There is something that has been bothering me about the still bubbling argument over whether or not the Scotsman should have published the "monster" quote from Samantha Power that basically ended her career as a high-level foreign policy advisor. Specifically, I don't like how those on both sides of the argument are hiding behind institutional standards of "journalistic ethics" to justify their positions. This is probably because, as a blogger, which ultimately means I am the proprietor of an independent media outlet, I have no institution to hide behind myself and, as such, I would not have published the quote.
Here is what the journalist who recorded the quote, Gerri Peev, which the editor of The Scotsman then published, said in justification (emphasis mine):
Because I don't know what the convention is in American journalism, but in Britain here we have very firm rules about the fact that generally you establish whether a conversation or interview is on or off the record before it actually happens...we are not in this business to self-censor ourselves; we are in this business to print the truth."
The justification for publishing the quote is entirely based on "conventions," "rules," "business," and other institutional norms. There seems to be no appreciation that Peev and her editor were personally responsible for ending someone's political advisor career over something really, really stupid. This strikes me as very much hiding behind vague institutional rules and regulations in an effort to elide personal responsibility. Such hiding is impossible when someone is a blogger, since any pretext of protection from a larger institution is wiped away. When you are an independent blogger, there are no vaguely constructed curtains of professional conventions, rules and business practices to hide behind. If I do something, then I am responsible for it, not some larger institution or professional code. And so, I'm not going to publish a quote like that, because I am not going to get Samantha Power fired over something really stupid that she obviously did not want published.
The largest difference between the progressive blogosphere and established media outlets is not that we are partisan or ideological, but rather that we have completely different business models and relationships to larger institutions. While most established media outlets are large companies and / or sections of enormous corporate conglomerates, the progressive blogosphere mainly operates on a small business and hobbyist model with very few employees and a lot of direct fundraising in order to stay afloat. We do not have fixed salaries, editors, and professional codes of conduct on which to rely. Basically, we are out there on our own, and our actions directly reflect on us as individuals rather than on our relationship with large institutions. This ultimately results in a very different set of actions we are willing to undertake, or not undertake. What we do is very humanist, or at least human, and as such is antithetical to the sort of "gotcha" politics that has become the bread and butter of established political reporting, where consistency and decorum and supposedly valued above all other personal attributes (or, antithetical unless you are an asshole who doesn't care about destroying other people). If I start engaging in personal takedowns over something really stupid and pointless, then the same thing becomes fair game against me. By contrast, if you have an institution to hide behind and protect you, such human considerations never enter into the equation.
If one conceptualizes the exchange between Power and Peev as an exchange between the institution of the Obama campaign and the institution of journalism, then you probably think publishing the quote was justified. However, if you conceptualize it as an exchange between two people, Samantha Power and Gerri Peev, then like me you probably think Peev is a bit of a jerk more interested in taking people down than having an actual, meaningful personal exchange. And I think that where someone situates himself in that debate probably has a lot to do with your personal relationship to an institution: are you acting on your own, or on behalf of something larger than you? Do you have an institution to protect you, or not?
I have always hated the way many journalists use some abstract, vague, quasi-mythical "journalistic code" to attack bloggers as irresponsible and unethical. I feel no imperative to follow the code of an institution in which I do not operate. In fact, I think that the 'journalistic code" has led us down a path of dehumanized, "gotcha" politics, where there is no forgiveness, not gradients of being more or less consistent, and no accounting for the fact that journalists and politicians are all human beings.
Update: To be clear, I'm not trying to justify what Power said, or to argue that by printing the quote Peev was wrong. Instead, I'm arguing that Power was fired for her interaction with Peev and the Scotsman, not for her interaction with some sort of abstract journalistic standards. I am tired of journalists hiding behind institutions and vague abstractions in order to elide responsibility for what they themselves have done. When you are in my situation, and there is no pretense of institutional support to hide behind, it is impossible to avoid your personal responsibility for what you write.
When journalists hide behind a code of ethics to justify what they do as individuals, it is a cop-out, pure and simple. Stenography is not the job of a journalist, and everyone edits. If stenography was their jobs, they would just post audio or video files of their interviews and be done with it. Instead, everyone crops, edits, and summarizes, and leaves in what they feel are the important parts. In this case, Peev left in what she felt were the important parts, and her editor agreed with that assessment. For Peev to then hide behind an abstract code elides her personal role in the matter. Journalists can print whatever they want to print. Just don't claim that, when you keep something in an article and leave other things out, that "the code made me do it." That is just pathetic. Take responsibility for your own editorial decisions, rather than passing the buck off to an abstraction. |
