Here's the background: The features editor of the brick&mortar Washington Post, Raju Narisetti, tweets some awesome commentary such as :
and
These comments were tweeted on a private account; meaning that unless Narisetti gave you permission to follow him, there was no way to see the tweet. That is, unless it was cut and pasted into a new tweet, email, blog post, et cetera; and attributed back to him. Is that a bad thing? No, not really. There doesn't seem to be a breach of privacy. The problem has to do with the Washington Post itself.
In Ombudsman Blog - Post Editor Ends Tweets as New Guidelines Are Issued, Andrew Alexaner writes about Narisetti's reckoning of his tweets: They were “personal” observations, he said. “But I also realize that... seeing that the managing editor of The Post is weighing in on this, it’s a clear perception problem.”
And that's in and of itself a problem: The assumption that there's no perception at all in news reporting. And that WaPo sees this as what brings value to their "brand of journalism". A brand of journalism that seems to say that nothing that has happened in last 100 years in the field of knowledge studies (philosophy, linguistics, history, sociology, politics) bears any threat to this "freedom from bias" lie.
Let me give you a recent example using the latest news about Roman Polanski as an example.
Look at the following headlines which basically report on the same bit-of-news about Polanski's arrest and impending extradition to the United States. There's from the website of a California TV station, Roman Polanski arrested on warrant for 1977 sex charge. Here's the headline for a report coming out of the usually right-wing and conservative Examiner: Director Roman Polanski arrested for 1977 rape. Yet also look at the rather fact based opinion piece wrritten for the Guardian by Melissa McEwan: Roman Polanski's life of crime. Compare that to Anne Applebaum's The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski. This last one was written for The Washington Post and still is bereft of any explanation of Ms. Applebaum's conflict of interest in the Polanski matter.
That's just a rather pedestrian example but it presents rather nicely how bias is projected by newspapers. In the case of the Polanski debacle there are those who refuse to call him a rapist even though he plea bargained his way into the statutory kind. Then there's those who either see Polanski as too good for the adjectives "fugitive", "criminal", "statutory rape" and instead opt for describing his situation as being inconvenienced by a "sex charge".
Which is why it's really amazing to read these guidelines. At this day and age, it is rather distasteful if not ludicrous for any newspaper or media outlet in this country to publish guidelines that dictate, All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens.
WaPo is not only denying they are free of bias when writing a headline about a fugitive child rapist who also is a popular Oscar wining director. What they are saying also is that, after the 100+ years of ontological work by the likes o Nieztsche, Hegel, Blanchot, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Eco, Barthes and others that "perspective" and "opinion" are matters of "personal privilege".
As if perspective were something outside of humanity, something that you can turn on and off. As if "giving up perspective" were not only possible but in the case of WaPo something their employees really want in order to sell their "brand of journalism"
To which I have to say to the ladies and gentlemen of the Washington Post editorial board: Every single article or report your company publishe is a representation of your collective biases as a publication. To try to hide your biases is exactly the same as admitting them and wishing them away. Denying the individuals who work for you as journalists their ability to express and discuss their opinions and biases in a public forum is to force them to lie about the work they provide to your company. Which is to say, your desire to sell impartiality as residing outside of the reality of human perspective is a lie and it taints your image by suggesting you are a fabricator of news instead of being a true witness to history.
The full text of the guidelines was posted by Staci D. Kramer and we're reblogging with my commentary below:
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The following are effective immediately:
Newsroom Guidelines for Use of Facebook, Twitter and Other Online Social NetworksSocial networks are communications media, and a part of our everyday lives. They can be valuable tools in gathering and disseminating news and information. They also create some potential hazards we need to recognize. When using social networking tools for reporting or for our personal lives, we must remember that Washington Post journalists are always Washington Post journalists. The following guidelines apply to all Post journalists, without limitation to the subject matter of their assignments.
In other words: what's being imposed is a tyranny of truthiness. Journalists are not individuals reporting on facts. They are personless sheeple whose sole fuction is to support "the brand of truth" sold under the banner of WaPo.
Using Social Networking Tools for Reporting
When using social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space or Twitter for reporting, we must protect our professional integrity. Washington Post journalists should identify themselves as such. We must be accurate in our reporting and transparent about our intentions when participating. We must be concise yet clear when describing who we are and what information we seek.
How can someone do this on every tweet is beyond me. It demonstrate a complete disregard for how social media sites works.
When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment. We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.
Image is always first in the mnufacturing of Truth. You have to present information in a way that makes your report not just truthful but The Truth. The semblance of impartiality via rhetorical tweaks is more important than the truth as the reporter sees it and the publication understands it.
Our online data trails reflect on our professional reputations and those of The Washington Post. Be sure that your pattern of use does not suggest, for example, that you are interested only in people with one particular view of a topic or issue.
Here WaPo is really breaking down how they construct the news and create the semblance of impartiality: (1) Obfuscate the origin of your information so the source points to you (and the newspaper) and, (2) there are patterns of use necessary to sell the lack of bias.
Using Social Networking Tools for Personal Reasons
All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens. Post journalists must recognize that any content associated with them in an online social network is, for practical purposes, the equivalent of what appears beneath their bylines in the newspaper or on our website.What you do on social networks should be presumed to be publicly available to anyone, even if you have created a private account. It is possible to use privacy controls online to limit access to sensitive information. But such controls are only a deterrent, not an absolute insulator. Reality is simple: If you don’t want something to be found online, don’t put it there.
Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online. Post journalists should not be involved in any social networks related to advocacy or a special interest regarding topics they cover, unless specifically permitted by a supervising editor for reporting and so long as other standards of transparency are maintained while doing any such reporting.
Post journalists should not accept or place tokens, badges or virtual gifts from political or partisan causes on pages or sites, and should monitor information posted on your own personal profile sites by those with whom you are associated online for appropriateness.
Personal pages online are no place for the discussion of internal newsroom issues such as sourcing, reporting of stories, decisions to publish or not to publish, personnel matters and untoward personal or professional matters involving our colleagues. The same is true for opinions or information regarding any busi
ness activities of The Washington Post Company. Such pages and sites also should not be used to criticize competitors or those who take issue with our journalism or our journalists.If you have questions about any of these matters, please check with your supervisor or a senior editor.
NOTE: These guidelines apply to individual accounts on online social networks, when used for reporting and for personal use. Separate guidelines will follow regarding other aspects of Post journalism online.
Pointing out the "publicness" of private online areas and account is important. I could give them kudos for asking employees not to discussing on their private sites job-relate issues. The problem is that it's a catch-22 that renders silent their employees.
The WaPo editorial board doesn't want their journalists to just be journalists 24/7. They want them to be agents of the Washington Post brand at all times. Yet they want these WaPo journalists to be not just silent about what they do and how they do it. They are outright expecting them to render themselves completely mute as in "The First Rule of The WaPo is that we don't talk about The WaPo".
That this goes beyond the pale of corporate over-reaching is indisputable: They're saying that as long as you work for The Washington Post, even after working hours, you have no personhood, no individuality on the web.
Which makes me state the following: The invented animosity described as "bloggers vs. journalists" is not one founded on who does better reporting or who has more credibility. The battle between journalism and blogging is about individual vs. corporate personhood. And it's not just in the sense of the legal aspect of personhood. Am speaking of personhood here from an ontological framework.
One of the most radical ideas to have been captured by The Cluetrain Manifesto and yet to have been lost on a lot of "social media experts", it's the idea that "the markets" are a conceit. Am particularly interested in the following points from the manifesto:
- 34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
35. But first, they must belong to a community.
36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
39. The community of discourse is the market.
So "The Markets" are nothing more than people, individuals with free-will who use all kinds of technologies to enter into conversations. Networked individuals who are becoming smarter with the power that networks give in terms of information exchange. Smarter people (and employees) who are exercising their autonomy, will and personhood in spite of gatekeepers of old who've seen themselves as the sources of taste, knowledge, expertise and ultimately power.
These guidelines reminded me of Marx's theory of alienation. Take away the printing presses, take away the delivery trucks, take away the TV stations, the radio towers and what exactly are we left with when speaking of media as an industry? Words, images, sounds. Not brick and mortar capital, just the output of their workers creativity.
Companies like the Washington Post have rested their fortunes on the concepts of "intellectual property", "news/music/film product" and in the process tried to cleave it from their actual creators, the "personless" "knowledge workers" among which we find journalists because if not, what are they left with? It's why this bit of the guidelines caught my eye:
Post journalists should not accept or place tokens, badges or virtual gifts from political or partisan causes on pages or sites, and should monitor information posted on your own personal profile sites by those with whom you are associated online for appropriateness.
That can be read as being cautious about getting bribes for articles or something like that. Yet think of it in the context of Facebook. They're basically saying that as long as they work for WaPo they cant accept the gift of a superpoked digital sheep or the challenge of a scrabble game. Not because they are "bribes" but because they would be in the community, being part of the community and thusly their presence online would be about themselves as individuals who happen to be journalists who happen to be working for the Washington Post as opposed to branded property of the Washington Post.
And yes, I am implying that the powers that be at WaPo are, with these guidelines, treating their journalists as property.
Which takes me to the "bloggers vs. journalists" shenanigans.
The idea of "the blogger" is that their blogs are their words, their ideas, their minds and consciousness. Some blogs are filtered, others not. Yet the most important aspect of "the blogger" is that she is not disambiguated from her "knowledge product" or "the brand". The blog is an extended intellectual and creative space for the blogger. It is an extension of her mind and her voice. She is the media, the messenger and the message.
Not for nothing but there's a reason why media and mediator are semantically related.
It is extremely difficult for independent bloggers to compete one-on-one with media companies like Washington Post. I will give you that. Big media companies still have the advantage of advertising money and of having access to information as well as the manpower to collect and manage information.
Yet when it comes down to it, what is really the difference between WaPo and, let's say, a collection of bloggers aggregated through Google Reader? Wat is WaPo exactly giving in each section of their newspaper or each column so different and unique that bloggers are absolutely unnable to supply as an alternative?
For once let's call the "bias free journalism" what it is: The News as a Lie.
The fact we bloggers are in on the lie and are more than happy to point it out to them is not only an irritant. It is a threat.
2009 has gone down in infamy as the year the newsaper died; when the industry lost more than 28% of revenues for a record breaking $2.6 billion in vanished money.
Stopping a features editor from tweeting is not going to change any of that.
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