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No substitute for facts
Common SenseJohn Maxwell
Sunday, July 01, 2007
I tell my students in journalistic ethics class that ethical journalism is a human right: that people are entitled to the truth and that journalists are not entitled to tell lies or mislead.
My rights end where yours begin, I tell them and journalists need to do unto others, as they would have others do unto them.
Journalism is a mix of things, facts, opinions, entertainment among them, but while journalism may be a mix, the basic purposes must be clearly understood to be separate and different.
Facts are facts; opinions are opinions and not alternatives to nor substitutes for facts.
I don't know any businessmen and not that many journalists who are familiar with journalistic ethics. Most have never bothered to try to understand the journalist's function.
The first principle is that people are
entitled to the truth. That does not mean that argument and opinions are not journalistic; they are simply different and should never be confused.
Modern journalism began with men who had something to say and, liberated by the printing press, wanted to speak to as many people as possible. They all had axes to grind, causes to promote. The business of news reporting came second.
Today, however, the theory is that the press, or the media, exists primarily as a distributing agency for the news of the day, enabling people to make up their minds on the facts, allowing them to make their own decisions on issues that may affect their lives and livelihoods.
The most important facts are generally concerned with government, because governments are those institutions set up by the people to protect their communities, to ensure that all of us have the same rights and the same opportunities to make the best of ourselves. Governments exist to keep us safe and allow us to be happy.
The publishers of the Jamaica Observer have recently become embroiled in a dispute over the non-publication of a public opinion poll. The poll was commissioned by the Observer from a subsidiary, the Stone Polls. Before the poll was published, the Observer published another poll by another organisation.
The excuse given by the Observer management was that the results of the Stone Poll were 'on the street' before they had received them. Other people, including the Observer's competitor, the Jamaica Herald, contend that the reason the Stone Polls were not published was that the Observer's management, allegedly pro-JLP and anti-PNP, knew that the Stone Polls would show increasing support for the Government and were therefore unfavourable to the JLP.
The Stone Polls leader, Dr Ian Boxill, says that his team were never told about any breach of confidentiality. But the Stone team has been disbanded.
To my mind, the Observer management made a bad decision. Polls are news and not a commercial commodity. Whether the Observer or its parent organisation owned the poll is beside the point.
If newspapers are to be trusted, it must be clear that news is controlled by journalists and not by businessmen or other third parties. If, as the Observer contends, the decision not to publish the polls was a 'business' decision; the Observer has fallen into the trap that many publishers before them have fallen into - the idea that ownership means journalistic discretion.
Several years ago, the controlling shareholder in the Trinidad Guardian, Anthony Sagba, decided that his newsroom was not competent to decide about the propriety of relationships between the Guardian's parent organisation and the government of Trinidad. As a result of that decision, 10 journalists left the paper and its reputation for journalistic probity was severely damaged.
The Gleaner, at the time, defended Mr Sagba as having made a management decision and I commented in this paper that that argument was hogwash.
Mr Sagba had no more right to tell his journalists what stories they could print than he would have to walk into one of his company's supermarkets and walk out with a ham without paying for it.
The Gleaner during most of its life has taken positions dictated by its ownership and has claimed journalistic virtue even while its chairman, Neville Ashenheim, and one of its editors, Hector Wynter, were both chairmen of the Jamaica Labour Party.
There are no eunuchs in journalism any more than there are in business. Everybody has a point of view and personal biases. What journalists try to do, ideally, is to neutralise those biases by treating fact as fact and opinion as opinion. And, when the owners feel constrained to intervene in public affairs, their intervention must be open, transparent, and done
in full view of their readers.
A J Liebling sardonically said several decades ago that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. As I have said repeatedly in this paper, in the western world the people least privileged to exercise freedom of the press are the journalists themselves.
In Jamaica, our commentators have largely not been journalists but special-interest representatives.
In the Gleaner, Delroy Chuck, a JLP MP is allowed to speak without being identified as to his interest, as if he were an independent commentator.
In the Observer, Dennis Morrison, a senior government apparatchik, is allowed the same freedom. Right now, Mr Morrison is busy arguing for fewer and less effective government regulation to advance the cause of business. There are not too many of us arguing for the public interest and against the general tendency to erode the public interest in matters such as the environment.
Three decades ago, when the Gleaner commentators sailed under noms de guerre, I used one of my television commentaries to explode and expose the identities of these influence peddlers. The public has a right to know the sources of their information as much as they have a right to know the sources of their drinking water and their food.
Before that, when I was editor of the weekly, Public Opinion, I had an agreement with O T Fairclough, the publisher and co-founder of the People's National Party. It was quite simple: Fairclough would not interfere with my editing of the paper and I would not interfere with his management of the company that owned it. On at least two occasions, when Fairclough disagreed fundamentally with my treatment of the PNP, his interventions were clearly identified as his personal opinions.
All papers, if they are to survive, eventually become the 'property' of their readers. The readers or the radio and television audiences make a sort of social contract with the paper: I will listen to you if I believe that you will generally tell me the truth or as much of it as you know.
People are much smarter than some of us think. In 1976, the Gleaner launched what turned out to be a vicious attack on Michael Manley. The Gleaner misreported Michael Manley's speech on his return from Cuba. What Michael Manley said was that his government was quite comfortable with people who became rich through their own effort and honest dealings. If people wanted to become rich by theft, deception or trickery there were two flights a day to Miami.
The Gleaner 'corrected' Manley, saying he said FIVE flights a day to Miami, and then misrepresented what he said to mean that rich people had no place in Jamaica and should leave. He still won the election.
Non-journalists have a mistaken idea of the influence of the media. Anybody who watches the local political scene should understand that.
Journalists are better able to understand because they spend more time trying to understand.
There is no substitute for facts.
cont
Common SenseJohn Maxwell
Sunday, July 01, 2007
I tell my students in journalistic ethics class that ethical journalism is a human right: that people are entitled to the truth and that journalists are not entitled to tell lies or mislead.
My rights end where yours begin, I tell them and journalists need to do unto others, as they would have others do unto them.
Journalism is a mix of things, facts, opinions, entertainment among them, but while journalism may be a mix, the basic purposes must be clearly understood to be separate and different.
Facts are facts; opinions are opinions and not alternatives to nor substitutes for facts.
I don't know any businessmen and not that many journalists who are familiar with journalistic ethics. Most have never bothered to try to understand the journalist's function.
The first principle is that people are
entitled to the truth. That does not mean that argument and opinions are not journalistic; they are simply different and should never be confused.
Modern journalism began with men who had something to say and, liberated by the printing press, wanted to speak to as many people as possible. They all had axes to grind, causes to promote. The business of news reporting came second.
Today, however, the theory is that the press, or the media, exists primarily as a distributing agency for the news of the day, enabling people to make up their minds on the facts, allowing them to make their own decisions on issues that may affect their lives and livelihoods.
The most important facts are generally concerned with government, because governments are those institutions set up by the people to protect their communities, to ensure that all of us have the same rights and the same opportunities to make the best of ourselves. Governments exist to keep us safe and allow us to be happy.
The publishers of the Jamaica Observer have recently become embroiled in a dispute over the non-publication of a public opinion poll. The poll was commissioned by the Observer from a subsidiary, the Stone Polls. Before the poll was published, the Observer published another poll by another organisation.
The excuse given by the Observer management was that the results of the Stone Poll were 'on the street' before they had received them. Other people, including the Observer's competitor, the Jamaica Herald, contend that the reason the Stone Polls were not published was that the Observer's management, allegedly pro-JLP and anti-PNP, knew that the Stone Polls would show increasing support for the Government and were therefore unfavourable to the JLP.
The Stone Polls leader, Dr Ian Boxill, says that his team were never told about any breach of confidentiality. But the Stone team has been disbanded.
To my mind, the Observer management made a bad decision. Polls are news and not a commercial commodity. Whether the Observer or its parent organisation owned the poll is beside the point.
If newspapers are to be trusted, it must be clear that news is controlled by journalists and not by businessmen or other third parties. If, as the Observer contends, the decision not to publish the polls was a 'business' decision; the Observer has fallen into the trap that many publishers before them have fallen into - the idea that ownership means journalistic discretion.
Several years ago, the controlling shareholder in the Trinidad Guardian, Anthony Sagba, decided that his newsroom was not competent to decide about the propriety of relationships between the Guardian's parent organisation and the government of Trinidad. As a result of that decision, 10 journalists left the paper and its reputation for journalistic probity was severely damaged.
The Gleaner, at the time, defended Mr Sagba as having made a management decision and I commented in this paper that that argument was hogwash.
Mr Sagba had no more right to tell his journalists what stories they could print than he would have to walk into one of his company's supermarkets and walk out with a ham without paying for it.
The Gleaner during most of its life has taken positions dictated by its ownership and has claimed journalistic virtue even while its chairman, Neville Ashenheim, and one of its editors, Hector Wynter, were both chairmen of the Jamaica Labour Party.
There are no eunuchs in journalism any more than there are in business. Everybody has a point of view and personal biases. What journalists try to do, ideally, is to neutralise those biases by treating fact as fact and opinion as opinion. And, when the owners feel constrained to intervene in public affairs, their intervention must be open, transparent, and done
in full view of their readers.
A J Liebling sardonically said several decades ago that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. As I have said repeatedly in this paper, in the western world the people least privileged to exercise freedom of the press are the journalists themselves.
In Jamaica, our commentators have largely not been journalists but special-interest representatives.
In the Gleaner, Delroy Chuck, a JLP MP is allowed to speak without being identified as to his interest, as if he were an independent commentator.
In the Observer, Dennis Morrison, a senior government apparatchik, is allowed the same freedom. Right now, Mr Morrison is busy arguing for fewer and less effective government regulation to advance the cause of business. There are not too many of us arguing for the public interest and against the general tendency to erode the public interest in matters such as the environment.
Three decades ago, when the Gleaner commentators sailed under noms de guerre, I used one of my television commentaries to explode and expose the identities of these influence peddlers. The public has a right to know the sources of their information as much as they have a right to know the sources of their drinking water and their food.
Before that, when I was editor of the weekly, Public Opinion, I had an agreement with O T Fairclough, the publisher and co-founder of the People's National Party. It was quite simple: Fairclough would not interfere with my editing of the paper and I would not interfere with his management of the company that owned it. On at least two occasions, when Fairclough disagreed fundamentally with my treatment of the PNP, his interventions were clearly identified as his personal opinions.
All papers, if they are to survive, eventually become the 'property' of their readers. The readers or the radio and television audiences make a sort of social contract with the paper: I will listen to you if I believe that you will generally tell me the truth or as much of it as you know.
People are much smarter than some of us think. In 1976, the Gleaner launched what turned out to be a vicious attack on Michael Manley. The Gleaner misreported Michael Manley's speech on his return from Cuba. What Michael Manley said was that his government was quite comfortable with people who became rich through their own effort and honest dealings. If people wanted to become rich by theft, deception or trickery there were two flights a day to Miami.
The Gleaner 'corrected' Manley, saying he said FIVE flights a day to Miami, and then misrepresented what he said to mean that rich people had no place in Jamaica and should leave. He still won the election.
Non-journalists have a mistaken idea of the influence of the media. Anybody who watches the local political scene should understand that.
Journalists are better able to understand because they spend more time trying to understand.
There is no substitute for facts.
cont
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