MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Media ethics and transparency By Felix Salmon
By EmmaZahn on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 4:34pm |
What would ethics look like in a world which is messier and more transparent? For one thing, we would spend less effort ring-fencing journalists’ lives and conflicts, and more time simply being open about them. The end result could actually be a significant improvement.
The reason is that the single biggest problem, when it comes to journalistic bias, has nothing to do with journalists owning stock in companies, or being paid speaking fees. (Although with speaking fees, a simple would-you-be-happy-being-transparent-about-this test is often a very good place to start.) Rather, by far the most common way in which journalists are captured by corporate interests is precisely the same way that journalists get scoops: source cultivation.
Journalists don’t always have sex with their sources, but when you’re having long and often boozy meetings with people, it’s statistically inevitable that many journalists are going to end up liking some subset of those people. After all, sources aren’t necessarily bad or evil: some of them are very good, very charming people. And often journalists end up working incredibly closely with sources for weeks or months on end as stories progress. Sometimes, that work becomes formalized: after Gretchen Morgenson used Josh Rosner as a source during much of the financial crisis, she then co-authored a book with him. Other times, the source ends up marrying the journalist: think Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell.
But most of the time, it’s not nearly as obvious as that. Especially when it comes to background dinners with no particular agenda, a lot of what’s going on is a complex game of two people trying to get comfortable with trusting each other. That trust needs to be built up over time, and building it up takes a substantial amount of effort. It can be hard to distinguish, sometimes, from friendship. And if the journalist writes something bad about the source or the source’s company, the whole relationship can be jeopardized.
URL:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/11/media-ethics-and-transparency/
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