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BILL CLINTON'S REMARKS--WHEN "GOTCHA" JOURNALISM CROSSES ETHICAL LINES
This entry was posted on 6/3/2008 8:55 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
One of the things that first attracted me to working for HuffingtonPost.com's Off the Bus page as a "citizen journalist," was that journalistic standards would be upheld. For one thing, we who post blogs for HuffingtonPost do not just log on and spout off, as we're able to do for sites such as Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo's TPM Cafe page.
At HuffingtonPost, even though we don't get paid for our work, we have editors with whom we brainstorm ideas and who help us shape those ideas into posts, if necessary, or who read over our posts when we're done. Then, the editors post the blogs.
The editors I've worked with at HuffPost are just the best, and I should know, because I freelanced for years and years before my first novel was published, and I worked with various book editors through the years as well. HuffPost editors work virtually around the clock, which is pretty much par for the course in the 24/7 fast-paced Internet world. They shepherd hundreds of writers and put together what has rapidly become one of the most widely read and respected political blogs in cyberspace.
For these reasons and many more, I am deeply proud of my association with HuffingtonPost.
Off the Bus was created in the first place to provide a citizen's-eye view of this exciting and unprecedented campaign season. The idea was that press pool journalists who literally ride with the candidate's entourage from stop to stop on campaign buses or planes, tend to become somewhat claustrophobic in their coverage of a campaign. A piece of gossip making the rounds on the bus will receive major media play even as frustrated voters wait for the REAL story.
So the idea was that people--not necessarily journalists--from all walks of life in every state in the country would be able to visit smaller events that might not be covered by the traveling press corps, and give a ground-up perspective. This is why, when I covered an Obama rally in Austin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deanie-mills/at-an-obama-rally-in-aust_b_74023.html
last fall, I left the roped-in press corps area and waited with the supporters in the audience. I was able to get a good feel for the mood of the crowd and what they thought about his remarks, and take photographs more in-the-moment and less canned. It was exciting and fun. And I didn't have to hide the fact that I was an Obama supporter.
But there is a problem with citizen journalism, I've found. Trained and experienced political reporters know, for instance, that there are moments in a long campaign that are intended to be off the record. Candidates get exhausted and irritable and get words confused when they clearly know better--such as Obama's saying recently that he had been to "all 57 states."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/new-patriotic-o.html
I think the man knows how many states there are.
There are events, for example, that are clearly meant to be off the record. Invitation-only fundraisers, for example. In situations such as this, the press is not even invited. A candidate is among friends. He or she can relax, answer questions off the cuff, and not worry about parsing every single word.
But at such an event, an Off the Bus citizen journalist, who had not been invited, finagled an invitation from a friend who was in the loop, and attended, ostensibly as a supporter. This "journalist" donated a considerable sum in order to be considered a supporter at this event.
Yet when Obama answered a question put to him by a supporter by mentioning that some voters who've been ignored by their government and who have seen their communities consumed by layoffs, factory closings, and encroaching poverty then become "bitter" and "cling to guns and religion"--this reporter pretending to be a supporter secretly taped the remarks, wrote them up, and HuffingtonPost published them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html
The resulting firestorm almost destroyed Obama's candidacy. I am quite sure that, as astute a politician as he is, he would probably never have phrased his remarks in such an inflammatory way on the record, but he did not know he WAS on the record.
Meanwhile, hits on HuffingtonPost skyrocketed, the mainstream media picked up the story and blanketed the country with it, and the "reporter" became a bit of a star, even garnering a profile in the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/politics/14web-seelye.html?pagewanted=print
And now, this same HuffPost citizen journalist has pulled a similar bait-and-switch with former president Bill Clinton. Standing on the rope line crowded with adoring supporters, while shaking hands with the president, the reporter took the opportunity to ask him about a provocative and controversial article, "The Comeback Id," by Todd S. Purdum (who is married to former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers), just out in Vanity Fair.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/07/clinton200807
Only she didn't just ask, as a real reporter might, "What do you think of Purdum's article in Vanity Fair?" or "Do you have a comment?"
Instead, she said, "What do you think of the HATCHET JOB Todd Purdum did on you in Vanity Fair?"
The way this question was asked, so deliberately partisan and so overtly provocative, again, sounded more like it was coming from a supporter than a reporter.
Predictably, Clinton had a virtual meltdown in his enraged response, calling Purdum a "sleaze" and a "scumbag."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/bill-clinton-purdhum-a-sl_b_104771.html
I strongly suspect that Bill Clinton, shaking hands with a supposed supporter on a rally ropeline, who asked a partisan question with an implied sense of outrage, did not know he was being recorded or that his remarks would be copied down and published.
But as soon as they were, other news sources leapt onboard the bus, quoting the remarks and sometimes mentioning that the remarks had been given to a "HuffingtonPost reporter."
This legitimizes the remarks and made it seem as if Clinton has given an on-the-record interview. It all makes good copy, and HuffingtonPost.com is again a star, along with its citizen journalist.
But as a fellow "citizen journalist," I am appalled at this. Have we lost all sense of decency in this race?
Clinton was caught at what must have been the most devastating and demoralizing point for him in the past two years. He has campaigned tirelessly for his wife--exhausting staffers 30 years younger. But he is not 30 years younger. A few years ago, he had open-heart surgery, followed a few months later by more major surgery. His stamina is not what it once was, and he must be completely exhausted.
We have all been there--maybe not on the campaign trail--but in LIFE.
Would we really want one of our own private rants--made in a friendly setting, provoked by exhaustion and emotional stress--then published, analyzed, and criticized around the world?
Yes, he is a public figure, and yes, he brings a lot of this on himself. But even as an Obama supporter, I take no glee in this "gotcha" story. I think the man was tricked into the tirade, and as a fellow "citizen journalist," I am offended by that.
I realize that in this day of YouTube, all political candidates have to be especially vigilant, lest they wind up like former Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia after his horrible "macaca" slur was recorded on a cellphone and broadcast daily until he lost his re-election bid to Democrat James Webb.
But that remark was made in a public venue, in front of a large audience, many of whom had video cameras. If an experienced pol like Allen did not know better, he should have.
But for any journalist to set himself or herself up as a partisan supporter on an innocent ropeline, deliberately ask a provocative question, catch a candidate in a private moment off-guard and off the record, and then record and publish those remarks is, in my view, unethical.
At the very least, it is unfair.
Do political candidates not have the opportunity, even on the campaign trail, to be HUMAN? Can they have NO PLACE where they can feel safe to vent once in a while? Do they have to distrust every person on a rope line or at a fund-raiser, and parse every single word out of their mouths at every moment of every day in an unbelievably long and grueling campaign?
Do "citizen journalists" have the right to pretend to be something they are not, (even donating money to a campaign) in order to get the gotcha story, just so a website will get more hits, more attention, more legitimacy--and the "journalist" more recognition?
Is this legitimate journalism? Or just pretending to be?
Are there no longer any rules or professional journalistic standards that anyone can adhere to, or are we all just addicted to the flashy headline?
I don't know the answer to these questions. But I expect that my editors--and all editors--do.
And if they won't set the standards, then what does that say about us as a people, a culture, a society, a country?
Have we no standards left at all?
As voters, does that leave us to make our decisions based on the worst moment of a candidate's given day out of thousands?
Does that mean that our candidates are no longer allowed to be authentic, not even in one unguarded moment, without expecting Judgement to Fall from On High?
Because if that is truly the case...then when it comes to our elected officials, we fully deserve what we get.
*(HuffingtonPost.com, perhaps understandably, passed on posting this, but with no hard feelings on either side.)
cross-posted at TPM Cafe: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/deanie-mills/
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