The best, concise short take I have seen on the issue of journalistic lack of integrity is HERE. Rather than recap it, visit it yourself.
Journalistic integrity is an issue that goes back to the glory days of the old media and is becoming a major one now on several fronts in the new media — even as the new media tries to use it against the old media. And it’s coming into play now on several stories that have fired up the always-need-to-be-fired-up-blogosphere which then ignited mainstream media coverage.
The traditional concept is that some people will do “anything for a story” — a concept that now is “anything to do a blog post” with a political motive. I was told by all of my editors who I wrote or worked for to never to misrepresent myself, to make sure off the record was indeed off the record and not for attribution was not for attribution. When I was overseas freelancing, before I worked on newspapers in Wichita and San Diego, I lived in New Delhi and Madrid where many of my “analysts say” were government officials, party officials or diplomats of several embassies, particularly the U.S. embassy (and my interactions with them made me admire diplomats greatly for their intelligence, perception and professionalism). Most talked not for attribution directly and some gave me good off the record info which helped guide me in future reporting.
I ran into several glaring examples of a lack of integrity such as the one in the link above — where someone said one thing to me to try and get me to participate or get information on me and it turned out to be a lie or what they produced turned out to be presented in a way that was a partial lie:
1. When I was in India, a stringer for a major American television network in New Delhi was leaving. He told me he recommended me to his boss who wanted me to drop him a note explaining what I had done so far (actually stringer for The Chicago Daily News which ran several long and short stories of mine a week with my name and the title “Chicago Daily News Foreign Service”). So I wrote to him specifically saying that above all I wanted to avoid cliche reporting such as ones that falsely suggested that all people in India lived in huts, there were millions of sacred cows on the street eating up food that people could eat and that a huge chunk of India was starving. I got back a letter — no joke — saying that they wanted me for my first assignment to get some tape of cows mooing in the background, find some academics or experts who can tell me in taped interviews that the cows are eating up food that could be used for people — and not to do a voice over or edit but to send the tapes and any information to them since it would be written and voiced over in New York then put on a network radio broadcast.
How did I respond? I simply was dumbfounded and never responded but passed on that career opportunity (but I later did some radio reports from Madrid for NPR, which did not play games) and focused on my print pieces. (I gave that network bigwig’s letter to an academic).
2. A radio station from Europe called me in my other incarnation as an entertainer and asked me to do some voices like used in my show with some jokes on an interview segment on their radio show because “there are some extremely kids in a hospital nearby and we want them to hear you and address them.” I agreed, not doing it for any fame (I don’t do shows in Europe) or fortune (this was just another radio interview). Once the interview started by his comments and what he wanted me to say after a while — with me saying this would not sound good and just sounded ridiculous — I realized it was to tape me and present it as kind of a Borat audio clip as if I had just offered this up out of the blue. I hung up after a minute and a half or so. It still galls me that he used the ruse of me helping sick kids to try and get a piece of tape that for his show. The story in effect was written by the show in advance and I was there to give them the raw material for the segment.
3. A network in my other incarnation more than 10 years ago wanted to do a feature on Chuck Jackson, the person who made my wooden ventriloquist dummies. They sent a field producer who interviewed me for 30 minutes and insisted on coming to a show I was going to do at a comedy night, in a small family restaurant in Chula Vista, about 30 miles from the border. Chula Vista is an up and coming San Diego County city. The restaurant was small and when I came in the lights were dimly lit. When the show began the owner wanted to turn the lights on. “No, leave they are!” the field reporter said. The owner was puzzled because without the other lights you could not see the performers as well and you could see the nice room or stage.
The feature on Chuck as aired began by showing me and the character and then a voice saying “What you see is a dummy working a room in a dimly lit nightclub in a California border town. It makes you wonder: What’s a nice dummy doing in a place like this?” The reporter did not use one word of my long interview. His report misrepresented the location (Chula Vista is not really a border town but is not far from the border: San Ysidro is a border town, Mexicali is a border town), the venue (a family restaurant not a nightclub) and it was only dimly lit and looked like a seedy place because HE ASKED THAT THE LIGHTS NOT BE TURNED ON. This lede to an otherwise good feature was in effect written by the field producer in advance.
4. A liberal talk show host on an Air America station in San Diego invited me on because in those days I sent out links to various talk show hosts. I had interviewed this person years ago when I was a reporter on the San Diego Union, which had a conservative editorial page that had nothing to do with news gathering operations (those who insist the two are merged on most newspapers a)don’t know what they are talking about or b)have a political agenda and know they are not giving the facts). I had been a HUGE FAN of this talk show host — going back to the days when he was not a liberal talk show host but on another station where he was a center to center right at times talk show host. But now he was on Air America where, most likely, he felt the constraints were off. His email was to me and his producer asking his producer to set me up to talk about my blog and issues.
I got on his show but he was not interested in talking about issues — or the blog. He kept asking me how anyone could really be a moderate. He asked me also when I had interviewed him and I said when I was a San Diego Union reporter. “Ah, when you worked for the SAN DIEGO UNION” he said with emphasis — saying to a liberal San Diego audience that this means I therefore MUST be a conservative. He invited me on to talk about issues but the only part of this segment was to keep asking me what a moderate was and how anyone could really be a moderate and not really be a closet conservative Republican. When I answered about moderates and the center he and his co-host producer would talk over me saying “A moderate cup of coffee..a moderate case of cancer…” And then they hung up on me. The segment was in effect written in advance. (I have to say I smiled when I learned that this person’s program was off the air once the station dumped Air America and switched to music. I’m sure he is working somewhere but I never listened to him again and I had been a huge fan. He had and has no credibility with me).
The link in the first paragraph of this post is the same thing as the examples you see here.
More and more of what passes for “journalism” you involves ideological writers and broadcasters basically having their segments written in advance for their own POLITICAL reasons and also to increase readership/audience share since conflict and controversy sells — and being thoughtful can get you the kind of ratings and readership that the great channel CSPAN gets on cable.
Integrity is unknown to some of these folks. They will do what they have to get things set up so they have the words, images and political slant they started out with having before they even started a news gathering operation or talked to someone for a talk show segment. It’s getting product to sell. And you can’t make product without a list of materials or ingredients that you have in front of you in advance.
Or, that’s how they see it.
Read that link above again.
The email sent out sounded above board, didn’t it? But in retrospect it now seems to have been a sign of a fishing expedition — fishing for something specific that could be used in a specific way.
Decided in advance.
The proof in the end was in THIS as your mother told you.
NOTE: A bit has been added to this since it was originally posted.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.