ProPublica argues they’re open enough » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism: Look, I’m 100-percent willing to be wrong on this stuff. As I said, I’m only a moderately informed reader. The ProPublica article may be completely right to criticize Goldman. But my original post wasn’t a criticism of ProPublica’s journalism. It was a criticism of how they responded to seemingly reasonable criticism.
Specifically, they responded by (a) relying on the traditional “the story speaks for itself” argument, and (b) when that didn’t seem to stop the criticism, having a conversation with the critic on the condition that it not be shared with the public. As Salmon put it this morning:
Dick Tofel had every opportunity to put certain things he told me on the record, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he called me, and the first thing he did was make clear that everything he was about to say was off the record, and that I was not going to be able to talk to the journalist who wrote the story.
(An aside: Tofel defended that last decision to me, saying, “I said to [Salmon] that we believe our reporter’s time is better devoted to additional reporting on the subject than to debating. That’s a resource decision we have to make. You may think that’s wrong, you may think that’s antiquated, but that’s the decision we make.”)
My counter-argument, which I advanced in my original post this morning, was that that old model doesn’t work too well any more. The audience has the power to talk back in a way it never had before. And news organizations will, increasingly, have to become part of that conversation if they want to be successful.
There was a time, not that long ago, when a news organization’s credibility was boosted by its voice-of-God tone, the sense of solidity in its stories and the distance it kept from its audience. All that played into its status as a Respected Institution. Those days, I think, are over. Now you gain credibility through transparency, openness, and a willingness to engage with smart people who have questions.
Finally, let me address the other concern Tofel raised in our conversation. He said he wished I would have called him or ProPublica before writing my post. He said I had a “’shoot first and ask questions later’ approach, which I know is becoming more common” online. “Why wouldn’t you want to be better informed before you publish?” he asked me.
Here’s my answer: I was responding to the story as a reader would — to the publicly available record. My point was about how ProPublica was appearing to the public. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I needed to talk to ProPublica to criticize their doing what news organizations have done for decades — pointing to the story and saying, in essence, “that’s all we’re going to have to say on the subject.”
It’s my opinion that that’s not a smart path in the Internet era. You are, of course, free to disagree with me. What do you guys think? I’d be happy to publish any responses from Tofel, Salmon, or anyone else.
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