Jay Rosen blogs at idealab:
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2007/11/cleveland-plain-dealer-deals-w.html
I comment:
Great roundup!
Unfortunately, many in media share this if-you-engage-in-society-you-can't-be-a-journalist attitude. A session at the Online News Association conference essentially asked "Can a journalist have a blog" (and answered, "sort of.")
It's also sad and ironic that the Cleveland Plain Dealer editors set up something called "Wide Open," orchestrated the tired Republican-Democrat dichotomy to manufacture a sort of conflict they understood, and couldn't even figure out how to profit when actual controversy arose.
They didn't even hire these people to report but rather to have political opinions. If a pro-Democratic candidate blogger had donated to a Republican candidate, that's a scandal.
Thank you Jay for phrasing this as a matter of two different ethics. That's an important contribution, albeit one I will undermine by stating flatly that the ethic of transparency is the better ethic.
The bigger problem with the ethic of avoiding an appearance of conflict of interest is that it denies reporters the right to be human (and in so doing denies the public humane reporting).
The Cleveland Plain Dealer's policy that financial support of what you like is forbidden, applied to freelance political bloggers in this case, would logically preclude any reporter, editor, or publisher from donating to causes, going to charitable fundraisers, giving money to a church, or purchasing a product or service.
After all, what could be clearer evidence of bias then someone voluntarily giving money to anyone else, whether the receiving people are a homeless veteran and a street musician (no military, housing or urban reporting for you!) or the employees and owners of Verizon when you pay your phone bill (that's the end of your telecommunications, labor, and business reporting!)
This sounds like a joke, but it isn't. We the media are in 1984 going on 2008 and a major regional newspaper experimenting online can't distinguish between a material conflict of interest (a campaign paying a writer) and an aspect of being a human, citizen, and political junkie (donations to a candidate by a writer). The former must always be disclosed and could be reason to end a reporting career. The latter should probably be disclosed to readers but cannot be considered a breach of ethics until we have all our reporting and commentary done by space aliens with no connection to life on earth.
Left out:
(see for instance Bill O'Reilly)
... in reference to the space aliens. Left that out intentionally, it's a cheap shot.
Left out accidentally, the far, far more important things the Cleveland Plain Dealer should be reporting when it comes to politics and elections in Ohio:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2730
And most everything else covered at central Ohio's Free Press.
