Good Journalism? (Rant)

[mishalak]

How do journalists manage to say with straight faces that uncritically relaying "leaks" on behalf of institutions is critical to a free press acting as society's watchdog upon those same institutions? Do they honestly believe that it is the same thing to parrot the information given to them as part of unofficial policy of an organization as it is to receive information from whistleblowers wanting to call attention to unethical or illegal behavior on the part of an organization that person is a part of? And what of if that very act of conveying the information is not only a crime but also morally wrong? It is one thing to illegally publish the classified the Pentagon Papers to show that the government is lying about a war situation to the public and quite another to be used as a tool of petty revenge/discrediting which is apparently the case with the CIA agent leak situation which prompted this rant. Yet reporters can't seem to see the difference and are intent upon creating a new right, reporter source confidentiality, that will stand in all cases no matter unlike those much more limited privileges that involve mere doctors or lawyers. Is it any wonder that the public has little respect for them?

Comments

[golddustdreams.livejournal.com]

This post really makes me doubt my reading ability.

I read it four times and still can't connect everything you're saying.

How smart I feel!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I don't think excessive claims of confidentiality are the big issue. Part of it is the habit of asking people how they feel right after major tragedies. (I've heard claims that journalists don't do that any more--I don't know whether they've really cut back.) Another (and perhaps larger) part is a decade or so of complaints about the liberal press. A third (but probably smallish for the general public) is that journalists are apt to get the facts wrong.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

My biggest complaint is that the press reports what one side's press releases say and then reports what another side's press releases say and calls that good journalism. I'd like something a lot meatier than reporting on what two side's opinions are in my news. And yes the bleeding lead thing annoys me as well with the pile on to endlessly reporting that they have nothing to report.

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

But how do you know, at the time, if you are parroting or uncovering? Even more so given that different people have different views, suppose that you felt the liberal press was making excuses for Saddam and the "no yellowcake" report was part of that?

And morally wrong? Some would say that publishing the Pentagon Papers was morally wrong. It's the sort of stuff that gets sorted out, if we're lucky, decades after the events.

Every interview with a newsperson or boffin of journalism that I've heard included a statement that protecting someone guilty of a crime shouldn't fall under nondisclosure protection; several also pointed out that there is a judgment call there, what if the 'crime' was a tool of convenience for putting away critics of the state - in which case shielding the source, in their opinion, would not be shielding a criminal.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

How to express this? Administration people talking off the record or asking not to be named so they can get information out in a deniable way isn't good for democracy contrary to what reporters claim. And it is contrary or else groups like the Committee of Concerned Journalists isn't a group that should be quoted in new stories about the subject. All in all reporting has become sloppy even when reporting on themselves. They don't report facts, they just report what people with different points of view are saying. Bah.