In the if-you-like-sausage category, the New York Times‘ Jeremy Peters has a piece today (7/16/12) about a new trend in journalism: Political sources demanding—and receiving—final control over what they are quoted as saying in news stories.
Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House—almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail…. Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article.
As Peters notes, this means that journalists are giving their sources “final editing power over any published quotations.” He doesn’t spell out the implication, which is that journalists are thereby serving as PR agents, packaging the messages of political professionals at their direction rather than independently reporting the news.
The Times published these photos of political strategists who are allowed to edit their own quotes.
Peters gives his explanation of why journalists would allow such a thing: “Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree.” It makes reporters sound like zombies: “Must…pick…brains!”
In reality, political strategists can generally only give you an explanation of their political strategies, and those explanations are usually themselves political strategies. At best, they’re going to help you write the most useless genre of election coverage, the inside-baseball campaign strategy report, which are chiefly of interest to readers who happen to be political strategists. More likely, you’re going to get spun.
Responsible journalists shouldn’t have to be told that it’s wrong to allow your sources to edit their quotes, but apparently the sort of journalists who work for national news outlets do need to be told that. In fact, they need to be told that by their editors, so that when their sources propose such a deal, they can say—sorry, we’re not allowed to do that.
At which point, the political strategists can respond in one of two ways: Maybe they’ll realize that they need the press more than the press needs them, and they’ll allow journalists to do their jobs without interference.
Or maybe they’ll refuse to do interviews altogether, and campaign correspondents will be forced to do stories on the candidates’ policy proposals and how they might impact people’s lives.
Let’s hope they go for Door No. 2.
“Or maybe they’ll refuse to do interviews altogether, and campaign correspondents will be forced to do stories on the candidates’ policy proposals and how they might impact people’s lives.”
Or maybe they’ll just do more stories based on the propaganda spewed by campaigns for public consumption. Granted, it’s not as sexy as the insider idiocy, but given a choice between doing the job expected of them by their owners, and actually doing their job as journalists …
Well, we can hope they go for Door No. 2.
But I wouldn’t put scared money on it.
Would you?
Where are where are investigative journalists today- could they indeed write anything of incisive journalism independent of so-called access.
anyway to post these onto facebook? I have alot of conservative friends who should read these items.
We hope to automate the process when we move (soon!) to a new website, but in the meantime, you can just copy the url of any item and paste it into the status update box on Facebook.
Actually, to await APPROVING of quotes is quite standard journalistic praxis, if that only means letting the person confirm you have understood them right and not changed the meaning when you translate from spoken to written word, which often include a little change in wording. Of course if the person blurted something and later would rather have it un-said, then the journalist must insist and respond, no, you actually did say precisely that. Letting the interviewed take back too-honest or otherwise unfortunate answers, or even worse letting them choose quotes, of course is entirely illegitimate.
I have become bored by what candidates say, and turn off my radio when the reports come on. (I have TV but don’t watch it.) I read print reports of trusted resources and commentators such as Jim Hightower.
I’m with Jon W. Getting the quote right is good journalism. Recordings (where made) can take some of the guesswork out of phrasing. But a dangling modifier can be a dangerous thing, especially taken out of context.
If someone says: “you know how [some group of people] are. ‘let them swing,’ right?” (meaning: “that group of people has a no-prisoners attitude”) it can get reported as “our campaign thinks that group of people should be hung.” An unscrupulous or careless editor can cause real havoc by going for version 2. Making sure that version 2 does not see print is good reporting, not bad. The news cycle is already way too focused on slips of the tongue or accidents of grammatical ambiguity, rather than substantive policy issues.
(Anyway, people have been able to choose to be “on record” or “off record” for a very long time.)
Approving quotes is not approving a piece. If you give me a quote, I can use it to praise you or skewer you, depending on how I frame it. So long as it is only the quotation that gets approved, not the context, this is misdirected anxiety.
Approvale for quotes?To much control of a free press.Carrot and the stick approach of blocking or allowing access has corrupted the process.Good piece
McClatchy’s Washington Bureau establishes no-alter quote policy
“It is the bureau’s policy that we do not alter accurate quotes from any source. And to the fullest extent possible, we do not make deals that we will clear quotes as a condition of interviews.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/20/156986/mcclatchy-washington-bureau-quote.html#storylink=omni_popular
I have lost votes as a candidate due to selective quoting of what I have said during election campaigns. What an Orwellian world where the powerful are not only quoted, but they get to control their message and how it is delivered.
As Peters notes, this means that journalists are giving their sources “final editing power over any published quotations.” He doesn’t spell out the implication, which is that journalists are thereby serving as PR agents, packaging the messages of political professionals at their direction rather than independently reporting the news.
Isn’t this one of the main problems in news as a whole and political ads specifically? It would be good if all political ads were fact checked and that the politician had to be in every one saying whatever crap they have to say. But the weirdest interpretation of the First Amendment allows them to lie in the one place they must be truthful.