"Absolute power corrupts absolutely." This quote is famous for describing the seemingly natural tendency for leaders to abuse their power once they have it. This is why democracy has embraced the challenge of periodic elections and the checks and balances of multiple branches. But this quote goes beyond politics; in fact, power can even go to the heads of journalists.
Normally journalists are a group that help challenge others' power. Through careful investigation they shine light on wrongs and enable the court of public opinion to pressure for change. But we sometimes forget that journalists themselves are a powerful group. They hold a one-way tool for reaching millions of readers or viewers with their words. Further, the pressure they do feel is to place a big story. And sometimes that leads them to stretch the truth, or stop researching once a juicy lead is uncovered.
The abuse of journalist power has gone on since long before the yellow journalism days of the turn-of-the-century. The danger of journalists' abuse of power has itself been a highlight in the news lately. The New York Times has been a particular target of protests. Perhaps the most cited example is that case of Jayson Blair, a reporter who faked facts and quotes for years. More recently, the paper is accused of an anti-war slant, and angered the Bush administration by publishing facts about a classified international bank monitoring system.
But in recent years a growing force of challenge is arising in the form of citizen journalism, and specifically the blogosphere. Today, a newspaper is not just competing with the daily down the street or the nightly TV news. It's readers have mostly migrated to the Internet, where ink is basically free and millions of reporters are digging into stories at no charge. Yahoo! is #1 online, and The New York Times is #6. Meanwhile, thanks to cheap web sites, email and blogs, the journalist is not the only voice in town; and when he makes a mistake, thousands of writers will expose him. For example, a recent inaccuracy in The New York Times about comments by Hillary Clinton was spotted by progressive group Think Progress in hours and a retraction was made.
The new pressures of the Internet are leading some journalists to embrace the medium. Many have taken up blogging to provide personal perspective and a deeper story than what editors normally allow. One of my favorite examples is the group of BusinessWeek blogs, where reporters like David Kelly maintain an ongoing conversation with readers. Recently, one of its "Blogspotting" writers, Stephen Baker, even pointed out that more journalists should keep their own blogs. Baker says that they should embrace the "vulnerability" of blogging, which adds pressure, but helps build an open, honest relationship with readers. According to Baker:
"Many journalists view the blog world as threatening. To a certain degree, they're right. It's virtually lawless and has plenty of flamers, spammers, wingnuts and MSM loathers. In other words, it's much like the outside world. But I'd say that journalists who don't venture into this world are more vulnerable, not less. If they get into trouble, they have few allies outside their own guild. And if they're not blogging, good chance they won't hear the angry voices til they grow into a storm."
I think more journalists should follow Baker's lead. By exposing themselves to challenge journalists may reap the dividend of better reporting and more loyal readership.
UPDATES:
1. The New York Times has an article up 24 hours after this post about how reporters are starting to take on more entrepreneurial gigs in order to adjust to the new media realities.
2. This morning a friend in a high level corporate position, who shall go nameless, mentioned that he was recently interviewed for an hour for an article in a major business magazine. He got only one quote that could have been copied from a press release. That's power...
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