed at the Murdochs.

Therefore, I stand in the middle of things.

I welcome the renewed interest in journalism standards, and the need to revisit our codes of ethics and newsroom practices. These changes to the culture of journalism can be beneficial and, indeed, necessary. I have spent most of my career advocating for such changes and improvements. However,  I am less sanguine when talk turns to laws. I do not flinch when it comes to laws that prevent media concentration. But I do flinch, and worry, when people promote general laws on (a) what the press can say or report — the content of journalism, or (b) on how the press can gather information, argued for under the rubric of “privacy.”

So, I say, be careful for what you wish.

Let the inquriers into this scandal flourish; let all of the truth be made known; let’s debate how journalism ethics should change or be strengthened; and let’s discuss how the public can keep the press accountable. But be careful when it comes to strict press laws that would apply to any type of story or investigation.

As the old legal saw goes, laws based on examples or exceptions almost invariably result in bad law.

Rupert Murdoch’s weak appearance before a British parliamentary committee yesterday was littered with vague talk of “responsibility” and flat denials of responsibility.  Murdoch made the unpersuasive and very large claim that he is in no way responsible for the unethical and illegal acts of his employees.

In what way, though, is Murdoch responsible?

Responsibility is a key concept in ethics and law. But the concept is complex. The trouble is that there are many types of responsibility — legal, criminal, moral, etc. As well, responsibility becomes controversial when we go beyond the acts of individuals to the behaviour of people in groups and large corporations. Is the German nation as a whole, yesterday and today, responsible for the Nazis atrocities? Am I, as a Canadian, responsible for the unjustice done to Canadian natives in the past and even today?

Where long chains of command are in question, as in the army or in a global media corporation, responsibility can become diffuse. Responsibility may be spread across many levels of the organization until it seems that no one is really to blame.

The distinction between direct and indirect responsibility helps somewhat. In a chain of command, those employees who are directly connected to the irresponsible acts may be said to be directly responsible. They either committed the acts themselves or they allowed such actions to occur. Perhaps they encouraged such acts. Higher up the chain of command, division chiefs and ultimately the CEO may be said to be indirectly responsible. This is the idea that when anyone accepts a major supervisory and operational position, that person takes on an indirect responsibility for what happens on their “watch” — whether or not they knew about the questionable actions.

Military generals, heads of large organizations, heads of governments, and other people in similar roles cannot simply hold their employees to be responsible and eschew all and any responsibility for themselves. We would not accept, for example, the head of BP Oil to disown all responsibility for bad practices by his employees — practices that caused a massive oil spill. So why should the public allow the Murdochs to play a similar “get out of jail” card?

The sort of responsibility that applies to Rupert Murdoch might be called “overall operational responsibility.” Leaders of organizations, while perhaps not directly involved in the daily work of employees, are still responsible to make sure their senior officers do not allow unethical or illegal practices to happen, and to make sure that adequate monitoring systems are in place.

So, even if it were true that Rupert Murdoch did not know of certain illegal acts, or that he was surprised by how some of his journalists acted, he cannot reject all and any responsibility for what occurred at his media properties.

It is not enough for Murdoch to apologize and say how he has been humbled. He also needs to acknowledge his responsibility for this sordid scandal.

Read the analysis of the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal, as it deepens and broadens, and you will search in vain for one salient factor: the British public’s strong support for tabloid journalism and its dubious ethical practices.

Many of the public who enjoyed the content of the News of the World and the other powerful London tabloids now sit in ethical judgment of the journalists who provided them with years of titillating, salacious journalism characterized by information gathering processes that everyone has known for years were questionable. Now we know they were illegal and tended to corrupt major institutions.

The members of the public who supported this journalism bear some responsibility for its excesses. They encouraged tabloid journalists to keep crossing the ethical and legal lines until despicable acts were done in the name of “getting the story.”

This fact does not this justify unethical practices by journalists; it simply means that the public cannot self-righteously stand back and condemn the journalists. The public must also ask themselves some tough questions: If I really believe in responsible journalism, then what media should I support? What papers should I purchase? What TV news shows should I watch?

Responsible journalism requires both a responsible core of journalists and a responsible public.

The controversy swirling around the closing of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World shows, once again, the dreary truth that journalism is often a poor place to look for serious and honest ethical discussion.

Whenever journalists get caught acting unethically, as in the phone hacking scandal, we see a number of typical and unedifying responses:

1.      Circle the wagons and impute unethical motives to their critics. Point the finger elsewhere. Instead of dealing with facts, attack other people. Try to dodge ethical questions aimed at their own behavior.

2.      Claim they follow “strict standards” although they don’t.

3.      Amid well-justified public outrage against ethical abuses, argue that nothing can be done. Raise the specter that any talk of holding the press more responsible means the end of a free press. Claim that the press is perfectly capable of regulating itself and, even if it is not so capable, there is no other press system worthy of consideration.

All of these unsavory tendencies are found in the writings of journalists in England and elsewhere over the past few days.

Much of the English press has attacked British Prime Minister David Cameron for raising the valid point that the existence of a powerful press capable of paying police for information and hacking into ordinary people’s phones should cause us to ask how the press can be accountable.

The line was that only a (completely) self-regulated press can be a free press.

As usual, these journalists want to force us into a false dilemma – a free press must be almost or completely self-regulated or we have a Communist-style lapdog press.  This dualism does not hold.

The journalists who argue in this manner seem to be oblivious to the fact that “self-regulation” as the sole form of media accountability is a joke, and has been a joke for decades.  Don’t these editors get it? Telling the public “just trust us” won’t work. It hasn’t worked for years. The News of the World debacle is a crystal clear example of what happens when you rely only on the thin reed of self-regulation. How can such journalists expect the public to take their mantras of “free press” and “self-regulation” seriously while they avoid issues of media power and media corruption of major institutions?

The truth is that the journalists who make these arguments are not truly serious about ethical standards or responsible journalism. When no scandal threatens, they pour scorn on those who talk about journalism ethics, calling it an oxymoron. Then suddenly, once a scandal breaks, they try to take shelter behind the fig-leaf of ethics. They use and abuse ethical language. They talk about “standards” and make stirring appeals to a “free press”  that serves the public.

The abuse of ethical language in the case of the News of the World was a shameful act of hypocrisy. When the paper went out of business Sunday, it claimed it has insisted on tough “standards”. How could the paper say this when its practices have been for years the antithesis of journalism according to ethical standards?  Are these editors that out of touch with the public or do they talk the public to be a fool? Better for the paper to reject calls for ethical journalism and standards altogether. Some honesty, please.

The sad thing about this abuse of ethics, and the hypocritical use of ethical language, is that it makes more reasoned, nuanced discussion on the issues impossible, such as how we can build media accountability structures, or how we make ethics a stronger force in newsrooms.  It also avoids nuanced discussion of how to balance the freedom to publish with the ethical imperative to not abuse that power.

Given my recent blog about nasty partisan-fueled journalism, I am not surprised to learn that the secret taping of NPR’s chief fund raiser, Ron Schiller, was not edited with a close eye to journalism ethics.

Ha!    Of course it wasn’t.

Last week, an edited version of the tape was recorded and released by “citizen journalist” James O’Keefe, who is actually a conservative partisan using journalistic tools to embarrass political opponents.  He later released the unedited version of the tape.

O’Keefe and a colleague pretended to be members of an Islamic organization ready to give NPR $5 million dollars. Controversial comments by Schiller on conservatives and Tea Party members on the edited tape led to him leaving NPR, and eventually to the resignation of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron Schiller).

An analysis of the unedited tape by NPR, journalist Al Tompkins and — yes, this is true — an editor from Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze, found that the edited version was misleading. Among the problems was the fact that the edited version makes it seem that Schiller is laughing after hearing that the phony Islamic group wants to spread Sharia law. In truth, he was laughing at an uncontroversial remark. It doesn’t contain Schiller’s comments that donors can’t influence coverage and it edits out Schiller’s complimentary comments about growing up Republican.

I hope this warns the general public about the growth of these unethical forms of journalism. News organizations need to shine a bright and critical light on all of these so-called journalists.

It is too much to ask, I suppose, but perhaps those people who last week applauded O’Keefe as a courageous, muckraking journalists will re-think their enthusiasm. Remember that the public must be able to trust the messenger, not just the message.

The prank calls to the governors of Wisconsin and Massachusetts in recent weeks are only the tip of a journalistic iceberg coming  our way. A new era of journalism dirty tricks is fast approaching based on our polarized, partisan democratic culture.

Now we have so-called “citizen journalists” (read “political partisans”) like James O’Keefe catching NPR executive Ron Schiller on a hidden camera making unguarded and controversial comments about Tea Party members and other people.

This is “gotcha” journalism pure and simply, only this time it is being practiced not by professional journalists but by people with an explicit agenda to embarrass their political enemies — and not, by the way, to embarrass their political friends.

To the people who celebrated the decline of the power of mainstream professional journalism, I say: You ain’t seen nothing yet. You may live to pine for a return of a modicum of professional journalism standards in news media.

New technology has empowered citizens to mobilize against tyrants and to join the journalistic conversation. Terrific. Yet there is a down side. Such tools will be used increasingly for blatant political purposes and biased reporting. We are witnessing the rise of a new era of unethical journalism — if we can call it journalism — where anything goes when it comes to advancing one’s political goals. Forget minimizing harm. Forget restraining one’s freedom to publish. Forget any talk of using fair methods. The reputation of journalism will only sink lower in the minds of the public.

This new era puts pressure on responsible newsrooms to not use these methods, and to cover such journalistic practices with a critical eye — making sure they clearly explain who the so-called journalists are and the political groups they represent. In addition, citizens must become more savvy in their media literacy skills, so they are not taken in by the political biases of people who use journalism for their own purposes.

Isn’t this new era of partisanship and the joyous rejection of objectivity a wonderful thing?

Whenever civic life become divisive, news media have a special responsibility to stay cool-headed, to stand back from the fray and political posturing. News media should give citizens what they desperately need: an accessible and impartial analysis of not just the facts but also of the problem.

The current protest at our state legislature is a case in point.

As I scan media, I get much heat and argument; much emotion. I get an overwhelming amount of opinion and dueling media columnists.  Lots of pictures of people carrying signs and a daily counting (or mis-counting?) of the size of the crowd. That is part of the story. But only part of it.

What I don’t see enough of are large, well-researched articles and TV programs analyzing in detail the budget problems, and citing crucial facts that place the problem in national context. I don’t see enough fact-checking journalism into claims by all sides.  What is also missing is a cogent and easily understandable presentation of alternate budget-reducing options, drawn up by people without partisan connections.

Here is one moment when public “solutions” journalism, as it is called, could play a role in the public debate.

An engaging article by Scott Shane in Sunday’s New York Times adds context to a flurry of articles on how social media (seemingly alone) is undermining authoritarian Arab leaders. I applaud the democratic movements and admire the courage of the people in the streets; I am fascinated by their use of social media. I also am fascinated by how new forms of media are used in ways never envisaged by their creators.

But, as Shane notes, we need to take a larger view when assessing the democratic potential of new media. Shane points out that authoritarian regimes are catching up on the media revolution. Security officials are learning to use new media to track down activists and protest leaders. He notes how, in Iran, after the protests ended, the Iranian police followed the “electronic trails” left by activists. The trails helped police arrest thousands of protest participants. The Facebook site of a leading protester can be a gold mine of information on his political networks.

As Shane notes, police and security officials from Tehran to Beijing have mastered the learning curve for new media and can match the media savvy of many democracy groups. It seems that protesters in these countries need to take their media usage to a new level — finding ways to not leave electronic trails for security forces.

These are sobering facts that should temper our sometimes naive belief in the positive power of new media.

Of course, even if security forces under repressive regimes use new media to inhibit protests, there is no guarantee that this will protect a regime from protest and perhaps revolution. There are other forces than media at work, including poverty, despair about the future, long-festering resentments at the loss of basic liberties, government corruption, and so on.   True, media alone does not cause revolution. But media combined with the right economic, social and political forces can be a potent threat to any leader, anywhere.

This is one lesson we should take from the Egyptian protests.

As I have been warning, we need to separate our support for publishing the cable secrets from our support for one person, Julian Assange. This doesn’t mean that we support government attempts to bring him up on charges of espionage or to shut down WikiLeaks. It means not basing our support on the public profile of one person — a person whom we may come to personally dislike; a person whose methods we may come to question. We need to avoid acting as Assange’s cheerleaders and base our arguments on the public role (and right) of journalism in a free society to reveal secrets, so long as journalists do so in a responsible manner.

We need this separation because that we do not know how Assange will act in the future. More and more, questions are being raised even among supporters of WikiLeaks.

I am not talking about his Swedish sex charges.

I am talking about his increasingly arrogant and questionable actions, such as attacking the press who write independently about him. For example, he apparently cut the New York Times off the list of newspapers that would receive the diplomatic cables because the Times ran a tough profile of him. The Guardian newspaper in London apparently gave the Times the cables. More recently, the Times of London reported that Assange is angry at the Guardian for delving into the sex charges against him, using leaked documents! Meanwhile, stay tuned for Assange’s autobiography next year.

The battle to protect the publication of confidential documents needs to be extended far beyond the power of one man — Assange — because, frankly, I see a “train wreck” coming down the line. Happily, other sites are being established, and coalitions are being formed globally, to carry on the effort to report what governments are doing below the surface of the daily news.

As ethicist Peter Singer has argued, maybe the WikiLeaks sage, for all its twists and turns, will push — or force? — governments toward more open diplomacy.

David Carr, columnist for the New York Times, repeats a warning I have sounded — that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has a strong activist agenda combined with a lack of concern for the consequences of publishing secrets that may, in the long run, do more harm to the WikiLeaks phenomenon than government attacks. 

Carr writes that the fruitful hybrid journalism that conjoins activist hackers and mainstream newsrooms to publish the Wikileaks-supplied documents won’t be easy in the future because Assange is a “complicated partner” who does not share the values and aims of professional journalism.  For Assange, “transparency” is the “ultimate objective” to deprive illegitimate state actors the secrecy they need to continue their questionable behavior. Mainstream media do publish secret information like WikiLeaks, but they regard the state actors (or states) in question as legitimate (if imperfect) political entities that have at least some legitimate secrets.  http://nyti.ms/gLdQTk

I have said — and continue to worry — that this difference in values will soon force professional newsrooms to limit, stop, or reconsider cooperation with Assange and future Wikileaks-like web sites because of their strong activist belief that all secrets should be published — potentially harmful consequences be damned. The best way for this new trend in whistleblower journalism to continue to have widespread public support is to balance, carefully, the freedom to publish with minimizing harm to innocent third parties and individuals named in secret documents, and by making sure the information won’t assist terrorists. I simply don’t believe that this balancing act is a concern of WikiLeaks, nor do I expect it to guide any new stateless web sites.

A parting of the ways looks likely down the road, perhaps after a release of documents leads to the death of people. I  say this with concern because I support the publication of the diplomatic cables.