8 ms·

This is a tragedy, Scott Alexander is such a thoughtful writer. I wish journalists would come up with some professional standards and make the title licensed,

This is a tragedy, Scott Alexander is such a thoughtful writer. I wish journalists would come up with some professional standards and make the title licensed, like doctor or lawyer. Right now we all recognize how important journalism is but journalists themselves run the gamut from ethical investigative journalists to clickbait manufacturers. Imagine if journalists also had to adhere to the equivalent of attorney client privilege for sources.

jakeogh 6y ago
A journalism license? I struggle to come up with a worse solution... No.
ericzawo 6y ago
I 100% agree and talked about this a lot in j school. Would love to see some type of society body emerge with a coalition of Pulitzer Prize winners (the only real framework that possibly stands to live past the inevitable calls about its legitimacy from the News Corp -owned bodies of media, honestly) and ideally backed by the biggest news media companies in the world. I would love to see a further membership based element where members of the public and journalists could critique reportage and possible ethical lapses all publicly, adhering to principles set by the society itself. Honestly I think it's time journalists take back some of the responsibility and importance of their roles that's been stripped by colleague and company malpractice (and the side effects of a business model twisted inside out in rapid succession), as many DO recognize their importance. But like politics any real "talk" of media quickly devolves into sports-like tribalism and never gets beyond hating the 'players' not the game itself.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  You don't have a self-governing body for journalism?
  - tschwimmer 6y ago
    There's this, but I don't see much discussion about it: https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    It's fine to have a standards committee with the power of suggestion. However something like that could just as easily become something for countries with dictators to use to attempt to silence reporters who they don't like so I suspect that's why there's no "governing body" just some organizations who recommend best practices. One man's "standards" is another one's opportunity to cull rebellious journalists.
  - ericzawo 6y ago
    I don't, but the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian Journalism Foundation both exist. CAJ particularly has done some good explanations in the past (though I haven't read it since I was forced to, in university!) https://caj.ca/Ethics https://caj.ca/Ethics
- 0-O-0 6y ago
  > society body emerge with a coalition of Pulitzer Prize winners ... backed by the biggest news media companies If biggest media companies were interested in upholding any ethical standards - the would have been doing that already. Allowing them to create a coalition and giving that coalition any more power would make things only worse.
- jmeister 6y ago
  Pulitzers have lost a lot of credibility because of Hannah Jones/1619.
pvg 6y ago
Scott Alexander was not the source. Journalists generally don't reveal sources and some have gone to jail to avoid doing so.
- fourcommas 6y ago
  And then there's Washington Post whose entire editorial board signed a letter asking the US Gov to arrest and charge their own source. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesnt-deserve-a-pardon/2016/09/17/ec04d448-7c2e-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...
- tschwimmer 6y ago
  Scott Alexander may not have been the original source, but he is a definitely _a_ source as it seems he was in touch with the reporter. The reporter has an undeniable ethical duty to decide whether to publish his full name after he raises concerns about his safety. I see limited to no news value in publishing his name and substantial risk of harm, but I'm a frequent reader and admirer of the blog.
  - pvg 6y ago
    I don't think the 'substantial risk of harm' is established, at least, not by Scott Alexander's own behaviour - he says himself his pseudonymity was quite thin. Journalists tend to see their responsibility as being primarily to their readers, not the subjects of their stories. Subjects generally don't get to edit stories about themselves - that's considered non-journalism.
    - hitekker 6y ago
      > I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an antipsychiatry Reddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. I think anyone who is not a sociopath would consider this proof of a “substantial risk of harm”.
iagovar 6y ago
I'm not really putting much on the table but journalist are in my low tier of respect, if there's any. There's so many instances of abuse, lying and laziness that seems low standards are common through the profession and countries. In general I tend to see them as activist, with very few exceptions of people that tries to approach truth. Nowadays it really doesn't matter if they write for a local newspaper or WAPO, it's just so common that your default approach should be looking at every piece as propaganda.
praptak 6y ago
First fix the economic incentives. They are badly broken after the paper press lost to internet news. You can't expect the journalists to uphold ethical standards when the market rewards garbage rage-inducing clickbait.
ehnto 6y ago
A standards body maybe. But do you not see some ethical concerns of licensing that tells people how to conduct journalism? Freedom of the Press, but only for those who the governing body deems fit? The whole point of a license is to reduce the gamut of people who can practice a profession to just those people who do it the way the license specifies. In a world such as ours, and a country such as the US, it will inevitably become the target of corruption and a position of immense power over the media. Even if it could be a good idea, I don't believe we live in a world where it would be executed in a way that maintains freedom of the press.
- baddox 6y ago
  I don’t see it as much different than the general societal norms that we tend to teach children, like “try to be nice” and “it’s okay to avoid people who aren’t nice.” Is that a violation of freedom of speech, or some top-down regulation? I don’t think so. It probably shouldn’t be “licensing” in the sense of using state or otherwise organized violence to seek out people who violate the norms. We generally don’t teach people to punch anyone in the face who is rude. But having general standards of conduct don’t seem to bad to me.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    Licensing or regulation is a very particular construct in relation to employment, and nothing like education of ethics. I am on board with ethics education as a way to impart societal values. I'm pretty sure it's a component in most journalism degrees, but perhaps it should be part of early education more distinctly as well.
- 0-O-0 6y ago
  There is no accountability, no repercussions [1] for causing any amount of personal and economic damage. No real need to offer retraction and corrections even when reporting isn't just unethical, but also blatantly wrong. If you want an easy example look at this Super Micro spy chip story [2] by Bloomberg Businessweek. It's absolutely unsubstantiated [3], caused 40% drop for SM share price, but two years later it's still up. [1] except that one time Tiel funded a lawsuit [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... [3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/super_micro_chinese_spy_chip_sec/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/super_micro_chinese_s...
buboard 6y ago
Aren’t they already a legally protected profession?
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Not in some countries but it's the 1st amendment of the US Constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. So it's considered pretty important here.
neonate 6y ago
Licensing seems like a solution to problems like this but the cure would be worse than the disease. Control over the licensing body would guarantee control over information, so it would become a prize to be fought for and the whole thing would be politicized. The best case scenario is we end up with the same mess we have now. Worst case is one side captures control and now their side gets to be the only "legitimate" one. Same problem with so-called fact-checking. It's politicized, which means it adds nothing over the chaotic political debate we already have, except a false veneer of objectivity.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Licensing of reporters would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.
qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
> make the title licensed This is possibly one of the easiest ways to create a police state if you make journalism "regulated" (i.e. government approved) ((or if you're a nutter, corporation approved))
marcus_holmes 6y ago
There is already a sort-of licence. Being employed by a company as a journalist, especially if the company is a recognised media "name". But the people this is deliberately not recognising is bloggers. And to be honest, I'm seeing better journalism being done by (some) bloggers than (some) paid journalists now (not their fault - the business model for journalism is a mess, while the model for blogging is working).
- luckylion 6y ago
  > There is already a sort-of licence. Being employed by a company as a journalist, especially if the company is a recognised media "name". But this obviously fails as seen in this instance (and many others). Companies have interests that do not align with the public's interest of ethical standards. Much like we've generally understood (but unfortunately not really everywhere) that letting other industries regulate themselves isn't a good idea, I don't think it's any different in the media.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    I totally agree. The sooner we can all stop reading ad-funded journalism, the better.
CM30 6y ago
Personally, I'd rather journalism wasn't licensed in this way. I get the intention behind it, but it'd basically outlaw freelance journalists, independent journalism sites, blogging, etc, and make it easier to justify arresting people at protests because you don't like what they're recording. Also an easy target to politicise, and dangerous to society if the far left/right end up running such a board and dictating that their opponents are wrong.
frobozz 6y ago
Licensing only works if you have to be in a certain jurisdiction to operate in it. Given that more "journalism" is online, if Murdoch or the Barclay Brothers or whoever don't like the restrictions of your licence, they can just employ journalists somewhere else. If they need boots on the ground, they can employ independent contractors. How do you prevent independent journalists selling pieces to certain outlets without unfairly placing the burden on the journalist? Is it a list of proscribed publications? How does a publication get on the list? What happens to all the "good" journalists who work for an organisation when it gets put on the list? What, exactly, is a journalist? Does it include columnists who write opinion pieces? If not, how do you prevent an outlet from running more and more "opinion pieces" masquerading as news? If you get defrocked for doing something your employer considers highly profitable, they can just rebrand you as a columnist. What does it mean to be licensed? What does having a licence allow you to do that you can't do without one? Is this your "press pass" allowing you to ask questions at briefings? There have been cases recently when this has been revoked on a whim. Is it just to get a byline in a printed newspaper? Again, they can rebrand unlicensed journalists as runners, and print the piece under the name of a real journalist. Journalism is not a terminal career like medicine or law. If you get thrown out of one of those professions, you lose your livelihood. There is nothing else that you are as well trained for that pays as well. You have to start at the bottom of something else. Most journalists are not particularly well paid. Former journalists can earn as much, if not more, writing press releases and advertising copy.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Doctors were once upon a time not very highly trained, medicine was a crapshoot, now things have changed. I'm sure it was a tremendous upheaval at the time. That it's a lot of work doesn't mean it can't be done. A more interesting argument against doing this is considering the tradeoffs if implemented: * e.g. the AMA has pretty successfully restricted the supply of doctors and driven the prices of medicine up, * people are so paranoid about giving medical or legal advice they have to say things like "I'm not a doctor but... I'm not a lawyer but..." etc.
  - frobozz 6y ago
raxxorrax 6y ago
People just don't buy newspapers anymore since the net is full of news articles. Your business model is basically attracting as many people as possible to your site. Advertisers were always the largest customers but today the reader is completely exempt from business relations.

jakeogh 6y ago

A journalism license? I struggle to come up with a worse solution... No.

ericzawo 6y ago

I 100% agree and talked about this a lot in j school. Would love to see some type of society body emerge with a coalition of Pulitzer Prize winners (the only real framework that possibly stands to live past the inevitable calls about its legitimacy from the News Corp -owned bodies of media, honestly) and ideally backed by the biggest news media companies in the world. I would love to see a further membership based element where members of the public and journalists could critique reportage and possible ethical lapses all publicly, adhering to principles set by the society itself. Honestly I think it's time journalists take back some of the responsibility and importance of their roles that's been stripped by colleague and company malpractice (and the side effects of a business model twisted inside out in rapid succession), as many DO recognize their importance. But like politics any real "talk" of media quickly devolves into sports-like tribalism and never gets beyond hating the 'players' not the game itself.

rebuilder 6y ago
You don't have a self-governing body for journalism?
- tschwimmer 6y ago
  There's this, but I don't see much discussion about it: https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  It's fine to have a standards committee with the power of suggestion. However something like that could just as easily become something for countries with dictators to use to attempt to silence reporters who they don't like so I suspect that's why there's no "governing body" just some organizations who recommend best practices. One man's "standards" is another one's opportunity to cull rebellious journalists.
- ericzawo 6y ago
  I don't, but the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian Journalism Foundation both exist. CAJ particularly has done some good explanations in the past (though I haven't read it since I was forced to, in university!) https://caj.ca/Ethics https://caj.ca/Ethics
0-O-0 6y ago
> society body emerge with a coalition of Pulitzer Prize winners ... backed by the biggest news media companies If biggest media companies were interested in upholding any ethical standards - the would have been doing that already. Allowing them to create a coalition and giving that coalition any more power would make things only worse.
jmeister 6y ago
Pulitzers have lost a lot of credibility because of Hannah Jones/1619.

pvg 6y ago

Scott Alexander was not the source. Journalists generally don't reveal sources and some have gone to jail to avoid doing so.

fourcommas 6y ago
And then there's Washington Post whose entire editorial board signed a letter asking the US Gov to arrest and charge their own source. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesnt-deserve-a-pardon/2016/09/17/ec04d448-7c2e-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...
tschwimmer 6y ago
Scott Alexander may not have been the original source, but he is a definitely _a_ source as it seems he was in touch with the reporter. The reporter has an undeniable ethical duty to decide whether to publish his full name after he raises concerns about his safety. I see limited to no news value in publishing his name and substantial risk of harm, but I'm a frequent reader and admirer of the blog.
- pvg 6y ago
  I don't think the 'substantial risk of harm' is established, at least, not by Scott Alexander's own behaviour - he says himself his pseudonymity was quite thin. Journalists tend to see their responsibility as being primarily to their readers, not the subjects of their stories. Subjects generally don't get to edit stories about themselves - that's considered non-journalism.
  - hitekker 6y ago
    > I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an antipsychiatry Reddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. I think anyone who is not a sociopath would consider this proof of a “substantial risk of harm”.

iagovar 6y ago

I'm not really putting much on the table but journalist are in my low tier of respect, if there's any. There's so many instances of abuse, lying and laziness that seems low standards are common through the profession and countries. In general I tend to see them as activist, with very few exceptions of people that tries to approach truth. Nowadays it really doesn't matter if they write for a local newspaper or WAPO, it's just so common that your default approach should be looking at every piece as propaganda.

praptak 6y ago

First fix the economic incentives. They are badly broken after the paper press lost to internet news. You can't expect the journalists to uphold ethical standards when the market rewards garbage rage-inducing clickbait.

ehnto 6y ago

A standards body maybe. But do you not see some ethical concerns of licensing that tells people how to conduct journalism? Freedom of the Press, but only for those who the governing body deems fit? The whole point of a license is to reduce the gamut of people who can practice a profession to just those people who do it the way the license specifies. In a world such as ours, and a country such as the US, it will inevitably become the target of corruption and a position of immense power over the media. Even if it could be a good idea, I don't believe we live in a world where it would be executed in a way that maintains freedom of the press.

baddox 6y ago
I don’t see it as much different than the general societal norms that we tend to teach children, like “try to be nice” and “it’s okay to avoid people who aren’t nice.” Is that a violation of freedom of speech, or some top-down regulation? I don’t think so. It probably shouldn’t be “licensing” in the sense of using state or otherwise organized violence to seek out people who violate the norms. We generally don’t teach people to punch anyone in the face who is rude. But having general standards of conduct don’t seem to bad to me.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Licensing or regulation is a very particular construct in relation to employment, and nothing like education of ethics. I am on board with ethics education as a way to impart societal values. I'm pretty sure it's a component in most journalism degrees, but perhaps it should be part of early education more distinctly as well.
0-O-0 6y ago
There is no accountability, no repercussions [1] for causing any amount of personal and economic damage. No real need to offer retraction and corrections even when reporting isn't just unethical, but also blatantly wrong. If you want an easy example look at this Super Micro spy chip story [2] by Bloomberg Businessweek. It's absolutely unsubstantiated [3], caused 40% drop for SM share price, but two years later it's still up. [1] except that one time Tiel funded a lawsuit [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... [3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/super_micro_chinese_spy_chip_sec/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/super_micro_chinese_s...

buboard 6y ago

Aren’t they already a legally protected profession?

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Not in some countries but it's the 1st amendment of the US Constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. So it's considered pretty important here.

neonate 6y ago

Licensing seems like a solution to problems like this but the cure would be worse than the disease. Control over the licensing body would guarantee control over information, so it would become a prize to be fought for and the whole thing would be politicized. The best case scenario is we end up with the same mess we have now. Worst case is one side captures control and now their side gets to be the only "legitimate" one. Same problem with so-called fact-checking. It's politicized, which means it adds nothing over the chaotic political debate we already have, except a false veneer of objectivity.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Licensing of reporters would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

qq11ww22ee33 6y ago

> make the title licensed This is possibly one of the easiest ways to create a police state if you make journalism "regulated" (i.e. government approved) ((or if you're a nutter, corporation approved))

marcus_holmes 6y ago

There is already a sort-of licence. Being employed by a company as a journalist, especially if the company is a recognised media "name". But the people this is deliberately not recognising is bloggers. And to be honest, I'm seeing better journalism being done by (some) bloggers than (some) paid journalists now (not their fault - the business model for journalism is a mess, while the model for blogging is working).

luckylion 6y ago
> There is already a sort-of licence. Being employed by a company as a journalist, especially if the company is a recognised media "name". But this obviously fails as seen in this instance (and many others). Companies have interests that do not align with the public's interest of ethical standards. Much like we've generally understood (but unfortunately not really everywhere) that letting other industries regulate themselves isn't a good idea, I don't think it's any different in the media.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I totally agree. The sooner we can all stop reading ad-funded journalism, the better.

CM30 6y ago

Personally, I'd rather journalism wasn't licensed in this way. I get the intention behind it, but it'd basically outlaw freelance journalists, independent journalism sites, blogging, etc, and make it easier to justify arresting people at protests because you don't like what they're recording. Also an easy target to politicise, and dangerous to society if the far left/right end up running such a board and dictating that their opponents are wrong.

frobozz 6y ago

Licensing only works if you have to be in a certain jurisdiction to operate in it. Given that more "journalism" is online, if Murdoch or the Barclay Brothers or whoever don't like the restrictions of your licence, they can just employ journalists somewhere else. If they need boots on the ground, they can employ independent contractors. How do you prevent independent journalists selling pieces to certain outlets without unfairly placing the burden on the journalist? Is it a list of proscribed publications? How does a publication get on the list? What happens to all the "good" journalists who work for an organisation when it gets put on the list? What, exactly, is a journalist? Does it include columnists who write opinion pieces? If not, how do you prevent an outlet from running more and more "opinion pieces" masquerading as news? If you get defrocked for doing something your employer considers highly profitable, they can just rebrand you as a columnist. What does it mean to be licensed? What does having a licence allow you to do that you can't do without one? Is this your "press pass" allowing you to ask questions at briefings? There have been cases recently when this has been revoked on a whim. Is it just to get a byline in a printed newspaper? Again, they can rebrand unlicensed journalists as runners, and print the piece under the name of a real journalist. Journalism is not a terminal career like medicine or law. If you get thrown out of one of those professions, you lose your livelihood. There is nothing else that you are as well trained for that pays as well. You have to start at the bottom of something else. Most journalists are not particularly well paid. Former journalists can earn as much, if not more, writing press releases and advertising copy.

chillacy 6y ago
Doctors were once upon a time not very highly trained, medicine was a crapshoot, now things have changed. I'm sure it was a tremendous upheaval at the time. That it's a lot of work doesn't mean it can't be done. A more interesting argument against doing this is considering the tradeoffs if implemented: * e.g. the AMA has pretty successfully restricted the supply of doctors and driven the prices of medicine up, * people are so paranoid about giving medical or legal advice they have to say things like "I'm not a doctor but... I'm not a lawyer but..." etc.
- frobozz 6y ago

raxxorrax 6y ago

People just don't buy newspapers anymore since the net is full of news articles. Your business model is basically attracting as many people as possible to your site. Advertisers were always the largest customers but today the reader is completely exempt from business relations.