There was a time when hearing that a bunch of employees of news organizations had given money to candidates in a current election cycle would have caused a stir. Today, not so much.
When the number of media outlets was limited by the physical process of production, including expensive printing presses and a limited broadcast spectrum, journalists were more careful about appearing partisan. It was a business issue as much as an ethical one. With relatively few outlets going for the same mass audience, it was important to be trusted. To be trusted by the greatest possible number of consumers, we carefully concealed our biases.
In the old journalism, it was marketing, not ethics, that led us to be preoccupied with appearances.
Whereas I can see this guy’s point, I must politely disagree.
As a reporter, your job is to report the news fairly and justly. You don’t put your own spin on it unless you are writing an op-ed piece. Period. End of story.
The job as a journalist is to inform the public of the goings-on in the community, and the world, not the goings-on inside said journalist’s head.
If you support a certain person’s campaign as a personal (or financial) level, it is your duty to tell your editor so that you are not reporting on it – to avoid a conflict-of-interest situation in reporting. If you can’t get out of reporting on it due to lack of additional resources within the newsroom, then you keep your checkbook closed, you don’t canvass for that person, etc.
You are a fixture in the community in which you write. If you’re caught at a campaign rally for Joe Bob, but then you’re in the opposition’s office the next day with your little Press hat on, you best believe the competition isn’t going to be forthright and honest with you. How are they going to trust that you will give their side the due diligence it deserves?
Keep in mind, this comes the side of reporting in a small town, where everyone knows everyone and you see people you know everywhere. There’s nowhere to hide in Georgetown. In bigger cities it might be easier to conceal – however, that doesn’t mean that you are ethically doing your job as a journalist. The basics in journalism school are that we present both sides fairly and equally, and you don’t put your own personal slant on it. How skewed is this world today that we abandon those basic foundations of journalism?
Now, to the point mentioned about narrowcasting … I think that’s such a crock of shit. Yes, there are so many more publications these days – little rinky-dink magazines, newspapers, websites, blogs, etc. that anyone and everyone feels they can call themselves a reporter/journalist. I beg to differ. Just because you write for some sort of publication does not give you the right to call yourself a journalist.
Shoot, I don’t write for a paper anymore, so I refer to myself as a former journalist/reporter. I look at things through a reporter’s eyes a lot of the time, because that’s how I was trained to look at the world, but I would by no means call myself a reporter at the present moment in my life. Just because I have a blog and I write about current events (sometimes), does not a journalist make. Any crack-pot can get published these days (have you seen some of the crap in ACE Weekly? I’m just saying.), and just because they get a byline in some sort of publication, does not instantly give them any sort of credibility or a leg to stand on as far as calling oneself a “journalist.”
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