Rupert Murdoch has a way with news

Carl Bernstein, investigative reporter of Watergate fame, and Roger Cohen of the New York Times debate the media legacy of Rupert Murdoch in the wake of the News of the World implosion. Bernstein begins ...
 Has Rupert Murdoch changed the news of the world? by KCRW

Fox News and the impartial partisans

Want to see what happens when a news operation drops impartiality as the framework for gathering and disseminating information? Look at how Fox News decided to frame the health care debate. Howard Kurtz has the report at the Daily Beast - the piece starts with Republican pollster Frank Luntz coaching Fox host Sean Hannity on the right words to use:

“If you call it a public option, the American people are split,” [Luntz] explained. “If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it."

“A great point,” Hannity declared. “And from now on, I'm going to call it the government option, because that's what it is.”

On Oct. 27, the day after Senate Democrats introduced a bill with a public insurance option from which states could opt out, Bill Sammon, a Fox News vice president and Washington managing editor, sent the staff a memo. Sammon is a former Washington Times reporter.

“Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance,’ or, when brevity is a concern, ‘government option,’ whenever possible,” the memo said.

Sammon acknowledged that the phrase "public option" was “firmly ensconced in the nation’s lexicon,” so when it was necessary to use it, he wrote, add the qualifier “so-called,” as in “the so-called public option.” And “here’s another way to phrase it: ‘The public option, which is the government-run plan.’”

Advocacy organizations like Fox News deny their partisan framing all the while claiming to be impartial, and blaming all the media that isn't conservative-leaning of having a liberal bias. In this case, "public option" is also a partisan framing preferred by supporters of the plan. Had Fox health care reporters come up with a way to describe the plan based on their own reporting, they might have called it "government-run." Instead, they borrowed the phrase most favorable to the Republican position. That's what happens when journalists claim the mantle of impartiality without actually practicing impartiality.

(found via LA Observed)

The objectivity canard (updated)

Alan Mutter is a smart man and I agree with much of what he writes. But in a recent blog post, which can be read here, he concedes an argument at the expense of a form of traditional journalism that needs defending (and explaining).

Here's the key line:

It’s time to retire the difficult-to-achieve and impossible-to-defend conceit that journalists are now, or ever were, objective.

The problem here is that "objective journalism" is a straw man that's almost always propped up to be attacked by those who want to do away with a much more defensible practice. (Mutter's ultimate conclusion in the blog post is that journalists should be more transparent, which I sort of agree with, but its an argument that should be made separate from the "objectivity" debate, and not offered as a concession.)

So, let me first agree with two things: Journalists are not objective and objectivity is an unattainable goal. The "objective journalist" is an oversimplified symbol championed by greedy publishers that's supposed to represent the practice of impartial journalism. So let's kill the oversimplified symbol and actually defend the practice.

News reporters who know what they're doing are not striving for the personal perfection of being "objective" - which is chasing rainbows. Instead, they are using techniques and editorial oversight to create an impartial framework that gives one as broad a view of a potential story as possible. It's a practice aimed at avoiding the advocate's framework, which offers a more limited view of what constitutes a story precisely because it wants to accomplish a specific goal.

Impartial journalism is a discipline that, when done right, enables journalists to gather information from a wide variety of perspectives and sources. By avoiding advocacy, a journalist gains access to different sides of a debate, and often to people who are affected by issues who aren't advocating anything. Sources are more likely to speak about their goals rather than waste time trying to convince the interviewer. The reporter is able to hear facts that stray outside one's experience and preconceptions, and so can find stories that don't conform to ready-made agendas. 

It's a process that tries to strip out opinions that obscure or color facts, which, in turn, rob readers of the ability to draw reasonable conclusions. It's a process designed to work against our natural impulse to develop a point of view. This is artifice, which is why it is sometimes hard to defend to people who don't practice journalism. But it's a discipline that a reporter learns through practice; the guidance of editors; the reactions of readers and sources; successes, and mistakes.

It's not a faith-based profession: believe in "objectivity" and it will come.

The impartial framework is designed to keep reporters from adopting the framework of partisans and advocates. It's why partisans and advocates are so dismissive of impartiality, and why they welcome advocacy journalism in place of "objectivity" - they have plenty of points of view ready-made for journalists to adopt or get in a debate over.

 There are limits to impartial journalism, of course. Plenty of reporters mistake it as some form of balancing doctrine - that all sides get equal representation. Plenty of reporters also use the cloak of impartiality to avoid asking tough questions or to be downright lazy. Bad journalism is bad journalism.

Also, a defense of impartial journalism should not be construed as a rejection of advocacy journalism. In fact, the advocates could be doing a better job right now - where are the Hunter Thompsons? But our need for sober, cynical, skeptical voices does not mean we should not shout down the impartial ones - we should figure out how better to use impartial reporters and defend their usefulness. We need reporters who remain open to stories outside their realm of belief, who search for facts and sources that fall outside of their agenda bubbles and emotional attachments. We need to let the narrative unfold through observation, rather than through our personal context or connection. One can still draw conclusions, call out bullshit, challenge authority and avoid manipulation while practicing impartial journalism.

Here's a little more from Mutter:

Unsettling as the punditization of the news may be to old-school journalists, there is a powerful cultural reason why Fox, Jon Stewart and other news-with-a-view productions have caught on: Consumers are so overloaded with information that they want someone to tell them what it means.

Fox, Jon Stewart and others do give consumers a point of view that helps them feel they can make sense of the world. But these outlets also depend on impartial journalism so that they can form their commentary and opinions. And impartial journalists will push back against the comforting idea that our point of view is the right one, or that complicated and frightening world events can be made digestible before bedtime. Indeed, impartial journalists are not competing with Jon Stewart or Fox (though their employers probably are), and we should all be thankful that they're willing to be unsettling.

Basically, I say defend impartial journalism, not as the only form, but as a necessary one. And stop asking what the extinction of the unicorn means.

Just how many journalists are out there?

The implosion of daily newspapers, the largest employer of professional journalists, has left behind a river of unemployed bodies, the victims of layoffs, downsizing, buyouts, attrition, and whatever else got people off the shrinking payrolls.

But the expansion of non-traditional media has, even in this down economy, offered some opportunities for transition into journalism jobs of a different sort. For example, public radio and nonprofits are expanding, though at a slow pace, offering some former daily reporters and editors new homes. Online sites, from AOL's Patch to the Daily Beast, are giving writers of varying experience a chance to resettle.

The quality of journalism from the new and expanding media is mixed, but then so was the quality of many newspapers. Nonetheless, it's hard to evaluate, in the middle of a massive upheaval, whether "good" journalism will thrive - especially since there's increasingly loud disagreement about what constitutes "good" journalism.

But for those tracking the numbers, Ken Doctor has a roundup of the jobs lost and jobs gained in recent years, which might give us a little a blurry idea of where things are headed. It's still an ugly picture for anyone out of work (or at a bad paper) who's uncomfortable with opinionizing, taking a pay cut, and for whom editing down video of a community meeting is torture. But some green shoots (a godawful phrase) are appearing.

Fowler wanted to get paid to do her job

Mayhill Fowler got a lot of attention for herself and for Huffington Post when she quoted then-candidate Barack Obama saying that some folk cling to their guns and religion. But HuffPo never hired her as one of its paid reporters, choosing instead to offer her a "platform" in lieu of real money. So she's quitting as loudly as she can.

Here's part of her parting shot:

The Huffington Post business model is to provide a platform for 6,000 opinionators to hold forth. Point of view is cheap. I would never expect to be paid there when the other 5,999 are not. However, the journalism pieces I have done in the past year seem to me as good as anything HuffPost’s paid reporters Sam Stein and Ryan Grim produce. Why do they get money, and I do not? I don’t recall either of them writing the story about Barack Obama waxing large on “clinging to guns and religion,” which seems more and more as time goes by to be the one big story out of the last presidential election to live on. Or at least it is the one that journalists and pundits are quoting regularly now. ... 

 She continues on at length before getting to founder Arianna Huffington:

Don’t get me wrong.  Arianna has many wonderful qualities.  I especially admire her wit and her continual reinvention of herself, in that classic American (especially immigrant American) way.  But she is also the quintessential opportunist.  And I cannot help but feel that, at the end of the day, as I thought I was proving myself to her to be worthy of journalism, she on her part was milking me for everything she could get before letting me go.

 (found via LA Observed)

Rooting out the "undermedia"

Media watchers have produced one-week-after reflections on the two Big Stories that surfaced out of the conservative's activist media: Andrew Breitbart's take down of a USDA employee on a bogus charge of reverse racism and Tucker Carlson's attempt to expose a liberal media cabal by publishing the musing of self-identified liberal commentators.

David Carr describes the stories as "provocateur" journalism, a radicalized form of the advocacy journalism practiced by more traditional media:

As content providers increasingly hack their own route to an audience, it’s becoming clear that many are less interested in covering the game than tilting the field.

Carr's colleague at the New York Times, Brian Stelter, writes about an "undermedia" (a Breitbart term) that pushes stories meant to reinforce and amplify a set of beliefs, or fears, rather than to test conventional wisdom. Thus, Breitbart runs a false story because he sees his job as constructing a conservative narrative, not chasing down facts.

Breitbart told Stelter:

"It’s my business model to craft strategies to make sure that the mainstream media is forced to reckon with stories that it would love to ignore because it doesn’t fit their narrative."

Breitbart and Carlson desperately want us to treat news as a series of competing partisan narratives. It is an effective way of neutering facts that contradict one's own views and emboldens like-minded thinkers to ignore any argument that support the other side. It tells readers that they have a choice of ideologies, and that they must identify with one or the other, and in doing so deprives them of the facts they need to evaluate these partisan narratives for what they are: the tools of the entrenched to manipulate votes. Breitbart's folly, a result of giddy over-eagerness, hopefully pulls back the curtain.

Ask them if they want to buy an ad while you're at it...

Some media critics have never liked the idea that newspapers insulate their newsrooms from the business side of the operation. In the critic's mind, this unnatural division has created rooms full of dreamy, soft-headed writers and editors who, in their veal-like state, simply don't get the pressures real people (such as publishers and ad managers) face in the real world - as though prohibiting reporters from taking story ideas from the advertising staff makes them unable to comprehend where the money for paychecks come from.

Of course, journalists are no more ignorant about, or insensitive to, financial issues than anyone else who doesn't make enough money to have a mortgage or a diversified stock portfolio. It's not the line drawn around advertising that keeps journalists in the dark, it's insufficient salaries. If journalists aren't watching the market, it's because they can't afford to be in it.

But even that is a stereotype - one that holds truer for younger reporters; not so much for veterans who cover complicated financial matters, from area real estate and business deals to government budgets and pension funds.

Which is why the argument, made by some media watchers, that removing the wall separating business and news we will create an entrepreneurial journalists better able to hopscotch through the fractured mediascape, and keep their own publications thriving, is complete nonsense. Unemployment and shifting opportunities will inspire the so-called "entrepreneurial" journalist. But no reporter benefits from learning how to tie stories to big ad buys, or write compelling advertorials, or keep the "important people" happy. This isn't going to remake journalism more authentic or more valuable.

One way newspapers are accelerating the business-editorial mashup is to employ editor-publisher hybrids. Already big in MediaNews Group's LANG chain, the role seems to be catching on and is likely to trickle own the management ladder.

Michael Sigman at Huffington Post writes about some of the predictable consequences when business and editorial freely mix. His examples, including the recent Los Angeles Times' "Despicable" ad wrap and a firing at the Chicago Reader, drive home the point that when the wall is removed, only one side compromise and only one side benefits.

If publications want to blow up the boxes and rewrite the standards by which they operate, then by all means experiment - honestly and transparently - and see how readers react. But don't rationalize that it's going to lead to better coverage. Shifting/blurring the line is simply shifty/blurry ethics.

Agenda journalism

In an earlier post, I stated my opinion that the Dave Weigel affair is less interesting for what it says about Weigel and the Washington Post than what it says about the inevitable celebrification of bloggers. But Joshua Benton at Nieman Journalism Lab points out that, in this case, it may be more about the role raw partisan agendas increasingly play in America's newsrooms.

Benton read through Weigel's account of his firing from the Post and picked up on the fact that Weigel is part of a class of reporters who entered journalism through internships paid by ideological groups - in Weigel's case, the Collegiate Network.

Benton writes:

I was familiar with the Collegiate Network from my own college days; it funded a conservative publication on campus, and that’s what I thought the extent of their work was. But I didn’t realize that it also pays for journalists to work at mainstream news organizations.

-snip-


The Collegiate Network describes these jobs as year-long fellowships, with stipends of $24,000 to $30,000 paid by CN, and along with USA Today lists Roll Call among outlets where it’s placed journalists. Their Wikipedia page also lists a wide variety of conservative publications and outlets, but also US News & World Report. The application form also lists the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the News & Observer, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and my old paper The Dallas Morning News — although that form doesn’t differentiate between summer internships and the year-long fellowships. And based on this post, fellows aren’t just on the editorial board — they’re also writing news stories.