Should reporters be making campaign contributions if it's the only way to gain access to a political event? That's what a Miami Herald Reporter was left to do in order to cover President Clinton's visit.
What good is it for reporters to stand their ethical ground outside in the cold and miss the event when they could gain access by buying a ticket like
everyone else?
everyone else? This is a great debate for a journalism class .. and other who follow the business.The mandatory contribution doesn’t surprise me. In fact, paying for entry — in a way — helps preserve objectivity.
For example, reporters who receive free entry to cover sporting events or to review live theater will sometimes admit that there’s an underlying expectation to write positive stories and reviews. Likewise, media outlets that buy tickets for their reporters stand a better chance of stepping back and holding their ground should the story cast the subject in a negative light. (photo courtesy: vmminternet.com)
In August, I paid $15 for my own ticket to attend Akron’s Mayoral debate between Don Plusquellic and Joe Finley. While the media was permitted free entry to stand in the back, I wanted to be able to be seated for the luncheon and write my observations without feeling any obligation to the organization sponsoring the event.
It’s not that the viewers would have cared one way or the other, but the implication of “free entry” can often be interpreted with strings attached by the performers or the event organizers.
I guess to me, each situation is different .. and any media organization that implements a blanket policy that it will never pay under any circumstance is setting itself up for some tough choices.
Thoughts?
10 comments:
Hi Eric,
Interesting topic. I completely agree with your paying $15 to cover your lunch expenses if you ate at the debate (and I'm assuming that was at the Akron Press Club, where you may be a member, so, no foul.)
The problem with paying to gain entrance to a political fundraiser, is that the campaign is required by law to document your "donation" as a public record with the FEC. Once that is done, there is a public record of the "objective reporter" financially supporting a candidate for office.
In the newsrooms I run, reporters are not permitted to financially contribute to campaigns for just that reason, and so in this case I would have advised our reporter to skip the event, or cover it from the outside and mention that the candidate would not let us in without payment.
If the story was EXTREMELY important (and how many candidate fundraisers really are?) we may have paid but certainly mentioned it in the story so it wouldn't come back to haunt us later with some "Michigan Radio reporter makes contribution to Hillary" story.
Vince
Thanks, Eric (and Mr. Duffy) -
I think the key thing coming out of all this is that the rule the PD is trying to portray as so ironclad that it even has to apply to independently contracted bloggers who are contracted to BE political is that the rule is not so ironclad and NEEDS examination.
And THAT'S how it should have come to us from Susan Goldberg - not in the form of an ultimatum, but rather in the form of - we've got something really knew and weird and difficult to solve here - what should we do?
That's what Jean would have done if given the chance. Something went awry in the process of figuring it all out.
That Wide Open was a casualty is a bummer, but the conversations that are coming out of it, as an experiment, are fantastic.
Thanks for writing about it and personalizing it - I've gotten many emails from "real" journalists who've told me similar stories about the angst at papers around this "ironclad" rule.
Sorry - do not mean to making fun of it - just with they'd called a spade a spade and said, this is a tough one - what do you think?
But that wasn't how it came down. :(
I've been invited to a few political events as a blogger to sit in the press area. They are great for watching the press, but bad for covering the actual event. Most of the press areas are roped off in the back of the room. From these "press pens" you can't see a thing unless you have a telephoto lens. You also can't wander around and get a feel for the event. So I have found it much better to just attend an event rather than get a confining press pass. It is kind of funny how "free" the press is at political events.
Eric, I don't think there is anything unethical about paying a cover for a debate. Plus the Martin Center generally has decent food.
Jill, the more I have thought about Jeff's situation the less I respect the Plain Dealer.
Is "blanketly" a word?
Vince, Jill, Kyle, and others ...
Good thoughts brought to life by all. I'm not sure I would have been as quick to buy my lunch at the mayoral debate if the money were also considered an official campaign donation. Still, the only way to cover an event is to be there and sometimes the nominal cost is just part of doing business.
Vince, I can understand the need for your policy .. and it stands the basic tests of ethics and logic. Still, I would shy away from "never" in our policies. We have policies in our newsroom against identifying minors or rape victims .. but there are always rare exceptions to those rules too. Glad to know you've got all that young talent in Detroit motivated by your iron fist :)
Hopefully my point about reviewers buying tickets to sports and theater made sense. It all makes for good discussion for journalism students. I'll bet many veteran journalists would admit that they may answer this ethical decision differently today than they might have 10 or 20 years ago.
And yes .. "blanketly" does set off alarms with spell check. I'll chalk that one up to my PHD. My Public High School Diploma :)
stay in touch everyone .. Eric
Eric--I'm guessing since you paid $15 that you are not an Akron Press Club member--time to join! Since the $15 is not a political contribution, to me there is no conflict of interest issue. Neutral groups like APC, Cleveland City Club, Akron Roundtable rely on those funds to pay for their programs.
Vince--good to see you are still checking out what's happening here in Ohio--I hope things are going well for you in MI.
Kyle--you're generous about the Martin Center food.
Jill--I still am stunned at the PD's actions with regards to Jeff Coryell--he was a politically active blogger hired because he IS a politically active blogger. The major problem is that it appears he was let go because he angered a sitting U.S. Congressman. That should send a chill down the spine of everyone in the media, not just bloggers.
Dave Cohen
University of Akron Bliss Institute/Polisci Dept & Akron Press Club board member.
Like the children's game of "telephone", the folding of the Plain Dealer's Wide Open bloggers forum has been told and retold so many times, that it bears little resemblance to what really happened, especially with Coryell casting himself so ridiculously as the victim. If bloggers want to play in the big leagues with staff reporters, they need to be held to the same rules and ethics as those who sit on the newsroom floor: no campaign contributions, no exceptions.
The following are excerpts from from Ted Diadiun's Sunday Column: "It all began, as many vexations do, with the best of intentions.
Jean Dubail, the assistant managing editor for online news and the man responsible for the newspaper's ever-widening Internet presence, decided in August to begin an online project called Wide Open. His idea was to open a politics blog on our affiliate, Cleveland.com, inhabited by four well-established Ohio bloggers, two from the left and two from the right.
He rounded up the four and agreed to pay them for their work. Their mission was to opine daily about the political scene, play off each other and generate response from fellow online politics junkies. They got free rein on what they could write.
Wide Open debuted in September, and Dubail sat back to watch the fun.
For his trouble, he wound up being called a "moron" in his own brainchild the second day out, when one of his bloggers linked to an unflattering story about the paper that had been in one of the city's alternative weeklies. But in general, the blog did what he wanted it to do. Ultimately, Wide Open would attract 600 to 800 visitors a day.
Then, on Oct. 16, reporter Sabrina Eaton wrote a story about how much money Ohio's congressional candidates had raised, and she named some of the more interesting contributors.
Among the names was one of the Wide Open bloggers -- Jeff Coryell of Cleveland Heights (known in the blogosphere as "Yellow Dog Sammy"). Coryell, one of the two liberals, had contributed $100 to the campaign of Bill O'Neill, the Democratic opponent of U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican.
At first, Coryell didn't understand why this would be news. Eaton explained that because he was a paid contributor to a Plain Dealer-sponsored blog, failure to include his name in the story would be deceptive. Then he became suspicious: How had she learned about the contribution?
As it happens, she had found out from LaTourette.
After she got the list of contributors but before she had looked it over, she had interviewed the congressman for another story. He had seen Coryell's name on the list and asked about the ethics of such a donation.
It was a fair question. Any reporter knows that giving to a political campaign is prima facie conflict of interest. LaTourette or no LaTourette, Eaton would have used Coryell's contribution in the story: She knew his name and his connection to The Plain Dealer's blog, and it was obvious that fairness demanded she tell readers about it.
LaTourette was unhappy that the newspaper would pay someone who financially supported his opponent to write political opinion. He complained to editorial page director Brent Larkin, who referred him to Editor Susan Goldberg, whom he had never met. LaTourette set up an appointment, then thought better of it and canceled.
Goldberg was also unhappy, but not because LaTourette was unhappy.
"The issue here isn't blogging, or political pressure," she said. "The issue is our financial tie to these four bloggers. To allow someone we pay to use our site to, potentially, lobby for a candidate they financially support would put us in a place we can't go. Had we known that he had contributed to the opponent of a person he might write about, we wouldn't have put him on the blog in the first place."
After some deliberation, Dubail told Coryell he would have to agree to refrain from writing about LaTourette if he wanted to continue with the blog. Coryell declined, and they parted ways. The other liberal blogger quit in sympathy, and with two of his gang of four gone, Dubail reluctantly folded the experiment Friday.
The fallout from all this draws a bright line between the way newspaper reporters and bloggers ply their crafts.
Coryell concluded that he was "fired" because of political pressure from LaTourette. Both Eaton and Dubail explained to him that the ethical concerns of the situation had nothing to do with LaTourette's objections, but he was unpersuaded.
And he spread that view throughout the blogosphere. On his own blog, on local blogs and on the big national forums such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, you can find posts from Coryell that The Plain Dealer bowed to political pressure. Others picked up the cry, spreading his interpretation as if it were the truth and adding their own spin that still others picked up and embellished.
But that's the way things work in the blog world: "Yellow Dog Sammy" rejects the ingrained ethics of the newspaper world, preferring to read editors' minds and create his own reality. Other bloggers pick that up and repeat it as gospel, and suddenly we begin getting questions from all over the country about why we're letting Steve LaTourette run the newspaper.
Here's the reality:
You can't contribute to a political candidate and then write about his or her campaign, either as an employee or as a paid free-lancer for The Plain Dealer, on paper or online. Period.
Steve LaTourette has got nothing to do with that, now or ever."
Last anon - unless you are going to reveal that you are Jean Dubail, Chris Jindra, me, Jeff, Tom, Dave or Susan Goldberg, I'm not sure how you think you have the definitive take.
Ted's take has several problems with it and he and I have already been communicating about our different opinions of what went down. however, I can assure you that at no time was he present with any of the bloggers nor did he call me before he wrote what he did. So his version is still second-hand, as opposed to mine - which is not secondhand.
So - I would urge you to reveal yourself so people can see whose opinion is expressed here.
As for this assertion of yours:
"If bloggers want to play in the big leagues with staff reporters, they need to be held to the same rules and ethics as those who sit on the newsroom floor: no campaign contributions, no exceptions."
We didn't and we weren't asked to. This assertion of yours has absolutely no connection to the project, whatsoever. Please go check your sources.
Telling me an infinite number of times that there are four lights and not five, when I know that there are five, isn't going to change my conviction that there are five. Just not going to happen - especially when I'm one of the people involved.
Dave - thanks for that. It means a lot to us that folks such as yourself are willing to weigh in. There seems to be a serious, serious divide between those who "get it" and those who don't. Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen have been on to that for a long time.
I just really thought that the PD was getting it. I know some of the folks there too.
I actually bet that Susan Goldberg does. But they are just so damn scared of change.
All ..
Great dialogue here ... and this is one debate I plan to push for further discussion within our broadcast industry. Wide Open's demise should inspire more to take a stand .. but I think it also speaks to the weight that political bloggers carry in the upcoming elections.
Again .. thanks to Jill for the original post on this issue ... Eric
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