In looking up the Wasserman quote below, I realized that I'd missed his last couple missives. (Note: no one should publish so much as a grocery list these days without an RSS feed attached.)
Ed disagrees with us on the transparency inherent in Journalism 2.0:
First, what exactly do you disclose? Fine, readers should know if a reporter covering an electoral campaign is a fierce partisan. But the situation is rarely that clear-cut (since assigning editors aren’t usually that ethically obtuse.)...Hence, the second problem: What do you cop to? A lifelong mistrust of authority? Abiding sympathy for underdogs? Admiration for entrepreneurs? Many readers find religious faith relevant. Should you acknowledge having doubted the existence of a just and benevolent God as a cautionary note alongside your story about litigation over a comatose child? Might a bitter divorce influence your coverage of lawyers and courts?...
Third, why confine disclosure to the person who wrote the story or appears on camera? Journalism is a team effort. So we get this reporter’s disclosure for an abortion-related story: “I’m a gay man, and have no personal involvement, although my unmarried sister just had an abortion. But my editor is strongly pro-choice, and the headline writer is a born-again. The publisher is a practicing Catholic with seven children, and reads everything we run on the subject….”...
Besides, what’s the point of all this voir dire? Shouldn’t the proof of good or bad reporting be the report itself, especially compared with others? If a story is skewed, buries some facts and makes corrupt use of others for polemical reasons, won’t that emerge from analysis and criticism, not from some half-baked critique of the people who produced it?
While he makes some reasonable logical arguments here, the point missed is this: To serve your customer, you want to give him a read that he doesn't have to do a lot of research for secondary and analysis and criticism to find out that you're full of beans. Those who create transparency will be better-read.
Further, the silliness of the many disclaimers, which is a valid concern, is largely prevented when your reporters are allowed voice and personality in their work. Yes, a six graf disclaimer at the end of a straight news story is silly, but when you let a good reporter tell the story in his own voice, the biases are a clear part of the reporting.
Don't disclaim, in other words. Speak in a real voice.
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