Journalism in a Dangerous Place

Here is my script on the challenges of reporting in Moldova, aired this week on CBC Radio's "Dispatches."

INTRO: What happens when journalists from Russia, Ukraine and three South Caucasus republics get together? They surprise themselves - and a visiting Canadian professor with how far they have come. 

The purpose? To talk about media self-regulation. Which is prof-speak for how to make media more democratic, more independent and more responsive to the needs of readers, listeners and viewers.

Jeffrey Dvorkin reports on what he found in south eastern Europe earlier this year.

Chisinau is the capital of Moldova – a former Soviet republic squeezed up tight between Romania on the west and Ukraine on the east. Not exactly the land that time forgot, but not exactly on any high traffic tourist routes.

Chisinau charmingly exudes a sense of “old Europe” – it has wide boulevards, huge trees, marvelous centuries old Orthodox churches and flower boxes everywhere. But a closer look shows why Moldova is still the poorest country in Europe.

At first it looked like the construction crews working on the roads quit early the day I arrived… Sidewalks more rubble than pavement. As I hauled myself and my suitcase from the taxi into the hotel over the broken concrete, it occurred to me that I could easily break an ankle trying to go for a walk any time of day. At night, don’t even think about it unless you are carrying a flashlight. And street lighting is non-existent, except for the neon glare from what are advertised as “casinos.”

They are bright enough to shed some light on the street and inside you can catch a glimpse of a bar leaned on by waiting women. The repetitive sounds of Euro Pop pound onto the streets. Every block has at least three or four of these joints but they are in fact fronts, I was told, making Chisinau the most active center for human trafficking in Europe and the Middle East.

My self-consciously “hip” guidebook only alludes to this by saying that Chisinau has an abundance of BMWs and Mercedes and quote ”fashionably dressed youth who strut down boutique-lined avenues and dine in fancy restaurants.” Where does all this flaunting of wealth come from? “You don’t wanna know and we ain’t asking” says the entry. So much for the helpful guidebook.

So Moldova is not exactly a journalistic utopia where independent media thrive. Doing journalism here, I was told, is a deliberately bold act – and sometimes a dangerous one as well.

As a result, much of the newspaper business is simply a variation on slightly safer themes like sports and sex. If you thought that some of the English tabloids were risqué, they are nothing compared to the Moldovan media.

Television is mostly sports and cable talk shows in Russian or Romanian. There is some independent online media. Some bloggers have tried to get write about this, pointing to high levels of official corruption. But they tend to get beaten up if they get too close. There have even been a few unsolved murders.  Blogging without government sanction is technically illegal. So there isn’t much of it. New media still feels like the “samizdat” or underground journalism of the Soviet era.

I met with a number of bloggers who wanted to know how it is done in the West…how lucky we are to practice journalism without fear. Some have left to try their luck in a more supportive and slightly more open journalistic environment in Moscow! Now there’s a shift!

The journalists who stay in Moldova are remarkable men and women who know what they need to do but are somewhat unsure of the best way to do it. The light at the end of the tunnel is called “civic journalism.”

The problem is – no tunnel. Not yet.

So the challenge for the media here and in other former Soviet republics is two fold: how to give government more confidence that independent journalists can be trusted, and second how to give the authorities fewer reasons to return to the bad old days of Soviet-style censorship.

Even so…Some curious and distinctly un-western ideas were floated at the meeting:

We heard from a colleague from Romania how earlier this year, a law was proposed in her country: all registered journalists would have to submit to a psychiatric examination every three years. This was how journalists would stay licensed by the state. Fortunately that distinctly loopy idea was defeated.

Some of the people at the conference were not surprised by this suggestion: psychiatry has a long tradition in the former Soviet bloc of being used as a means of civic repression. It’s an indication of what journalists in the region have to deal with.

Another dangerous notion: why not create ethics guides that journalists would have to agree to in order to get jobs in journalism. Those who refused would be declared “unethical journalists.” That would not necessarily deny them work. But it wouldn’t help them either. Some of us at the meeting suggested that this was also too Soviet. So it was dropped.

We from the west tried to steer the meeting in another direction. Especially toward ideas that would not get result in either prison or murder: We suggested press councils and independent news ombudsmen. Those were ideas that were enthusiastically endorsed.

And we also started a conversation about the value of starting small. Looking at some of the immediate issues that touch people in Chisinau every day. Like, well, what about the sidewalks? And the lack of street lights? Doing stories like that might just be sort of journalism to help citizens restore their trust in their newspapers and broadcasters.

We talked about how there actually is a direct connection from broken sidewalks to broken lives. A year from now, my guess is that these journalists might also be doing stories on human trafficking and why the authorities are tolerating that.

For Dispatches, I’m Jeffrey Dvorkin in Chisinau, Moldova.

Is Double Dipping Ethical?

I received the following note from a journalism student who has been assigned a class project about conflict of interest.

The student asked me for my take on it. Here is the problem the student received:

You've just been transferred off the medicine and health beat for a Toronto daily and are now writing about municipal politics.

You get a call from a contact at the Canadian Medical Association, who asks you if you will write, anonymously, a brief to be presented to the federal government advocating the privatization of selected sorts of medical services now covered by medicare.  Medicine is an area you know well.
 
The CMA will pay you $15,000 to write this brief, and you can do it in your spare time in less than a month.  You are behind on your mortgage and, despite repeated attempts by your union to increase salaries at your very profitable paper, they rank well behind some other unionized papers in smaller, and less expensive Canadian cities.
 
You'd never realized that contract writers for lobby groups earned such large fees, but your contact tells you this is quite a standard rate.  She says it can be a very lucrative line of work, but adds that anyone considering it 'shouldn't quit their day job until they've built up a bit of a track record, because no one wants to hire someone who hasn't proven themselves.'

Do you accept the CMA offer?  Why?

Here is my response:

First as a reporter, your primary obligation is to your employer. S/he should know that you have been approached. There should be no double-dipping. It is unethical and compromises your journalistic independence. If your editor says s/he doesn't mind, find another line of work. This reveals a lack of standards at your newspaper.

Second, there is no such thing as anonymity when it comes to lobby groups. Even if they claim that everything will be kept confidential, how do you know?

Third, there may come a time when the lobby group may ask for another favor that is more difficult to do. But you have taken their money once. What's to stop the lobby group from making your previous relationship public?

Finally, you have to choose whether you prefer to make the big bucks as a hired hack or whether you still think journalism has some value.
 
You could of course, do the work, and give the money to a charity, but once you have taken the money, you are caught and are henceforth in the paid service of the lobby group. They don't care what you do with the money. The point is, you took it and now you are on their hook.

Conclusion? You could do it, but there are real and long lasting consequences.

                                              *                *                 *

As I thought about it, I wondered why this was deemed to be an ethical issue at all? It seems very straight-forward to me. Is there something more nuanced here that I have overlooked?

It reminded me that when I was NPR's ombudsman some years ago, I was approached by a large California based p.r. firm. I was asked to give a speech on accountability to the annual general meeting of a major defense contractor.

The speaking fee was enormous (by NPR standards). I said I would do it, but I said that I wouldn't/couldn't accept the money, nor the plane ticket (first class) nor the boutique hotel reservation. I told them I would be happy to come.

Two days later, the offer to speak was withdrawn.

Evidently, there are strings attached everywhere, even if they aren't apparent at first.

Why So Few Female Ombuds?

One of the pleasures of this job is that I get to speak to up and coming journalism students around the world.

Their optimism and their clarity about journalism's strengths, gaps and its ability to make a difference can be truly inspiring.

Recently I spent some time with undergraduates at the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York.

I fielded a lot of good questions such as how ombudsmen can possibly operate in an environment of heightened competition among media and in this time of deepening public skepticism and hostility? Tough questions with no easy answers.

One question today was particularly pointed:

Why are there so few women ombudsmen? asked one (male) student.

It's true that if you go to the website of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, the preponderance are male.

There may be many factors that contribute to this situation: while I found being on ombudsman a fascinating place to be (for a while), many people in the news organizations (male and female) told me that they didn't know how I could stand the pressures: taking shots from the public and the newsroom; enduring personal abuse; being caught between the defensiveness of the journalistic culture and the offensive demands of the public. It is true it can be wearing.

I don't think that being a male is a prerequisite for taking on the job. On the contrary, many ombuds were and are women who proved themselves to be just as tough and tough minded as any one had to be in that role.

But to respond to the student, I think the really answer lies in the demographics of newsrooms.

Not today's newsrooms. But the newsrooms of the 1970s and 1980s.

Most ombudsmen happen to be senior (aka older) journalists. That means they entered the workplace when men predominated in news organizations. As the work force ages, more women should achieve positions of authority in management and as ombudsmen/women.

If news organizations decide to appoint ombudsmen who are younger, there would quickly be more females among them.

And that is what we are seeing now - more women who have proven their journalistic worth, being appointed to those roles in their media organizations.

I would look forward to that, because it might change the dynamics of how the public interacts with the media. The red meat critics that I had to deal with might just be a bit more civil if a woman answered the phone and said: "Office of the Ombuds. Ombuds X speaking."

The Media's Moral Panic Over Child Abductions

Kienan Hebert

A horrible story from British Columbia last week, but one with a very happy ending:

In a small town in southeastern BC called Sparwood, a 3 year old boy was snatched from his bedroom one night by a man who according to police, has a history of sex crimes.

People were in a justifiable state of anxiety as this is every parents' nightmare. But the outcome was as ideal as possible: the child, Kienan Hebert, was returned to his home a few days later, at 3 am by the same man who took him away. The alleged perpetrator was caught and has been charged. He will appear in court in six weeks after a psychiatric examination.

Randall Hopley

Randall Hopley, 46, was led into a crowded courtroom last week, where he was charged with abduction of a child, breaking and entering and breach of probation.

Outside the courtroom, a small crowd picketed. Signs called for the death penalty to be brought back for crimes against children.

The story was, as they say, too good to check: a beautiful little boy is taken from his bed by a seedy looking suspect who police say is a local drifter with a history of anti-social behavior including stalking, and sexual harassment.

While all right-thinking people can sleep a little easier now, there are a number of aspects to how the media handled this story that should keep most journalists and media managers awake at night:

This was an ideal media story. It allowed for the framing of this story in order to ramp up the public's fear of sexual predators. As usual, there was not a lot of context provided as to whether this was a single incident or a pattern? Without answering that question, the public's fear is only heightened.

Some questions remain: How was the child brought back to his parent's house at 3 am without anyone being at home? Where were the parents? Why was the house left unlocked?
Did the police make arrangements with the alleged kidnapper for the return of the child? Has this happened before in this area? Did the police handle the case well or poorly?

The media covered the story intensively but without much context about missing and abused children as a phenomenon.

In the US and increasingly in Canada, there is a growing level of hysteria on this issue. The
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Virginia has been funded by Congress to inform the public on this issue. But in many ways, the Center also promotes hysteria around this issue.

It claims that 800,000 children go missing in the US every year. But a closer look at the numbers reveals something else: There are around 100 children murdered by strangers in the US annually. That's shocking enough. But far from the epidemic of murderous abductions that many believe is ongoing. Most are kids who runaway return home within 72 hours. They have been reported missing to police or the FBI. But the media rarely reports their return.

A study in Slate showed that the so-called epidemic of abductions is largely a media myth that often serves the police to create that sense of moral panic. The media also is complicit in this especially when the victim is young, or female and blonde.

Those are the preferred victims who gain media attention.

Dozens of young native women have vanished while hitchhiking in northern British Columbia. But the media seem unwilling to spend any time or money on that issue.

Are Universities Unwitting Enablers of Idiotic Ideas?

Last week, Ryerson University in Toronto hosted a four day conference of "Truthers." The conference was devoted to exploring and advocating the notion that 9/11 was an "inside job" and that the Bush administration, the CIA and the bicycle riders were behind it. (Well, not all bicycle riders...just the ones who, you know...).

Ryerson has one of the best journalism schools in Canada and I was delighted to be a Visiting Professor there from 2008-2010. But something about having Ryerson hosting this conference is both unseemly and unjournalistic.

In an interview in the Globe and Mail with one of the organizers (a professor of religious studies at McMaster University), this gathering seemed more about faith than facts. Mostly it seemed to be an excuse to indulge in another bout of anti-Americanism. Not so far below the surface of course is Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as the underlying cause of terrorism.

Which seems to be the point: are the origins of Middle East terrorism only about American policy in the region? Or is it about how so-called western values evoke and provoke Middle Easterners? Not easy questions with easy answers.

For the "truthers," the reality seems overly complicated. Like many today who find our present plight unbearable, "truthers" seek simple answers to complex issues. Conspiracy theories are an easy way out.

In some ways, "truthers" bear an uncanny resemblance to Holocaust deniers. They also claim It never happened. And if it did, there must be some reason that "they" are keeping from them.

Holding a "truther" conference the week before the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is offensive enough, but holding it on the site of one of the best journalism schools in the country is doubly odd. The fact that no new ideas or evidence were presented seems to be only about mutual psychological reinforcement rather than helping understand what happened and why.

Of course, some will say there are good, free speech reasons to hold a conference about unpalatable views and where better than on a university campus?

Universities have an obligation to be more than intellectual telephone poles, mutely standing there transmitting all signals. In this instance, Ryerson, in my opinion, did a disservice to the concept of open public inquiry and was actually offensive to the memory of those who died ten years ago this weekend.