Are we journalists first?

[Disir]

The longstanding debate about whether and when a reporter can intervene in a story is rekindled in the age of inequality

In the fall of 1997, the Los Angeles Times published an ambitious 6,500-word front-page feature on the lives of the children of drug addicts. It was written by a young reporter named Sonia Nazario, who was the Times’ urban-affairs writer. She was no stranger to the kind of journalism that pressed her hard against human suffering, beyond the codified barriers that separate source and subject. Three years earlier, while working on a similarly immersive series on childhood hunger, she watched while one family ate three hotdogs, total, for dinner.

She watched children beg their way into play dates for the promise of a meal. She watched a teacher handing out apples be thronged by more hungry students than he could feed.

She never offered help. When a photographer she was working with gave a bag of groceries to one family, Nazario felt he had crossed an ethical line. “I think what was beaten into me early as a reporter was you don’t intervene or change a story that you’re writing about,” says Nazario. As she would patiently explain to each subject at the beginning of her reporting, she was there to observe, to tell a story that alerts the public to problems and hopefully motivates others to address those problems. It is a traditional notion of objectivity that has been American journalism’s defining ideal for more than a century.

But the details Nazario gathered in “Orphans of Addiction,” the piece on the children of addicts, were chilling. She wrote about children being slapped and sleeping on a urine- and semen-soaked mattress; a 3-year-old named Tamika Triggs cut her foot on glass and was left to tend to the wound herself. The most troubling scene, a photograph taken while Nazario was absent, showed a man brushing Triggs’ teeth with her HIV-positive mother’s toothbrush. Her mother had left the room to deal with her bleeding gums.

Readers were understandably outraged. But instead of training their ire at the government agencies whose job it was to protect children, they went after Nazario. Hundreds of readers wrote to the Times criticizing her for not stopping the abuse; some included toothbrushes with their letters. “Was winning an award so important to you that you would risk the life of a 3-year-old child to do so?” wrote one. A child-welfare investigator filed a complaint with the police against Nazario. The pushback against the story was so fervent that the American Journalism Review published a piece that took Nazario to task for her failure to intervene.

The irony is that Nazario’s story had real impact: Within 24 hours of its publication, child-abuse reports in Los Angeles County increased by 20 percent, and eventually rose 45 percent. The county ordered an audit of the Child Welfare Agency and reorganized its reporting hotlines. More federal and state funds were allocated to programs for addicted mothers. The story also improved the lives of the families she’d profiled: The county placed Tamika Triggs in a foster home; her mother was admitted to a choice rehabilitation program. She had forced her readers to empathize and motivated agencies to action—in many ways a best-case scenario for what such journalism can accomplish. “If you can put people in the middle of the misery and have them watch that misery unfold, that’s often the most compelling way to write about these kinds of stories,” says Nazario.

Are we journalists first? : Columbia Journalism Review

The above is a longish article. Note that I am not a journalist and that is the name of the piece.

Many journalists have no problem opining and, therefore, have no problem influencing public opinion but hands off when confronting an issue directly?

 

[westwall]

When journalists began calling themselves the "fourth estate" they stopped being reporters and became advocates and agents. By declaring themselves the fourth estate they have stated that they are a part of the ruling class.

This refers to the French government before the revolution which was made up of the "Estates General". The First Estate was the king and the royals. The Second Estate was the Clergy, and the Third Estate was the peasantry.

Robespierre was a pamphleteer and leader of the revolution who final overstepped himself and was in his turn beheaded.

As you can see there was no Fourth Estate. That appellation came later....much later.

 

[Pogo]

When journalists began calling themselves the "fourth estate" they stopped being reporters and became advocates and agents. By declaring themselves the fourth estate they have stated that they are a part of the ruling class.

This refers to the French government before the revolution which was made up of the "Estates General". The First Estate was the king and the royals. The Second Estate was the Clergy, and the Third Estate was the peasantry.

Robespierre was a pamphleteer and leader of the revolution who final overstepped himself and was in his turn beheaded.

As you can see there was no Fourth Estate. That appellation came later....much later.

"Journalists began calling themselves"?? What, they all had a meeting and voted on it?



"Fourth estate" has been applied to several entities after the Estates of the Realm. Much like "fifth Beatle". But it certainly wasn't coined by journalists. And btw those Estates are not synonymous with "the ruling class"; that applies only to the First and Second. That was the whole point of our Revolution; the rise of the Third against I and II.

Perhaps rather than being informed it would be better if we all ran on rumor and innuendo. And out the other.

Bravo to Sonia Nazario for respecting the Prime Directive.

 

[Disir]

Westwall,

Yes and I agree with what you are saying.

Out of curiosity, I ran a search on just how long has the media been referred to as the fourth estate. It's isn't that recent.

I know, I know. It's Wiki
Fourth Estate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But at the bottom it has an external link which puts it at 1837
The French Revolution - Section V

Unless, Burke did coin the term and that puts it at 1787.

 

[Pogo]

Yes and I agree with what you are saying.

Out of curiosity, I ran a search on just how long has the media been referred to as the fourth estate. It's isn't that recent.

I know, I know. It's Wiki
Fourth Estate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But at the bottom it has an external link which puts it at 1837
The French Revolution - Section V

Unless, Burke did coin the term and that puts it at 1787.

He's derailing the topic as soon as it starts anyway; it's not about Estates of the Realm, it's about journalistic ethics.

To your last line in the OP:

Many journalists have no problem opining and, therefore, have no problem influencing public opinion but hands off when confronting an issue directly?

Any journalist that starts opining immediately ceases to be a journalist at that point, because journalism is disinterested straightforward cold hard fact. That's gotten rarer of late due to crass commercialism, because hard real news doesn't sell like sensationalism does. For that reason news is always threatened by commercializing it. News-for-profit is doomed to embarrass itself.

That's not the doing of journalists; it's the commercial entities they work for. News and profit are mutually exclusive; you can't have one and keep the other.

 

[westwall]

Yes and I agree with what you are saying.

Out of curiosity, I ran a search on just how long has the media been referred to as the fourth estate. It's isn't that recent.

I know, I know. It's Wiki
Fourth Estate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But at the bottom it has an external link which puts it at 1837
The French Revolution - Section V

Unless, Burke did coin the term and that puts it at 1787.

He's derailing the topic as soon as it starts anyway; it's not about Estates of the Realm, it's about journalistic ethics.

To your last line in the OP:

Many journalists have no problem opining and, therefore, have no problem influencing public opinion but hands off when confronting an issue directly?

Any journalist that starts opining immediately ceases to be a journalist at that point, because journalism is disinterested straightforward cold hard fact. That's gotten rarer of late due to crass commercialism, because hard real news doesn't sell like sensationalism does. For that reason news is always threatened by commercializing it. News-for-profit is doomed to embarrass itself.

That's not the doing of journalists; it's the commercial entities they work for. News and profit are mutually exclusive; you can't have one and keep the other.

The problem is when journalists allow their personal opinion to color how they report stories. The most egregious in recent memory was the producer altering the 911 tape to make Zimmerman sound like a racist.

Others are the constant refusal to report on the multitudinous times the firearms are used to prevent crime. The examples are legion.

 

[whitehall]

Walter Cronkite was once dubbed as the "most trusted man" simply because he had a grandfatherly persona and was skilled at news reading. Actually he was a radical liberal who started to believe in his own fake promotion. After the US victory of the TET offensive, Cronkite flew to Vietnam, donned a helmet and flack vest to pretend he was under fire and dishonored the courage of the US Military by claiming that the victory was really a stalemate. Instead of taking credit for the incredible victory LBJ quit the fight. V.C. general Giap later claimed that his army no longer existed after TET but after Cronkite's spin the V.C. gained momentum.

 

[Mojo2]

The longstanding debate about whether and when a reporter can intervene in a story is rekindled in the age of inequality

In the fall of 1997, the Los Angeles Times published an ambitious 6,500-word front-page feature on the lives of the children of drug addicts. It was written by a young reporter named Sonia Nazario, who was the Times’ urban-affairs writer. She was no stranger to the kind of journalism that pressed her hard against human suffering, beyond the codified barriers that separate source and subject. Three years earlier, while working on a similarly immersive series on childhood hunger, she watched while one family ate three hotdogs, total, for dinner.

She watched children beg their way into play dates for the promise of a meal. She watched a teacher handing out apples be thronged by more hungry students than he could feed.

She never offered help. When a photographer she was working with gave a bag of groceries to one family, Nazario felt he had crossed an ethical line. “I think what was beaten into me early as a reporter was you don’t intervene or change a story that you’re writing about,” says Nazario. As she would patiently explain to each subject at the beginning of her reporting, she was there to observe, to tell a story that alerts the public to problems and hopefully motivates others to address those problems. It is a traditional notion of objectivity that has been American journalism’s defining ideal for more than a century.

But the details Nazario gathered in “Orphans of Addiction,” the piece on the children of addicts, were chilling. She wrote about children being slapped and sleeping on a urine- and semen-soaked mattress; a 3-year-old named Tamika Triggs cut her foot on glass and was left to tend to the wound herself. The most troubling scene, a photograph taken while Nazario was absent, showed a man brushing Triggs’ teeth with her HIV-positive mother’s toothbrush. Her mother had left the room to deal with her bleeding gums.

Readers were understandably outraged. But instead of training their ire at the government agencies whose job it was to protect children, they went after Nazario. Hundreds of readers wrote to the Times criticizing her for not stopping the abuse; some included toothbrushes with their letters. “Was winning an award so important to you that you would risk the life of a 3-year-old child to do so?” wrote one. A child-welfare investigator filed a complaint with the police against Nazario. The pushback against the story was so fervent that the American Journalism Review published a piece that took Nazario to task for her failure to intervene.

The irony is that Nazario’s story had real impact: Within 24 hours of its publication, child-abuse reports in Los Angeles County increased by 20 percent, and eventually rose 45 percent. The county ordered an audit of the Child Welfare Agency and reorganized its reporting hotlines. More federal and state funds were allocated to programs for addicted mothers. The story also improved the lives of the families she’d profiled: The county placed Tamika Triggs in a foster home; her mother was admitted to a choice rehabilitation program. She had forced her readers to empathize and motivated agencies to action—in many ways a best-case scenario for what such journalism can accomplish. “If you can put people in the middle of the misery and have them watch that misery unfold, that’s often the most compelling way to write about these kinds of stories,” says Nazario.

Are we journalists first? : Columbia Journalism Review

The above is a longish article. Note that I am not a journalist and that is the name of the piece.

Many journalists have no problem opining and, therefore, have no problem influencing public opinion but hands off when confronting an issue directly?

The line should not be crossed unless imminent death is likely possible.

The reporter did right.

And they should, similarly, adhere to the ethics of journalism when the stories deal with politics, expecially national politics and government.

No harm here, no foul.

The critics need to stfu.

 

[Mojo2]

Walter Cronkite was once dubbed as the "most trusted man" simply because he had a grandfatherly persona and was skilled at news reading. Actually he was a radical liberal who started to believe in his own fake promotion. After the US victory of the TET offensive, Cronkite flew to Vietnam, donned a helmet and flack vest to pretend he was under fire and dishonored the courage of the US Military by claiming that the victory was really a stalemate. Instead of taking credit for the incredible victory LBJ quit the fight. V.C. general Giap later claimed that his army no longer existed after TET but after Cronkite's spin the V.C. gained momentum.

You got most of the story correct from my recollection so i won't quibble over minor details.

 

[Disir]

Yes and I agree with what you are saying.

Out of curiosity, I ran a search on just how long has the media been referred to as the fourth estate. It's isn't that recent.

I know, I know. It's Wiki
Fourth Estate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But at the bottom it has an external link which puts it at 1837
The French Revolution - Section V

Unless, Burke did coin the term and that puts it at 1787.

He's derailing the topic as soon as it starts anyway; it's not about Estates of the Realm, it's about journalistic ethics.

To your last line in the OP:

Many journalists have no problem opining and, therefore, have no problem influencing public opinion but hands off when confronting an issue directly?

Any journalist that starts opining immediately ceases to be a journalist at that point, because journalism is disinterested straightforward cold hard fact. That's gotten rarer of late due to crass commercialism, because hard real news doesn't sell like sensationalism does. For that reason news is always threatened by commercializing it. News-for-profit is doomed to embarrass itself.

That's not the doing of journalists; it's the commercial entities they work for. News and profit are mutually exclusive; you can't have one and keep the other.

It is about ethics. I remember watching news on Katrina and I kept thinking............so you guys brought water and food, right? Reports on Rawanda? You guys tried to get a few people out? That is exactly where I was at. I think there comes a point when you have to question the motivations of journalists. Is the individual operating as a conduit or is this about ego?

At any rate, good journalists are few and far between. There may be some great ones out there that are prevented. I consider omission of facts as opining as well. Commercial news is not embarrassing itself quickly enough.

Westwall has a valid point. In fact, I think it ties in with the commercial entities as propaganda. Propaganda was the driving force behind the revolution.

 

[Pogo]

Walter Cronkite was once dubbed as the "most trusted man" simply because he had a grandfatherly persona and was skilled at news reading. Actually he was a radical liberal who started to believe in his own fake promotion. After the US victory of the TET offensive, Cronkite flew to Vietnam, donned a helmet and flack vest to pretend he was under fire and dishonored the courage of the US Military by claiming that the victory was really a stalemate. Instead of taking credit for the incredible victory LBJ quit the fight. V.C. general Giap later claimed that his army no longer existed after TET but after Cronkite's spin the V.C. gained momentum.

You got most of the story correct from my recollection so i won't quibble over minor details.

I will.

There's nothing in Cronkite's CV that indicates "radical liberal". By your own story he played a major part in undermining Lyndon Johnson (who bailed out of the 1968 election shortly after that report) and turned the Presidency over to Nixon.

If that's a "radical liberal" he wasn't very good at it. Which just disproves the whole story. Cronkite told the truth about Vietnam, which is what ethical journalists do.

Not that Cronkite was blazing trails with this revelation; by then the whole country was already turning against the war. What the Cronkite report did was confirm that dissent in mainstream America; it gave that dissent the legitimacy of the "Establishment".

 

[whitehall]

Walter Cronkite was once dubbed as the "most trusted man" simply because he had a grandfatherly persona and was skilled at news reading. Actually he was a radical liberal who started to believe in his own fake promotion. After the US victory of the TET offensive, Cronkite flew to Vietnam, donned a helmet and flack vest to pretend he was under fire and dishonored the courage of the US Military by claiming that the victory was really a stalemate. Instead of taking credit for the incredible victory LBJ quit the fight. V.C. general Giap later claimed that his army no longer existed after TET but after Cronkite's spin the V.C. gained momentum.

You got most of the story correct from my recollection so i won't quibble over minor details.

I will.

There's nothing in Cronkite's CV that indicates "radical liberal". By your own story he played a major part in undermining Lyndon Johnson (who bailed out of the 1968 election shortly after that report) and turned the Presidency over to Nixon.

If that's a "radical liberal" he wasn't very good at it. Which just disproves the whole story. Cronkite told the truth about Vietnam, which is what ethical journalists do.

I didn't say Cronkite was smart. I said he was a radical liberal. No doubt there was gratuitous hand slapping and butt crunching in the network when Cronkite showed LBJ who was boss. The next democrat president would be easier to manipulate but it turned out to be Nixon so they did a job on him.

 

[Pogo]

You got most of the story correct from my recollection so i won't quibble over minor details.

I will.

There's nothing in Cronkite's CV that indicates "radical liberal". By your own story he played a major part in undermining Lyndon Johnson (who bailed out of the 1968 election shortly after that report) and turned the Presidency over to Nixon.

If that's a "radical liberal" he wasn't very good at it. Which just disproves the whole story. Cronkite told the truth about Vietnam, which is what ethical journalists do.

I didn't say Cronkite was smart. I said he was a radical liberal. No doubt there was gratuitous hand slapping and butt crunching in the network when Cronkite showed LBJ who was boss. The next democrat president would be easier to manipulate but it turned out to be Nixon so they did a job on him.

Nixon was a Republican, Brainiac. And I didn't say you said Cronkite was "smart"; I said you said "radical liberal" -- which is still bullshit.

 

[SmedlyButler]

When journalists began calling themselves the "fourth estate" they stopped being reporters and became advocates and agents. By declaring themselves the fourth estate they have stated that they are a part of the ruling class.

This refers to the French government before the revolution which was made up of the "Estates General". The First Estate was the king and the royals. The Second Estate was the Clergy, and the Third Estate was the peasantry.

Robespierre was a pamphleteer and leader of the revolution who final overstepped himself and was in his turn beheaded.

As you can see there was no Fourth Estate. That appellation came later....much later.

what the hell your talking about? Never, any time I've paid attention.

"Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain"--Wikipedia

What do you do, just make this shit up hoping no one will know any better?

 

[SmedlyButler]

You got most of the story correct from my recollection so i won't quibble over minor details.

I will.

There's nothing in Cronkite's CV that indicates "radical liberal". By your own story he played a major part in undermining Lyndon Johnson (who bailed out of the 1968 election shortly after that report) and turned the Presidency over to Nixon.

If that's a "radical liberal" he wasn't very good at it. Which just disproves the whole story. Cronkite told the truth about Vietnam, which is what ethical journalists do.

I didn't say Cronkite was smart. I said he was a radical liberal. No doubt there was gratuitous hand slapping and butt crunching in the network when Cronkite showed LBJ who was boss. The next democrat president would be easier to manipulate but it turned out to be Nixon so they did a job on him.

Quote: Originally Posted by westwall
When journalists began calling themselves the "fourth estate" they stopped being reporters and became advocates and agents. By declaring themselves the fourth estate they have stated that they are a part of the ruling class.

This refers to the French government before the revolution which was made up of the "Estates General". The First Estate was the king and the royals. The Second Estate was the Clergy, and the Third Estate was the peasantry.

Robespierre was a pamphleteer and leader of the revolution who final overstepped himself and was in his turn beheaded.

As you can see there was no Fourth Estate. That appellation came later....much later.

Do you ever know what the hell your talking about? Never, any time I've paid attention.

Quote:
"Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term "fourth estate" to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain"--Wikipedia

S.B. - What do you do, just make this shit up hoping no one will know any better?

That doesn't make you a good liar.

 

[Indofred]

In my humble opinion, the journalist's job is to report fact and show the world what is going on.
It is the job of others to correct the situation.

Child abuse, as noted in the OP, can't be stopped by a journalist themselves, but can be much reduced because others read their story and do something about it ....... if the journalist does their job properly.

 

[blastoff]

Cronkite's call regarding the TET offensive was 100% inaccurate, which means he was either guilty of sloppy journalism or had an agenda. Either way, Johnson's reaction was if he'd lost Cronkite he'd lost support of middle America, or something along those lines.

As noted above, Gen. Giap certainly knew the north got its ass kicked as a result of their failed offensive, but then eagerly grabbed the lifeline Wally was kind enough to toss them.

 

[Indofred]

This is rather interesting.

Editorial: Endorsing Jokowi | The Jakarta Post

This editorial piece sees the Jakarta post openly declare its support for Joko against Prabowo.
This move, should Prabowo win, could be extremely dangerous for the staff of that newspaper. Even if he doesn't win, this guy has a history of 'suspected' mass murder, so it might well lead to serious trouble anyway.
This move is highly unusual, especially because they bring up a past that some people don't want in the open.

The Jakarta Post in its 31-year history has never endorsed a single candidate or party during an election. Even though our standpoint is often clear, the Post has always stood above the political fray.

But in an election like no other, we are morally bound to not stand by and do nothing. We do not expect our endorsement to sway votes. But we cannot idly sit on the fence when the alternative is too ominous to consider.

Each candidate in the presidential election has qualities in his declared platform. They have been dissected at length the past three weeks. And voters will sway one way or another based on it. Yet there is also a sizable part of society who are undecided in their preference.

In such a case, perhaps one can consider who not to vote for as their reasoning for that moral choice.

Our deliberations are dictated on the values by which the Post has always stood firmly for: pluralism, human rights, civil society and reformasi.

We are encouraged that one candidate has displayed a factual record of rejecting faith-based politics. At the same time we are horrified that the other affiliates himself with hard-line Islamic groups who would tear the secular nature of the country apart. Religious thugs who forward an intolerant agenda, running a campaign highlighting polarizing issues for short-term gain.

We are further perplexed at the nation’s fleeting memory of past human rights crimes. A man who has admitted to abducting rights activists — be it carrying out orders or of his own volition — has no place at the helm of the world’s third-largest democracy.

Our democracy will not consolidate if people’s mind-set remains wedged in a security approach in which militarism is an ideal. A sense that one candidate tends to regard civilian supremacy as subordinate to military efficacy.

This nation should be proud of its military, but only if those in uniform acknowledge themselves as servants of the democratic, civilian governance.

As one candidate offers a break from the past, the other romanticizes the Soeharto era.

One is determined to reject the collusion of power and business, while the other is embedded in a New Order-style of transactional politics that betrays the spirit of reformasi.

Rarely in an election has the choice been so definitive. Never before has a candidate ticked all the boxes on our negative checklist. And for that we cannot do nothing.

Therefore the Post feels obliged to openly declare its endorsement of the candidacy of Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as president and vice president in the July 9 election. It is an endorsement we do not take lightly.

But it is an endorsement we believe to be morally right.

A news outlet that is normally reasonably unbiased on political issues has made a major policy change, attempting to influence the outcome of a presidential election on purely moral grounds.
As a note, I have searched for links between the paper and Joko/Joko's associates, but can find none. This does appear to be what they state, a moral move, designed to save Indonesia from a dictator.

Are they journalists first? it seems not, at least on this issue.

 

[whitehall]

Journalists first and Americans second? Why would ABC forbid it's "journalists" aka news readers from wearing the American Flag lapel pin? Because they didn't want to offend our enemies? Tom Brokaw said he wouldn't wear a Flag lapel pin because it might be interpreted as supporting the administration. How freaking ignorant is that?

 

[Pogo]

Journalists first and Americans second? Why would ABC forbid it's "journalists" aka news readers from wearing the American Flag lapel pin? Because they didn't want to offend our enemies? Tom Brokaw said he wouldn't wear a Flag lapel pin because it might be interpreted as supporting the administration. How freaking ignorant is that?

Your ignoramical density never ceases to amaze me.

News doesn't have a nationality. It simply IS. That's it. I don't think if we're watching the American Broadcasting Company we're sitting there wondering "where is this news produced? Iceland?"

What -- you want your news biased?