Why WikiLeaks is Bad for Journalism

There's not much there. Or at least not much that couldn't also be heard in any newsroom cafeteria, senior common room or neighborhood bar.

The Arabs are worried about Iran? Gee.

Sarkozy has a temper? Whatever next?

The Canadians' major export is moral rectitude? Quelle surprise!

There may be more to come, but so far, WikiLeaks is just a tepid drip of low level gossip.

At least the New York Times sent a number of the leaks to the Obama administration to make sure that what they would publish wouldn't endanger anyone. The administration asked to redact some aspects. The Times agreed to some and refused to do others.

WikiLeaks showed no such ethical consideration. For Julian Assange, the reclusive leaker-in-chief, it was publish and be damned. If he thought this was information that would change the nature of diplomacy, he must be very naive.

The result of this outpouring of (so far) non-information is that news organizations are going to have a much harder time getting a government source to go on background for any real information.

It's going to be very hard to be a diplomatic correspondent for the next little while.

The Americans will make sure that not much gets leaked for the foreseeable future. Ironically, after 9/11 when it was shown how little information was being exchanged among various intelligence agencies, the rules for sharing were loosened up. The result was that it was easier to have access to cross-agency intelligence.

But the consequences for real investigative reporting and responsible journalism have now become much tougher thanks to WikiLeaks.

Roger Ailes' Attack Shows The Need for Ombudsmen

Fox News boss Roger Ailes' recent description of NPR management as having "Nazi attitudes" provoked some revulsion around various media. No more so than inside NPR as well.

NPR reporter Andrea Seabrook wrote a heartfelt response posted on Facebook.

She was shocked that NPR which she sees as a beacon of reason and responsible journalism, could be demonized in this way. Andrea is right to be appalled. But Ailes' flip and foolish remark was mild compared to what routinely crossed my inbox when I was Ombudsman at NPR. It feels as though it has become rougher of late. I'll leave that to practicing ombuds to confirm that.

When I was on those particular front lines, I assumed that part of my job as ombudsman was to act as a combination triage and heat shield on behalf of the journalists.

As most who do the job of ombudsman or public editor can attest, it's often not very nice out there. And in cyberspace, it can be extremely rough.

The role of an ombudsman, as I saw it, was to keep the level of civility as high as possible, without being paternalistic about the sensibilities of the journalists. Did reporter X really need to know that a listener referred to him or her as an &;*^$#;)? Probably not. But if the critic had a good point, I would sent the criticism to the reporter, warts and all, and usually with a warning.

Nasty remarks without any redeeming constructive criticism often weren't forwarded.

I sometimes wondered if I was doing anyone (the complainant included) a favor in keeping the more caustic and toxic comments away from both journalists and management. Wouldn't it be better if everyone knew just how complicated and even vicious our so-called civic discourse could be?

In the end, I usually kept most of those nastier comments away; some I just filed for the record, without responding. Others - the most virulent - I deleted since they were of no value as a comment on the journalism or on the journalists.

One could argue that the role of the Ombudsman is simply to act as a telephone pole between the senders/listeners and the receivers/journalists. That's not how I saw it.

Ombudsmen do a better job for journalism when he/she exercises editorial discretion by choosing the most useful and constructive observations. It doesn't mean the Ombudsman engages in censorship, or even makes the audience out to be better than it is.

It's a judgment call and one that ombudsmen make several times a day.

CBC and NPR: Preparing for the Worst; Hoping for the Best?

It is the best of times; it is the worst of times.

Even as NPR takes a few well-deserved brickbats for how it fired Juan Williams, there has never been such a flurry of accolades and encomiums in the media, all hailing public radio's service to America.

Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times is only the latest of a series of surprising articles praising the value of public service journalism.

It is nice to see and NPR should be delighted at this display of rallying 'round.

At the same time, Republicans are gathering to try to de-fund public broadcasting. They failed today, but they will be back.

The tone is darkening as Fox News' Roger Ailes referring to NPR management as "Nazis." After a protest from Jewish groups, he apologized. 

It remains a ominous time for public broadcasters in North America.

The question is whether public broadcasting should prepare for an eventually de-funding by a more ideologically-driven Congress or even by a Palin presidency (sic).

The last time this happened was in 1994. Speaker Newt Gingrich declared that government support for public broadcasting would end.

Public Television responded by a furious campaign to save PBS. It worked.

Public Radio took the threat equally seriously but responded by looking for ways to reduce its dependence on Congress. Back then, NPR received around 30% of its operating budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the funding arm of Congress.

The president of NPR in 1994 was Delano Lewis who came to NPR after a distinguished business career. He left NPR in 1998 to become the US ambassador to South Africa. Full disclosure: Del hired me as NPR's VP of News and Information.

Back in 1994, Del decided that Congress was not a reliable partner for NPR, so he slowly but consistently moved NPR away from dependence on Congressional funding. By the time Del left NPR, we had reduced our CPB budget from 30% to less than 2%. NPR still takes station fees and program dues from public radio stations who rely more heavily on CPB than NPR. But the principle was established that NPR, at least, could survive without a direct subsidy from CPB and Congress.

There were some in the public radio community who criticized Del for doing this. Some felt that a governmental subsidy was a necessary approach to public broadcasting. Why should public broadcasting let government off the hook? We were asked to be more like PBS and lobby for support.

Ultimately, when the next NPR president came along, Kevin Klose (1998-2008) deepened that shift from public to private support by effectively tapping into an enormous reservoir of pro-NPR sentiment throughout the United States.

The question for the latest NPR leader, Vivian Schiller is which direction to go? Back to Congress and CPB dependency? Or further into deeper public support? I think the answer is obvious, but how to insure the solvency of more than 900 public radio stations remains problematic.

The CBC is faced with a similar problem of political support. The CBC receives more than $1 billion annually from Parliament. But upper management must feel insecure about whether that amount will go on forever.

In Canada, the ruling Conservatives (much like previous Liberal governments) have never completely embraced the CBC, especially its news service and particularly on the French-language side. For the moment, the government does not control a majority of seats in the House of Commons. This has acted as a brake on the Tories' open animosity for the CBC.

A majority Tory government would be another matter. There seems to be a growing element in Canada who are committed CBC-haters. You have only to read the comments on the CBC website to get a taste of what could be in store for the public broadcaster if the political winds blow a little harder from the right.

Could the CBC survive a serious cut to its budget? I don't think it could. It simply could not continue in its present form. But it would force the CBC, like NPR before it, to make some hard choices about priorities.

Now would be a good time to think about a post-cut CBC and to identify Canadians who support the idea (if not the reality) of a strong public broadcaster and who are prepared to pound a bully pulpit for the CBC. In effect, the CBC needs its own Kevin Klose, because in public broadcasting, the best defense is a good offense.

Just ask Del Lewis.

Can Public Media Survive Without Government Funding? Yes We Can

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform for reducing the deficit in the US came out with a preliminary report that has sent shivers down the spines of public broadcasters.

The co-chairs  of the study, Erskine Bowles (President Clinton's former chief of staff) and former Senator Alan Simpson (Republican of Wyoming) called for a gradual phasing out of federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

CPB, a private corporation funded by Congress now receives around $500 million a year. About two thirds of that goes to fund PBS and the public broadcasting television system. The rest goes mostly to public radio stations. NPR receives almost 2% of its operating budget from CPB, but it indirectly receives more from member stations dues and fees. The radio stations rely on CPB for an average of 13% of their funding. The TV stations, even more.

This attempt to "zero-out" public broadcasting has been tried before. In 1994, the Republican takeover of Congress began with Speaker Newt Gingrich calling for the same abolition of publicly funded public broadcasting. It failed spectacularly, mostly because of strong grass roots opposition and because in 1994, the open ideological opposition to PBS and NPR was not enough to garner popular support.

What's different this time is that there is more political support for the Republicans (although this may prove to be a short-lived as the exuberance for Barack Obama was in 2008). And there appear to be compelling economic reasons this time as well. The financial situation in 2010 is considerably more serious than it was in 1994 when the Clinton administration ran a surplus. 

Public broadcasting can resist the pressure if it can demonstrate its value to the American people. This means more than special pleading (although more of that done smartly won't hurt). But if public media were to demonstrate that it is providing something commercial media cannot or will not, citizens might be more willing to rally around.

NPR is already doing that, but it can do more to serve the needs of the present and the next generation of under-served citizens especially in a digital environment.

As commercial media has converged and retrenched its offerings, public media still has an opportunity to create more of a digital commons where citizens are able to participate more actively. It sounds "pie-in-the-sky" but the alternative of doing nothing and hoping that the public radio and public TV haters will go away, probably won't work either...

A few years ago, a grass-roots movement for local radio called "Low Power FM" was squelched by a combination of commercial and public radio lobbying. LPFM was said to interrupt the signals of public radio stations by broadcasting on adjacent frequencies. Congress agreed and outlawed these community stations. NPR lost a lot of credibility when it allied itself with the National Association of Broadcasters to shut down LPFM. And the people behind LPFM haven't gone away and they haven't forgotten.

These grass-roots forms of community media are still out there, working in different areas, waiting for a chance to relaunch their ideas. This would be a chance for legacy public media to partner with them, to learn new techniques from them and, in turn, to set some ethical standards and skill-sets that could help these new media practitioners.

It won't be easy. There is a lot of suspicion on all sides and finding what will work with the listening and viewing public will be a hit-and-miss proposition.

But as Richard Sambrook, the former head of BBC News has observed, "the build it and they will come" mentality among broadcasters - public and commercial - hasn't worked. So a new approach is needed.

Sambrook has written that public media needs to "stop looking in the mirror and start looking out the window." There are communities outside of public media that have achieved an astonishing level of self-sufficiency. What they lack in expertise, public media can provide. What public media lack in public support, grass roots media can provide.

The threat posed by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform may just be the vehicle for focusing the attention of public media to achieve a more useful and long-term outcome.

Now Keith Olbermann Too? Something in the Management Water?

 POLITICO Breaking News
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MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay after POLITICO reported that he made three campaign contributions to Democratic candidates. MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement Friday: "I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay." 

First Ric Sanchez, then Juan Williams and now Keith Olbermann. Have the media suddenly been seized with a bout of ethic guide-itis? 

For some on the left it will look like a case of premature capitulation when confronted with an increasingly conservative electorate. For the right, it's about time.

Although NPR's removal of Juan was due to his gaffe on Fox and Ric Sanchez because of his anti-Semitic utterances, all three removals had to do with sins of omission (not staying in a reportorial role) and sins of commission (deliberately taking a partisan position on matters of public controversy).

Defining your media organization as non-partisan is always a risky business these days. There are always those who are convinced that mainstream media are deliberate in their bias, even when they aren't. But CNN, NPR and NBC do consider their role to be essentially non-partisan even if they have some journalists on their staffs who aren't. Most importantly, they have their ethics guides to prove it.

Removing overt partisanship from media is good, if it's followed by a re-affirmation of good journalism. So CNN, NPR and MSNBC should be applauded.

One problem: leaving Fox to continue to play the anti-Obama partisan card makes the rest of the media look weak by comparison. Fox will continue to wrap itself in the mantle as defenders of free speech; the rest of the media will wrap themselves in their internal ethics guides. 

This may be another case where the good guys finish last.
 

Did Firing Juan Williams Help the Republicans?

A friend in DC wrote to say how disappointed he is with NPR's firing of Juan Williams. My friend is a conservative in some ways, a Democrat in others and a regular NPR listener.

When Juan was fired, my friend wrote to me to complain that Juan at least brought a "common sense" style of conservatism to NPR - something he felt was sorely needed. He also agreed that Juan's appearances on Fox did not add anything to the national discussion since, like much of what passes for political discourse these days, it's mostly visceral rather than intelligent. Management's tussles with Juan (including my own) were beside the point. Juan needed editorial management, not firing, claimed my friend.

He also felt disappointed and let down by NPR. He made the comment that the desire for pack journalism and uni-thinking seems about same on Fox as it is on NPR. Ouch!

I thought that was a bit harsh, but it got me thinking about the political waves that must be emanating from this high-profile and ill-timed event.

One of my bosses at NPR always used to ask whenever we were faced with a complicated decision: "What's the downside?" Was that question ever asked inside NPR?

I decided to google "NPR and Juan Williams." To my amazement, there were as of today, 720,000 hits on that tandem. I doubt if every one of them refer to the recent events, but I stopped counting after I downloaded 12 pages of online references, all of them discussing the firing, and most of them attacking NPR.

It's doubtful that the Democrats can point to NPR as the cause of their present dilemma.

But my guess is that this was one more small media eruption that ended up contributing to the larger Republican tsunami.