Jeremy Iggers and The Increasing Irrelevance of Journalism Ethics

Last Thursday I went to see Jeremy Iggers, former Star Tribune writer, philosopher, current executive director of the TC Media Alliance, Web site administrator of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and contributor to Minneapolis online publication, The Rake. The event was co-sponsored by the Philosophy department, College of Business, and the Department of Mass Communications at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

I thought he would mostly stick to the title of the lecture, "The Increasing Irrelevance of Journalism Ethics," but to my surprise most of the discussion dealt less with the decreasing ethics in journalism, and more with the increasing importance citizen journalism.

In his lecture, Iggers discussed how advertisement in print media is down, which causes circulation to decrease and advertising to continue its downward spiral and when this happens, staff is cut. This makes me nervous since the Star Tribune laid of more than 75 staff in the last year. These are more than likely people that have already obtained their BA or BS in mass communications, completed an internship or two, and have more experience in the field than I do and I've always hoped for my job destination to eventually be within the Twin Cities area at a newspaper such as the Tribune or Pioneer Press.

He mentioned that niche publications that cater to a specific audience have great growth potential, as do online publications, but that print news is on its way out, saying "the long-term prognosis for print journalism is very bleak."

Writing for an online news publication might seem like the way to go, but people expect online news to be free and online ads bring in far less revenue than print ads, again adding to the downward spiral, or what Iggers called "possibly a dead spiral."

This means that salaries for online publications are low, and freelance is even lower.

Many of these publications, such as MinnPost, have a tiny operating budget and follow a Public Radio business model. For serious, committed journalists for non-profit news publications, their salaries depend highly on advertising, corporate sponsors and donations. But are there enough readers? And more importantly, are there enough professional journalists willing to write for $100/per story? I don't need a lot, but I don't know if I could live like that.

Iggers also discussed how the digital revolution has placed powerful tools, such as the internet, digital cameras, laptops and cellphones, in the hands of the ordinary citizen, thus creating citizen journalism as we have come to understand it.

Iggers said, "if journalism is to have a future it will be a 'new' type of journalism with strong collaboration between citizens and journalists," saying that citizen journalists are filling many gaps in journalism, creating richer, deeper coverage than ordinary print media has been able to provide. This new journalism, however, will have to follow the same journalism ethics of accuracy, fairness, accountability and accessibility, according to Iggers.

With the decline in newspapers and the increasing number of blogs and their popularity, as journalists we may not have much of a choice but to work for pennies if the economy and public interest can no longer support news rooms. Likewise, the public may not have much choice but than to look to less than credible sources for information.

Still, citizen journalism is better than nothing at all.

John Dewey in his book The Public and its Problems said, “The ties which hold men together in action are numerous, though and subtle. But they are invisible and intangible. We have the physical tools as never before. The thoughts and aspirations congruous with them are not communicated, and hence are not common. Without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless, seeking spasmodically for itself, but seizing and holding its shadow rather than its substance. Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community.”

One important role of the news media is to provide information which emphasizes dialogue, deliberation, diversity, accuracy and accessibility. Without informed citizens, we can not have democracy. The digital revolution has finally brought us the tools to make democracy in a new era. Take the electoral college, for example. Supposedly the electoral college was set up so citizens, who did not have access to newspapers, the internet, television or the radio, could elect a local public official that they saw fit to cast their vote. Today, this is simply unnecessary, and in the 2000 Presidential election the popular vote of the ordinary citizen was overruled by the electoral system.

The problem with citizen journalism, according to Iggers, is that citizen journalists are often passionately involved in the community, otherwise why would they do it? The way to solve this is to actively seek to make sure the widest range of view points possible are represented. Iggers also said the new technique of crowd sourcing will become increasingly important, saying "Google has made us all much smarter."

He also mentioned the popular slogan, "We fact check your ass," meaning errors are increasingly easy to spot. So instead of balance, transparency is valued. Iggers said as far as accuracy is concerned, professional journalists are key, but some of our current attitudes need to be revised. Going back to my last entry on post publication considerations, Iggers also mentioned that it is much more difficult to correct errors after print than it is to edit an online edition.

We are also starting to see the increasing importance of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace which build connections, alliances, grassroots movements, foundations and support social causes through groups and applications.

I'm not sure what this means for my career, but given this information I'm hoping that my 2008 Young People For fellowship will give me an upperhand if I choose to take an oath of poverty and work for some progressive, grassroots citizen journalism publication. I think I could be happy doing that and covering stories that are important to me, but in order to pay the rent I might need a dull but steady office job on the side.

Post Publication Pondering

In San Francisco, I attended a session led Hamline University's paper, The Oracle's Editor in Chief, Trevor Maine, and their and their faculty adviser, David Hudson.

Earlier in the fall, The Oracle experienced a dilemma of what to put into print and what to put online when several members of the football team wore black face paint for Halloween. The photos surfaced the following day on Facebook with the caption "spooks and ooks."

The Oracle decided to run the photo in print, but not online due to the never ending abyss of the internet and to not harm the six players in their future adult lives. If this was the right decision to make, I'm not sure, but the session did raise a lot of interesting questions and things to consider.

Some of these post publication considerations include:
-Accuracy of the original post
-Consequences for stakeholders, including your organization
-Integrity of historical record
-Would you be adding or subtracting from the story, or merely editing?

In addition to post publication considerations, there are also many pre-publication questions:
-Should we print?
-Should we post it online?
-Should we print but not post it? Or post it but not print it?
-What is the journalistic purpose of the article?
-And what is the journalistic purpose of this as an archive?
-Who are the stakeholders and what consequences might they face if we publish?
-What alternatives are there?

In an article by Bob Steele and Bill Mitchell on Poynter Online, they ask many of the same questions to make decisions to alter post publication, and also bring up another issue: transparency.

Hudson suggested that publications include a note at the top of the publication to let the reader know that an article has been changed and how, and I think that is a fair approach.

This led me to wonder about the Rissa Amen-Reif situation, should area publications who may have insinuated that alcohol played a factor in her death print a retraction? I believe the Reporter did print an editorial apologizing if we may have done so, but should publications also go back and edit previous stories?

In this case, I think not, since I believe it still serves an archival purpose, but I think this is something interesting to consider for future mistakes.