The Importance of Being Earnest

My father, in another lifetime, would make an excellent journalist. He hates secrets.

“The great thing about the Internet,” he says, “is that no one has any secrets anymore.”

He swears that if the Watergate scandal had happened in 2002 rather than 1972, it would have taken Woodward and Bernstein mere months to uncover the truth, rather than years. He’s probably right.

The Internet, in many ways, is a journalist’s dream. It does just what we’ve always aimed to do: transfer information quickly, and in a language that’s relatively easy to understand. It’s for the masses. Most people have access to it, and can use it to post any information what they way. And, for the time being, it’s generally unregulated. It’s perfect. Right?

With the emergence of blogs and digital social networks like Facebook, it’s become much easier for people to use the Internet as a personal soap box. A blogger can post an opinion on a Web site, and then link directly to sources. It rings well with Kovach and Rosenstiel’s theory of the importance of transparency in reporting in The Elements of Journalism.

“The only way in practice to level with people about what you know is to reveal as much as possible about sources and methods,” (80). They add, “It is the same principle as governs scientific method: explain how you learned something and why you believe it—so the audience can do the same,” (81).

It sounds like the Internet and transparency go hand-in-hand. But where do we draw the line at transparency?

On the Facebook, I can display my political leanings in a personal profile and join virtual groups of people who have the same opinions as I do. Tom Warhover sent a memo out to most at the Missourian last week, stating that this practice is wrong, and that all mention of political bias should be taken off of a reporter’s Facebook profile.

According to the standards that we’ve been taught, Tom is absolutely right. Kovach and Rosenstiel have an entire chapter in their book devoted to the political independence of journalists.

The topic has come up in two or three of my classes this week, and the same questions keep arising:

Aren’t we supposed to be transparent? If we have political bias, shouldn’t we tell our readers that, so that they know all parts of the journalism process, including what’s in the reporter’s head?

And my favorite: No one is completely objective. But if we pretend like we are by not displaying our personal biases, are we just hoodwinking our readers? Is this “independence” thing just a grand but shallow display?

These are tricky questions that I at first dismissed, until I read this in The Elements of Journalism:

“One might imagine that one could both report on events and be a participant in them, but the reality is that being a participant clouds all other tasks a journalist must perform. It becomes difficult to see things from other perspectives. It becomes more difficult to win the trust of the sources and combatants on different sides,” (97).

If we follow this doctrine, we obviously can’t put “Liberal” or “Conservative” on our Facebook profile. And we can’t rant about George Bush or Barack Obama in our blog.
But can we vote in an election? Some professors say yes. Others, no.

Kovach and Rosenstiel say we can’t participate in the events that we cover, but in my experience, there are several fields of reporting that affect our everyday lives. Politics and business reporting come to mind. We may not be able to buy stock in General Mills, but can we buy Cheerios at the grocery store? Can we add MSN.com as our homepage?

It may be an extreme example, but I just wonder where we draw the line. With no secrets these days, if we are to follow the basic tenants of journalism, we need to be careful about what we do and how much people know about us—and how much of it is posted on the Internet.

But if we follow the new sentiment that I’ve been hearing in a lot of my classes, maybe we should just throw it all out there on our Facebook profiles, in the name of transparency.

I’m not sure which one is right—or left—anymore.