12 ms·

Jim Lehrer’s Rules of Journalism

234 points by funmi 7y ago

proximitysauce 7y ago
In addition to partisanship and sensationalism, access journalism has dramatically lowered the quality of what gets reported: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism It's also worth referencing Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent which lays out the playbook for propaganda posing as journalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- mc32 7y ago
  Just want to point out that while often manufacturing consent is seen in a negative light because it’s been used to negatively manipulate people that it is also also possible to be used to the better good (vaccinations, education, etc. of course this can get abused and thus the negative aspect).
  - proximitysauce 7y ago
    I disagree. It's not the job of journalism to manipulate people, even if they think they're doing it for a good cause. Jim Lehrer's rules are very correct here.
    - mc32 7y ago
      I think we’re talking past each other. Manufacturing consent isn’t always about lying or making things up. It can be presenting a united front on something and it entails telling the truth with which you’re persuading a pop to see that POV.
      - proximitysauce 7y ago
        I've never heard manufacturing consent used like that. Do you have any examples of what you're talking about? Genuinely curious.
        jariel 7y ago
        "I've never heard manufacturing consent used like that. Do you have any examples of what you're talking about? Genuinely curious." It's called 'PR', it's used all day, every day by most companies and political organizations, social movements and even the government. Highlighting the positive aspects of whatever you're doing, avoiding the negative aspects, discrediting opponents and most insidiously - misrepresenting their arguments is how it's done. It's about creating the intended narrative around a specific subject. Take any controversial issue and you'll generally see that the 'sides' are not having a debate in public, they're engaging in framing the issue in a manner. The end up talking past one another entirely. 'Manufacturing Consent' is a funny book, because we read it when we're young and naive and our eyes are opened to the reality of the world and the perennial war of ideas. Because such activities are framed as nefarious and related to questionable acts of intervention (i.e. US intervention in S. America) ... we are 'shocked and outraged'. But I think looking at it from a more mature, contextualized perspective, it doesn't seem 'shocking' it seems really normal. Ironically the real coup of Chomsky is to misrepresent the nature of 'mass idea marketing' in a fair antagonist way that I don't think is really helpful. Unfortunately - almost all news is narrative-driven. Certainly the entirety of cable news. If you watch the local news, it feels dry and mundane, because it's generally very truthful, and there isn't a lot of 'war of ideas' over the dog that called 911. But for everything in pop culture and politics, there's a way to frame the subject in an ideological way (or in a manner that represents the interests of some group like advertisers or powerful individuals etc.) which is what happens all day long.
        throwawayjava 7y ago
        > ...we read it when we're young and naive and our eyes are opened... First, you're projecting. Second, it's not at all surprising that you're young enough to have first read Manufacturing Consent when you were "young". Third, books like Manufacturing Consent and Discipline and Punishment are primarily sociological. They do have some normative content, of course, but their primary goal is to explain how the world works. > It's called 'PR', it's used all day, every day by most companies and political organizations, social movements and even the government. This is an over-simplification. Of course that's true. Manufacturing Consent is not merely pointing out the existence of politics or merely making the observation that political operatives attempt to use media to shift opinion. It's a book about ___how___ that process works in the age of mass media and in a democratic capitalist society. The way in which cable news is used to warp people's perception of reality seems pretty obvious in 2020, with hindsight. And so Manufacturing Consent might seem trite and obvious today. But the book wasn't written in 2019. Or 2018. Or 2008. Or even 1998. It was published in 1988. Just to put that in context: it was written prior to 9/11. It was written almost a decade before Fox News was founded. It was written only shortly after cable television was even invented. In 1988, "Cable News" as we know it today didn't exist. CNN barely existed, and looked more like a combination of NBC Nightly News and CSPAN. And most importantly, manufacturing Consent was published at a time when most Americans really did believe that the nightly news was a mostly unbiased source of information. You might read it today and think "yeah, that's obviously how mass media is used to influence how people think about the world". But that's very much not the reaction most people -- even, perhaps especially, hard-nosed realists -- had when reading it in 1988.
MaupitiBlue 7y ago
Reading his rules, it’s hard not to agree with Bob Woodward that many journalists have become “unhinged” over Trump.
- 0x445442 7y ago
  You forgot to put journalists in quotes.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
macspoofing 7y ago
If you take the present journalism climate as the norm, these rules are radical. Can you imagine CNN reporting on Trump voters and following rule #6? Or reporting on Trump and following rule #5, #11?
- pjc50 7y ago
  #5 and #7 are a problem - they can be exploited by bad actors. That's how you get the "views on shape of Earth differ" reports.
  - proximitysauce 7y ago
    It's the job of journalists to vet the stories. No journalist ever has or ever will suggest that the earth is flat. That's a strawman.
    - nickloewen 7y ago
      The concern as I understand it is not that a journalist would just straight-up defend a conspiracy theory. Rather, the concern is that if you give any airtime to conspiracy theorists, even in the form of a debate, some viewers/readers will conclude that there must be some nugget of legitimacy in the conspiracy (why else would it be on the news?). Indeed, conspiracy theorists have relied on this to gain support, especially before they had the internet, when strategically baiting the media was the only way to get their bullshit noticed.
      - proximitysauce 7y ago
        A far greater concern than conspiracy theorists getting taken seriously are actual conspiracies perpetrated by mainstream media outlets. I gave two examples elsewhere in the thread: Weinstein and Epstein. Those aren't "conspiracy theories", they're know and active conspiracies. There were a multitude of opportunity to report on them but the stories were actively stifled for personal and political gain.
    - pjc50 7y ago
kristianc 7y ago
Many journalists seem to have discovered that becoming noisy, performative blue tick ‘personas’, acting out journalism on Twitter, and saying things like ‘this, literally this’ a lot as a substitute for actual analysis is also good for their careers. They act out this status-dance of pretending to loathe every second of life in the toxic digital hellscape that, in the talk tracks and visibility it gives them is actually very beneficial for their careers. They couldn’t actually admit it’s been good for them though, as that would mean admitting profiting from the algorithmic, privacy problem-invested landscape that they barely understand but have made their careers criticizing. But of course, everyone’s at it! So the only way to get ahead is more paranoia, more angst, more toxicity. Once you’re bought in, you can’t go back to tacking to the middle. So we get an arms race of performative angst and hyperbolic statements. Before you know it, you’re claiming that Slack notifications give you PTSD symptoms: https://twitter.com/pfpicardi/status/1220738739514814467?s=21 https://twitter.com/pfpicardi/status/1220738739514814467?s=2... The problem is that that is antithetical to the real work of journalism - which should be about seeking truth without fear or favour.
- mc32 7y ago
  The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters. Maybe one day actual journalists will come to the conclusion that tweeting is antithetical to journalism and may only use it as a tool of discovery rather than engagement.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters. The upside though is that it's easier to tell they're activists / non-objective on Twitter - compared to supposedly 'serious' outlets pushing all kinds of agendas as "objective" journalism.
  - elfexec 7y ago
    > The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters. They've always been activists. Twitter just makes it visible to the public while in the past, their biases were shielded behind the fake PR-driven reputation of an institution. The first newspapers in america were created to lie and spread political ideology. And that has been the case ever since. "As for what is not true you will always find abundance in the newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson I wish everyone was taught about the history of the news industry. Also, I wish every media company was forced to notify/warn their audience on who founded the company and why. Like how cigarette and tobacco companies have to put warning labels to notify their customers of the dangers of the product they are selling.
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
> No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. This is the entire internet.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  I think Lehrer's point here is that journalists often speak to sources "off the record", and that this is often used to fuel conflict instead of illuminating the situation.
mannykannot 7y ago
I think the author unintentionally misspoke in calling him "one of the last". The growth of journalism in which Lehrer's standards are not observed should not distract us from the fact that there are many journalists reporting with integrity, and in some cases, great courage.
- jc01480 7y ago
  Can you reference some?
  - nl 7y ago
    There are plenty. The Pulitzer prize winners and finalists last year seems a good place to start. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2019 https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2019
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  Journalism is in the same boat as websites are. There are more fantastic ones than ever before but the number of crappy ones and major players that have entered the market in the past 20 years have overshadowed them by orders of magnitudes. I think this is pretty much happening everywhere as access to the middle class and knowledge worker/white collar jobs are becoming the norm. A small cadre of experts still exist but the number of amateurs, scammers and grifters is aggressively growing.
bilbo0s 7y ago
Interesting that none of the rules of journalism include just reporting facts. In fact, it says that journalists should be disciplined for "reckless" reporting of any fact. It kind of explains why we live in the fact light environment of quotes and spin. Presumably, if a hard fact proves unpopular with a large enough group, then those facts, even when backed by hard evidence, can likely land you in a lot of trouble. A bit understandable I suppose? I mean, if talking bad about Trump or Obama increases the number of shooters in your Walmarts and churches, then yeah, probably should be careful about doing that. At the same time, if you have to walk on egg shells around people so emotionally invested in a person, or place, or subject that they're going to shoot up anyone who disagrees with them, then your journalism on that issue is not likely to be very "good" in any case.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Interesting that none of the rules of journalism include just reporting facts. Facts are not enough because in order for 'facts' to be useful they have to be embedded in a larger structure - like a theory, or ideology, or narrative, or whatever. Here's a fact: "Sun rises in the East, and sets in the West". This fact is compatible with heliocentric and geocentric models. The fact on its own doesn't tell you which is which. It doesn't tell you the context, nor the other facts that may have been omitted or superfluously included when reported, and proponents of both theories can use it to justify their position. This is why there can never be such a thing as "journalism that just reports the facts".
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >This fact is compatible with heliocentric and geocentric models. The fact on its own doesn't tell you which is which. But the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun does tell you which "model" is actually a fact. That's the point. You're making an argument about which facts should be reported? The sun rising in the east? Or the phases of Venus? Or both? Or both and more? But stating that you need an ideology or narrative to support your facts is a bit nonsensical in my own opinion. There really is only one conclusion that can be drawn from the totality of the facts. To state only a single fact, and then say, "here is an ideology or narrative so you can understand the fact I just gave you." Really is just stating an ideology or narrative. Think of it this way, if you still need a narrative, then you didn't give anyone all the facts.
proximitysauce 7y ago
It's much more rare though and it's almost entirely absent when looking at political coverage. Two journalists I can think of off the top of my head who have acted with outstanding integrity in recent years are Ronan Farrow and Julie K. Brown (broke the Weinstein and Epstein stories respectively). Part of what makes their journalism so strong is that they had to fight the entire industry to get their stories out. Political coverage is a nightmare though. Just yesterday George Stephanopoulos was caught on camera acting in an extremely partisan manner [1]. This happens on both sides of the isle regularly at this point (the White House itself is hardly faultless). It's only ratcheted up since 2016 where it seems the press took it up themselves to "save" us, where the definition of save seems to be: push their own political opinions. 1. https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1220758756071497728 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1220758756071497728
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Just yesterday George Stephanopoulos was caught on camera acting in an extremely partisan manner [1] To be fair, Stephanopoulos was a Democratic operative for years before transitioning to media. Why would you expect him to not be partisan?
  - proximitysauce 7y ago
    I wouldn't but I also wouldn't expect a political operative to become the chief anchor and political correspondent of a major network.
    - aNoob7000 7y ago
      The problem I see is that no one can agree on what is right or the truth any longer. What one side considers the truth might not be the same for the other, look no further than the impeachment proceedings. I'm amazed that we've reached a point in the USA where we can't agree on some simple truths anymore.
      - macspoofing 7y ago
degosuke 7y ago
I wonder whether the improvements in machine learning would ever be sufficient, so that for an article we could generate a quick report of how many points from the list are "checked".
- lando2319 7y ago
  Journalists pick and choose facts to support the narrative, I don't think having them "checked" would matter. What you want to know is the facts that go against the narrative that aren't mentioned. Then take a holistic view.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Exactly. Something that gathers all of the known facts in one place for review. That used to be what journalists did, not so much any longer.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  people would just game it, you can't solve this with technology.
specialist 7y ago
Lehrer's Rules are solid, ethical, and actionable. I agree 100%. Alas, they are completely moot in today's ad-supported automated outrage machines. And I'm fresh out of goodwill. Until we decide that discourse is more important than profits, forge a new consensus, we have to treat reporting like the replication crisis in science. Just two rules apply: Sign your work. Share your data. The corollaries are just as simple: Unsigned, unsourced statements are gossip. Unsupported data is propaganda.
celticmusic 7y ago
probably a silly complaint, but it would've been really nice to put the asterisk on the left side of the numbers so that one could immediately see by scanning which are the refined 9.
jellicle 7y ago
Somewhat amusingly, the list highlights the Achilles heel of journalism by omitting one simple rule: "tell the truth". Not lying is not at all the same as telling the truth. Modern journalism, at best (very rarely seen), tells you something that is, narrowly taken, true. Even this version of journalism does not attempt to tell you what the actual truth of the matter is. Narrowly true statement: "Republican Senator Blarg said today on the floor of the Senate "these charges are nonsense, fake news, totally made up"." That's a true statement! It was said! But it's also misleading about the whole matter to convey it to your readers. Telling your viewers the real truth of the situation: "The charges levied in the Senate are obviously accurate and serious, but Republican Senators are lying about them in an attempt to obfuscate and downplay the situation."
djinnandtonic 7y ago
13. Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible but fairness never is. The worst problem with journalism today, encapsulated in a single sentence.
- bsder 7y ago
  Personally, I think a bigger journalistic sin is: > Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. A journalist should check whether there is another side that they missed. However, there sometimes isn't. Sometimes the other side is simply flat-out wrong. More often, the "other side" is maliciously wrong. This journalistic assumption that there are always multiple sides that are on equal footing needs to DIE.
  - teflodollar 7y ago
    But stories do have multiple sides, even if one side is flat out wrong. I don't think anyone on the right or left would say that the present problem with Journalists is that they present both sides too well. That's not to say that there's never a correct position. Assuming there is another version is different from assuming all versions are on multiple footing.
    - bsder 7y ago
      My standard argument about this is: vax vs anti-vax. There are NOT two equal sides. There is a correct side and an outright fraudulent side and bunch of easily swayed morons. Journalists tend to cover this with "balance" instead of calling one side flat-out wrong. "Fair" means occasionally calling out liars and pissing people off.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    Disagree completely. Journalists to a great degree aren't smart enough to determine the correctness of a viewpoint. When they try they make themselves look foolish and reduce trust in not just themselves but institutions more greatly. For instance, they keep reporting the results of dodgy scientific studies as if it's the unquestionable truth. Their evaluation of "is it true" is nothing fancier than "does the person telling me this have a PhD from a university I've heard of". Then more studies that come out and contradict the first set, and they get reported in the same way. Pretty soon people figure out that these stories can't all be right. If journalists insist on interpreting the news to try and give context, which they don't have to do, then they should be far more skeptical than they really are, and give far more time to people who disagree with any given idea of view. That would pretty quickly put a stop to things like this: http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ NB: this site tries to make the Daily Mail look stupid because some objects are classified as both cures and causes cancer. But if you check the stories, they're all reporting on actual scientific results. The problem is the underlying medical science isn't reliable enough to determine truth.
12xo 7y ago
Attention is the currency of media. Modern, mainstream "news" programs are not journalism per se, they are just conduits for advertising dollars. The sad part is that concocting sensationalism is extremely profitable, especially politics. And when you can create the controversy and then charge outrageous amounts of money to the very people to whom you poke, you control the discourse and you make a lot of money, which in America is power. Modern, mainstream "news" is just like fast food. If you care about your body and your health, you will not eat the stuff. But most people dont care, dont mind and dont even think about it. Its cheap, tasty and convenient.
fnord77 7y ago
most of these seem like a good personal ethos to have, even if you're not a journo
Anka33 7y ago
Rule 1 : Promote Marxism Rule 2 : Goto rule 1
salimmadjd 7y ago
Even the "newspaper of record", the NY Times has lost its journalistic process. This is just one recent example that comes to mind. See why Harvard Professor is suing the NYT [1] for completely twisting his post about MIT and Jeffrey Epstein [0] I found this so outrageous how NYT would completely twist words and not make the appropriate corrections when given the evidence. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D135DBWfabM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D135DBWfabM
- sgustard 7y ago
  > "Lessig’s defamation suit covers a September 2019 article titled “A Harvard Professor Doubles Down: If You Take Epstein’s Money, Do It in Secret.” He claims the headline misrepresents his interview, where he condemns the donation, but says that “if you’re going to take the money, you damn well better make it anonymous.”" If you see the egregious defamation there, then you're a more nuanced reader than I am. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/13/21063873/jeffrey-epstein-lessig-nyt-defamation-lawsuit-mit-joi-ito-donations-interview https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/13/21063873/jeffrey-epstein-...
Knulp 7y ago
I feel like the conversation is lacking a journalist point of view so I'm going to pitch in :) I usually don't say anything in this kind of debate (especially on Twitter ;) ) because it's pretty useless, but I love reading the community here and it's the first time that a debate disppoints me. I feel like it's one sided and completly lacking the usual counter-argument and debate. Also, bear with me if I make english mistakes - I'm french and it's not my native langage. First I'd like to adress there's very different kinds of journalism, different set of skills associated with it and of course, a company they work for. As a job, working for the New York Times, for a local journal, for a tech magazine or for travel channel is completely different. I don't think people realise how different the job actually is from one media to the other. You can't say 'journalists' the same way you can't say 'engineers' because there's people doing software, people doing tests, people building machines, people advising companies and many other people doing many other things and having no idea how to do some other engineer job because it is... entirely different. We're not interchangeable and we don't all do the same job at all. All medias are also different. Which implies different owners, rules, and bosses. As a journalist, you're like everyone else : you're an employee. You can have ethics, you can have thoughts or a list of rules. At the end of the day, it's a job and if your boss asks you to do something completly stupid, you can either say no, loose that job and possibly die of hunger. Or you roll with it and hope very very hard it will not stay on the internet. (Spoiler alert : it will and you'll be ashamed of it all your life.) You do have rights in some countries; but first, like many rights, not everyone know them; and second, those rights don't necessarily protect you. Maybe the media can't fire you right away or because you refused working, but a few months later, when they're considering reconducting your contract, you'll just get cut. It's just sad math. Not everyone can afford to be a hero.
- Knulp 7y ago
  Another point is that there's this image that being a good journalist means investigating. Movies or tv shows never mention the actual money you're getting for publishing online. I often see discussion here on how much engineers make. Everytime I read those, I can't believe the numbers. So let's talk money. In France the middle ground for an online paper is getting paid between 40 dollars for a short piece and 120 for a long one. That's usually 8000 characters for long ones, so more or less 800 to 1000 words. If you want to do a good job, it requiries usually two days : you have to research, get people's contacts. Agree on a time for three or four interview which are going to last between 30 minutes and an hour each. Then if you have everything (rarely happens) you have to write. If no one answers or you realize the subject was actually much more complicated than you thought, it might take a week or a month. The nature of the job makes it hard to know how long exactly something is going to take if you want to do it right... But at the end of the day, the amount of money you get paid doesn't change and you might just get paid 100 dollars for two days work, and that's before taxes. I'll talk about my own experience as a freelancer for a year here, and I'm actually one of the very lucky ones because I had work. I calculated that this year, I often got paid 1 or 2 euro the hour. I earned 300 or 400 a month - well, usually it's more 1500 a month, then nothing for two month, then 200, then 600, then nothing again... Often I got paid four months after being published - and sometimes on Paypal. I also worked for a big American media and they pay you the same amount as in France - except at the end you get a check and your bank at home will also cut its own share of it and you'll end up with two times less money. I am absolutely not exagerating. Of course, I stopped being a freelancer because I couldn't make it work. Yes, my job was more interesting and I was travelling and getting to cover more exciting stuff. But it couldn't compensate the stress that came with having literaly no money and my savings going down and down and down and down. So now I have a job that is actually one of the rare ones where I can do a good job in France and get paid ok. I'll still never earn more than 20 to 25K a year after taxes. But I'm lucky. Really. So imagine how it is for mostly everyone else.
40acres 7y ago
For me, Twitter has been the worst thing to happen to journalism. There are a lot of downsides to strong institutions and gatekeeping, but when it comes to journalism I always felt like I was reading The New York Times or The Washington Post and not an individual reporter. The shroud of not getting an up close an personal look put the institution at the forefront. With social media, Twitter specifically, the journalist becomes the main focal point -- unfortunately the biases comes out as we are all human and you begin to get a closer look at how the sausage is made, how much "access journalism" corrodes coverage, and particularly how non-diverse these institutions are (everyone feels like they went to some Ivy or liberal arts college with somewhat wealthy or well connected in journalism relatives). A majority of the content is still really good (climate reporting, international politics, 'explainers' and data backed reporting are all excellent) from the big institutions but I've totally avoided political and most opinion columns since 2016.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  Another take: Traditional news outlets are no longer trustworthy, and will need to begin building new rapport by paying for known and trusted talent. Journalists will have publishing control, choosing which platforms suit each piece the best. People will have a much harder time discrediting someone with a focused, proven track record vs a business with broad financial and political interests. It's the natural result of a societal emphasis on identity-focused decision-making. We look for other individuals to guide us through things we don't understand. Individuals are relatable. This is why podcasting has swamped radio.
- danso 7y ago
  I think Twitter has been bad for journalism in that it presents a huge distraction, on top of the dangers of being an echo chamber (which varies depending on who you choose to follow). But the phenomenon of reporters being able to personally convey their behind-the-scene thinking and experience? I think that’s been a huge boon of valuable, informative insights we previously could only get in memoirs and 10-year anniversary reflections. What you see published as articles is something that’s been trimmed and edited for largely pragmatic purposes and convention, not through some rigorous standard of epistemology. The NYT’s Rukmini Callimachi is a great example of someone whose tweets greatly enrich her published work. Here is a thread of insights and reporting that became part of a next-day story on Iran and Sulemani: ‪ https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761 https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761 One of the best examples of all is David Farhenthoid, who tweeted the progress of what seemed like a very picayune (relatively speaking) factcheck of Trump's charity claims: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/david-fahrenthold-tells-the-behind-the-scenes-story-of-his-year-covering-trump/2016/12/27/299047c4-b510-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/david-fahr... > I spent a day searching for Trump’s money on Twitter, asking vets’ organizations if they’d gotten any of it. I used Trump’s Twitter handle, @realdonaldtrump, because I wanted Trump to see me searching. > Trump saw. > The next night, he called me to say he had just then given away the $1 million, all in one swoop, to a nonprofit run by a friend. That meant when Lewandowski said Trump’s money was “fully spent,” it was actually still in Trump’s pocket. Here's a more detailed breakdown of how Farenthold conveyed the progress of his reporting through Twitter, including screenshots of the legal pad he used as a checklist: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13810210/how-to-report-on-trump-fahrenthold https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13810210/h... By "picayune", I mean that in late 2016 (e.g. September through November) Trump's charity claims were extremely small-time compared to the actual presidential race. Without a way to publicly convey and accumulate (i.e. snowball) his reporting, Fahrenthold may not have been given enough time (by his editors) to have the critical mass needed for a meaningful story. His work eventually resulted in a Pulitzer-winning investigation, and the impetus for the most damaging ongoing state-level investigations into Trump today: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/david-fahrenthold https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/david-fahrenthold
MarioMan 7y ago
These are excellent rules, but they’re useless without sites and journalists that follow them. Does anyone here have some recommendations worth reading?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Reuters has pretty decent coverage of the US and international news. Their coverage of the UK may or may not be objective (I don't have the knowledge to say), but as far as I can tell, their non-UK coverage is pretty solid.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  You can watch the Macneil-Lehrer News Hour (now rebranded as just PBS News Hour), the program that Jim Lehrer hosted for the better part of his professional career and the reason people care about his opinion on journalism. It still runs every night: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/
baby 7y ago
In their current form, medias: 1. do not care about creating panics or damaging society 2. are incentivized to provide click-baity to-the-minute reporting. How to fix this? Maybe regulation, even though dangerous in this freedom of speech territory. One thing I was thinking (inspired by one of Andrew Yang's point) is to have a press tax to fund a delayed international news outlet. It changes the incentives: the media has no funding issue and is not incentivized to attract more readers; and it changes the impact: delaying each piece of news to wait until more information is available is good.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  We already have some obscure bureaucratic infrastructure in place from the 70s called the "public broadcasting service". It's funded and everything. Could just re-purpose that I suppose. Perhaps the public broadcasting service could have a nightly program that dedicates an entire hour of primetime to this type of reporting. And we could even name it in Lehrer's name! Of course in that case we should also give MacNeil credit as well. So perhaps the show could be called something like the "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour"! ;-)
  - baby 7y ago
    I’m not native so I’m not sure I got your comment :D
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
      You suggested a tax-funded news outlet that could focus on publishing well-sourced stories instead of keeping up with the hourly news cycle. What you are asking for already exists [1]. In fact, the article we're commenting on is about the guy who co-hosted it [2]. Up until a few years ago, the program was even called the "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" [3]. [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour#The_MacNeil/Lehrer_NewsHour_and_The_NewsHour_With_Jim_Lehrer_(1983%E2%80%932009) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour#The_MacNeil/Lehre...

234 points by funmi 7y ago

In addition to partisanship and sensationalism, access journalism has dramatically lowered the quality of what gets reported: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism It's also worth referencing Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent which lays out the playbook for propaganda posing as journalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

mc32 7y ago
Just want to point out that while often manufacturing consent is seen in a negative light because it’s been used to negatively manipulate people that it is also also possible to be used to the better good (vaccinations, education, etc. of course this can get abused and thus the negative aspect).
- proximitysauce 7y ago
  I disagree. It's not the job of journalism to manipulate people, even if they think they're doing it for a good cause. Jim Lehrer's rules are very correct here.
  - mc32 7y ago
    I think we’re talking past each other. Manufacturing consent isn’t always about lying or making things up. It can be presenting a united front on something and it entails telling the truth with which you’re persuading a pop to see that POV.
    - proximitysauce 7y ago
      I've never heard manufacturing consent used like that. Do you have any examples of what you're talking about? Genuinely curious.
      - jariel 7y ago
        "I've never heard manufacturing consent used like that. Do you have any examples of what you're talking about? Genuinely curious." It's called 'PR', it's used all day, every day by most companies and political organizations, social movements and even the government. Highlighting the positive aspects of whatever you're doing, avoiding the negative aspects, discrediting opponents and most insidiously - misrepresenting their arguments is how it's done. It's about creating the intended narrative around a specific subject. Take any controversial issue and you'll generally see that the 'sides' are not having a debate in public, they're engaging in framing the issue in a manner. The end up talking past one another entirely. 'Manufacturing Consent' is a funny book, because we read it when we're young and naive and our eyes are opened to the reality of the world and the perennial war of ideas. Because such activities are framed as nefarious and related to questionable acts of intervention (i.e. US intervention in S. America) ... we are 'shocked and outraged'. But I think looking at it from a more mature, contextualized perspective, it doesn't seem 'shocking' it seems really normal. Ironically the real coup of Chomsky is to misrepresent the nature of 'mass idea marketing' in a fair antagonist way that I don't think is really helpful. Unfortunately - almost all news is narrative-driven. Certainly the entirety of cable news. If you watch the local news, it feels dry and mundane, because it's generally very truthful, and there isn't a lot of 'war of ideas' over the dog that called 911. But for everything in pop culture and politics, there's a way to frame the subject in an ideological way (or in a manner that represents the interests of some group like advertisers or powerful individuals etc.) which is what happens all day long.
        throwawayjava 7y ago
        > ...we read it when we're young and naive and our eyes are opened... First, you're projecting. Second, it's not at all surprising that you're young enough to have first read Manufacturing Consent when you were "young". Third, books like Manufacturing Consent and Discipline and Punishment are primarily sociological. They do have some normative content, of course, but their primary goal is to explain how the world works. > It's called 'PR', it's used all day, every day by most companies and political organizations, social movements and even the government. This is an over-simplification. Of course that's true. Manufacturing Consent is not merely pointing out the existence of politics or merely making the observation that political operatives attempt to use media to shift opinion. It's a book about ___how___ that process works in the age of mass media and in a democratic capitalist society. The way in which cable news is used to warp people's perception of reality seems pretty obvious in 2020, with hindsight. And so Manufacturing Consent might seem trite and obvious today. But the book wasn't written in 2019. Or 2018. Or 2008. Or even 1998. It was published in 1988. Just to put that in context: it was written prior to 9/11. It was written almost a decade before Fox News was founded. It was written only shortly after cable television was even invented. In 1988, "Cable News" as we know it today didn't exist. CNN barely existed, and looked more like a combination of NBC Nightly News and CSPAN. And most importantly, manufacturing Consent was published at a time when most Americans really did believe that the nightly news was a mostly unbiased source of information. You might read it today and think "yeah, that's obviously how mass media is used to influence how people think about the world". But that's very much not the reaction most people -- even, perhaps especially, hard-nosed realists -- had when reading it in 1988.

MaupitiBlue 7y ago

Reading his rules, it’s hard not to agree with Bob Woodward that many journalists have become “unhinged” over Trump.

0x445442 7y ago
You forgot to put journalists in quotes.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

macspoofing 7y ago

If you take the present journalism climate as the norm, these rules are radical. Can you imagine CNN reporting on Trump voters and following rule #6? Or reporting on Trump and following rule #5, #11?

pjc50 7y ago
#5 and #7 are a problem - they can be exploited by bad actors. That's how you get the "views on shape of Earth differ" reports.
- proximitysauce 7y ago
  It's the job of journalists to vet the stories. No journalist ever has or ever will suggest that the earth is flat. That's a strawman.
  - nickloewen 7y ago
    The concern as I understand it is not that a journalist would just straight-up defend a conspiracy theory. Rather, the concern is that if you give any airtime to conspiracy theorists, even in the form of a debate, some viewers/readers will conclude that there must be some nugget of legitimacy in the conspiracy (why else would it be on the news?). Indeed, conspiracy theorists have relied on this to gain support, especially before they had the internet, when strategically baiting the media was the only way to get their bullshit noticed.
    - proximitysauce 7y ago
      A far greater concern than conspiracy theorists getting taken seriously are actual conspiracies perpetrated by mainstream media outlets. I gave two examples elsewhere in the thread: Weinstein and Epstein. Those aren't "conspiracy theories", they're know and active conspiracies. There were a multitude of opportunity to report on them but the stories were actively stifled for personal and political gain.
  - pjc50 7y ago

kristianc 7y ago

Many journalists seem to have discovered that becoming noisy, performative blue tick ‘personas’, acting out journalism on Twitter, and saying things like ‘this, literally this’ a lot as a substitute for actual analysis is also good for their careers. They act out this status-dance of pretending to loathe every second of life in the toxic digital hellscape that, in the talk tracks and visibility it gives them is actually very beneficial for their careers. They couldn’t actually admit it’s been good for them though, as that would mean admitting profiting from the algorithmic, privacy problem-invested landscape that they barely understand but have made their careers criticizing. But of course, everyone’s at it! So the only way to get ahead is more paranoia, more angst, more toxicity. Once you’re bought in, you can’t go back to tacking to the middle. So we get an arms race of performative angst and hyperbolic statements. Before you know it, you’re claiming that Slack notifications give you PTSD symptoms: https://twitter.com/pfpicardi/status/1220738739514814467?s=21 https://twitter.com/pfpicardi/status/1220738739514814467?s=2... The problem is that that is antithetical to the real work of journalism - which should be about seeking truth without fear or favour.

mc32 7y ago
The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters. Maybe one day actual journalists will come to the conclusion that tweeting is antithetical to journalism and may only use it as a tool of discovery rather than engagement.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters. The upside though is that it's easier to tell they're activists / non-objective on Twitter - compared to supposedly 'serious' outlets pushing all kinds of agendas as "objective" journalism.
- elfexec 7y ago
  > The problem is that on Twitter they’ve become more like activists rather than journalists/reporters. They've always been activists. Twitter just makes it visible to the public while in the past, their biases were shielded behind the fake PR-driven reputation of an institution. The first newspapers in america were created to lie and spread political ideology. And that has been the case ever since. "As for what is not true you will always find abundance in the newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson I wish everyone was taught about the history of the news industry. Also, I wish every media company was forced to notify/warn their audience on who founded the company and why. Like how cigarette and tobacco companies have to put warning labels to notify their customers of the dangers of the product they are selling.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago

> No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. This is the entire internet.

0xcde4c3db 7y ago
I think Lehrer's point here is that journalists often speak to sources "off the record", and that this is often used to fuel conflict instead of illuminating the situation.

mannykannot 7y ago

I think the author unintentionally misspoke in calling him "one of the last". The growth of journalism in which Lehrer's standards are not observed should not distract us from the fact that there are many journalists reporting with integrity, and in some cases, great courage.

jc01480 7y ago
Can you reference some?
- nl 7y ago
  There are plenty. The Pulitzer prize winners and finalists last year seems a good place to start. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2019 https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2019
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
Journalism is in the same boat as websites are. There are more fantastic ones than ever before but the number of crappy ones and major players that have entered the market in the past 20 years have overshadowed them by orders of magnitudes. I think this is pretty much happening everywhere as access to the middle class and knowledge worker/white collar jobs are becoming the norm. A small cadre of experts still exist but the number of amateurs, scammers and grifters is aggressively growing.

bilbo0s 7y ago

Interesting that none of the rules of journalism include just reporting facts. In fact, it says that journalists should be disciplined for "reckless" reporting of any fact. It kind of explains why we live in the fact light environment of quotes and spin. Presumably, if a hard fact proves unpopular with a large enough group, then those facts, even when backed by hard evidence, can likely land you in a lot of trouble. A bit understandable I suppose? I mean, if talking bad about Trump or Obama increases the number of shooters in your Walmarts and churches, then yeah, probably should be careful about doing that. At the same time, if you have to walk on egg shells around people so emotionally invested in a person, or place, or subject that they're going to shoot up anyone who disagrees with them, then your journalism on that issue is not likely to be very "good" in any case.

macspoofing 7y ago
>Interesting that none of the rules of journalism include just reporting facts. Facts are not enough because in order for 'facts' to be useful they have to be embedded in a larger structure - like a theory, or ideology, or narrative, or whatever. Here's a fact: "Sun rises in the East, and sets in the West". This fact is compatible with heliocentric and geocentric models. The fact on its own doesn't tell you which is which. It doesn't tell you the context, nor the other facts that may have been omitted or superfluously included when reported, and proponents of both theories can use it to justify their position. This is why there can never be such a thing as "journalism that just reports the facts".
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >This fact is compatible with heliocentric and geocentric models. The fact on its own doesn't tell you which is which. But the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun does tell you which "model" is actually a fact. That's the point. You're making an argument about which facts should be reported? The sun rising in the east? Or the phases of Venus? Or both? Or both and more? But stating that you need an ideology or narrative to support your facts is a bit nonsensical in my own opinion. There really is only one conclusion that can be drawn from the totality of the facts. To state only a single fact, and then say, "here is an ideology or narrative so you can understand the fact I just gave you." Really is just stating an ideology or narrative. Think of it this way, if you still need a narrative, then you didn't give anyone all the facts.

proximitysauce 7y ago

It's much more rare though and it's almost entirely absent when looking at political coverage. Two journalists I can think of off the top of my head who have acted with outstanding integrity in recent years are Ronan Farrow and Julie K. Brown (broke the Weinstein and Epstein stories respectively). Part of what makes their journalism so strong is that they had to fight the entire industry to get their stories out. Political coverage is a nightmare though. Just yesterday George Stephanopoulos was caught on camera acting in an extremely partisan manner [1]. This happens on both sides of the isle regularly at this point (the White House itself is hardly faultless). It's only ratcheted up since 2016 where it seems the press took it up themselves to "save" us, where the definition of save seems to be: push their own political opinions. 1. https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1220758756071497728 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1220758756071497728

macspoofing 7y ago
>Just yesterday George Stephanopoulos was caught on camera acting in an extremely partisan manner [1] To be fair, Stephanopoulos was a Democratic operative for years before transitioning to media. Why would you expect him to not be partisan?
- proximitysauce 7y ago
  I wouldn't but I also wouldn't expect a political operative to become the chief anchor and political correspondent of a major network.
  - aNoob7000 7y ago
    The problem I see is that no one can agree on what is right or the truth any longer. What one side considers the truth might not be the same for the other, look no further than the impeachment proceedings. I'm amazed that we've reached a point in the USA where we can't agree on some simple truths anymore.
    - macspoofing 7y ago

degosuke 7y ago

I wonder whether the improvements in machine learning would ever be sufficient, so that for an article we could generate a quick report of how many points from the list are "checked".

lando2319 7y ago
Journalists pick and choose facts to support the narrative, I don't think having them "checked" would matter. What you want to know is the facts that go against the narrative that aren't mentioned. Then take a holistic view.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Exactly. Something that gathers all of the known facts in one place for review. That used to be what journalists did, not so much any longer.
celticmusic 7y ago
people would just game it, you can't solve this with technology.

specialist 7y ago

Lehrer's Rules are solid, ethical, and actionable. I agree 100%. Alas, they are completely moot in today's ad-supported automated outrage machines. And I'm fresh out of goodwill. Until we decide that discourse is more important than profits, forge a new consensus, we have to treat reporting like the replication crisis in science. Just two rules apply: Sign your work. Share your data. The corollaries are just as simple: Unsigned, unsourced statements are gossip. Unsupported data is propaganda.

celticmusic 7y ago

probably a silly complaint, but it would've been really nice to put the asterisk on the left side of the numbers so that one could immediately see by scanning which are the refined 9.

jellicle 7y ago

Somewhat amusingly, the list highlights the Achilles heel of journalism by omitting one simple rule: "tell the truth". Not lying is not at all the same as telling the truth. Modern journalism, at best (very rarely seen), tells you something that is, narrowly taken, true. Even this version of journalism does not attempt to tell you what the actual truth of the matter is. Narrowly true statement: "Republican Senator Blarg said today on the floor of the Senate "these charges are nonsense, fake news, totally made up"." That's a true statement! It was said! But it's also misleading about the whole matter to convey it to your readers. Telling your viewers the real truth of the situation: "The charges levied in the Senate are obviously accurate and serious, but Republican Senators are lying about them in an attempt to obfuscate and downplay the situation."

djinnandtonic 7y ago

13. Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible but fairness never is. The worst problem with journalism today, encapsulated in a single sentence.

bsder 7y ago
Personally, I think a bigger journalistic sin is: > Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. A journalist should check whether there is another side that they missed. However, there sometimes isn't. Sometimes the other side is simply flat-out wrong. More often, the "other side" is maliciously wrong. This journalistic assumption that there are always multiple sides that are on equal footing needs to DIE.
- teflodollar 7y ago
  But stories do have multiple sides, even if one side is flat out wrong. I don't think anyone on the right or left would say that the present problem with Journalists is that they present both sides too well. That's not to say that there's never a correct position. Assuming there is another version is different from assuming all versions are on multiple footing.
  - bsder 7y ago
    My standard argument about this is: vax vs anti-vax. There are NOT two equal sides. There is a correct side and an outright fraudulent side and bunch of easily swayed morons. Journalists tend to cover this with "balance" instead of calling one side flat-out wrong. "Fair" means occasionally calling out liars and pissing people off.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Disagree completely. Journalists to a great degree aren't smart enough to determine the correctness of a viewpoint. When they try they make themselves look foolish and reduce trust in not just themselves but institutions more greatly. For instance, they keep reporting the results of dodgy scientific studies as if it's the unquestionable truth. Their evaluation of "is it true" is nothing fancier than "does the person telling me this have a PhD from a university I've heard of". Then more studies that come out and contradict the first set, and they get reported in the same way. Pretty soon people figure out that these stories can't all be right. If journalists insist on interpreting the news to try and give context, which they don't have to do, then they should be far more skeptical than they really are, and give far more time to people who disagree with any given idea of view. That would pretty quickly put a stop to things like this: http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ NB: this site tries to make the Daily Mail look stupid because some objects are classified as both cures and causes cancer. But if you check the stories, they're all reporting on actual scientific results. The problem is the underlying medical science isn't reliable enough to determine truth.

12xo 7y ago

Attention is the currency of media. Modern, mainstream "news" programs are not journalism per se, they are just conduits for advertising dollars. The sad part is that concocting sensationalism is extremely profitable, especially politics. And when you can create the controversy and then charge outrageous amounts of money to the very people to whom you poke, you control the discourse and you make a lot of money, which in America is power. Modern, mainstream "news" is just like fast food. If you care about your body and your health, you will not eat the stuff. But most people dont care, dont mind and dont even think about it. Its cheap, tasty and convenient.

fnord77 7y ago

most of these seem like a good personal ethos to have, even if you're not a journo

Anka33 7y ago

Rule 1 : Promote Marxism Rule 2 : Goto rule 1

salimmadjd 7y ago

Even the "newspaper of record", the NY Times has lost its journalistic process. This is just one recent example that comes to mind. See why Harvard Professor is suing the NYT [1] for completely twisting his post about MIT and Jeffrey Epstein [0] I found this so outrageous how NYT would completely twist words and not make the appropriate corrections when given the evidence. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D135DBWfabM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D135DBWfabM

sgustard 7y ago
> "Lessig’s defamation suit covers a September 2019 article titled “A Harvard Professor Doubles Down: If You Take Epstein’s Money, Do It in Secret.” He claims the headline misrepresents his interview, where he condemns the donation, but says that “if you’re going to take the money, you damn well better make it anonymous.”" If you see the egregious defamation there, then you're a more nuanced reader than I am. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/13/21063873/jeffrey-epstein-lessig-nyt-defamation-lawsuit-mit-joi-ito-donations-interview https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/13/21063873/jeffrey-epstein-...

Knulp 7y ago

I feel like the conversation is lacking a journalist point of view so I'm going to pitch in :) I usually don't say anything in this kind of debate (especially on Twitter ;) ) because it's pretty useless, but I love reading the community here and it's the first time that a debate disppoints me. I feel like it's one sided and completly lacking the usual counter-argument and debate. Also, bear with me if I make english mistakes - I'm french and it's not my native langage. First I'd like to adress there's very different kinds of journalism, different set of skills associated with it and of course, a company they work for. As a job, working for the New York Times, for a local journal, for a tech magazine or for travel channel is completely different. I don't think people realise how different the job actually is from one media to the other. You can't say 'journalists' the same way you can't say 'engineers' because there's people doing software, people doing tests, people building machines, people advising companies and many other people doing many other things and having no idea how to do some other engineer job because it is... entirely different. We're not interchangeable and we don't all do the same job at all. All medias are also different. Which implies different owners, rules, and bosses. As a journalist, you're like everyone else : you're an employee. You can have ethics, you can have thoughts or a list of rules. At the end of the day, it's a job and if your boss asks you to do something completly stupid, you can either say no, loose that job and possibly die of hunger. Or you roll with it and hope very very hard it will not stay on the internet. (Spoiler alert : it will and you'll be ashamed of it all your life.) You do have rights in some countries; but first, like many rights, not everyone know them; and second, those rights don't necessarily protect you. Maybe the media can't fire you right away or because you refused working, but a few months later, when they're considering reconducting your contract, you'll just get cut. It's just sad math. Not everyone can afford to be a hero.

Knulp 7y ago
Another point is that there's this image that being a good journalist means investigating. Movies or tv shows never mention the actual money you're getting for publishing online. I often see discussion here on how much engineers make. Everytime I read those, I can't believe the numbers. So let's talk money. In France the middle ground for an online paper is getting paid between 40 dollars for a short piece and 120 for a long one. That's usually 8000 characters for long ones, so more or less 800 to 1000 words. If you want to do a good job, it requiries usually two days : you have to research, get people's contacts. Agree on a time for three or four interview which are going to last between 30 minutes and an hour each. Then if you have everything (rarely happens) you have to write. If no one answers or you realize the subject was actually much more complicated than you thought, it might take a week or a month. The nature of the job makes it hard to know how long exactly something is going to take if you want to do it right... But at the end of the day, the amount of money you get paid doesn't change and you might just get paid 100 dollars for two days work, and that's before taxes. I'll talk about my own experience as a freelancer for a year here, and I'm actually one of the very lucky ones because I had work. I calculated that this year, I often got paid 1 or 2 euro the hour. I earned 300 or 400 a month - well, usually it's more 1500 a month, then nothing for two month, then 200, then 600, then nothing again... Often I got paid four months after being published - and sometimes on Paypal. I also worked for a big American media and they pay you the same amount as in France - except at the end you get a check and your bank at home will also cut its own share of it and you'll end up with two times less money. I am absolutely not exagerating. Of course, I stopped being a freelancer because I couldn't make it work. Yes, my job was more interesting and I was travelling and getting to cover more exciting stuff. But it couldn't compensate the stress that came with having literaly no money and my savings going down and down and down and down. So now I have a job that is actually one of the rare ones where I can do a good job in France and get paid ok. I'll still never earn more than 20 to 25K a year after taxes. But I'm lucky. Really. So imagine how it is for mostly everyone else.

40acres 7y ago

For me, Twitter has been the worst thing to happen to journalism. There are a lot of downsides to strong institutions and gatekeeping, but when it comes to journalism I always felt like I was reading The New York Times or The Washington Post and not an individual reporter. The shroud of not getting an up close an personal look put the institution at the forefront. With social media, Twitter specifically, the journalist becomes the main focal point -- unfortunately the biases comes out as we are all human and you begin to get a closer look at how the sausage is made, how much "access journalism" corrodes coverage, and particularly how non-diverse these institutions are (everyone feels like they went to some Ivy or liberal arts college with somewhat wealthy or well connected in journalism relatives). A majority of the content is still really good (climate reporting, international politics, 'explainers' and data backed reporting are all excellent) from the big institutions but I've totally avoided political and most opinion columns since 2016.

soulofmischief 7y ago
Another take: Traditional news outlets are no longer trustworthy, and will need to begin building new rapport by paying for known and trusted talent. Journalists will have publishing control, choosing which platforms suit each piece the best. People will have a much harder time discrediting someone with a focused, proven track record vs a business with broad financial and political interests. It's the natural result of a societal emphasis on identity-focused decision-making. We look for other individuals to guide us through things we don't understand. Individuals are relatable. This is why podcasting has swamped radio.
danso 7y ago
I think Twitter has been bad for journalism in that it presents a huge distraction, on top of the dangers of being an echo chamber (which varies depending on who you choose to follow). But the phenomenon of reporters being able to personally convey their behind-the-scene thinking and experience? I think that’s been a huge boon of valuable, informative insights we previously could only get in memoirs and 10-year anniversary reflections. What you see published as articles is something that’s been trimmed and edited for largely pragmatic purposes and convention, not through some rigorous standard of epistemology. The NYT’s Rukmini Callimachi is a great example of someone whose tweets greatly enrich her published work. Here is a thread of insights and reporting that became part of a next-day story on Iran and Sulemani: ‪ https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761 https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761 One of the best examples of all is David Farhenthoid, who tweeted the progress of what seemed like a very picayune (relatively speaking) factcheck of Trump's charity claims: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/david-fahrenthold-tells-the-behind-the-scenes-story-of-his-year-covering-trump/2016/12/27/299047c4-b510-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/david-fahr... > I spent a day searching for Trump’s money on Twitter, asking vets’ organizations if they’d gotten any of it. I used Trump’s Twitter handle, @realdonaldtrump, because I wanted Trump to see me searching. > Trump saw. > The next night, he called me to say he had just then given away the $1 million, all in one swoop, to a nonprofit run by a friend. That meant when Lewandowski said Trump’s money was “fully spent,” it was actually still in Trump’s pocket. Here's a more detailed breakdown of how Farenthold conveyed the progress of his reporting through Twitter, including screenshots of the legal pad he used as a checklist: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13810210/how-to-report-on-trump-fahrenthold https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13810210/h... By "picayune", I mean that in late 2016 (e.g. September through November) Trump's charity claims were extremely small-time compared to the actual presidential race. Without a way to publicly convey and accumulate (i.e. snowball) his reporting, Fahrenthold may not have been given enough time (by his editors) to have the critical mass needed for a meaningful story. His work eventually resulted in a Pulitzer-winning investigation, and the impetus for the most damaging ongoing state-level investigations into Trump today: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/david-fahrenthold https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/david-fahrenthold

MarioMan 7y ago

These are excellent rules, but they’re useless without sites and journalists that follow them. Does anyone here have some recommendations worth reading?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Reuters has pretty decent coverage of the US and international news. Their coverage of the UK may or may not be objective (I don't have the knowledge to say), but as far as I can tell, their non-UK coverage is pretty solid.
throwawayjava 7y ago
You can watch the Macneil-Lehrer News Hour (now rebranded as just PBS News Hour), the program that Jim Lehrer hosted for the better part of his professional career and the reason people care about his opinion on journalism. It still runs every night: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/

baby 7y ago

In their current form, medias: 1. do not care about creating panics or damaging society 2. are incentivized to provide click-baity to-the-minute reporting. How to fix this? Maybe regulation, even though dangerous in this freedom of speech territory. One thing I was thinking (inspired by one of Andrew Yang's point) is to have a press tax to fund a delayed international news outlet. It changes the incentives: the media has no funding issue and is not incentivized to attract more readers; and it changes the impact: delaying each piece of news to wait until more information is available is good.

throwawayjava 7y ago
We already have some obscure bureaucratic infrastructure in place from the 70s called the "public broadcasting service". It's funded and everything. Could just re-purpose that I suppose. Perhaps the public broadcasting service could have a nightly program that dedicates an entire hour of primetime to this type of reporting. And we could even name it in Lehrer's name! Of course in that case we should also give MacNeil credit as well. So perhaps the show could be called something like the "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour"! ;-)
- baby 7y ago
  I’m not native so I’m not sure I got your comment :D
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    You suggested a tax-funded news outlet that could focus on publishing well-sourced stories instead of keeping up with the hourly news cycle. What you are asking for already exists [1]. In fact, the article we're commenting on is about the guy who co-hosted it [2]. Up until a few years ago, the program was even called the "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" [3]. [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lehrer [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour#The_MacNeil/Lehrer_NewsHour_and_The_NewsHour_With_Jim_Lehrer_(1983%E2%80%932009) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour#The_MacNeil/Lehre...