I think Jay Rosen is right that Mayhill Fowler didn’t break any rules of journalism when she recorded Obama at a fundraiser in San Francisco and then broadcast his amateur sociology to the world. Things aspiring presidents say about politics are on the record unless designated otherwise. That much is pretty straight forward to me.
Even so, I’m sympathetic to Michael Tomasky’s concerns with the ambiguity of the situation. Fowler, for the uninitiated, was invited to a closed-door (but not explicitly off the record) fund raiser for Obama. She entered the event as a supporter who blogged, she left it as a journalist who caused significant damage to the campaign. She didn’t break the rules, but she clearly broke some implicit trust and contradicted the assumptions of those around her.
Which may be fine when it comes to presidential campaigns, but it points to a new fundamental vulnerability we all live with. You can no longer assume, with anyone anywhere, that your words will not be taken and projected around the world. That vulnerability, applied to less prominent figures, makes me more wary than Jay Rosen is about entering “unchartered territory.”
Let’s say, for example, you’re standing in line for coffee and you hear your city councilor, in line in front of you, talking to a friend about what an idiot the mayor is. Or let’s say you’re at a party and you hear a principal telling a friend that one of the local teachers is incompetent.
As a citizen journalist in a situation where a public official has made no clear request to be off the record, are these words reportable for the front page of a local newspaper? Or, more likely, a local blog?
There is a reason, after all, that the role of journalist is in some ways the role of social outcast. If they’re doing their jobs well, a journalist is out to uncover people’s dirty laundry and share it with the world. Their job is to be willing to make enemies for the greater good. To be more committed to what is true than what is comfortable. It’s not a standard always met, but it’s at least the standard.
What does a world look like in which we’re all journalists?
Jeff Jarvis, in a debate with Tomasky on his piece, embraces a kind of radical transparency. If public figures know that they are constantly vulnerable, he argues, they’ll become more honest.
But an alternative path is possible, and it’s especially possible in a situation in which the trust being violated is more fundamental than that between a campaign and a supporter. It’s especially possible if the person who is being made vulnerable isn’t running for President and therefore as deserving of that scrutiny.
We will, no matter what Rosen and Jarvis (and I) would like, never live in a completely transparent and honest society. Honesty, in fact, is not always the best thing for communities. Many communities are held together by the choices we all make every day to put social order and peace above our own personal opinions. They’re held together by a certain amount of trust we have that other people will keep our confidences.
The alternative path is that the uncharted territory we now live in breeds a culture of suspicion and starts to erode the trust that most lived communities are built on. Not the trust between a campaign and a supporter, but the trust that a local public figure has that they can talk with their friends at a coffee shop or a party. The trust that a bad friendship won’t end with a youtube video of your worst moments. The trust that your entire life does not have to be lived out in public when others choose to put it there.
Mayhill Fowler did nothing wrong when she chose journalism over the trust that the Obama campaign had in her. But we mustn’t over-learn the lesson and accept the idea that ambiguity should always lead to disclosure, or that there is nothing problematic about the deep vulnerability that now defines public, and often private life.
We don’t need the old rules, but we do need to have a long conversation about what rules, and what explicit understandings we come to as a society, we need if we want to protect communities from a deep culture of suspicion.
Hi Andrew: Whatever comments I made about this issue were strictly about the Mayhill Fowler case.
I would never want to live in a completely transparent society, another name for which is “totalitarian.” In a free society there is a zone of private life where we are not on the record, not open to viewing by strangers, and we don’t have to be ready to defend what we say and do.
Not only do we need that for a civilized life, but the only reason to value public life and the public square itself is that we can come into it from the zone of privacy. The two realms create each other. There’s no spotlight if the entire space is floodlit all the time.
Here’s a discussion example for you, from Arianna:
Certainly we’re in agreement in that case.
But doesn’t that say to you that, as I argue, we do have to figure out how to flesh out some rules?
My primary concern is not with national figures like Kristol or Obama. Too much of this conversation, in my opinion, focuses on people who are the most public, allowing for us to not deal with the more difficult and complicated situations.
The public and the private, as I argue above, are not so easily distinguished in most local communities. And the tools that made Obama vulnerable make us all vulnerable, they don’t stop working when the person being discussed is in a more ambiguous situation.
The situation with public figures is completely different from regular people going about their business. In the Obama case, some people tried to argue that he had an expectation of privacy at the fundraiser; I thought that was absurd and the campaign later confirmed that when it said they expect everything to be recorded and posted.
But, yes, the notion that your conversation in the laundromat could wind up in a blog is scary and extreme; and we really cannot reckon with it using the same terms we use to discuss Obama, Kristol, Tomasky and Arianna.
But I don’t think Tomasky was on the right track with “rules.” If I had replied (Jeff did it, so there was no need) I would have said that in a situation where there are no publicly-known and established rules, in uncharted territory, you need people with an inner sense of direction, of right and wrong. That’s what saves you from an “anything goes” mentality, not “let’s have some rules.” The person who would secretly record you in the laundromat and post your conversation on his blog with secretly snapped pictures of you in your sweatpants… lacks decency not rules.
Journalists tend to believe that their behavior is more rule-governed than it is. Ask someone in pro journalism to explain the rules for “off the record” sometime, or, if you really want to have fun, the rules for whether something is news. After a few minutes they usually give up, falling back on something like: “you know it when you see it.” Or: “takes experience to know.”
I don’t think Tomasky meant: “let’s have some rules.” He meant, “let’s have some ropes” and keep the Mayhill Fowlers behind them.
I don’t want to get trapped into the Mayhill Fowler debate, as I said I side with you on that.
But I think your “people will know it when they see it, we don’t need rules” is extremely optimistic about human nature in a way I have a hard time with.
And again, let’s not talk about random people doing non-political things or major politicians talking about politics. Let’s deal with the complicated situations where you have public figures who are much closer to the ground, living in a community that is held together with a certain level of unspoken trust. How do we negotiate their circumstances?
No, I think you are too optimistic about the influence of rules on human behavior. It’s not that we don’t need rules. It’s that rules are typically codified after people have worked out how to behave in a situation where they have lots of choices. If they haven’t done that, we can always think up some rules, but they won’t mean much.
Maybe what you mean is “a sense of restraint.” Like when we ask, “why did he do that?” and someone answers, “because he can.” The opposite of that attitude is restraint. You can but you don’t. This is the opposite of rules.
Public figures who are speaking to supporters and within the bounds of an intimate community, who find their words recorded, ripped from context, and introduced into the larger public square, where they take on a completely different meaning…. yes, this is a problem. The only solution I see is for public figures to adjust their internal meters, their language.
I don’t really follow you here.
I’m not saying you and Jarvis should sit down and make a list of rules for new media and hand them down from on high.
But why not start the conversation? Why not try to affect the development of those rules by applying your expertise to highlighting the negative.
Rules don’t appear organically out of no where. Folks debate them and try to design them to minimize the bad and promote the good. Why not express your opinions on the bad and the good to help mold that?
Not really sure what you mean, Andrew. The “negative” in what….?
Are there lots of situations where public officials are getting unfairly hosed in blogs for something they said in line at the grocery store? If there were, I might write about those situations, and try to see in them where wisdom lies.
True, it could happen today in a way that was not there before blogging and the personalizing of media. In my experience you’re better off puzzling over what does happen, now that we have the Net, than you are worrying about what could happen because we have the Net. That’s why I like Clay Shirky so much.
Often in journalism one appearance of something is a story, two is a trend and three is a new law of human nature. I do try to avoid that, as well.
I think it’s folly not to prepare for what I think are fairly predictable negative possibilities. Do you really not believe that this will happen?
I understand that most of what you are doing right now is convincing old media nostalgists that there a lot of good stuff happening, but that shouldn’t preclude us discussing the downside.
Okay, well I certainly believe in intellectual preparation, and in accenting the negative–the downside–when necessary.
If they’re predictable situations then give me four or five that you think absolutely will happen, even though we do not know the particulars. That will make it easier to think about, and I might well have ideas that pertain, or need to get some, soon. You must have some: what should we be prepared for?
Maybe one reason I hesitate is my guess. My guess is these situations are not really about blogging, new media, journalism, or reporting at all, but the all-important line between public (square) and private (life), a subject I have strong feelings–and many thoughts–about!
In my own blogging, I observe a strict separation. I’m almost Calvinist about it. I don’t bring the private into the public. I use Facebook not to keep my friends up on what I’m doing, but to keep friends of my ideas up on what I am thinking and saying IN PUBLIC… and in my work. (The very last thing I would update you on at my blog is my mood.)
The overheard private statement isn’t a public utterance. That’s why you shouldn’t blog about it. But these are rules of decency, not blogging. You see what I mean?
Notions like “character” are inherently subject to abuse–and the character issue is often abused in politics and journalism–as they argue for the public significance of what are essentially private actions. I think we should very wary of those who make claims like that, and we should insist on the greater significance of public actions.
On the other hand, when everything a public official says is a lie, a misdirection, a charade, we’re permitted to mistrust appearances. But the crucial question is: when you dig behind the facade, are you digging into the official’s (hidden) public record or his private business, which is hidden because it’s private?
These are things I would tell bloggers. One more: I think we should strive to keep your channel clear for stuff that has public import.
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