Before I post again on the Register, I’d like to set out a few standards that seem reasonable for any newspaper or site.
I am not a journalist, and I have never aspired to be one. FREE WHITEWATER is a website of independent commentary and essays.
Look, though, at the weekly newspaper in town, and you’ll find that the Register is hardly a work of journalism, either. The difference is that they should be, following on a century and a half legacy.
For papers and websites that contend they are newspapers, or news sites, a few standards would be helpful.
Here goes:
1. Provide attributions for what you publish. If you publish only your own copy, so be it. If you’re re-printing the written work of others, then say so. Often, media in Whitewater will publish something without identifying who wrote originally it.
I write all of my own copy, or attribute the author clearly. Everything published here is from one blogger, using the pen name John Adams, or is clearly attributed otherwise (selected inbox email, statements of others, etc.)
There are no recycled, unattributed press releases from for-profit concerns, including corporations whipping up a few paragraphs to get their names in the news.
2. Recognize interests and motivations. This is the point about listing a byline, and attributing stories and posts accurately. There’s a gullible notion that because a public official said something, the comments are not merely public ones, but objectively true ones, too.
There may be a wide difference between public remarks and truthful ones.
Officials’ comments can be as biased as any other; they’re not free from self-interest or error. It’s an overly-trusting, childlike notion that because a mayor, representative, etc., said something, then it must be true. When someone clips a section of a weekly report, and publishes it without attribution, it creates the impression that the words published are objectively true.
Works in the public domain are not unquestionably true; sometimes they’re not true at all.
The self-interest of human nature doesn’t release its grip when a man takes an oath of office.
3. Acknowledge political roles and conflicts. I hold no office in the city; you may have noticed that I prefer private life to public office. I prefer this generally.
A reporter, editor, or publisher of a newspaper (and not a blog of brief opinion posts like this one), should make especially clear any office-holding. It would be seen, correctly, as a possible conflict of interest if someone in office published news stories, each week.
If a reporter or editor at the Chicago Sun Times is also an alderman, that’s something his readers should know. That’s especially true if the reporter or editor is covering his own office, or his own election race. (It’s just an example; I know of no conflicts at the Sun Times.)
What applies in the Chicago example should apply here, too.
If an office-holder wants to post about his own office, so be it – just be clear about it, so that each and every reader will see the possible conflict in each published story. Only then can readers decide: is this conflict immaterial, or am I seeing an article or story that’s a valentine to the status quo, however subtly?
The officeholder or candidate with his own newspaper has a source of campaign advertising, about himself, or about other accomplishments that might advance support for his candidacy. There are very few incumbents who would publish account after account of all that they have neglected, failed to do, etc. For an incumbent, it’s either all roses or…silence.
When an ordinary citizen tries to distribute a few leaflets about an issue, he sometimes finds himself running afoul of campaign finance restrictions. Civil libertarians dislike these campaign restrictions, as they inhibit free speech and debate.
Worse still is when the ordinary citizen finds himself the subject of legal scrutiny for a few flyers, but existing officeholders get a free pass for their own daily or weekly publications.
Civil libertarians are opposed to campaign speech restrictions, but no less opposed to the inequitable enforcement of speech restrictions.