The honesty double-standard

As I expand my reading list (yes, there will soon be a blogroll), I've been catching up on old posts. One of the blogs I've been reading is PressThink, home to Jay Rosen's incisive (albeit often lengthy) commentary on modern media.

After citizen journalist Mayhill Fowler's run-in with Bill Clinton on June 2, Rosen published an extremely thorough round-up of media reactions to what is now dubbed "PurdumGate."

Fowler committed the heinous crime of failing to inform Clinton that she was a citizen journalist or that she was recording the conversation (her recorder was in her hand, but apparently he didn't notice it). Clinton let his guard down (you can listen here) and spoke honestly and passionately to Fowler about Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair article, The Comeback Id. Needless to say, Clinton was not pleased to discover the conversation, with commentary, published on the Huffington Post's citizen journalist campaign section, Off the Bus. Both Fowler and Clinton regret the incident; Fowler wishes she'd remembered, in the heat of the moment, to identify herself, and Clinton probably wishes he hadn't let his guard down.

The incident hit a nerve with many media members (for a summary, check out Rosen's blog post as linked above).

Reading those reactions, I had a bit of an epiphany.

Old-school reporters hold themselves to a very strict code of ethics. Most believe that we must disclose who we are to sources. If the story is important enough and there's no other way of getting the information, this rule can be bent or in rare cases, broken.

In many of the excerpts Rosen quoted, it's clear that members of the traditional media feel that this is important, because otherwise, politicians would always have to be on their guard. And what a horrible way for them to live!

But wait. Why are they on their guard in the first place? What's so bad about the public seeing them as they really are - humans? The reason is simple. Politicians wear personas the way we might wear hats or masks. The guy we vote for probably doesn't even really exist. He's a carefully crafted ideal designed to capture votes. And most of us expect it, because being an honest and open politician just isn't the done thing.

So we bend over backwards to pretend that there is no man behind the curtain. We strive to be honest so that politicians can continue to be dishonest and lie to us about who they are. We must be honest and disclose at all times, but politicians are expected, always, to present a false facade, a lie. We aid and abet that by allowing them to choose what is and isn't off the record.

I don't mean to suggest that journalists should start lying about who we are. Nor am I suggesting that we should stop disclosing our intent before an interview. But when politicians complain about being on the record all the time (which is increasingly the case what with so many people blogging), we shouldn't feel sorry for them. If they were honest in the first place, and presented themselves as they are, being on the record all the time wouldn't be a problem in the first place, and voters would know who they are really voting for. In essence, elections could be about the issues instead of the image.

Food for thought.

Editorial standards

I've been mulling over the question of maintaining editorial standards in a network of professional blogs. I'm imagining an online publication readers feel they can trust that consists of a network of freelance blogs. Yet, I want to have as little management as possible. A system that runs itself without oversight would be ideal, but is it possible?

Right now I'm reading We the Media by Dan Gillmor, who works at the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship. One of the points he keeps on driving home is that the Internet's greatest power is not simply interactivity. Allowing readers to comment? Simple interactivity. Harnessing the knowledge, creativity, and judgment of the readers to enforce editorial standards? That's open source press.

What I've been realizing is that the open source movement is about far more than just coding. Increasingly, individuals are being invested with the tools and knowledge to make change. It's happening in programming and in media. It's also happening in politics. Medicine too - with more and more information available to patients, it is now possible for patients to be far more informed about their more obscure health problems than a general practitioner can possibly be. Meanwhile, smart medical researchers may be looking to health forums for research questions.

Gillmor seems to be saying that as Internet technology evolves, it is handing us more and more tools that make centralization and management less and less crucial. Grassroots civic involvement and a more democratic process are just some of the possible benefits.

At the moment, I'd say that I agree with Gillmor. I'd be interested to read some thoughtful and pointed rebuttals, if anyone can point me towards one.

I'm also on the look out for well-written, succinct information on the open source coding movement. Information on how they do distributed project management, as well as a history of the philosophy and theory of the movement, would be key. Hook me up!