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It is an interesting time in journalism, that’s for sure. Newspapers are “dying” or “being reinvented” – depending on who you ask. People get their news before the 6 p.m. broadcast and long before the pages have run off the press.
There is another change revolutionizing the information business – the Obama administration.
As I drove to Thriftway to pick up a pack of cigars – Black and Mild wines, criticize as you will – I heard it on “All Things Considered.” I’d read it in The New York Times and several other papers. I knew it would happen, the storm was on the horizon and I spotted it the day I learned of what was, at the time, the president-elect’s podcast. “According to Obama’s weekly podcast.” There it was. The attribution.
Our president embraces technology. Subscribers to the president’s podcast can watch or listen to his pre-scripted addresses weekly. This can be great for citizens, as they feel informed and perhaps a more direct connection to the executive. The problem is how this PR affects all other information. It is not reporting.
To use something scripted that a public official says is against all good reporter instincts, in my book. It isn’t that reporters should not cover press conferences. That is silly. But by parroting what the script says and presenting it as news rejects real reporting that nails officials to the wall when necessary and asks the tough questions to best inform the public. It’s laziness.
When it comes to television news, Obama frequently asks for airtime. And networks give it to him. Mind you, sometimes this is in the form of Q-and-A with reporters, but for the most part it is press conferences. Pre-packaged information he can spit out.
Sarah Palin, who took a drastically different approach with the press, made a good argument at the vice-presidential candidate’s debate: “I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard. I’d rather be able to just speak to the American people.”
The trouble with this is that there is a filter, Sarah. The filter is your speech writer and team of PR people who chose your words weeks, if not months, before.
America needs its press – if only for its fact-checking abilities. We know public officials are prone to fibbing, and newspapers hold those officials to what they say. Where informal bloggers and your uncle Frank will tell you how much of a liar a candidate is, it is the media’s job to be watchdogs and, attempting to have no political bias, tell you what is going wrong – where the blips are in the status quo.
I enjoy the transparency under this presidency, as it allows me to do better reporting by easily finding public records that may have required me to file Freedom of Information Act requests before. The problem is lazy journalism. In a world where a reporter must take on 10 or more assignments a week it is tough to make call after call to the president’s office – especially when he already addressed the issues in his podcast. It comes down to the necessity for not just any information, but good information that requires asking tough questions and holding Obama – and any public official for that matter responsible for his or her promises.
Heather Steeves is news editor for The Maine Campus.
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