Another one bites the dust (h/t several readers who sent this to me):
I thought all of this (a sign she held up at an OWS rally) could be fodder for an interesting segment on The Takeaway—a morning news program co-produced by WNYC Radio and Public Radio International—for which I had been working as a freelance web producer roughly 20 hours per week for the past seven months. I pitched the idea to producers on the show, in an e-mail.
The next day, The Takeaway’s director fired me over the phone, effective immediately. He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a “teaching moment” for me in my career as a journalist. The segment I had pitched, of course, would not happen. Ironically, the following day Marketplace did pretty much the exact segment I thought would have been great on The Takeaway, with Kai Ryssdal discussing the sign and the Goldman Sachs deal it alluded to in terms that were far from neutral.
James O’Keefe rules our world.
Update. NPR changed to “public radio”.
John X.
NPR is doing to itself the same thing that the unions did in the 1960s – siding with the conservatives against the hippies. And just like the unions, the longterm result is going to be that the liberals will just shrug when the right finally brings them down, despite all the craven cowering and sucking up.
And frankly, in a world with the internet’s blogs, BBC, Guardian and a billion other sources, who needs them? As much as I love This American Life, I don’t have much time for a news source by and for cowards.
anonymoose
National Pu**y Radio
beltane
A teaching moment indeed, with the lesson being that any journalist who aspires to a career with NPR must toe the Fox line.
smintheus
No doubt Mara Liasson will give us her take on these firings in her next appearance on Fox News.
trollhattan
Ugh. Somebody with sufficient balls (or ovaries, honeybadger don’t care) hire her, stat!
Maybe this whole crazy OWS mashup will create some good in unexpected areas, such as a rethink of what journalism actually needs to be in a purportedly free society.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@smintheus:
Fixed.
And yes, it’s a teachable moment: unless you can tightly define how your donations to generic “public radio” are used, figure that part of any donation will go to pay for NPR programming, aka Liarsons salary.
jwb
This wasn’t NPR, but PRI.
fasteddie9318
Do public radio outlets like PRI and NPR expect that liberals are going to push back the next time some unhinged Republican congressperson proposes eliminating their federal funding?
Alan
Umm… she wanted to do a story on an event she participated in. How is that ok? How could she get to be a freelance producer working for an NPR show and not understand that journalists don’t do that? (Of course Fox news reported on Tea Party rallies that they helped stage but nobody seriously considers them journalists.)The story about the opera lady getting fired from one show (and nearly from 2) is completely ridiculous because her work had nothing to do with politics, but I don’t have much sympathy for this lady, except that it’s a tough lesson to learn and I hope she can salvage her career.
pragmatism
because marketplace and pri allow mcmegtard on the air, i refuse to listen to them.
MeDrewNotYou
@Alan: Assuming she disclosed everything at the beginning of her story, I don’t see why it would be a problem. We’d know her possible bias and could judge accordingly. The difference with Fox News is that not only did the not disclose their intimate relationship with the Tea Party, not only did they present themselves as giving ‘fair and balanced’ accounts of the rallies, they were also deeply involved in the planning and staging of the rallies. Unless the woman is one of George Soros’s top paid behind-the-scene organizers, it isn’t very similar.
ETA- I know she didn’t do the story, I forgot to mention the first sentence is a hypothetical.
DougJ
@jwb:
Yes, that is why I changed the title.
Suffern ACE
@Alan: Ummmm. She was fired for proposing a story. She hadn’t actually done the story and then lied about her participation. Journalists, I assume, propose stories all the time, some of which are selected an others which are not, and they aren’t fired every time a story is turned down. Freelancers probably just keep trying.
That said, if she did do that – attempt to get a story about the sign greenlighted without disclosing that additional information – I don’t know if I would fire her, but I definitely would do some boss like hollering.
slag
Goddamnit. WNYC! Fuckers. Now I have to consider canceling my monthly giving to them. And so begins the case of Jad and Robert v. the Rights and Duties of Living in a Free Society. In my brain.
Breezeblock
WNYC makes it easy to decide to not give them money.
Mnemosyne
@Alan:
You don’t listen to NPR much, do you? That’s kind of their schtick. As she mentioned, “Marketplace” did the essentially the same story she proposed the next day using their staff.
Of course, being “Marketplace,” they probably put the correct mockery on the story to make sure everyone knew how stupid and useless the protests are, so that’s the real reason they got away with it.
RareSanity
What a bunch of yellow-bellied cowards!
Why the hell does any “left-leaning” outlet, give a damn about what a bunch of people, that don’t even listen/donate to your program care about your employees?
Until Roger Ailes is running the place, conservatives are ALWAYS going to have a problem with you!
Get. The Fuck. Over it!
Just because you play classical music, and are non-confrontational, doesn’t mean that everybody is going to like you.
Comrade Mary
It was a chickenshit move to fire her. I can’t believe how ridiculous it was.
But had her boss been sensible enough not to fire her, he would have made the right call to refuse the story. Journalists cover news, they don’t make news then sell that story.
Alan
Well if I propose to my boss to do something unethical at work, it’s not going to be much of an excuse that I only proposed it.
The marketplace story wasn’t the same because the person doing the story wasn’t the person holding the sign and as far as we know had no connection with OWS.
Djur
@19: She wasn’t proposing to do the segment herself, was she? She was employed as a web producer, not as an on-air reporter.
Redshift
The comments on that article are, for the most part, really depressing:
Really? The only way you can be “objective” is to behave all the time as if you have no opinions at all, and are not a citizen of this country? That’s not being “unbiased,” that’s being closeted.
No wonder journalism is in such a terrible state these days.
David in NY
@slag:
You can just tell them you won’t give unless they get rid of the Takeaway, which in my aged view, sucks. WNYC didn’t do this, but they can put pressure on the Takeway by cancelling them, or complaining, but only if you complain to them.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mnemosyne: Marketplace is also not NPR, but another group that NPR pays for. It’s been a while since I listend to NPR, so I don’t remember the group, though.
Alan
@20- I don’t think that’s a relevant distinction. The fox news “reporters” might not have personally staged those Tea Party rally shots, but I remember seeing their producers doing it. It was laughable for them to do it and it should be laughable for NPR to do it.
Djur
Of course, objectiveness only goes so far. It’s generally accepted for American journalists to accept as a given that American interests are paramount. I don’t remember any attempt to give al-Qaeda equal time after 9/11, but I do remember a lot of US flag pins. Hell, isn’t even the word “terrorist” itself making a value judgment?
(Note: I’m not arguing that the media was unfair toward al-Qaeda. I’m arguing that we already accept certain political biases from reporters, so it’s disingenuous to argue from the basis of perfect objectivity being the ideal.)
Postscript
You can go to the following link to leave a comment for Takeaway:
http://www.thetakeaway.org/contact/
That may be the best way to express disgust on this – I certainly did in my submitted comment.
Alan
@21, yeah, but there’s a difference between having opinions and participating in political events that you then want to do stories about.
David in NY
Kind of amazing how many people feel free to comment without reading the link, and therefore, without having a clue what went on.
Djur
@24: We don’t know the nature of the story she was proposing. It could have been a “how I ended up in this famous photograph” type thing. I’ll agree that if the story she was proposing was “let’s cover this sign that I wrote and held and not indicate that I work for you” then yes, that’s unethical. I think full disclosure should be sufficient in cases like this.
We seem to accept the idea of a ‘war reporter’ without any problem, even though many ‘war reporters’ travel with the troops on one side and openly support that side. Why this suddenly is an ethical failing when applied to other phenomena than war, I do not know.
MarkJ
I really have given up on NPR. They fluffed Paul Ryan on Morning Edition this morning but had no democrat on to rebut his stupid and inane crapola about “job creators” beings scared by “regulatory uncertainty” and whatnot. They must have two (or more) republican politicians on for every democrat.
Their listeners are predominantly liberal and they’re turning themselves into a “high brow” version of Fox News. It makes absolutely no sense.
Note to NPR: We’re not listening to hear right wing propaganda, but that’s a lot of what you’re giving us these days. And that’s why a lot of long-time listeners aren’t giving you what you want from them anymore, namely pledge money.
kindness
@Alan: Fucking moron. She was a freelancer. What you check your first amendment rights when you take a freelance job? Plus, there was nothing in her photo which identified her or linked her to the job. You sound like the cock bites who commented under that Gawker article. What a bunch of tools they are. (I’m including you in that bunch of tools category as well)
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Mary:
Unless your name is John Stoessel. Then it’s what’s expected of you.
Petorado
The sign the reporter was photographed carrying read:
This text was a verbatim excerpt from an article about OWS written by Conor Friersdorf and posted in the Nation. What “liberal media outlet” in its right mind would permit such an inflammatory and obviously politically slanted statement to be carried by one of its freelancers. What would people think? /snark
Alan
Lol. NPR didn’t violate her first amendment rights. Despite NPR’s small amount of federal funding, it’s not a governmental agency. You don’t have a First Amendment right not to get fired unless you get fired by a governmental agency, and even then there are lots of exceptions.
Also, she was a freelance journalist so the only freedom of speech rights she has are those that don’t conflict with her job. I’m a freelancer too (a freelance lawyer). I have first amendment and freedom of speech rights, but if I did something unethical like reveal confidential information about the case, I would be fired also, and deservedly so.
(I laughed because I remember having a long argument here last year when I went after that jerk with a skateboard who stole the koran. I insisted that he violated that other moron’s freedom of speech rights, though people though I was saying that he violated the guy’s first amendment rights. Just funny that I’m correcting someone else about that distinction here now).
j low
@Alan: Unethical is being a retired General on the payroll of a defense contractor acting as a media advocate for Pentagon spending without disclosing your personal stake. Proposing to write a news story about an event that you participated in from the perspective of the participant is just writing a fucking news story. How hard is that?
Comrade Mary
To repeat: she should not been fired for being at OWS, for becoming a meme, or for pitching the story.
But while it’s a great story that I would have loved to cover if I were her boss, I wouldn’t agree to her acting as producer or reporter for it. Interview subject, with appropriate discliamer? Sure!
j low
@kindness: Damn. Don’t muddy the waters like that. The first amendment never promised anybody a job.
Someguy
How do you fire a freelance journalist, exactly? My understanding is that “freelance” means you aren’t regularly employed but just sort of sell pieces. You sure she was a freelance journalist? B/c if she was, then NPR “firing” her would be akin to IBM firing an unemployed engineer…
smintheus
@j low: IIRC, both NPR and PBS aired interviews with the Generals-on-the-take, and have never apologized for it.
les
@Alan:
You’re not making much sense here, or your sense of “ethics” is hyperdeveloped. It seems to run like this:
1. she reads Conor’s stupid idea.
2. decides to test it–would the stupid idea resonate as CF thinks it will.
3. takes sign to OWS, tries to get responses of protesters.
In order to meet your standards, apparently she should have gone to OWS and waited until somebody else, unprompted, showed up with CF’s sign? Would have been ok if she signed an affidavit that she had no sympathy for OWS before she went? jebus, by your standards she couldn’t go to the protest and ask questions about anything–unless maybe somebody else scripted the questions before she went.
Maybe you can ‘splain me the ethics FAIL.
Alan
@j low:
I’ve never taken a journalistic ethics class, so I can’t really speak with any expertise, but my understanding is that it’s just not acceptable to cover a story you’ve participated in. From what I understand, it’s just assumed that there will be so many potential conflict of interest problems in your reporting that it is basically useless as information for the audience. I know as a lawyer that I could never be a witness in a case that I worked on. If for some reason I were required to be a witness in the case, I would have to withdraw from my role as a lawyer in the case. I think the same considerations are at play with the reporter.
Mnemosyne
@Alan:
Actually, that’s 100% not true. What’s unethical is covering the story without revealing one’s involvement in it. If a journalist finds him/herself involved in, say, an accident, they can report on it from their point of view. First person journalism is 100% ethical as long as it’s presented as first person journalism.
It’s concealing the connection that’s unethical, which is what the complaint was with Fox News.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m sure glad Jann wenner never pulled this shit with hunter thompson. there would be no Gonzo journalism
j low
@Alan: Every journalist participates in every story they write. It happens while they are reporting it. It happens while they write it. If they are in air, it happens in the way they inflect. What is unethical is when you HIDE your personal interests while PRETENDING to be impartial. This perception that journalists should simply report exactly what they hear is if there is no such thing as truth is why most mainstream journalists today are basically stenographers.
les
@Alan:
How did she unethically participate? By exposing the sign, to see how people responded? How is that different than walking up with a microphone and saying “CF said xyz, what do you think about that?” She didn’t invent the statement, she didn’t invent the protest, she didn’t script anyone’s answer; I really don’t see the rub. Your analogy fails; she’s not a witness, she’s not giving or creating evidence, she’s recording reactions.
catclub
@Comrade Mary: “Journalists cover news, they don’t make news then sell that story.”
Who is a well known ‘young’ ‘journalist’?
If you said Asshole O’Keefe, give yourself a cookie.
Some wrong examples are perhaps sending the wrong message?
catclub
@smintheus: yet another story that for some strange reason, never resonated for the beltway ‘journalists’.
Alan
@les:
Yes, if she had gone to OWS to report on it and then she saw someone else carrying that sign, she could report on it, and ask them if they got the idea from CF and do the story that way.
I don’t think an affidavit would matter since saying that you don’t have sympathy for OWS is also a statement of opinion that clouds the story and goes against the NPR policies. Now, I do feel that maybe those policies go to far and that reporters should be able to disclose where they’re coming from more often. Jay Rosen persuasively and extensively writes on that topic. However, I think even if NPR had a looser policy, it still wouldn’t allow for a journalist’s direct participation in a political movement followed by attempting to cover that participation.
I don’t see how the ethics rules would prohibit asking questions at OWS.
Howlin Wolfe
@David in NY: I agree: The Takeaway is a smarmy, journamalistic NPR Lite sort of operation that exists mainly to reinforce the corporate narrative. I think it sucks.
Alan
@Mnemosyne: “If a journalist finds him/herself involved in, say, an accident, they can report on it from their point of view.”
Well, that’s not quite the same thing. That would be reporting your observations of what happened. Also, the coverage would probably be reported by another journalist. I don’t think any news station would let a reporter who was involved in a car accident lead a report about the car accident.
j low
@Alan: I’m curious how you were able to see the finished story. You seem to know an awful lot about it.
Alan
@les: Umm… one is participating in a protest (holding a sign which ostensibly expresses your point of view), and one is asking questions of people who are taking part in a protest. Different things.
Alan
@j low: Ok, your comment veers into postmodernity, but of course you have a point. The difference between what the journalst did here and an ethical journalist is that while an ethical journalist might shape the story by her reporting, she’s not reporting on herself.
@j low: well, she describes what she wanted to do a story about, which was her holding a sign at a rally. I can see why that’s a serious problem, and why it was enough for her supervisor to let her go.
joes527
I dunno …
She didn’t go to the OWS protest to observe and report. She went there to shape what was happening, and then she was going to package that as a story.
Firing seems harsh, but the “story” (reporter goes to protest (w/o any visible sign that she is a reporter) and stirs things up) was a very bad idea.
Sort of like when O’Keefe tried to infiltrate and make folks say stupid things for the camera. Just because you agree with the politics of the person doing the reporting – that doesn’t change the ethics of a journalist actively creating a story.
Alan
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s definitely an interesting point. Again, I’m not a journalist and only have a layman’s understanding of journalistic ethics but there are definitely some stories that might skirt the line between journalist and activist. I’ve always defended those Chris Hanson predator stories as being a valuable public service, and good journalism, even though he was cleary involved in staging the events that got covered. I think maybe an exception can get made for journalists to do that in some stories where they are not the main actors being covered. The Chris Hanson stories are not about Chris Hanson, rather they focus on the predator’s and their actions. Also it can be argued that the predator’s would take those actions whether the sting operation was being conducted or not. The sting operation only meant that no children could be harmed.
The reason why the journalist here doesn’t fit that exception is that she was the primary actor that was being covered. Without her holding up the sign that she wanted to do the story about, it doesn’t get held up.
LongHairedWeirdo
Um. I hate to say this, but…
This person went to a protest and did something, and then pitched her own actions as a story. That *is* a violation of journalistic ethics.
Now, I’m not saying she was wrong to go to the protest. I’m not saying she was wrong to hold up the sign. I’m not saying she was wrong to tweet or otherwise share on social networks.
But if I understand it, she went to an event, held up a particularly interesting sign, and then pitched *that* story to her editor And yes, that’s unethical.
Look: if Fox had some freelancers pitching stories about the interesting signs *they* had held up at Tea Party rallies, would everyone here think “Oh, I’m *sure* there’s *no chance* that there was any collusion.”
No. Some people would assume, with some merit, that Fox was trying to gin up the Tea Party story a bit. That’s why journalists are careful about this.
I really hate to say this, but I agree with the editor. Since she not only did this, but also seems completely clueless about why it’s a potential problem, I think she deserves to be fired, at least until she can explain how stupid this particular mistake was. It’s the lack of understanding that really bothers me – it means she could do something like this again, not out of malice, but just out of carelessness.
(Edited to change “journalist” to “person” – it sounds like she’s not a reporter.)
j low
@Alan: Again, I am curious how it is that you know so much about what story she was proposing to write. Without knowing that there is no way to judge whether or not the story she was going to write could have turned out to be unethical and worthy of firing. What she was fired for was being associated with OWS. You may think that a worthy of offense. I do not.
j low
@LongHairedWeirdo: Again, unless you have some information the rest of us do not have about what kind of story she was writing, this is off base. If she was in fact writing a story about going to the protest and holding up a sign there in nothing nothing nothing wrong with that. As a listener you know who she is, what she did, and what her perspective is. You can make your judgment about the story from there.
Alan
@j low: She says in the article the story that she proposed! That short summary of it was enough for it to be blatantly wrong, no further information needed. LongHairedWeirdo at 56 makes the point better than I have. You can’t report on events that you’ve staged. It’s as simple as that. I would imagine they teach it in the first week of journalistic ethics. It’s discouraging that she was unaware of that and still managed to be a freelance producer who has produced pieces for NPR!
j low
@Alan: In the article she says what she did at the protest, but does not articulate the content of the segment that she wanted to produce. Was it the media complaining about the OWS lack of focused message and the the positive media reaction to her presenting an exact mirror of the message the media said they wanted to hear? Would that have been “unethical” media commentary? That is what she talks about for a couple of paragraphs before she gets to saying she proposed a story, but I don’t really know because she never says what direction her pitch was going.
Keith G
@joes527:
Well said.
This need to be in a flashing box on many threads here in Balloon-Juice Land. Though, it won’t win you many friends.
Amir Khalid
I don’t see how Caitlin Curran’s involvement in OWS per se was an ethical issue, let alone a firing offense. It’s perfectly okay for a journalist to have political opinions and participate in political events. What’s not okay is to be both participant and reporter, because then there goes your objectivity as an observer. But it doesn’t compromise your organization unless they themselves are participating too.
As for Curran’s story idea itself, somebody else did it, so there was definitely a good case for doing it. At the point when she pitched the story, Curran had not violated journalistic ethics. Takeaway’s general manager could have said that Curran was, because of her involvement, the wrong person to do this worthwhile story, and assigned another reporter. There was no justification to fire her.
Sasha
She’s apparently that cute girl holding up the “it’s wrong to create a mortgage-backed security filled with loans you know are going to fail so that you can sell it to a client who isn’t aware that you sabotaged it by intentionally picking the misleadingly rated loans most likely to be defaulted upon” sign in that picture that went viral, and after it did, she thought it might be an interesting thing to do a story on.
In other words, she didn’t set out to create or shape news, but the unexpected popularity prompted her to suggest reporting on it.
But the liberal media, attempting to lull Real America, fired her in order to keep its sleeper agenda quiet.
joes527
@Amir Khalid:
If I understand what happened correctly, Marketplace had a story about Curran holding up the sign without realizing who she was. They thought she was just another protester. Kai Ryssdal didn’t go to a protest and anonymously hold up a sign so that he could gin up a story.
The fact that she faked out other journalists makes her attempt to manipulate the protest even more clearly wrong.
Petorado
In all the talk about ethics in this situation, one important point is getting lost: the whole purpose of the reporter’s participation in OWS was to test a statement made by Conor Friersdorf about messaging surrounding the event. Investigating the truth about things is what a reporter is supposed to do, and one way to do that is to test assertions and assumptions.
The fact this woman was fired for pitching this concept is the ethical dilemma. She wasn’t fired for unethical reporting or fabricating a news event, she was fired because someone affiliated with public radio didn’t like the optics of an image of her at the event. The concept of her story idea, that was never produced, was not the issue. The program heads didn’t like seeing her there with a sign on her day off.
Reporters frequently get involved in their stories as investigators, as questioners, and as participants (remember all the embedded reporters in the Iraq and Afghanistan?) Why firing a person, without pursuing other disciplinary or educational options first, for just presenting a concept for a story to her superiors is the real ethical problem.
kindness
For those of us who are appalled at the actions of the Station Manager, I recommend you go to the Gawker article and link over to the station and leave a comment on the Contact Us link as I did.
I wasn’t as profane as I was here with Alan (sorry bout that Alan) but I probably will never be considered for a job there if they can trace my hotmail account. I’m not going to worry. I don’t want a job there.
Hey Alan….you should put in for a job there. You’d fit right in!!!!(you’re still a tool Alan. I just shouldn’t have come right out and call you a fucking moron right off the bat).
Enjoy.
arguingwithsignposts
@LongHairedWeirdo:
How many stories have you read where a journalist went skydiving, rode in a Blue Angel, spent the night in a ride-along with the police, etc., etc., Nickel and Dimed, and on and on.
Ethical journalism is much more nuanced than people here seem to think.
Suffern ACE
@joes527: Hmmm. This seems like a case of the undercover cop arrested by the beat cop. So she wanted to test Connor Friesdorf’s idea and as a freelancer she could. (Perhaps the radio station where she works could hire her! Then she wouldn’t need to pitch stories). The Marketplace decided to fluff Connor for having an impact on the protest. The actual reporters and journalists who were covering the event and published her picture decided that they liked the sign, but didn’t bother to ask the holder any questions about it (at which point, she probably would have said “I’m here writing a story that I hope to pitch to someone. I’m going to pitch it to NPR since I am a temp there, but if they don’t want it, I’ll try someplace else, since I am a freelancer and this is how freelancer pay their rent in brooklyn, which isn’t cheap, you know!”
joes527
@Petorado:
uuuuuuuhhh. …. bad example.
The in-bedded reporters were (are) a journalistic clusterfuck of epic proportion.
Though I agree, firing seems harsh. There is nothing wrong with her holding up a sign at a protest. The ethical problem is with her holding up a sign at a protest in order to create a story.
At the point where the sign was held but the story wasn’t yet written, there would seem to be enough ethical room for an editor to tell her “No, you should not be reporting on events that you created, and if you come to me again with a story idea that boils down to “lets talk about what I did” then I WILL fire you.”
arguingwithsignposts
Also, anyone pay attention to the other shows like radio lab, this american life. the blurry lines in public radio are a mile wide.
Petorado
@joes527
I agree that the embeds worked out horribly, but thought some indication of a strong precedent of reporters participating in events was needed to make a point. Ernie Pyle in WWII or Dan Rather in Viet Nam would have been far better, though more dated, references. Cheers.
joes527
@arguingwithsignposts:
There is a difference in this story. In all of your examples, Journalists experience something that exists without them, and report on their experience.
Skydiving, blue angels, cops and nickel and dimeing all exist without journalists, they just participate in them in order to report on them.
In this case, the reporter did something unique. (dare I say … newsworthy?) – something that wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t do it. Her idea wasn’t to just ride along with OWS and report on what that was like. She very specifically intended to drive, and report on what folks though of her driving.
smintheus
@catclub: funny how it worked out that way, eh?
arguingwithsignposts
@joes527:
This doesn’t seem to indicate she was trying to get a story out of it:
Amir Khalid
@joes527:
Per Caitlin Curran, she only had the idea for a story on Takeaway after the picture of her at OWS went viral. Before it did, her only intention was to tweet, on her personal Twitter account, about people’s reactions to it. The Conor-quoting sign only became newsworthy because other people began writing about it. So, saying that the made the sign and carried it at OWS to gin up a story strikes me as inaccurate.
Curran did not violate ethics by pitching a story to the Takeaway GM at that point, since it was those other people who had made the story newsworthy. One could argue, as I do, that she shouldn’t be on both sides of a political story i.e. as participant and reporter. Any issue there could easily have been avoided by assigning another person.
And there would have been no ethical hazard for Takeaway in covering the story. I see no justification for the Takeaway GM to have admonished her as you suggest.
arguingwithsignposts
@joes527:
Barbara Ehrenreich worked low wage jobs to report on her experience doing so. This is a distinction without a difference.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Amir Khalid:
See, this is exactly what folks seem to be missing about my (and some other people’s) comments. It’s not that we think she did something evil.
It’s that, under these circumstances, people could claim that PRI, or Takeaway, was trying to boost OWS, that they were quietly giving their freelancers suggestions that might sex up the story a bit. I don’t think that’s what happened – but you can’t prove that it didn’t. That’s what ethics are about… making sure no one has to prove a negative like that.
And, again, my concern is much less what she did. I think she made a mistake, but not a serious one. My bigger concern is that she doesn’t seem to understand what kind of a mistake this was. That means she could make another mistake of this sort, and not even realize it.
joes527
@arguingwithsignposts: Your quote shows clearly that her actions at the protest were not mere participation, but a carefully thought out provocation in order to have something to report.
Now, she says that she was ginning the story up for twitter. Since their are no ethical standards for twitter (other than the new: don’t send dick-pics rule) it is all good. Although one might say that you can’t be a journalist on NPR by day and an agent provocateur on twitter by night. That keeping track of when you are wearing the suit and glasses and when you are wearing the tights and cape is inherently problematic. Let’s just walk on by that.
Where it gets really fuzzy is where she tries to roll this twittage into formal reporting. Yes. Absolutely. It could have been reported with full disclosure. But the question: “did she do this stunt and then it became news, or did she do this stunt in order to create news” can only be answered by accessing her intentions at the time. (not available)
If (please, please, please – notice that this is a conditional) she did the whole thing in order to create a news story that she could report, then that was unethical. Given the series of events, there is no way to independently investigate whether that was what happened. All we have is her story about how she became the story.
She should have recognized this apparent conflict and passed on the story. Her editor overreacted. He (she?) was correct to treat a reporter reporting on news that they had created as a bad idea. He (she?) could have been reasonably annoyed at a reporter for even going there. But firing her because she didn’t recognize that she needed to avoid the appearance of conflict seems to be over the top.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Low wage jobs existed before Barbara Ehrenreich took one. See the difference?
Amir Khalid
@LongHairedWeirdo:
I did in fact get that. But Curran can attest that making the sign to display at OWS was entirely her own idea, and Takeaway and PRI can attest that neither of them went the slightest bit out of their way to sex up the story. That’s about the extent of what a news organization can do to refute an accusation of bias or ulterior motive in covering a story. For what it’s worth, had Takeaway done the story, I don’t feel there would have been grounds to accuse them of sexing it up.
People who don’t like what you cover, whatever their reasons, are always going to accuse you — as journalist or news outlet — of bias or ulterior motives. If you were to take the position that you should avoid ever facing such accusations, and so should be very very cautious about what you cover, you’d wind up not covering very much at all.
Amir Khalid
@joes527:
Are you saying that tweeting about something on one’s personal Twitter account amounts to reporting a news story on it? For my part, I see a vast difference — not of kind, but of degree.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Amir Khalid:
Stares in mute amazement.
Attempts three replies – deletes each.
Attempt 4:
Are you seriously saying that a news organization *can’t* abide by a code of ethics, and, I dunno, maybe even find it necessary to fire someone who seems to have engaged in a pretty small violation of them, to let those who are seeking the truth see that they consider their ethical code to be extremely important, even if some liars and soreheads will refuse to accept it?
And are you, in fact, saying that, *WHILE RESPONDING TO A STORY WHERE THAT VERY THING HAPPENED*?
Excuse me, I’m going to go pound my head against the wall. I need to do something more productive than what I’m doing right now.
LongHairedWeirdo
@joes527:
Well, to repeat my earlier statement: my bigger concern was not the story pitch; my bigger concern was that she didn’t seem to realize there was a problem. Maybe she was fired from the moment the phone call started – or, maybe she demonstrated that she just didn’t understand the big deal.
Well, if she didn’t understand it was a big deal, then firing her makes sense.
1) it might teach her that it really is a big deal and
2) if she’s not going to understand why it’s a big deal, she’s dangerous to have working there. A reporter who might intentionally cheat once in a while is a risk; a person who doesn’t even realize when she’s cheating is a bigger one.
Amir Khalid
@LongHairedWeirdo:
No. A news organization exists to report the news. I’m saying that it is not unethical to cover the unintended, and unexpected, newsworthy consequences of your reporter’s off-duty actions. Nor is it unethical for the reporter in question to suggest such coverage. (I think this is where we differ.) The only ethical issue I see is that the reporter involved should not herself be in the story as both participant and reporter. And as I said before, that issue could have been avoided by assigning another reporter.
In the second paragraph of my comment #79, I argue that a policy of always avoiding the appearance of bias and ulterior motives risks leading a news organization into journalistic timidity. I don’t advocate recklessness in this regard, of course. But I reckon Takeaway was being too cautious in deciding not to do a newsworthy story.
Takeaway could very easily have covered this story with a clear conscience, whatever unfounded suspicions its detractors might feel free to voice. I still feel that it should have done so, and not let itself get scooped.