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"Accredited Clinical Journalist"
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03-01-2011, 06:20 PM
I see no problem with a clinical detachment for investigation and reporting. Given the compression of time in much of today's news cycle, nuances of a journalist's opinion can easily masquerade as fact to the casual or uninformed listener.
03-01-2011, 06:25 PM
August West wrote: I agree. There are plenty of places to find opinions, especially now that we have the internet, but when one is reading a "news" article about, say, what is happening in Wisconsin one should feel confident that the reporter is laying out the facts as they are and not leaving something out because it will weaken/threaten the point of view that he -- or his employer -- has on the matter.
03-01-2011, 06:32 PM
$tevie wrote: Stevie, that article would pass Ted's accreditation test. It doesn't contain any false information, the opinions are clearly identified as belonging to Mr. Boehner. It also states where and when he made those remarks. Now, that doesn't make it good journalism, or interesting to read. I agree. But it's "true."
03-01-2011, 06:35 PM
I don't think the issue is about deciding what is true and what is not true. Opinion will always differ on that. I think the issue is about allowing space or time (which costs a lot of money to the media outlet) to differing points of view.
A decent fair reporter will always give another point of view in the story. In the best of all possible worlds this OPV will be someone of fairly equal rank and prestige, so if you were to quote someone from the Brookings Foundation saying that Obama's economic policy is good and effective in producing a recovery, then you would quote someone from the American Enterprise Institute saying he blows his nose on Obama's position paper and his policy will lead to catastrophic inflation (or whatever). Basically you make the fight fair and you don't match the Brookings Foundation economist with a first-year business major taking his econ core class. And that is pretty much how you discover if someone is trying to be fair. How many points of view are reflected in the story? Are the different points of view explained thoroughly? If people read the stories they can see whether or not a reporter is being as objective as he can and whether he is trying to be fair. Swampy's right in saying that people need to be shown the difference between news and opinion. But the opinion v. news blurring takes place in electronic media mostly--print journalists have a little more time and leeway to present many points of view. I think most reporters and editors would fight any move toward accreditation because who would do the accrediting? Would the organization change with the political winds? Would the academics squeeze all color from the story in their effort to be "objective?" And opinions on "objective" vary as well. There are a lot of people who believe that FOX News is "fair and balanced" because they are repeatedly told it is, but they don't examine what is being said on the broadcasts and they don't try to exercise any critical judgment. (I don't mention MSNBC here because that network makes no pretense of fairness and balance.) If you had a bunch of academics deciding what is "objective" and appropriate for broadcast or print, then you would have to find academics who have never, ever accepted grants from the government or from a foundation that accepts grants from the government. I don't think there are many of those people around. The St. Petersburg Times is an excellent paper, and it is officially nonprofit. It is run by a foundation with 501c3 status. To avoid any trouble with its nonprofit status, the Times no longer endorses candidates. I think nonprofit is the model of the future. Sorry about the length.
03-01-2011, 06:43 PM
I'm afraid it's an eminently bad idea. Assigning 'truthiness' to some professional organization that may have its own agenda is like allowing the American Bar Association to choose the Supreme Court Justice nominees...
oh.. wait. Anyhoo... I'll agree with swampy. Teach your children to have a finely tuned B$ detector. Licensing ? Professional society ? FAUGH ! The end result WILL be some form of censorship, which is an attack on one of those sacred Rights... Free Speech. Don't Go There ! Historically the business of reporting (and it's a business, not Diogenese style pursuit of Truth, Justice, and Apple Pie)... Uhm... the business of reporting has seen its success in terms of readership. In other words the ability to sell advertising. If the readership values truth, then truth they shall get. If they value tripe and lies... well, they get what they love.
03-01-2011, 06:58 PM
it not so hard to set the ethical boundaries. these have been contemplated by many.
how to profit off those ethics...thats the hard part! (BUY GOLD!!!)
03-01-2011, 08:52 PM
Gutenberg wrote: I think nonprofit is the model of the future. I totally agree. Whenever I have heard it explained it seems to make an immense amount of sense.
03-01-2011, 09:05 PM
Great. A lot of good thoughts to respond to. I don't think I could do it all in a single post, so let me start by focusing on a common theme I'm hearing. That theme is about freedom of the press. I guess people were construing this statement from the OP in a way I didn't at all intend:
- Would someone have to get the accreditation to be called a journalist? No, I don't see why that should be the case. Anyone could call themselves a journalist, but they would have to get the accreditation to legitimately put the ACJ after their names on reports. Anyone who says they are, or are taken by others to be, a journalist without this accreditation association (IOW, as things are now) would still be considered journalists even with the accreditation association - no matter how many people would or would not get the accreditation. I deliberately didn't use the term "license", since that carries the connotation of government sanction. What I'm proposing is actually a free market idea. Journalists could decide to go through whatever process the association thinks is necessary and then get accredited to use the ACJ after their name in the byline... or, they could choose not to get accredited. But if they got accredited then by using "AJC" with their name in their byline, the journalist would be saying to whoever receives their report that the report would pass certain criteria laid out by the accrediting association. Now, it would be up to the news agencies to decide whether that mattered to them in their hiring and reporting practices. And whether or not it mattered to them probably would depend on whether or not the public would like it and through their choices of where to get news information would demand more of it. Or, the public may decide it doesn't care. Any way you look at it, though, I don't think it decreases freedom to try this. In a roundabout way it could actually benefit freedom.
03-01-2011, 09:28 PM
I think what you suggest is an impediment to first amendment freedom of the press Ted. Here's why. Any such "accreditation," in order for it to have any meaning whatsoever, would have to carry some weight of authority. That means that the people who receive it would have more power in their profession, and those not receiving would risk being marginalized. This would impact how they report, and who they choose to investigate. That limits freedom of the press, something we rely upon for a free and open society.
Again, who would get to decide the standards, and choose which journalists pass muster? What about THEIR biases? Here's an example. Think about the run up to the Iraq war. Well-respected journalists such as those at the NYT, NPR, and other well-regarded outlets were beating the war drums and accepting mostly without question that Iraq had WMD's. Those questioning this assumption were mostly on the outer edges of journalism. If we were to develop some sort of accreditation, people like NYT reporters would likely get it, and some of the lesser known bloggers, who have been instrumental in uncovering governmental wrong-doing, would have a tougher time. Do you see the problem?
03-01-2011, 09:50 PM
Alright, another theme that popped up more than once in the replies I got was about "truth". Who decides what's true?
If you look through the OP, I don't think you'll see me using the word "truth" or the word "true". I talked about objectivity. I did that on purpose. Mostly I wanted to steer clear of having to get into a discussion about the metaphysical nature of truth - although if anyone wanted to get into a discussion about that, I'm sure I would enjoy it; but my thought was that most people would rather not. But I think we may be able to approach this in an intuitive way that you may find adequate. It usually doesn't make sense to talk about something being more true or less true (things are not partly the way they are, they are what they are). But we do fairly routinely think in terms of more objective or less objective. The term objective has many definition meanings, but this is along the lines of what I intended: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objective 3a : expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations But, I admit, that still leaves the problem of if a journalist did a report under the auspices of ACJ but was accused of not being objective, how would the accrediting association determine whether or not the non-objectivity charge was accurate? Well, I think you could do it the way other professional associations do - have an investigative body get as much of the information they can and make a judgment call as to whether or not the journalist did or did not follow the criteria for objectivity. Sure, just like other professional organizations that accredit people, there is potential for things to go awry, but that hasn't stopped us from seeing the overall desirability of having such organizations. Me being kinda defensive - I would like to point out that in the OP I did recognize this as a significant problem: - Probably the hardest question is... what criteria would be used to determine if a report is objective enough? What does it mean to say a report is objective? |
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