Jay Rosen and I had a conversation on this blog in April about the dangers of entering the unchartered territory of journalism without a clear line between public and private statements. The exchange came in reaction to a case in which Mayhill Fowler, writing for a publication Rosen co-founded called Off the Bus, published the famous “people are bitter” quote from Barack Obama despite getting into the event by donating money. In the age of youtube and blogging, the question goes, who decides what’s fair game for publishing?
My concern is that in a society where anything that’s happening is always 30 seconds and a few clicks away from being public, the trust of privacy that holds so many communities together will be a more fragile, more often violated thing. We should, I argued, try to sort out the ambiguities of an all-publishing society or pay the price. Jay responded that people’s basic sense of right and wrong would be the ultimate guide, and that the correct journalistic choice would just be a matter of reasonably sorting out that question, not one of journalistic guidelines. I persisted in my concern with the ambiguity, he challenged me to propose a specific ambiguous situation, and I basically couldn’t. I didn’t feel at ease, but his point was well taken. (I’d encourage folks to read the exchange and let me know if they think I’ve characterized it fairly).
But Mayhill Fowler wasn’t done just yet. Last week, she broke news again:
A 61-year-old woman elbows her 5-foot-2-inch frame to the front of the crowd mobbing Bill Clinton after a campaign event in South Dakota. As Mr. Clinton shakes her hand and holds it tight, she deftly draws him into a response to an article on the Vanity Fair Web site that examines his post-presidential life. “Sleazy” and “slimy” are among the words that issue from the former president’s mouth. Within hours, audio of the three-minute exchange — including the woman’s description of the article as a “hatchet job,” and Mr. Clinton’s description of Todd Purdum, the author and a former reporter for The New York Times, as “dishonest” — is available for the world to hear on the Huffington Post Web site. [...]
While her digital audio recorder was visible in her left hand during that encounter last Monday, she says, she did not believe Mr. Clinton saw it. “I think we can safely say he thought I was a member of the audience,” she said in a telephone interview on Friday.
The same question arose. Did Fowler break any journalistic rules and did that violation indicate anything about the vulnerability of our unchartered territory?
The Times story concludes with a quote from Jay:
“In the interest of full disclosure, it would have been better if she said, ‘Mr. President, I’m a blogger from Off the Bus and I have a question,’ ” Mr. Rosen said. “I also understand the situation she’s in, he’s on a rope line, and it’s crowded and there are people shouting at him.”
“We didn’t anticipate exact circumstances like this,” Mr. Rosen added. “We didn’t think up guidelines for what to tell her in a situation like this.”
Now, I don’t pull the quote to say “I told to you so” (although after doubting myself, it’s good to know I wasn’t being ridiculously paranoid). I don’t think this latest episode is a particularly severe example of what I’m talking about (Bill Clinton should really know he’s on the record all the time by now). But I pull the quote, and restate my argument and the discussion that followed, to renew a call for a serious conversation about how we sort through this. Not just for projects like Off the Bus, but for all of those who will follow in its newly blazed path.
I couldn’t think of an example, but clearly they exist. So my failure of imagination just shouldn’t be the end of our effort to sort this out. The old rules of journalism were often designed, after all, for good reasons. Yes, often times they’re abused by a ruling class that plays with them for money and power, but they served a purpose.
New rules, that embrace transparency from both the journalist and the subject and respect some line of privacy, need to be ironed out. Not by me, or Jay, or the NYTs or Mayhill Fowler. But in a conversation amongst us all (mostly them all, because I can’t claim any special insights into answers) that prefigures the kind of journalism we’re hoping to see.
