Journalists use telephones.
This is my first post upon re-entry to academic life - I am now lecturing at the University of Wollongong and I am based in the beautiful Illawarra region. I’ll have more time and capacity to devote to my participation in this blog from now on, and I’m able to have a broader view of the issues Gatewatching has always dealt with, now that I’m no longer neck deep in the business of being a full-time practitioner.
The occasion for this post is the wash-up from Katherine Wilson’s hoaxing of Keith Windschuttle. I’m a little late on this, and my only excuse is the trauma of moving cities for the sixth time in five years. Most readers who are familiar with the Australian media and blogosphere will be across the details, so I won’t rehearse them here. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, and want a blow-by-blow account from near the centre of the action, check out the archive over at Margaret Simons’ place. There are also many astute analyses of the situation online. For mine, Graham Young’s at On Line Opinion is the most sustained and productive reflection on the incident to date, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all of the conclusions.
First, a disclaimer: I enjoyed the hoax immensely, I think it worked, I think Windschuttle had it coming, and I think his excuses exceeded even the hoax itself for entertainment value. Among other things, his explanations show him appealing for slack that he has never been prepared to cut for other scholars. I think Margaret Simons behaved ethically throughout, and in my view most suggestions that the hoax wasn’t worth doing proceed largely from political or personal axe-grinding.
There’s something that needs pointing out, though. I think I agree with Margaret Simons that the “unmasking” of the hoaxer showed that there are some important, relevant and remaining differences between amateur bloggers and industrial journalists. For me, a big, obvious one is: journalists use telephones. According to Simons, a couple took the time to confirm their suspicions with calls in this case.
A lot follows from this. There are some assertions - notably from Mark Bahnisch - that writing about the differences between bloggers and journalists is somehow out of court nowadays, and in particular that it obscures the issues here. I think, rather, that it clarifies a pertinent, persistent distinction between two modes of practice. Re-read Margaret Simons’ account of how the unmasking played out. According to her version, just one blogger attempted to contact Wilson via email. And whereas some bloggers were prepared to write posts and allow comments threads to lengthen on the basis of what appears to be speculative guesswork, working journalists simply called the principal actors and asked to have their suspicions confirmed. To the bloggers, the question needs to be asked: what if you weren’t right about the hoaxers identity?
Anyway, I’m not sure why this difference in practice persists. It may be, as scholars like Collette Snowden suggest, that the use of the telephone is so deeply embedded in the practices of industrial journalism that it’s rarely acknowledged as a central and distinctive trait, even by practitioners. Those who aren’t immersed in the culture of industrial newsrooms may never catch the habit of picking up their phone to nail down a story, or to get more detailed information. Whatever the explanation, as a reader and a teacher, I can’t help thinking that the form of newsgathering that entails checking hunches first-hand with a story’s protaganists is the one that’s most likely to have high quality information. Of course, this only applies to news content that presumes to break stories - opinion and analysis is a different story.
Now, I realise that not every MSM journalist bothers with fact-checking in every situation. I know that the form of practice that I’ve described as being characteristic of bloggers is also characteristic of many writing under the umbrella of large news organisations. And I’m also aware that not all bloggers aspire to being an alternative news source. But the first objection points to specific instances of journalistic negiligence or failure. The second points to an assimilation of particular forms of practice by large news organisations. And the third seems to me to be a way of restating the difference I’ve been trying to point to. It’s an objection that acknowledges such lingering differences, which define different fields of practice.
In any case, it’s good to be back. More soon.
Interesting post, Jason.
When I’ve got a bit more time I’ll maybe comment some more, but I don’t think I ever said it was “out of court” to distinguish between journos and bloggers. Clearly there are different practices. It’s more the “journos v. bloggers” frame which I object to, and that’s what I think was at work in Margaret Simons’ comments thread, a point I made at some length there at the time.
Good stuff, Jason - welcome back to the fold…;-)
I do wonder if the distinction between different patterns of technology use you draw here is also at least in part a generational one, though - generalising massively here, but I’d hazard a guess that many online commenters on this case are part of the email and Web generation, while the phone-jockey journos you describe may be a slightly older vintage.
Put differently: perhaps the currently dominant crop of journalists use telephones - but I’m not so sure that’s necessarily true for many of those who are currently doing their cadetships. And - and you touch on this in your last couple of paragraphs - given shrinking newsrooms and outsourced reporting, they may never catch on, which is a problem. (Not because of some inherent value in the phone as such, but because of the importance of fact-checking that it stands for, of course…)
Great post Jason and plenty to chew on, as usual.
The telephone may well be a generational thing but whatever tool replaces it needs to have the other key component of that tool: a comprehensive list of contacts.
The other key aspect of the phone is the synchronicity of the contact (assuming someone answers it, of course). It is much more difficult to fob off an answer when the question comes from a human voice rather than a text, email, Tweet or the other tools preferred by the newer crop.
However, I think you’ve put your finger on the main reason the Australian blogosphere doesn’t, as a rule, break stories.
Just on Axel’s point. I’m a Gen X kid but I absolutely despise talking on the phone. The invention of email and texting was a godsend for me. I suspect there are a lot of folks now who don’t think “reach for the phone” but rather send a msg.
I think you also need to distinguish between motivations, and this goes to your point about “not every blogger”… Those who were doing the snooping on the bloggy side were more interested in Wilson’s identity because of both the salience of Windschuttle in a classic blog issue (since we’re possibly among the few people in the country who actually pay much attention to the culture/history wars) and because Wilson had made friends and enemies in the ’sphere through her own participation.
I doubt anyone was interested in “breaking news”. If I am, I do get in touch with people (”sources”) in the same way a journo would.
And - “what if they were wrong?” - most unlikely given Wilson’s past prominence in the blogosphere and the very blatant clues she left lying around. Returning to your distinction, though, I think it was probably Wilson who had more of a journalistic mindset - I’m 99% sure she didn’t think she’d be found out and that she didn’t want to be - and it was the sort of skills that are more common (at this point in time) in the blogosphere that more or less ensured she would be.
I followed Mark’s comments on the Simons’ thread on this and find I agree with him totally. This constant need of commentators to see all such matters through the grid of blogger v. journalist is highly perplexing. Of course there are similarities with what they do, but to extrapolate from that and make value judgments based on it is to miss the point. Your whole thread is based on an implicit measuring of what bloggers do against what journalists do, for eg: “And whereas some bloggers were prepared to write posts and allow comments threads to lengthen on the basis of what appears to be speculative guesswork, working journalists simply called the principal actors and asked to have their suspicions confirmed. To the bloggers, the question needs to be asked: what if you weren’t right about the hoaxers identity?”
I really just don’t follow why this always happens, why bloggers (which for many commentators seems, as here, to lazily also include their readers) are judged on their failure to do what journalists do. Is it really that hard to accept that despite obvious similarities that the two groups are totally distinct? The implicit/explicit comparison between the two groups is especially pointless in Aust where the vast majority of bloggers are unpaid amateurs who blog more for reasons of public engagement than in any attempt to emulate journos.
Is there any chance at all that people can move on from this endless, pointless equating of the two forms?
Actually, let me clarify that: I’m not saying that such comparisons are “out of court”; if people want to do it, that’s up to them. I’m just wondering what it adds to the sum knowledge. Almost inevitably, the comparison is drawn in order to criticise bloggers while other more salient facts about blogging (engagement, for instance) are ignored.
On the whole hoax thing, btw, one point hasn’t been stated clearly. The hoax has killed Quadrant. It has shown them to be nothing more than a govt subsidised home for a particular sort of nostalgic conservative who cannot engage in an argument outside the bounds of “culture wars” and who cannot attract an audience by dent of ideas and/or good writing. The comparison between what mags like Q do and what political blogs do seems to me a much more fruitful area for some critical study than the endless rehash of blogger v journalist.
Hi all - thanks for your comments!
Mark #1:
Well, this is the point of the post, I guess. That, in this circumstance, and on the point of methods for confirming and delivering high-quality information, and further, I think, on a point of ethics, the bloggers vs. journos framework is perfectly relevant and legitimate. I don’t think bloggers emerge very well from the comparison, by the way.
There’s a larger issue which is perhaps more interesting. Forms of professional practice, technologies, ethical codes and even epistemologies are revealed as being bound up together in circumstances like this. If, as everybody constantly argues, the newspaper and other forms of what we’ve understood as industrial journalism are in decline, so too is an ideal practice (including particular uses of technology and an ethic of information) that we’ve come to understand as guaranteeing the quality of information. What’s replacing it? What are the consequences?
Axel:
This would be an interesting area for further empirical research. But a conclusion along the lines you’re suggesting would be counterintuitive, I think, given the widespread lament that “journalism-by-telephone” has supplanted practices from the “good old days” (like meeting contacts face to face over a schooner etc.) It would also suggest that journalists largely decide themselves on methods of newsgathering, rather than being strongly enculturated by the organisation they work for. In my experience, journalists have a tribal loyalty to their organisation, and a strict adherence to the methods by which they are taught to gather news.
As Snowden puts it (writing in 2007):
That matches my understanding of how newsrooms operate.
It’s my understanding that at least in metro newspaper newsrooms and ABC newscaff even at a regional level, minor details can be confirmed via email (or conversations arranged), but only a telephone conversation matches a f2f meeting as a method of confirmation, or for sourcing on-record comment. This goes double for major stories, and I suspect also for those where questions of identity are at stake (I actually received a couple of calls myself asking whether I knew how to get in touch with KW on the day) I think there are good reasons for all of this, by the way. I bet Keith Windschuttle now wishes he’d had a telephone call or a f2f conversation with “Sharon Gould”.
As I said, all this would be worth some further empirical research. But centrally, what I’m concerned with is the practice of confirming rumour and speculation prior to putting out there in the public sphere. I suppose that in principle you could do this with a range of technologies. In this case, where deception via email was central to the story, confirmation via telephone was clearly the way to go. But speculation on the basis of Internet breadcrumbs remains highly problematic in all cases, in my view, but especially in a story with subterfuge at the heart of it.
Derek:
Perhaps, but there’s a slightly finer distinction I’m trying to make here. I think a number of bloggers published speculation (or allowed it to run on in threads), and thus got there and “broke the story” before the MSM did, but that they simply didn’t bother confirming their suspicions before they did this. I don’t think there’s anything in particular that’s stopping people doing that again in the future. Next time, it could be a more serious matter where the stakes are higher in a case of mistaken identity.
(BTW Derek - intending to reply soon to yr Facebook message)
Mark #2
I take your point, but I’m not sure how this motivation changes much. Whether it comes from a desire to be first to the story, or axe-grinding, or whatever, I’m not sure how propagating unconfirmed speculation fits into any ethic of information I’d want to subscribe to.
I don’t really want to personalise this, if I can help it. However, if you use those methods, I’d suggest that you’re in a highly unrepresentative minority. In this case, I saw no evidence of anyone attempting to confirm this apart from the single email Margaret mentioned in her account.
I’m a Gen X kid, too. And not particularly enamoured of the telephone. But do personal preferences override other obligations for someone whose offering themselves up as a source of information?
“Most unlikely” doesn’t add up to confirmation. And if there was really no concern with “scooping” or “breaking stories”, why not make a call, write an email, or wait until someone else has? It probably goes without saying that in these situations, if bloggers (or anyone) publishes in error, there may be legal ramifications, and there are certainly major ethical issues, in my view.
Just to finish, if there’s a normative claim in all this, it’s simply that next time something like this comes up, bloggers ought to pick up the phone. Journos should continue to do so. Surely we all have one?
@gavan
Thanks for dropping by.
The most basic similarity is that they set up their stalls as information providers. Legally, say in cases of defamation, the courts will treat both a newspaper and a blog as publishers. And the point I’m trying to make is that ethically, when say “unmasking” a hoaxer, they both have similar obligations. In this case, I don’t believe that a lot of bloggers fulfilled those, and I think they ought to in future.
Are you saying bloggers have no control over their comment threads? Well, the Daily Telegraph settled a class action in 2006 because they guessed that the courts would judge that hosts of blogs were responsible for user comment. I think also that there is an ethical obligation for bloggers to try to rein in potentially damaging speculation in a case like this.
I think you should check out the archive of this blog. If anything, I think that collectively we probably err on the side of boosting the blogosphere.
In answer to your objection, though, first, I’d remind you that many Australian blogs are moving to operating on a commercial basis, and writers are making money from advertising in the same way that the news media do. Even for purely amateur bloggers, are you saying that there is no standard or account that they should be held to? If so, I guess the conversation is over. If not, where do you draw the line? In this case the line appears pretty clear to me, but I’m prepared to listen to alternative views that are specific to this circumstance.
The question I’m trying to answer is: what standards of behaviour should we expect from bloggers, or anyone, when it comes to publishing information that might reasonably be viewed as “news”? I think answering that would add to the sum of knowledge. And again, I’d direct you to our archive, where I think you’ll find consideration - much of it sympathetic - of many aspects of the Australian blogosphere.
I take your points, but nothing you say convinces me of the need to see this stuff through the frame of journalist v blogger. Sure, anyone who writes for public consumption can be held to various standards — ethical, accuracy, whatever — but that doesn’t mean the point of reference need be with journalists. There are similarities with what academics do and what bloggers do too but we don’t see endless comparisons along those lines (though in many respects it is at least as appropriate, probably more so). So sure, if you are not happy with the way a blogger has “covered” a story, then say so. But why the instinctive measure against journalism?
On commenters, my point is merely, as I said to M Simons, that people include commenters in their criticism of blogs in a way that they don’t with media sites. So, many critiques of “bloggers” are actually critiques of what has been said in comments. Now sure, maybe people, editors, whoever, need to assume some responsibility for the quality of their comments, but that is a different issue to conflating the two groups under the broad heading “something that was said on a blog”. That distinction should be held firm and often isn’t.
Your normative account: “it’s simply that next time something like this comes up, bloggers ought to pick up the phone. Journos should continue to do so. Surely we all have one?” only holds if the implicit “standard” is journalism and that’s my point: I’m yet to hear anyone make a watertight case as to why it should be. The constant pitting of bloggers v journlists, no matter how worthy the motivation (and yours seems to be to do with standards) leads to many false comparisons and unfair criticisms, so much so that it behooves anyone using that frame as their point of reference to examine why they are using it.
Hi again, Gavan.
But surely it’s the most relevant one in this case? Or are you suggesting that bloggers should never be compared to journalists? That it’s never a relevant comparison?
Also, the comparison is often made by bloggers themselves, either explicitly or implicitly, when journalists are made a target of criticism, and when bloggers engage in genres of public writing (news, op-ed) that clearly draw on, and aim to provide an alternative to industrial journalism.
I’m not suggesting that it’s the only comparison that’s ever relevant, but it makes sense to use it when it is. I’d defend my own prerogative to apply it when it’s relevant (and Margaret Simons’ for that matter) And I’m afraid that the direction of your argument is that it should never happen.
Have I conflated them here? On the other hand, I think that bloggers are responsible - ethically and, indications are, legally - for monitoring their comment threads. If commenters cross lines, who else is responsible?
Firstly, the standard isn’t “journalism”, but goals in providing information like fairness and ensuring that what you’re putting out there in a global publishing environment is accurate. What’s at stake is not holding bloggers to an inappropriate standard, but protecting people’s reputations.
And I don’t have to make a watertight case for every comparison that might ever be made between the two groups/practices, and nor am I interested in doing so. All I have to show is that in this instance, it’s relevant to compare how the two groups went about checking what, after all, was the same story. This of course entails that you can’t rule out, a priori, making this comparison.
Again, you appear to be asking that this never, ever occur. I’m afraid it doesn’t wash. And - what sort of criticism and scrutiny should bloggers be subject to? You haven’t really made any suggestions.
It might be convenient for some bloggers to avoid these comparisons, but I’m afraid that in some instances it’s not only fair, it’s unavoidable.
Hmm, I don’t know how you can say “you appear to be asking that this never, ever occur” when I specifically said “Actually, let me clarify that: I’m not saying that such comparisons are “out of court”; if people want to do it, that’s up to them. I’m just wondering what it adds to the sum knowledge.” So I’m very clearly not saying it should never ever occur.
I also don’t understand how you can say “And - what sort of criticism and scrutiny should bloggers be subject to? You haven’t really made any suggestions.” when, again, I specifically said “There are similarities with what academics do and what bloggers do too but we don’t see endless comparisons along those lines (though in many respects it is at least as appropriate, probably more so).” So a specific suggestion for an alternative frame.
So that’s two accusations you make, directly contradicted by what I’d already written.
Again, I can see your points, but your answers suggest that the blogger v journalist frame is SO embedded in this sort of discussion that you (and others) can’t see past them. You seem quite perplexed that I would even suggest a different way of looking at things.
You write rather curtly at the end: “It might be convenient for some bloggers to avoid these comparisons, but I’m afraid that in some instances it’s not only fair, it’s unavoidable.” But again, that misrepresents what I’m saying. Not that it should never occur, just that maybe it shouldn’t be the default position taken.
If a blogger makes an error of fact or does something else wrong then there is no particular reason that that has to be judged against journalistic standards or invoke comparisons with what a journalist would’ve done. You or others can usethe comparison if you like, but I really can’t see why it is the first point of call (other than a reflex based on superficial similarities) and, as I said, it often obscures more than it reveals. The very definition of a bad frame of reference, I would’ve thought. Not always inappropriate, but certainly worth thinking about a bit more carefully.
What gavan seems to be missing is that bloggers are journalists, inasmuch as they are engaging in journalism by publishing writing about real people.
You’re right, Bill, I am missing that because I don’t think it follows at all. Writing about real people doesn’t make you a journalist, doesn’t define journalism, so I really don’t see how you can conclude so definitively from that given point of similarity that “bloggers are journalists”.
I’m largely in agreement with Gavan, so I perhaps won’t add much more to comments on the framing of the issue. But, Jason, the more I think about it, the more I’m confused both by your interpretation of what occurred and what you think should have occurred.
I think the most comprehensive account of how Wilson was outed is on Simons’ blog here:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2009/01/08/who-killed-sharon-gould/
You seem to be saying - bloggers should have picked up the phone. But Wilson is not listed in the directory, and reading over Simons’ account the only person she actually spoke to was Simons. The journos couldn’t track her down. Her identity was confirmed by releasing Simons from confidentiality.
So I’m not sure how this accords with your narrative.
Secondly, Simons notes that Don Arthur contacted Wilson via email before writing his post. So again I don’t know how that squares with the generalisations made about “bloggers” and the apparent privileging of phone over email. In any event, since Arthur and others didn’t have and couldn’t access her phone number (unless they were to obtain it unethically), I’m completely unclear as to how you think they ought to have acted.
Lastly, just to trouble the elision of different individuals into “bloggers”, I myself have Wilson’s phone number but at no time was I interested in revealing her identity. I was publicly agnostic about it, though I linked to others posts, and I didn’t state definitively that it was her until Simons had confirmed that. Among other reasons, I don’t think she wanted her identity revealed, and I suspect the whole affair has done her some professional and personal damage. She bears some of the responsibility for that, but since that was my perception, I didn’t want to add to it.
I agree that a discussion about the “ethics of information” with regard to blogs is probably worthwhile, but I return to my point about motivations. I can’t actually think of any Australian blogger who sees themselves as being in the business of “breaking stories”. Here, I think that as well as the invalidity of the comparison between journos and bloggers (and I think why people do certain things demonstrates its invalidity), assumptions about the US blogosphere are being snuck in here - where there are bloggers or blogs or quasi-blogs (ie HuffPo) which do see themselves doing something akin to journalism and which are interested in “breaking stories”.
I really think a lot of applications of the concept of “citizen journalism” - in the Australian context - obscure rather than clarify and I think these concepts need rethinking and sharpening.
And I would also contend that any ethics of blogging has to pay attention not just to informational impacts or the output or product created, but also and crucially - why people blog and how they see themselves. If it doesn’t, it’s not going to be a fruitful discussion because it will provoke the same response we’re seeing here - “but I’m not a journalist”.
Love the debate, but have a question for the Gen X kids: Mark (who hates the telephone) and Jason (who is not particularly enamoured of it either): Why?
Really can’t say, Derek. I’ve never liked talking on the phone.
But gavan, just as a matter of fact it does. It’s what journalism is, in its broadest sense. All that other stuff about forms of delivery is just window dressing.
Re Mark: The Age didn’t call Wilson. They went around to her house and spoke to her in person - good old-fashioned shoe leather reporting!
Mmm. He writes about “real people” in the “broadest sense”; journalists write about “real people” in the “broadest sense”; therefore he is a journalist.
Nothing personal, Bill, but it’s not an argument that I think holds much water.
Also, Mark’s point about how bloggers define themselves is worth considering properly. He is absolutely right to suggest that those who write about bloggers are honour-bound to take seriously how bloggers define themselves, and that if a large number of bloggers disclaim the title of journalist then it is probably worth thinking about that in terms that go beyond, “It might be convenient for some bloggers to avoid these comparisons, but…in some instances it’s not only fair, it’s unavoidable.” From an academic point of view, it might be worth getting the descriptive aspects clearer before offering up normative conclusions.
Bill - here again the chronology is important. The Age, as I understand it, went round to Wilson’s house after Simons had disclosed her as the author of the hoax.
And, since ethics is at issue here - how did they obtain her address? I’ve seen it suggested they had it because she’s an occasional contributor. If someone knows where I live because of a professional or work association, does that give them the right to come and hassle me at home in pursuit of “information” or should the reason why they have my address be respected?
And on Gavan’s point, I think it’s true to say that all the academic discussion of blogs in this country is based on impressions about what bloggers do and think they are doing. As far as I’m aware, there is no survey, qualitative or ethnographic research into bloggers’ motivations, attitudes and practices. Such work, I’d suggest, is urgently needed, and in its absence, one ought to be very cautious about the premises lying behind the analytical frame that is applied.
Interesting debate here, and I might have more to say on my own blog once I have had a chance to think about the issues.
But in the meantime, just to set some facts straight:
Once Wilson’s identity was suspected, a number of journalists found her telephone number by doing a Google. It was available on the website of an environmental organisation of which she is a member. The Australian newspaper used the same method to track down and interview her father in Brisbane. It was the knowledge that the mainstream media was about to “out” her that caused Wilson to decide, reluctantly, to release me from my obligations of confidentiality and allow me to “out” her first.
As Mark said, The Age landed on Wilson’s doorstop after her identity was confirmed in Crikey - but they had the address not because she was a contributor but because they had written previous stories about her on other issues. That is also how they had the file photo that was used in all Fairfax papers, of her sitting on her roof.
One other point worth noting. On the day after her identity was revealed, commenters on one blog, Catallaxy, played around with revealing parts of Wilson’s real address in the comments thread. I know this was attempted by the same commenters on other blogs, but was prevented by the blog owners - rightly in my view, since it was an invasion of privacy and a major stress on Wilson and her family at a time when she was having contractions. Wilson also received some nasty phone calls at the same time. So some people hostile to her obviously obtained her number, presumably in the same way as some journalists.
Also, commenters (or it may only be one…using different names and, on my blog at least, a false email address) on my own blog and on others have made unsubstantiated allegations about Wilson, most notably that she had made a previous attempt to hoax Quadrant, and that she had written a post suggesting that 9/11 was a USA Government conspiracy. If you read the comment thread to this post http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/ you will see what I mean.
Now, these allegations are borderline defamatory. For that reason they would not be published in most mainstream media outlets without being checked. They have been published on a couple of blogs - by commenters, not bloggers, it is true, but if legal action was taken (and, to be clear, I don’t in any way think it likely) it is the bloggers as well as the commenters who would be liable.
This is not to apply a “journalists v bloggers” frame. But surely some comparisons between the two are valid, when both are engaged in making factual assertions about real people.
It doesn’t mean that “journalism” (whatever we define that to mean) is the correct or only standard. Rather, what we are debating is the broader issue of what it is reasonable (and legally safe) to do before publishing allegations of fact that go to an individual’s reputation.
Last point: as Mark said on my blog, not all journalists are equal, not all blogs/bloggers/commenters on blogs are equal. It seems to me that some blogs are closer to journalists than others, but Australia does not yet have many news based blogs. Most are trying to do other things. I have written more on this here. http://www.creative.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=229836
Sorry, the post with the unsubstantiated allegation discussion I refer to above is at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2009/01/08/who-killed-sharon-gould/ - gave the wrong link above.
Trackback:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/01/17/the-wilsonwindschuttle-quadrant-hoax-the-washup-continued/
Mark, yes, chronology is important. The Age only published after trying to obtain comment from Wilson, where a lot of the blog stuff with her name in it was published without any attempt to contact her at all. What if they had been wrong and she had taken exception and sued? Ouch.
Secondly, the answers to your ethical questions are yes and no, respectively.
I think it’s worth reinforcing Mark’s point that Wilson had made herself deliberately difficult to contact by telephone — even Simons said she was ‘hard to find’. That said, I also take his point above about journos coming around to your house just because they happen to know (or they think they know) where you live. I’ve had similar stuff happen to me — except I no longer lived there, the journos had got their facts wrong, and the people who did get hassled (my parents and former housemates) quite rightly viewed the behaviour as trespass.
I tend to view harassing phonecalls as harassing phonecalls regardless of their provenance, which is why when someone did track down Wilson’s telephone number and stuck it on a thread at my place, I deleted it.
Yes, but if journalists don’t attempt to contact people, then those people are liable to say, with justice, “so and so did not attempt to contact me before publishing these allegations”.
While it is an invasion for a journalist to turn up on a doorstop or to make a phone call, it is usually even more obnoxious to publish false allegations without giving the person right of reply. Indeed, giving fair right of reply is an ethical obligation on journalists under both the MEAA code, and Press Council Principles. In practice, that means making every attempt to contact someone. It should, of course, be done in a sensible manner, and you should go away if the person makes it clear they want to be left alone. That is what Dewi Cooke from The Age did when she landed on Wilson’s doorstop. I don’t think she did anything wrong.
For example, I would have appreciated Windschuttle contacting me (he had my landline and mobile phone numbers, and my email address) before publishing the false allegation that I was the hoaxer and that I was part of a Crikey “team” behind the hoax. He never put these allegations to me before publishing them. I would have preferred that he had - but then, of course, he would have had to publish my denial alongside his accusation.Or at least, that is what a journalist should do.
Hi all. I’ve been entertaining and away from the computer since Friday arvo. Rather than address all the new comments (!), and given Mark and Margret’s new posts, I’ve done a new posts.
http://gatewatching.org/2009/01/18/journalists-still-use-telephones/
Cheers.
Margaret, just to stress again, I’m not objecting to using the journalist comparison in all cases, just the habit of using it reflexively, as a first port of call on nearly every occasion and without due consideration of alternative povs. Still, I don’t think this means that this follows, when you say, “But surely some comparisons between the two are valid, when both are engaged in making factual assertions about real people.” Sure, sometimes it might be valid, but there is no particular automatic reason why “making factual assertions about real people” should invoke a comparison with journalists (see my logical fallacy comment to Bill above). Many writers do just that (academics, biographers, historians, anthropologists et al) and they don’t get compared reflexively to journalists. I’m sure some will say this hairsplitting, but I don’t think it is. Different groups should be treated differently. Often bloggers (particularly in the small Oz blogiverse) are just people who want to engage in public debate on contemporary issues and they do it, not as journalists (no matter how much what they write looks like journalism), but as amateurs, as citizens, as regular people, and in a range of styles that draws on everything from newspapers to novels. To invoke the comparison with journalism (and it happens constantly, that can’t be stressed enough) is reductive in the extreme.
The real point at issue is that, treating engaged citizens (amateur bloggers) as professional journalists is to impose artificial standards on people who merely want to be engaged in a way that democracy should welcome. It is, by definition, to professionalise a practice that should not be professionalised. Why should some person who just wants to write about the events of the day be treated the same as a person paid to look at current events in a particular way? This is not to say no standards should apply to bloggers–three cheers for those blog owners who wouldn’t allow Wilson’s details to be published on their sites–but we get into a really dangerous area when public participation is by default corralled into some academic’s or journalist’s or politician’s idea of what is an acceptable way to voice opinions in a democracy. Far more dangerous than the odd infraction by bloggers who aren’t held to the standards of journalism.
So sure, it is inevitable that the comparison will be drawn, but the point here is that it is drawn way too often and without sufficient examination of alternative approaches and with too limited an understanding of what bloggers are trying to do (and that won’t just be one thing). Way more empirical research needed. The habit of comparing the two is, mostly, a knee-jerk reaction, an easy way to say something “meaningful” about blogging without doing that empirical research or thinking more deeply about the practice.
Anyway, as you say on your own recent post, maybe the discussion should actually begin with a look at what a journalists is and maybe try and define those “journalistic standards” and look at how well journalists adhere to them before applying them to other people?
Gavan,I agree with your last paragraph and will have a bash at this.
The main thing I would say in response to your other points is that I think SOME bloggers are consciously trying to enter the field of journalism, and have said so. More in the USA and Europe than here, but here too. And some people are earning incomes from blogging, and there is even a site called the pro-blogger, so for some it is becoming professional, in the sense of paid. This is not true of all or most, but it is of some. See my taxonomy of blogs article that I linked to in my earlier comment.
Other bloggers - the majority - are not trying to be journalists. But journalism is in itself changing. Many journalists are now bloggers too (though it is often claimed, in a nice reverse, that they are not “real” bloggers). So we need to think more carefully about terms. Jay Rosen’s book “What are Journalists For” is a useful thing in this context. Likewise Mitchell Stephens “The History of News”, which sheds light on how the occupation journalist came to be. It was a creation of technology - in this case the printing press. Not surprising that technology is now causing changes again.
Rosen has also written on exactly this bloggers and journalists thing on his Pressthink blog here. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/01/21/berk_essy.html
And there ARE, and have been, debates about the standards that should apply to historians, biographers, academics etc. And the comparisons HAVE been made in those debates with journalists, among others. I can give you references to these debates if you wish. So it is not new to do this. I am emphatically not saying that journalists are the only or the right point of comparison. Just saying that such comparisons between different groups of people who publish assertions of fact about others are understandable, can be illuminating, and are valid.
And of course legally, the same standards apply to all of the above - bloggers, journalists and historians and biographers. So far as the law is concerned it is the act of publication that counts - not the PURPOSE of the publisher.
Thanks, Margaret. A thoughtful response though I feel the point is still being missed. Yes, maybe journalism does get compared to those other disciplines but not in the way it is routinely used with bloggers (but I take your point). And my point was more about offering those disciplines as alternatives to compare blogging with rather than constantly rely on the comparison with journalism. Again, too, I stress I’m talking about the Oz blogiverse. America, Europe are different kettles of fish.
Your point about legal requirements (final para) just seems to reinforce my point that there is no need to use a comparison between journalists and bloggers to make a point about standards. So why do it?
At the end of the day I don’t think a few bloggers here trying to run a few ads, or the odd point of contact like the hoax story, negates the basic point, namely that the comparison with journalism is overused, that it often hides more than it illuminates, that it is often used with no reference or understanding of what a blogger is trying to do (and that does matter), and that to professionalise public debate–impose standards of comparisons with professional journalists–in this way is potentially way more harmful than bloggers not living up to supposed journalistic standards.
@Margaret Simons Not quite sure how the commenting system here works, so if this comes out looking odd, then blame my fumble-fingered ignorance.
In some ways, I’m looking forward to journalism in its current ‘big media’ form falling over for want of marketshare, but that doesn’t mean I want blogging to take over — in fact, I can’t imagine anything much worse. Of course, some bloggers are likely to do just that, but I can’t conceive of me being one of them. Legal Eagle (my co-blogger) has written a thoughtful post on what she tries to do as a blogger — as you’d expect, it’s a very lawyerly approach. Mine is similar. I blog mainly to improve my writing skills and to try out some of the ideas in my thesis. That said, I’ve now got writing commitments as one of Oxford University’s journal editors, and the relevant pieces will have to go up on SSRN. This is pretty standard practice in academia. I will, of course, still use the blog to point at them.
I have had the odd sensation of being used as a news source, however, and since I see myself primarily as an academic, it is interesting if not always pleasant. Last year, for example, the BBC purchased one of my photographs of the anti-BNP protests outside the Oxford Union. They contacted me via Facebook (!) after seeing the graphics on my blog. This is the ‘good’ end of journalism, and one I appreciate. However, I’ve seen (and experienced) so much journalism where no-one attempts to contact the relevant party (or me) with their speculation, or where people don’t do what the Age journos did with Wilson and take ‘no’ for an answer that I’m simply unwilling to accept that ‘doing the right thing’ is standard practice among journalists. Maybe it once was, but not in my lifetime. Occasionally journalism does something useful (and since in debates of this type Watergate is always brought up, I’ll mention it now), but ceteris paribus so much journalism is invasive, trivial and/or destructive, I won’t mind very much when it goes as a set of social practices.