Should Government Sources Be Given the Right to Clear or Alter Quotes as an Interview Condition?
And so it looks like a bar is being lowered again. Should government sources be given the right to clear and alter quotes as a CONDITION for being interviewed? Once upon a time an editor would reply to such a suggestion by saying, “Yeah, right: in your dreams!” But that isn’t what is being said all the time now.
And McClatchy Newspaper’s Washington bureau has drawn a line in the sand:
To our staff and to our readers:
As you are aware, reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg and others are agreeing to give government sources the right to clear and alter quotes as a prerequisite to granting an interview.
To be clear, it is the bureau’s policy that we do not alter accurate quotes from any source. And to the fullest extent possible, we do not make deals that we will clear quotes as a condition of interviews.
With the government trying to do more of the public’s business in secret, the demands that interviews be conducted off the record is growing. While it puts us at a disadvantage, we should argue strenuously for on-the-record interviews with government officials.
When they absolutely refuse, we have only two options. First, halt the interview and attempt to find the information elsewhere. In those cases, our stories should say the official declined comment. Second, we can go ahead with the interview with the straightforward response that whatever ultimately is used will be published without change in tone, emphasis or exact language.
These days government is trying mightily to constrain access to public information. Each staffer has had no comments, demands for FOIAs that go unanswered and worse. More recently, our sources have been chilled by threats of leak investigations, and some have endured full blown leak inquiries.
As advocates of the First Amendment, we cannot be intimidated into letting the government control our work. When The New York Times agreed with Bush Administration officials to delay publication of its story of illegal wiretaps of Americans until after the 2004 election, it did the nation a great disservice. Acceding to the Obama administration’s efforts to censor our work to have it more in line with their political spin is another disservice to America.
And judging from the controversy that has ensued from the disclosure of these requests, the people don’t like this either.
If you believe there is a compelling reason for an exception to this policy, please clear it with me.
James Asher
Washington Bureau Chief
McClatchy Newspapers
Forget whether there is a Democratic or Republican administration. McClatchy is correct here: this is yet one more step in the journalistic castration of the press — a step that began with the weakening of newspapers due to changes in technology and the recession, and the decision by some politicians to avoid traditionally challenging interviews with newspapers and media outlets and instead try to talk only to ideologically friendly reporters or networks.
If many politicians and government officials had their way, a perfect world would be where they would only talk to Fox News or MSNBC (according to their party), and have all quotes cleared or edited by them first before going into news reports. So reporters would be come P.R. reps.
If the media is indeed “the fourth estate” then letting sources alter or clear quotes as a pre-condition for their agreeing to be sources will be one more step in the disintegration of the estate. Which is why the highly respected AP does not let sources alter quotes.
FOOTNOTE: When I was a reporter overseas and on newspapers in the United States I might call back a source to check a quote for accuracy. That’s not the same thing as giving a source control over the quotes.
The big question: is journalism journalism? Or is it all now going to be PR or political spin masked as what was once called journalism?
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We can call this the Putin rule. No interviews without total control of what is released.
Short version: No. Longer version: not and continue to pretend that the First Amendment is in effect. We’re not a banana republic. Yet.
As an interested citizen, I have followed this topic for about 12 years. In that time, it appears that the press has become weaker due to a combination of intense economic pressure, ownership by corporations that either don’t want to offend anyone or by corporations that are flat out politically partisan, e.g., FOX openly advocates a conservative republican agenda. Some vaunted self-described neutrals like NPR have become fairly fluffy due to pressure to keep donor and paid ad revenue coming in. The press is between a rock and a nasty hard place. If they report as they should, they will offend a fair number of viewers/listeners and advertisers. That costs money they don’t have to lose. Thus, we default to a fairly timid press barely capable of performing its function.
At the same time, the government has become overtly hostile to transparency and simple honesty in how it communicates to the public. What baffles me is that this tendency to keep information from the public is bipartisan. Nobody in government is on the public’s side on this issue. All a public official or politician has to do is say “no commment” and the press has the option to walk away or find an alternative source. Unfortunately, the press doesn’t have resource or time to find the alternative source and the information source knows that. The pressure to put something on the air forces the press to do the “news” on terms that simply do not properly serve the public interest, although its better than nothing.
We are in a situation where the government is a special interest out to protect itself and the status quo at any cost, including lying to the public, simply saying nothing or imposing rules that allow it to spin the news. Well, spun news isn’t news. Its spin.
The press is just another special interest trying to protect itself and its critical revenue streams. Special interests like business don’t ever want adverse publicity and they don’t hesitate to lie and/or conceal bad news.
What can be done about this is not clear at all. The problem is serious but supported by very wealthy and very powerful interests, both inside and out of government. What can be done in the face of that? It seems that a new approach to doing news is needed, but everything takes so much money. Maybe the Wikileaks approach is what we are going to be left with. But the issue there is that whistle blower laws afford no protection whatever, which is something I have seen up close and in person. It is as if those laws don’t even exist. This is a vexing problem indeed.
I had this big, glorious post half-written in response to the question when I saw this:
I think that says it all. Go brevity!
I read about this in 1995, McChesney predicted this day would come in america. I had hoped his book was tin foil hat. Funny how many tin foil thing hats are now commonplace.
http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Media-Threat-Democracy-Series/dp/1888363479
The general direction of our society has been predicted and warned about for decades, by writers and by various counterculture icons. Many of us who saw truth in the warnings were also of half a mind to discount them as over the top. It’s becoming more and more clear they were not so over the top afterall.
@zephyr: when 1984 ceases to be “over the top” (think Logging Preservation Act, Clean Air Act, Patriot Act) then nothing at all will surprise me. The continued evil dismays me, but it does not surprise me.
I have submitted an article to Joe that was written before I read this. It kind of sums up what I would have said here.