The Editor's Desk

“The Editor’s Desk” won second place in Best Overall Blog in the 2007 Society for Professional Journalists Inland Southern California chapter award ceremony.

I’d complain that I deserve first place, but that award was taken by my newsroom compatriots in the “Off the I-15” blog.

While it would be nice to crow about what a distinction this is, I think the reality is that newspapers, particularly editorial writers, have been slow to get on board the blog train. Or maybe they’re just reluctant to make a big deal out of them, given it’s still an evolving form? The Press-Enterprise won a ton of awards at the ceremony, and has quite a few blogs, but didn’t win any awards in that area. I wonder if they even entered.

Also, an experiment of mine failed. Way back when I was in college, I posited a theory that if you wrote about being gay in your English composition classes, you would automatically get an A. This turned out to be pretty true for me and some gay college friends of mine (to be fair, I got A’s on most of my essays though, so perhaps correlation doesn’t imply causation).

I thought I would try the experiment again for the individual blog essay competition. I sent in my essay on National Coming Out Day back from back in October. I got beaten by two essays about housing market issues and one about crime by Kate Rosenberg, formerly of the Daily Press in Victorville, now of the Lucerne Valley Leader.

The loss could mean several things — the most obvious is that it’s no longer much of a surprise to find out somebody is gay, particularly in the media. It’s not as big a deal as it was 10 or 20 years ago. It also probably wasn’t my strongest essay. I considered sending in my piece on how I became a libertarian instead, a stronger blog essay that talks about my thought processes as an editorial writer.

I also submitted one of my editorials about rental inspections in a print category. It didn’t win, nor did I really expect it to. I’ve noticed that libertarian editorials that hinge on the idea of setting boundaries for government behavior tend to not be rewarded. I suspect media judges don’t find it particularly inspiring to read pieces telling the government to stop doing things, unless these things are causing obvious physical harm to citizens. I think the editorials I do write are about issues that are important to residents to Barstow, but they lack a certain level of flash due to my reluctance to grandstand.

Steve Chapman over at Reason Magazine has a piece analyzing the media’s abuse of anonymous sources to protect people in the government from being held accountable for inappropriate (even illegal) behavior or incompetence.

In short, a gentleman named Steve Hatfill was identified (through anonymous government sources) as the man behind the anthrax mailings following the Sept. 11 attacks. He was completely innocent and was never so much as even charged in the case.

A judge has ordered a former USA Today reporter to disclose her sources or else face fines for contempt. News organizations are defending her right to keep the information a secret.

The media, in general, does have an ethical right to keep sources a secret in a number of circumstances. In its role as a government watchdog, the media sometimes needs to depend on whistle-blowers providing them information about wrongdoing. Whistle-blowers, of course, may face retribution for revealing inappropriate activity and the media has the ability to reduce the risks by providing secrecy. The government, with its ability to create laws, has a tendency to abuse this authority to protect itself.

However, obviously some people in the media have forgotten exactly why it is we protect sources. In this case, the media is trying to protect the identity of government agents who, either out of incompetence or maliciousness, damaged the reputation of an innocent person. This entire case turns the whole point of protecting sources on its head. We’re supposed to be protecting the innocent from the government, not the other way around.

To me, as an editor, the larger question is, why on earth would a newspaper allow government officials to anonymously name a suspect in a crime in the first place? The legal and ethical risks are obviously high, as we’re seeing here with Hatfill proving to be completely innocent. If a reporter came to me and said we were given the name of a suspect in a crime but couldn’t reveal the source, I absolutely wouldn’t allow the name to be printed. If law enforcement officials don’t have the confidence to publicly state their suspicions, it’s completely irresponsible for a newspaper to risk its own reputation by putting the name out there. Why is it that I can immediately see this problem, but the larger media companies cannot?

Dan Arritt at the LA Times’ “Varsity Times Insider” blogs about Barstow beating Victor Valley in the DSL to earn a playoff spot and acts like an obnoxious jerk about it (at least he linked to Matt’s story).

Arritt writes: “I don’t think there’s been this much excitement in Barstow since McDonald’s starting selling Angus burgers.”

I don’t know, there might have been more excitement in Barstow when our boys cross-country team won the state championship a couple of months ago for the third year in a row, but I suppose it’s too much to expect Mr. Arritt to keep track of a bunch of provincial hicks like us. Nobody tell him about the citywide riots we had when McDonald’s ran out of McRibs that one time or we’ll never hear the end of it.

Gah. Sometimes the culture of my own industry can drive me up the wall.

Every presidential cycle there’s a great rending of garments over how much participation journalists should be “allowed” in our country’s own political process.

The editor of the Denver Post sent out a memo listing who would and would not be allowed to participate in Colorado’s caucuses. The Rocky Mountain News has apparently prohibited journalists from participating in the caucuses entirely.

Caucuses are different from typical primaries because the votes are public tallies, so I understand the visual image of, say, your local news anchor standing around raising his hand for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

But on the other hand, so what? Here’s part of what Kelly McBride, an ethics expert for journalism think tank The Poynter Institute has to say about the matter:

“It’s a tough spot for the head of a newsroom to be in. You can’t prevent an employee from exercising a constitutional right. But you can minimize staffers’ involvement in political coverage if they have created a perception of bias or a conflict of interest. And if a significant portion of your staff can’t cover politics, can’t edit politics and can’t write headlines over political stories, that’s a problem too.

This might be a problem that’s peculiar to newsrooms in the United States, where news content (as opposed to opinion and editorial) remains free from political affiliation. It could be that someday we will move to something more like the European model, where many newsrooms reflect a political position.

I still think there’s value in a newsroom with a neutral point of view when it comes to politics. As long as neutrality is a value, it seems that caucuses and restrictive primaries will pose a difficult choice for journalists.”

My response to this is that it’s only a tough spot to be in if you think your readers or viewers are absolutely, utterly stupid. I blogged a bit about this before on the issue of journalists’ contributions to political campaigns.

The gigantic logic flaw in the middle of this debate remains the same: The absence of proof of bias is not the same as the actual absence of bias. It absolutely slays me that a significant number of leaders in this industry think that if readers don’t know or have documentation of a journalists’ political affiliation or beliefs, then the reader will just assume the journalist doesn’t have any.

We know this is not true. We know readers already make assumptions about the political leanings of journalists. We are not fooling anybody. This attitude is completely self-absorbed and insulting to our customers. Does not voting in the Colorado caucuses mean that John Doe Journalist wouldn’t prefer Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama? Or vice-versa? Of course not. It just means that we don’t have proof, which means that people will guess or speculate about journalists’ personal views and may or may not be correct. And it doesn’t mean that John Doe Journalist’s reporting won’t be influenced by his feelings toward Clinton or Obama.

There is a solution, and we don’t have to convert to the European model of partisan newspapers (though we’re a lot closer to them than most U.S. media leaders would care to admit). It’s simply being honest and having faith in your readers to discern the truth of what they’re reading or watching. It’s getting over that narcissistic attitude that journalists are some sort of holy paragons of truth as opposed to the reality that we’re a bunch average joes with a curiosity addiction who like to write and talk.

In fact, I’ll start. I voted in the California Primary this morning. Because I’m a “decline to state” voter, I wasn’t able to vote for Ron Paul, whose libertarian anti-war views most match my own. The Republican Party doesn’t allow “decline to state” voters to participate in their primary in California. The Democrats do. Ultimately I voted for Barack Obama (I’m just talking about myself — this isn’t a newspaper endorsement). He seems at first to be a long ways away from Ron Paul in his extremely expensive government funding plans, but there are definitely hints of libertarian mindsets back there with somebody who is interested in moving us past the Boomer-fueled culture wars that I’ve simply grown tired of. The election of Hillary Clinton, I feel, would actually fuel the war further in both parties, and I think Obama’s election would prompt the GOP to adapt eventually to a more libertarian standing or risk irrelevancy.

So what happens now? Now you know a little more about what makes me tick. Of course, I’m not just a typical editor here anyway; I write opinion pieces as well, so I never even had the luxury of acting like I’m above biases. Does this make me more or less trustworthy as a source of information? Granted, as the Desert Dispatch is a community newspaper, I won’t exactly be responsible for putting together a lot of national political coverage. But regardless, I have faith in your ability to look at what we do as a newspaper and come to intelligent conclusions about what we’re reporting. And I don’t believe trust is built between a media outlet and its customers by withholding information about ourselves.

The Paris Hilton news cycle is winding down. Maybe. Hopefully. Possibly?

Anyway, I bring her up because there’s a particular point of debate that goes on in the media the bugs the heck out of me. You’ve probably heard pundits of various types whining about how the media has spent too much time discussing Paris Hilton’s jail visit. Similar complaints happen whenever an entertainment story captures a chunk of the hard news cycle.

Some people seem to be caught up in a false either/or argument regarding news. Either you follow the serious news stories, or your follow the fluff. Apparently the possibility that a person can follow both and be perfectly informed and entertained at the same time escapes some people.

It’s not an either/or scenario. Here’s an example: Do you remember what happened on Election Day last November, besides, of course, the election? It’s okay to admit it if you know. Britney Spears announced her impending divorce from Kevin Federline.

That bit of “news” got tossed into the news cycle. When I read the piece of gossip at work, I wondered how long it would be for somebody to complain that Britney was getting too much attention on a very serious news day. Interestingly though, I don’t recall hearing that much whining.

Let’s say you visited a gossip site or flipped on E! to get the details: Did you suddenly stop caring about the election? Of course not. Humans are quite capable of jugging many different interests, needs, fears, and concerns within their heads. In fact, we probably would be unable to function if we couldn’t.

For that reason (not to mention my belief that the point of the media is to provide the information people want and need, not to sniff at them and judge them for their interests), I grow utterly exhausted at listening to people within my own field whine about Paris and Anna Nicole and celebrity journalism. It is not an either/or scenario. And given the rise of Internet news opportunities, it’s also no longer a case of portioning out the news space. Looking over the new culture of the media, there’s enough room for enough information to appeal to almost anybody’s interests. And the pie grows larger every day.

People interested in journalism as a field and culture might be interested to read this piece from MSNBC about journalists and political contributions.

My personal attitude is that as a field, we are being silly and pretentious when we try to pretend that we aren’t engaged as citizens in our community, using ethics as a justification.

The larger problem, one which journalism ethics doesn’t seem able to deal with, is that the prohibition against journalists giving contributions to campaigns does not even remotely reduce the appearance of bias. Bias comes from thoughts, not actions. The incorrect assumption here is: “If journalists don’t contribute or participate in political campaigns, then there is no evidence of bias, and people will trust them.” But what actually happens is that people will draw their own conclusions (and sometimes inaccurate ones) about the level of a journalist’s objectivity anyway. Does knowing that a larger percentage of journalists have given to the left than the right (in this particular investigation) change what you already believed to be true about journalists? Probably not.

The public would probably be better served if individual journalists participated in our society as they chose to and then simply be honest about it, instead of this foolish idea of trying to build integrity by hiding who we are. Evidence continues to show that it doesn’t work.

This is mostly how our ethics policy works. We don’t have a policy prohibiting involvement — we have a policy of avoiding conflict of interest. This means our reporters and editors are allowed to get involved with organizations and can donate their private money to whomever they choose. However, this also means that they cannot report news related to the areas they’ve gotten involved with.

For example, I’m a member of our local Rotary club. In the event that Rotary gets into some sort of trouble for whatever reason (not that we would), I would have to “recuse” myself from involvement with the story here at the Desert Dispatch, much like a judge would in a trial in which he has a stake in the outcome.

As a newspaper, though, we don’t get involved or donate money to campaigns. We don’t even endorse candidates. So we acknowledge the separation of the independence of our newspaper as an institution, and the independence of the people who make up the newspaper. I think that’s an important distinction.