“…to change the world for the better.”

December 16, 2021

[Graphic: Smaranda Tolosano]

Global Investigative Journalism Network

#GIJN

Nobel Winner Muratov: Be an Investigative Reporter, and Fight for a Better World
By Rowan Philp

“Asked why young people should become investigative reporters, Muratov’s response was simple: to “change the world for the better.”

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Russia’s leading independent outlet, Novaya Gazeta, said: “The award today goes to the entire community of investigative journalists.”

Four days later — in a webinar interview with GIJN — Muratov set out the true stakes for investigative journalists with whom he shared that high honor: “Investigative journalism is the most important mission for humankind, because investigative reporters are not letting people steal the future from us.”

“At the time of his interview with GIJN, Muratov was visiting radio journalism colleagues in his birth place — the town of Samara, on the Volga River.

Asked whether the international spotlight of the Nobel Peace Prize afforded independent media in Russia some added protection against state persecution, Muratov said he didn’t know. However, he said the award had transformed Novaya Gazeta into a perceived sanctuary for civic problems.

“There’s much more work for me now, because I personally get hundreds of emails — people are requesting help with medicine, court hearings, apartments, and childhood diseases,” he said. “This award has turned into a new job for me, and, to be honest, I’m happy with that.”

Muratov said the impact from investigative reporting — from fired officials to changed policies and influencing voters — is not only important for improving lives, but also for preserving the careers and energy of the journalists.

For Muratov, the talent and motivation for effective watchdog reporting is likely already present in many autocratic societies — and said young people in authoritarian countries should consider that their talents might be wasted in government service. The key, he says, is for journalists to have each other’s backs.

“It’s solidarity,” he said. “What is my hope? — I hope to cooperate with the international network of investigative journalists, like GIJN.”

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“…building a public infrastructure where everyone is trained to “commit acts of journalism.”

Darryl Holliday, co-founder of and director of the news lab at City Bureau, a civic journalism nonprofit in Chicago

He writes: “The solution to the current crisis in journalism isn’t simply to save jobs, but to willingly and intentionally democratize the means of journalistic production.” Holliday’s vision is one of faith: in the potential of journalism, and the idea that our fellow community members want to join in. “The profit-driven side of local journalism may be in freefall, but infrastructure for a more public, participatory, community-driven, trustworthy, accurate, and representational news ecosystem is readily available.”

Holliday’s vision is one of faith: in the potential of journalism, and the idea that our fellow community members want to join in. “The profit-driven side of local journalism may be in freefall, but infrastructure for a more public, participatory, community-driven, trustworthy, accurate, and representational news ecosystem is readily available.” And in the end, what other choice do we have? 

—Savannah Jacobson, story editor

Journalism is a public good. Let the public make it.
Ivory-tower journalism has failed. It’s time we focus on building public infrastructure where everyone can find, factcheck, and produce civic information

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/journalism-power-public-good-community-infrastructure.php?mc_cid=5ab965c6a8&mc_eid=a78d225513

 

“The constitution is not a suicide pact.”

July 27, 2021

“We can and must do more to regulate and support distribution of reliable news.”

CNN public editor: Why CNN’s audience deserves federally regulated news

by Ariana Pekary

Ariana Pekary is the CJR public editor for CNN. She was an award-winning public radio and MSNBC journalist for two decades. Now she focuses on the systemic flaws of commercial broadcast news. She can be contacted at publiceditors@cjr.org.

CNN, AS I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE, has amplified disinformation, relies on panel discussions that increase polarization, and has neglected voices of moderation for the sake of ratings. But is there some way to mitigate such problems, which are so common in cable news? Martha Minow, a professor at Harvard Law School, argues that the Constitution requires efforts to protect the free press––including regulation. 

In Saving the News, Minow describes the merits of “deep and extensive government involvement in funding, shaping, and regulating media.” Some may balk at the notion of federal intervention in the news. But Minow chronicles how the government has granted newspapers low postal rates, invested in research that created the internet, established licensing protocols for broadcasters, and regulated telephone lines and features of digital platforms––involving itself in essential elements of the nation’s media infrastructure.

“If the ecosystem fails to provide necessary information to citizens,” she told me, “then democracy dies—and the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” 

Minow argues that the First Amendment implies the existence of a functional press, so the government has an obligation to enact reforms and regulations to protect it. Many consider the industry to be a public utility, and therefore subject to regulation. And, as Minow explains in Saving the News, “Regulation of a necessary good or service also helps guard against coercion that works by exploiting people’s dependence, but it still permits private owners to operate for profit.” 

The now-defunct Fairness Doctrine, which mandated journalistic balance by requiring broadcasters to air multiple viewpoints, is one example of successful oversight, Minow said. Supreme Court justices wrote in 1969 that it was a “protection for ‘the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters.’ ” Public interest, Minow notes, is a vital characteristic of government intervention. Accordingly, we may deduce that the public has authority over an outlet like CNN to protect the audience.

The United States has a long, if forgotten, history of funding the news media.

In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert McChesney and John Nichols––cofounders of Free Press, a media reform group––calculated that “the level of government subsidy given to the American press in the 1840s was the equivalent of $30 billion in 2010 dollars.” But federal funding of public media amounted to just $465 million in 2020––an extraordinarily low amount compared with other countries.

Subsidizing public media, Minow told me, would “provide crucial competition and can stimulate for-profits to win viewers by doing better.” Sesame Street, for example, did not exist before broadcasters knew that the format would be popular. Now it’s competitive and profitable. We could use other public-private partnerships, similar to the current collaboration with ProPublica, to create new informative TV programs, she says, calling it a “public option” for journalism.

The Society of Professional Journalists is the former Sigma Delta Chi, founded at DePauw University.

Accountability from media, too.

January 16, 2021

MSNBC public editor: Accountability for everyone except MSNBC itself

by Maria Bustillos

Columbia Journalism Review

“Watching MSNBC in the hours since Wednesday’s mob attack on the Capitol has been dizzying.

The enormity of this history-rattling event was impossible to spin, downplay, or trivialize, even for cable news. And so the network’s coverage summarily imploded, splintering in real time, losing the glossy veneer of corporate imperturbability as its hosts veered wildly between prim expressions of astonishment, ostrich-like attempts at “business as usual,” and passionate demands for Trump’s immediate ouster.

Calls for “accountability” have come from nearly every talking head: congressmen, academics, retired generals, and the hosts themselves. In MSNBC parlance, “accountability” is a dignified-sounding word with no exact meaning. But IRL the word means facing consequences for your decisions and actions.

Real accountability, for MSNBC, means a clear and distinct demand for each of its hosts to come clean about his or her own complicity in building and enabling the increasingly violent and extremist Republican Party that led, inexorably, to the ruinous Trump administration. Joe Scarborough, for example, who on Thursday called for the president to be arrested, was not so long ago a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago, and a staunch ally of Trump the candidate in 2016, as CNN reported at the time:

Scarborough has spoken about Trump in increasingly glowing terms, praising him as “a masterful politician” and defending him against his political opponents and media critics. The Washington Post has noted that Trump has received “a tremendous degree of warmth from the [Scarborough] show,” and [said] that his appearances on the show, in person and over the phone, often feel like “a cozy social club.”

What would “accountability” look like for Scarborough and his cohost, Mika Brzezinski? What would it look like for Nicolle Wallace, whose work on behalf of George W. Bush in the Florida recount—a key moment in the degradation of the Republican Party—led to a high-profile job in Washington?

TV News and Disinformation

October 9, 2019

Jay Rosen: 

“What if the hosts threw their shows over to the beat reporters more often? What if guests who lied weren’t brought on again? What if people who had worked on campaigns couldn’t be brought on to spin the news unmitigated?”

[Jay Rosen is a media critic and journalism professor Studio 20 program at NYU.]

CNN public editor: What actually is CNN?

By Emily Tamkin

WHEN I THINK OF CNN—when I watch it, or when I scroll through Twitter, or when I think of what I want to write about it—I think of what Jeff Zucker, CNN president, said in 2017: “The idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood it and approached it that way.”

The contrast now is stark. It’s not that the CNN beat reporters are good and hosts are bad—many of the latter are accomplished journalists, too. It’s just that what is mostly reflected on the screen—especially during prime time—seems to be less news reporting, more punditry, more round tables, more horse race politics, more talking heads, more interviews and interviewees yelling at each other, more that makes the news more confusing for the viewer (or at least for this viewer).

I find myself wrestling with this tension when I write these columns. I know I’m not the only one: Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir went on Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources and expressed frustration that the networks were more focused on politics than on policy, and that, on TV news shows, “it tends to be a game”. (Stelter, to his credit, acknowledged that many viewers agree, and that “the shiny object, the sensationalism, it’s a problem.”)

https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/cnn-coverage-reporting.php