Blogger and journalism professor Jay Rosen has the ultimate analysis of the Newsweek Koran story fiasco. His conclusion: Newsweek was doing Take-Our-Word-For-It journalism.
And, increasingly, it seems like Jay Rosen is right.
Trust Me Journalism is a kind of journalism that boils down to this: trust us because we’re reporters. Trust us because we work for a prominent news magazine that has given you reliable information in the past. Trust us because we had to pay incredible dues to get where we are to edit and report in these positions (unlike you guys in pajamas at your computers).
It’s a valid concept that worked in the past — but it was a past in which the information menu’s choices were much smaller.The marketplace was less polarized. Readerships and viewerships were not as politicized and didn’t demand to vet nearly every word– and clamor for proof. And — as we constantly contend here — journalistic standards were more strictly adhered to.
Is this largely due to the late 20th century influence of tabloid publications such as the National Enquirer on the news marketplace? Shows such as Inside Edition? The decline of the newspaper and evening news show as prime news sources? The institutionalization of the 24 hour non-stop news cycle and all of the competition for something NEW and FRESH that it entails? The advent of cable television and sensationalistic talk-show-like cable news shows? Or a combination of all of these?
Here’s Rosen’s main point:
It was next-to impossible for us to judge the (Newsweek) Periscope item for ourselves; there was almost nothing in it our trust could latch on to, except Newsweek’s royal stamp and Michael Isikoff’s magic name.
And that is indeed it: a)Newsweek has an aura of credibility around it, b)Isikoff became a journalistically made-man in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. So you had corporate and celebrity brand names. Rosen meticulously charts the many layers of sourcing in the Newsweek report. Then he writes this:
From the New York Times account by Katharine Seelye: In addition, the reporters, Michael Isikoff, a veteran investigative reporter, and John Barry, a national security correspondent, showed a draft of the article to the source and to a senior Pentagon official asking if it was correct. The source corrected one aspect of the article, which focused on the Southern Command’s internal report on prisoner abuse.
“But he was silent about the rest of the item,” Newsweek reported.
That is the most revealing fact I have come across so far, because it is very clear how much weaker didn’t disconfirm is when compared to alternatives like “Colonel Jones said…”
Did he confirm it?
No, but he didn’t disconfirm it.
Oh, so is that confirmation?
Well, he would have warned us, I think.
Right, right. He would have warned us.
When I say “thin” that is the kind of thing I mean.
Dividing the story into six source levels, he notes:
The allegations in the Periscope item thus come with six possible levels of sourcing confidence. But as readers we have names for only Level 1: Newsweek’s editors and reporters. On my six point scale Newsweek’s item ranks as perhaps one and a half, naming only itself and Southern Command. The question the magazine should have to answer is why it ever thought sufficient such a meager reliability level for a story of this kind.
Rosen points to the increased pressures and scrutiny that the press faces these days, both at home and abroad. Didn’t Newsweek KNOW this? He writes:
Under these conditions, it is imperative that journalists in the United States raise their standards for reliability, because the consequences of being wrong–for themselves, for their profession as a whole, and for others far removed–are graver. The most difficult part of raising standards is not to figure out what to do that might improve reliability, but to admit that standards weren’t as high as they could have been in the first place.
So what was Newsweek’s fatal flaw? According to Rosen (and The Moderate Voice) it seemed to be the overwhelming desire to BE FIRST and shove that piece of information out there before anyone else could run it before they did:
The Periscope item in the May 9th issue of Newsweek is a creature from an earlier climate of credibility: when a single-source story was good enough; when anonymous was okay as long as you trusted “your guy” at the Pentagon or the DA; when the consequences of being wrong were not as great, as instant, or as global; when the game of being first–which always meant more to journalists than anyone else–could go on as if it had intrinsic value to the public…
By using the loopy logic of “firstness” (this is the first government source to say it!) Newsweek was I think pursuing the wrong goods, and it compounded the problem by settling for a low level of reliability in deciding to make its Periscope item news. On top of that Editor Mark Whitaker does not appear to understand the difference between “take our word for it” journalism, and the “don’t take our word for it, judge for yourself” kind, a shorter term for which is transparency.
Indeed, Newsweek — like Dan Rather in the memos scandal — seems to have been caught in a time tunnel coated with a slew of assumptions from the past.
The problem is, the time tunnel didn’t work and they got a rough taste of 21st century reality.
One new tenet could be this: people will trust news outlets but the trust has to be constantly re-earned — never taken for granted so that journalists and editors can coast. Trust me….
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.