Journalist Citizens?

Let me preface this blog post with the following disclaimers:

• I’m not a journalist (at least by the traditional definition).
• Lots of really smart folks have thought about these issues for a long time and I’m not presuming that I know better.
• This is complicated (but I think it’s important to think about)

Is a “mainstream” journalist allowed to be a full-fledged citizen?

Do professionals of any kind have to be hamstrung by rules just in case someone makes a mistake?

Is avoiding the “appearance of impropriety” and “protecting your brand” more important than seeking the truth?

There’s currently a little dustup over a memo NPR put out to their employees telling them they could not attend the Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert rallies in Washington, D.C.:

NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers, nor should they sign petitions or otherwise lend their name to such causes, or contribute money to them. This restriction applies to the upcoming John (sic) Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies.

This is nothing new in journalism circles, as they’ve typically had these kinds of policies. But what is new is that people like Jeff Jarvis are questioning the wisdom of such policies:

But my real problem here is, again, that NPR is forbidding its employees to be curious. There’s a big event going on in Washington. It could — just could — be the beginning of a movement mobilizing the middle. But NPR people are not allowed to even witness it, to go and try to figure it out, to understand what’s being said and why people are there. No, they can do that only if they are *assigned* to do that. Otherwise, it might seem as if by merely showing up they might have a forbidden opinion.

NPR has responded in several ways, including this post by their ombudsman:

But there’s another, more important issue than management botching a memo. The question arises in every election season, and boils down to this: If you become a card-carrying journalist, do you have no freedom outside of work?

. . . Media guru Jarvis agrees with these views. He even encourages NPR staffers to protest management’s decision. “Use social media, folks, and have an opinion about opinions,” he wrote.

I don’t agree.

Sure, journalists have opinions and causes they support.

But at the end of the day, they have to be professional – and that means avoiding actions that create the perception that they are taking sides in political controversies, including elections.

Specifically, mainstream journalists can’t put a political sign in their yard or carry one at demonstrations. They can’t donate money to candidates. They can’t sit on a school board. They can’t participate in political rallies. They can’t lobby, and they can’t become partisan activists.

To me, it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being a journalist.

NPR is not restricting its staff’s freedom. It’s protecting its credibility as a news organization that tries to give its audience fair, non-partisan coverage.

Interestingly, folks at some NPR affiliate stations don’t necessarily agree:

The issue isn't whether reporters "take sides" in political controversies. They do. They're not mummies. The issue is whether those opinions make their ways into news stories or in the process of selecting what stories to cover in the first place. Not allowing you the opportunity to know what the biases are does nothing to guarantee the impartiality of NPR (or any other organization's) content. It's designed more to prevent the questioning of the impartiality of the content.

The two are not the same thing.

I came upon this story via some tweets by Andy Carvin, Senior strategist at NPR (but tweeting as himself). Andy was simply pointing folks to the controversy, not taking a position, but it stirred my thinking about this in relation to how we are preparing our students.

Citizen journalism has been a term we’ve talked about a lot the last few years, arising from lots of places but not least the work of Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen. But in this case I think we’re really talking about journalist citizens – what rights, responsibilities and restrictions does a “mainstream journalist” have in a participatory age?

According to Alicia Shepard, the NPR ombudsman, “mainstream journalists can’t put a political sign in their yard or carry one at demonstrations.” But I wonder if that wouldn’t tend to drive people who want to be active in their community to become “non-mainstream journalists,” and wouldn’t that be bad for both the community and for mainstream media?

And the letter from NPR’s President Vivian Schiller comes across as defensive and a little elitist:

This is the case in almost all legitimate news organizations, indeed in many professions. In our case, the rules are designed to protect the impartiality of our content.

“Legitimate" news organizations? As opposed to, say, illegitimate ones? I think I understand the intent of this, to underscore that “legitimate” news organizations attempt to maintain impartiality in their reporting, whereas other ones may not. But in the context of this story that comes across as, “We’re legitimate, and you’re not, simply because you have concerns with our policy. And if you don't have a similar policy, then you're neither professional or legitimate.”

She goes on to say:

We live in an age of "gotcha" journalism where people troll, looking for cracks in our credibility. We need to err on the side of protecting our journalism, our journalists, and our reputation. While the credibility and trust that attaches to the NPR brand depends principally on the quality of our news reporting, it can be easily undermined if our public conduct is at odds with the standards we seek to uphold as a news organization.

But can’t we trust good people to do that? Can’t we trust them to do their jobs well, yet still fully exercise their rights as citizens? It seems to me that this is very similar to the restrictions placed on teachers. We can’t campaign or advocate for issues at school, but once we leave we retain our full rights (and responsibilities for that matter) as citizens. Couldn’t journalism operate the same way? Couldn’t we expect journalists to have journalist integrity, but still participate in and contribute to their community? In fact, isn’t it actually poor “public conduct” for them not to participate? This comes across more as trying to protect the NPR “brand” instead of pursuing truth and good journalism.

Finally (and thankfully now I’m going to try to relate this back to education), it seems to me that journalists actually can’t do their jobs well unless they are participating to a certain extent. In this participatory age, how can a journalist possibly do their jobs to the best of their ability if they aren’t participating? Whether that’s by attending rallies (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and/or Glenn Beck), participating in social media (not just broadcasting using social media, but engaging with it), or putting political signs in their yards, journalists have to participate if they are going to truly understand – and help us understand – what is going on. As long as they don’t represent their activities as NPR’s views, and as long as they do their best to maintain impartiality in their reporting, can we not expect that these professionals are capable of doing this? Sure, mistakes will be made, but instead of issuing blanket policies assuming that your employees will be unprofessional, why not trust your employees to do the right thing and then deal with the few that don’t? The idea that anyone is truly “unbiased” seems quaint, why not simply acknowledge your biases (publicly) and then do your best to overcome them? Wouldn’t that actually be more honest and show more “journalistic integrity?”

In the end, this feels like so much of our current public policy and leadership debates. People seem more concerned with avoiding the “appearance of impropriety” instead of doing the right thing. Organizations (and politicians) seem to be more concerned with protecting the “brand” instead of actually accomplishing good things. We’re more willing to run attack ads then simply lay out our own positions; more willing to hide behind blanket “ethics policies,” instead of struggling with complex issues in an honest and transparent manner.

So much of this is in direct contradiction to what so many of us are trying to accomplish in our classrooms. We encourage our students to be active, involved members of their communities, to be curious, passionate learners. We encourage them to think critically, and to wrestle with complex issues, instead of removing all possibility of independent thought and action. We encourage them to think out loud, to debate in public (including through social media), and to continue to evolve and adjust their thinking through their interactions with others. By prohibiting their employees from experiencing the full gamut of citizenship in a participatory age, NPR (and many other organizations) are crippling their employees’ abilities to learn and to do their best work. If we don’t allow our journalists to be citizens, and to be curious, passionate, participatory learners, then what kind of journalists can they possibly be?

Briefing 2.0

To add on to my earlier Democracy 2.0 post, it turns out the U.S. State Department is already doing Briefing 2.0, allowing anyone to submit video questions via YouTube:

Good afternoon, everybody. I wanted to welcome you to the first edition of Briefing 2.0. Let me first start off by thanking everybody who submitted questions to us, who placed some trust in us, and the fact that we’re going to try to answer your questions. So here we are. We’re going to answer your questions.

I want to respond to one thing up front. In some of the write-ups about this, kind of in the run-up to this briefing, a couple folks remarked on, in my video I said, you know, this is going to be fun. And they said, well, you know, it’s foreign policy; there’s nothing fun about foreign policy. And I just wanted to explain what I meant.

It’s fun for me because this is part of something I started three years ago when I first came in here, and I have a great team that’s been working with me. And it’s one of the things that we want to do is use technology and its applications to try to change the way the State Department communicates, not only with the press but also with the public. And this is an opportunity for the public to directly ask me questions, and maybe somewhere on down the line other people questions, and for you to get answers back.

And I think this is part of a general trend in the way that government and its publics communicate with one another, and it’s going to change over time. I think, inevitably, there has to be more interaction. There can’t be all this change and ferment going on outside the walls of government, and then government kind of continuing to operate as it has for the past 200 years. So that has to change. It’ll change eventually, and hopefully this is one small part of that change.

I’ve brought in a piece of paper. I just want you to know, all it has is the names and the locations of the people asking questions. I don’t know what the questions are, so I’m going to see them for the first time along with you.

Here's the intro video from the U.S. Department of State's YouTube Channel:




And here's the first briefing:




Very, very interesting. They also have a blog.

Brings up a few questions:

1. Social Studies Teachers: Don't you think this gives you some ideas for some assignments? Shouldn't you have your students submitting questions to the State Department?
   
   
2. District Internet Filter Czars: If you're blocking YouTube, isn't this yet another argument why, if you don't unblock it altogether, you at least need teacher overrides for the filter?

Democracy 2.0

In the presentations I’ve been giving over the last six months or so there’s a part where I talk about how schools need to make these changes I’ve been blogging about not just so that students will be effective students and eventually employees in the 21st century, but also so that they can become effective citizens. I’ve pointed to the 2008 presidential election campaign as a prime example, comparing the resources I had available to me growing up to learn about the candidates and the issues with the resources available to students – and voters – today. I’ve talked about YouTube and how you can chart the rise and fall of various campaigns based on the current viral political video, and the plethora of websites where you can find detailed information (and misinformation) about candidates and issues, and the candidates own websites where you can read, hear and watch what the candidates themselves have to say. I’ve pointed out how both campaigns have used the Internet extensively, but that the Obama campaign took it to another level – not just with the unprecedented fundraising, but with the outreach and community building. And I always closed that part of the presentation by saying something like, “When the historians write the history of this election, how big a factor will they say the Internet was? And how are we preparing our students to be successful citizens in such a world?”

Well, that was before we knew the outcome of the election. Now that we do, it appears clear that the answer to the first question is, “Big. The Internet was a very, very big factor.”

From the Denver Post:

Barack Obama's Internet-based campaign has not only made history, it has forever changed the American political process.

. . . Over the past two years, Barack Obama carried Dean's pioneering techniques to an exponentially more sophisticated level. Realizing that America is really thousands of separate if often overlapping communities of interest, Obama used the power of the Internet to identify, organize and unite them. He raised probably more than $800 million when the final numbers come in, and that mostly in small sums from millions of donors. In turn, Obama used much of that cash to convert his virtual communities into a network of field offices and a get-out-the-vote team that brought millions of new voters to the polls.

From The Mercury News:

Former vice president Al Gore said Friday he was overwhelmed by Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election and credited the Internet for the campaign's success.

"The electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are created equal would not have been possible without ... the Internet," Gore said.

From The Guardian:

While most pundits focused on the question of race, one largely overlooked factor was his powerful techno-demographic appeal. . . . It is no coincidence that one of Obama's key strategists was 24-year-old Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder. Hughes masterminded the Obama campaign's highly effective web blitzkrieg on everything from social networking sites to podcasting and mobile messaging.

From U.S. News and World Report:

A key turning point in the long and brutal presidential election involved a YouTube battle between dueling online videos.

It was primary season and Barack Obama was being battered in the press because of his relationship with controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Some of Wright's more inflammatory sermons were captured on video and were flying around YouTube.

Instead of letting the clips fester online, the Obama campaign immediately posted on YouTube the candidate's full rebuttal, a 37-minute-long speech on race he delivered to an audience in Philadelphia.

The video clip helped calm the controversy and attracted around 5.3 million views on the video-viewing website, proving the popularity and impact of a medium that was first used widely this election cycle.

From the NYTimes:

One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet.

. . . Mr. Obama used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground, Mr. Trippi said.

“The tools changed between 2004 and 2008. Barack Obama won every single caucus state that matters, and he did it because of those tools, because he was able to move thousands of people to organize.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. Mr. Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.

“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”

There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.

From Information Week:

And it's only the beginning, said Trippi. That kind of networking will likely transform the White House. Trippi anticipates Obama will create a similar social networking for his legislative initiatives and recruit supporters to lobby Congress to get his policies enacted into law.

That last quote is key, “It’s only the beginning.” We’ve already got Change.gov, a website for the “Office of the President-Elect,” where the not-campaign-but-not-yet-administration is not only keeping followers updated on what they’re doing, but they are also soliciting input under a section titled “Open Government” with a link titled “It’s Your America: Share Your Ideas.” Does anyone think for a moment that after building up this huge network of supporters that they aren’t going to try to leverage it to help them govern? That they aren’t going to use the incredible community they’ve built to help them drive the conversation and pass legislation? Not to mention, of course, keeping these folks involved so they’re ready, willing and able to going into motion four years from now for Obama-Biden 2.0.

Yes, the issues facing the soon-to-be Obama administration are huge and not quickly or easily solved, and changing governing and politics is a difficult task, but never before has an incoming President had the kind of network and tools at his fingertips that President-Elect Obama has, nor the people who apparently know how to use them well.

So, all this goes back to the second question in the opening paragraph above (and my previous post), how are you helping prepare our students to be successful citizens and participants in Democracy 2.0?

Update 11-14-08: President-Elect Obama is taking the weekly radio address to YouTube as well.