Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
This week brought more distressing news for journalists, as a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found the U.S. public more critical than ever of the accuracy and independence of the media.
Only 29 percent of Americans believe that news organisations generally get the facts straight, the survey found, the lowest level in the survey's near quarter-century history.
It gets worse:
--Just 26 percent said the media are careful that reporting is not politically biased.
--Only 20 percent believe news organisations are independent of powerful people and organisations.
--Barely a fifth believe the media are willing to admit mistakes.
And news organisations have been able to do what politicians have failed at: creating consensus across party lines. Now solid majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents all believe that stories are often inaccurate and tend to favor one side.
It's been a long road down. Back in 1985, in the first survey on media performance cited by Pew, 55 percent said news outlets get the facts straight and only 45 percent said the press was politically biased. Now 60 percent see political bias and only 18 percent say the media deal fairly with all sides of political and social issues.
What are we to do?
In the face of criticism, there's sometimes a tendency to take shelter, keep one's head down and hope the critics go away. But they won't go away. And judging by the passionate and sometimes vitriolic criticisms I see in our comment sections, there are significant numbers of readers who will never believe reporters can put aside personal viewpoints and report a story accurately and fairly. You only have to look at discussions of coverage in the Middle East to see that.
The proper response, I believe, can be summed up in two words: More transparency.
That's why we decided to make freely available to the public the guidelines our journalists live by when we published our Handbook of Journalism--and asked for feedback on it. That's why I'm doing this job. That's why we're aggressive and open about correcting our mistakes. That's why, in this blog and others, we welcome comments and debate on our work and issues in the news.
Reuters Editor in Chief David Schlesinger put it well in a recent speech, when he described journalism, at its best, as "a mirror, exposing back to society a true and brutally honest picture of what is going on."
"When we fail at that," he said, "when our picture is not clear or is at all distorted, we deserve to be criticised."
At the risk of violating metaphor-overload rules, I invite you to take advantage of the windows we're opening into our world--our Handbook of Journalism and our blogs--to tell us when you see a distorted picture or when the view is foggy. Or when it's clear and distinct.
Judging by the dim view of the media revealed in the Pew survey, we can't open the windows too wide or too soon.
The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by -- and we're proud of it. Until now, it hasn't been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it's only now that we're putting the full handbook online.
We've decided to make the handbook available to everyone for a number of reasons. Among them:
Transparency: At a time when trust is an endangered commodity in the financial and media worlds, it's important that news consumers see the guidelines our journalists follow.
Service: As we've seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it's also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin.
Geography: Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world. This is a handbook not just for English-language journalists in the United Kingdom or the United States, but for wherever English is used.
Many entries deal with words that are sometimes confused or misused. Turning randomly to the "H" section, we learn the difference between hyperthermia and hypothermia (The latter means "Too cold. Think that o rhymes with low" while the former means "Too hot. Think of 'er' as in very."); Haarlem and Harlem (the latter is in New York City, the former in the Netherlands); hangar and hanger (the latter is for clothes, the former a shelter for aircraft); and hale and hail (the former means "free from disease, or to pull or haul by force." The latter "is to salute or call out, or an ice shower").
We take a global approach to the spelling of many words. Often, it's the United States against the world. For instance, our preferred style is "artefact," except in the U.S., where it's artifact. Same goes for axe and axeing -- our standards for most of the world -- which become ax and axing in the U.S. There's also "backwards," which loses its "s" in American stories, and "leukaemia," which loses that first "a" in the U.S. There's plenty more: tyre and tire, titbit and tidbit, and defence and defense.
In the world of diplomacy, economics and academe, the G3 is Germany, Japan and the U.S.; the G5 extends membership to France and the U.K.; G7 grows the club to Canada and Italy; make it G8 with Russia; G10 adds Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. As for the G24, G30 and G77, you'll have to look for yourself (we've got entries for them, too).
There are slang words to avoid (posh -- though one former Spice Girl might object) and a number of common misspellings (Viet Cong, not Vietcong; ventricle, not ventrical; machinegun, not machine gun; and ketchup, not catchup or catsup).
The sports section of the handbook offers a list of sports cliches to avoid (hard fought, made history, veteran, bounce back, and icon), the difference between a field and a pitch (the former's where American football and baseball are played), and an explanation of delight as a transitive verb that needs an object ("Marat Safin delighted Russian fans with a neat chip...not Marat Safin delighted with a chip."). Words like disaster and tragedy shouldn't be used in sports stories, as this devalues the significance of these words ("Losing a football match is not a disaster. A stand falling down and crushing a fan is").
When language implies a value judgment, we must use words very carefully (cult, for instance: One person's cult is another's religion). The entry for "good, bad" advises: "For financial and commodity markets good news and bad news depends on who you are and what your position is in the market. Avoid them."
One of the most controversial entries is that of "terrorism." The entry reads, in part:
"We may refer without attribution to terrorism and counter-terrorism in general but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor do we use the adjective word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events. ... Report the subjects of news stories objectively, their actions, identity and background. Aim for a dispassionate use of language so that individuals, organisations and governments can make their own judgment on the basis of facts. Seek to use more specific terms like “bomber” or “bombing”, “hijacker” or “hijacking”, “attacker” or “attacks”, “gunman” or “gunmen” etc."
This policy has been passionately debated inside and outside Reuters. As the handbook says, "we aim for dispassionate language" so that our customers can "make their own judgment on the basis of facts."
Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger puts it this way:
"Over the years we have been criticised for this policy on numerous occasions, when people or governments wanted us to label an incident ourselves rather than quote their views. Criticism of our policy was especially fierce when the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Reuters made the decision not to describe the attackers as terrorists, because we thought a label would not add to our vivid description of the thousands of deaths and the destruction of the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center. In the years since, as the world has witnessed numerous other attacks, we've chosen to continue that policy of sticking with the facts and letting our readers make up their own minds based on our reporting and the evidence we present them."
It's important to point out that the handbook is a living document, one that preserves rules that have guided Reuters journalists through a century and half but also one that may change when the times change. It's also important to note that the handbook is produced by humans who aren't infallible -- and it's used by humans who aren't infallible, so sometimes we make mistakes. I'm sure you'll let us know when we do, but we're usually harder on ourselves than anyone else is.
I hope you'll find the handbook useful, whether you're a journalist, a student, a teacher or an engaged reader. And we welcome your comments and suggestions.
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
The recent election in Iran was one of the more dramatic stories this year, with powerful images of protests and street-fighting dominating television and online coverage.
Because traditional news organizations were essentially shut down by the authorities, it fell to citizen journalists -- many of whom were among the protesters -- to provide the images that the world would see, using such social media as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
This has raised a number of ethics, standards and legal questions for mainstream journalists. My colleague John Clarke, Reuters Global Television Editor, found himself in the middle of the issue as images became available and clients demanded coverage of the election's aftermath. John discusses the issues raised, the lessons learned and the opportunities for the future below. As always, his opinions are his own.
-----
Protests following the controversial Iranian election have put citizen journalism even more firmly in the spotlight. With traditional news gathering organizations effectively shut down by authorities, text, video and stills being produced and posted on social websites by the protesters themselves became the main way that much information was getting out of the country. This dramatic coverage -- regardless of (and perhaps even enhanced by) its shaky nature -- was accessed by Reuters (and other news organizations) and distributed to clients and viewers around the world.
Citizen journalism isn't new. We have long accessed amateur footage of stories around the world, from plane crashes to wars to natural disasters. However, the internet and mobile devices have resulted in a dramatic increase in the amount of content available and the speed of delivery, the ability to deliver outside of normal controls, more uncertainty over origin, ownership and verification, and the viral nature in which it can all spread around the globe.
At Reuters, we have used video from social networking websites for several years. We put in place strict rules about how such material can be accessed and used, with only senior editors authorized to approve running this material.
Verification is a major issue. Video or photos might not be what they purport to be, either because of sloppy information from the person posting it, or deliberate deceit, either to create mischief or for political or other reasons.
Another important consideration is that copyright still applies to the internet. The person posting material might hold copyright, or worse, they might not hold copyright. The material could originate from a private individual, a company or another news organization. Wherever possible, we have sought to find and seek permission from the originator of the material, as we would do for any third-party material accessed in any other way. This can apply to hard news and lighter material, including funny visual postings that have gone viral and have become stories in their own right.
When the Iran story broke, even when we were able to operate, we still accessed internet-posted amateur video. But such footage became even more important when our operations were hampered by authorities –- the sheer number of mini-cams and mobile phones taking visual images meant there would be good material we would want, even if we were able to operate freely ourselves.
Early on, we set up a 24-hour monitoring of Twitter and various social networking sites. We made a call early on that we would relax our rules on clearance –- protesters posting video and pictures on social networks wanted to get them to the world, and we were another conduit for that. Other news organizations followed a similar rationale.
Throughout the Iran story, however, we were extremely careful about what we wrote and said about material accessed from social networking sites, certainly not taking at face value what (little) information usually comes with such posts.
We have been clear when we are unable to verify content or location or date, and have also clearly stated that we’ve accessed it from a social networking site. Our subscribers (and their viewers) are also intelligent enough to know that no-one can 100 percent verify this type of material and are similarly circumspect, and the shaky, low-resolution quality of much of this material is an immediate signal to clients and viewers that it was shot by an amateur.
This approach does not, of course, absolve us of all responsibility. There have been many videos and photos we haven’t used because they have not rung true for one reason or another.
Iran was also a special case in that citizen journalism was not only a way to get video and photographs, but it was a very important part of the story itself. We didn’t just get video from citizen journalists, we did several stories, like the one below, about the importance of citizen journalism in Iran, which put our use of it in its proper context, too.
Iran was in many respects the culmination of trends in the way citizens have been using the web for the past few years –- a confluence of the proliferation of mobile recording devices, internet delivery and social networking sites that allow almost instantaneous interactions between users and an exchange of information and ideas.
How social networking intersects with traditional news organizations is also an evolutionary process.
It will not be good enough for traditional news companies to simply take from citizen journalists –- it needs to be a two-way exchange of content, information and ideas, with mainstream news companies contributing via blogs, chatrooms and other social networking sites, whether in the general news area or in specialist forums such as those for the financial community.
Verification, copyright and quality will always be significant issues -- even more so as millions of people around the world have the ability to distribute and exchange content. The combination of citizen journalism, and the standards of news organizations of companies such as Reuters, has the ability to produce a richer flow of information around the world.
Provided we clearly flag the origin of material and put the relevant context around it, our subscribers, our viewers and our readers –- who are already immersed in social networking as consumers and contributors themselves –- are smart enough to evaluate this content, without challenging our core journalistic values.
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
Are we too connected?
In recent days and weeks I’ve been wondering if our mobile phones, Blackberries, text messaging and constant access to email and social media have brought us too close together for our own good.
Or maybe the quality of our connected life is only as good as the information we share.
At this point, social media and microblogging phenomena like Facebook and Twitter focus on short answers to such generic questions as, “What are you doing?”
We hear from network and cable television anchors who tell us what they’re having for lunch (often a quick sandwich in the company cafeteria because they are, well, really busy). Or from usually cynical White House journalists who can’t resist Tweeting which B-list celebrity they saw at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Here are a few actual Tweets from the so-called nerd prom:
"Just spend quality time with ricky schroeder #nerdprom".
"post #nerdprom sightings. demi/ashton, james franco, owen wilson, eric holder, mayor fente, d axelrod, christopher hitchens, dana delaney". (This one's fitting since Ashton Kutcher is the world's most followed Twitterer).
"Just got picture with Dule Hill."
Given the quality of the material, it's little wonder that a Nielsen study found that Twitter retained only 40 percent of its new members after a month of use. And that was after Oprah started sharing her 140-character thoughts. Before that it was 30 percent.
But could it be that this “me, me, me” quality of Facebook and Twitter is just an early evolutionary stage of something smarter and more useful? There are some encouraging signs -- and that's a good thing, because we're becoming ever more connected.
How connected are we?
Facebook has more than 200 million active users and more than 100 million log on at least once a day. More than 3.5 billion minutes a day are spent on Facebook and more than 20 million users update their statuses at least once a day.
A Nielsen survey found that American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages a month in the last quarter of 2008, an astonishing 80 messages a day. That's more than double the previous year's figures and works out to more than three messages an hour -- if they never sleep or go to class.
How connected are we going to be?
Delta Airlines reported that more than 300 of its aircraft will be equipped with wi-fi this year, enabling email users to stay connected -- or shackled -- to their accounts even seven miles above the earth. Other airlines are closely watching Delta's experience.
Media outlets and other institutions are finding ways to take advantage of this connectivity, moving beyond gossip and gab.
ProPublica recently introduced Change Tracker, an application that monitors government websites and sends out notices of changes as they are posted via a Twitter feed. Some of the changes are a bit obscure -- "Biography of Millard Fillmore [rare] changed on 5/27" -- but others track changes to the website following the spending of economic stimulus money.
The Vatican has added an iPhone app to reach out to young, connected people, according to Online Media Daily. Young people "are looking to a different media culture, and this is our effort to ensure that the Church is present in that communications culture," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican's Social Communications department.
At Reuters, we're using Reuters Messenger to build chat rooms in which our journalists can expand their conversation with the marketplace through informal, dynamic interactions with a group of engaged financial news clients on our terminals.
We're also using Twitter in some intriguing ways:
Specialist journalists use it to share articles and build up a following.
Online editorial staff and bloggers use Twitter to distribute news and solicit reader comment.
Journalists are using Twitter during live events like Davos (Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger used it to break news there earlier this year) and to solicit questions for newsmaker interviews.
There are huge implications for those of us in the news media as we try to reach an increasingly fragmented and distracted audience awash in information, some of it wanted and much of it not.
And journalists who work and live in the digital world (and that’s just about all of us now) will find that there is little or no difference between our professional and private personae in the wide-open world of social media. A visit to my Facebook page, for example, would reveal to my friends that I have a strong interest in horse racing; an affection for the New York Yankees (an obsession, my wife would argue); and take great pleasure in the words and music of Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Townes Van Zandt. What you won't find is an indication of my politics or religion.
Here at Reuters, we are developing guidelines for how our journalists interact with social media.
If Reuters journalists want to use Twitter or social media as part of their professional role they should seek the permission of their manager.
If Reuters journalists use Twitter professionally they should use the word "Reuters" in the name of their streams or somewhere else on the page.
The Trust Principles apply to Twitter and social media -- they should do nothing that compromises them.
Microblogging and use of social media tend to blur the distinction between professional and personal lives: When using Twitter or social media in a professional capacity our journalists should aim to be personable but not to include irrelevant material about their personal lives.
In an email to the editorial staff, Editor-in-Chief Schlesinger told Reuters journalists, "whether we like it or not, our online identities are inextricably linked with our workplace identities....Things we do online could very easily taint our journalistic activity. If one of us self-identifies as 'very liberal' politically, it may well be the truth, but would advertising it simply feed the myth that journalists in general have a liberal bias?"
"The easiest rule," Schlesinger cautioned, "is to stop, think and imagine: How would you feel and how would you react if someone made your Facebook page or blog or online comment a story? Could you defend your objectivity? Could Reuters defend having you on the beat you’re on? Could your reputation, and ours, survive someone making an issue of it?"
I'm sure neither Schlesinger nor I have had the last word on the relationship of journalism and social media, nor on whether we're all too connected. What we need to pay attention to is the quality of those connections.
What do you think about how journalists are and should be using social media and microblogging? Let us know here -- and don't feel like you have to keep your thoughts to 140 characters.
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
There’s nothing like a disease outbreak to highlight the value of the media in alerting and informing the public in the face of an emergency.
There’s also nothing like it to bring out some of our more excessive behavior, essentially shouting “Run for your lives! (but, whatever you do, stay tuned, keep reading the website and don't forget to buy the paper!).”
An outbreak of a form of influenza, which was known as swine flu before the World Health Organization changed the name, has killed scores in Mexico and infected others in the United States, Canada, Europe and New Zealand. It's already having an effect on markets and travel plans, in addition to the obvious impact on public health.
The impact on markets could become more significant in time, but the impact on the media was practically immediate.
Cable television programmers went into crisis mode and a look at newspaper front pages and website home pages around the world showed a range of responses, from the almost hysterical to the concerned and more measured.
In the New York Daily News: “SWINE FLU SPREADS!” (though it was played below a sports story on the New York Yankees losing to the Boston Red Sox).
In the New York Post: “HOG WILD!” (also playing second to the Yankees' humiliation, but illustrated with a pig sucking on a thermometer).
In The Japan Times (using a Reuters story): "Swine flu in Mexico sparks global panic"
In the South China Morning Post (which certainly has experience in covering bird flu and SARS): “Asia on high alert for swine flu as airports step up checks.”
In The Guardian: “Swine flu: call for global action as outbreak spreads.”
In the Toronto Sun: "CALM URGED AS FLU FEARS GROW."
Later Monday, after the European Union health commissioner advised Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico, The New York Times led its website with “Europe Warned on U.S. Travel,” with a deck reflecting transatlantic disagreement, “Flu Advisory Unwarranted, C.D.C. Says.”
The BBC website focused on the confirmation of flu cases in the UK, with extensive Q&A's on the origins of the disease and how it spreads and contributions from readers who were dealing with disease (some of them medical professionals in Mexico).
Big, bad-news stories can mean surges in audiences for media outlets and they certainly raise the adrenalin level of editors and reporters. They offer the temptation to go to excess, but they also offer the opportunity for us be of priceless service to our customers, clients and readers.
The question for me is how we in the media make sure we report accurately and informatively on the story and its impact on the markets and consumers’ lives without minimizing and without sensationalizing it.
"This is the type of story where our goal to stay factual and keep perspective is essential to uphold," says Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger. "Our role is neither to trivialize nor to hype or scaremonger, but to describe accurately what is happening and put its implications in context."
Reuters has focused a great deal of resources—rightly, given our customers and audience—on the implications for the markets and the impact on the global economic downturn.
On Monday afternoon, Reuters.com was leading with “Will global recovery catch the flu?” atop a package of stories on possible market scenarios, the EU travel warning and factboxes on health precautions and industries being affected. One story noted, not surprisingly, that travel and tourism stocks were in turmoil.
Reuters.com also featured a special coverage page with the latest news, accompanied by a sober presentation of "Swine Flu Facts." There's even an invitation to receive updates on Twitter. Call me a skeptic on Twitter, but 140 characters won't do much to add context to the story. Still, no one ever said Twitter was about context and at least you can follow developments, whether or not you're near a computer.
My Reuters colleagues—especially the ones working bravely and tirelessly in Mexico—are succeeding in upholding the goal of staying factual and keeping events in perspective. It's our mission to provide the information and insight our audience and customers need to make intelligent decisions about their investments and their lives. As shown by the World Health Organization's decision Monday to raise the pandemic alert to Level 4, and later to Level 5, there's plenty of drama to report without adding to it.
The flu story is still in its early stages and it remains to be seen if this becomes one of the biggest stories of our time. Whatever happens, it won't hurt us all to take a deep breath now.
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
Kidnapping isn't funny.
Neither are extortion, hijacking or murder threats.
So why have some in the media been laughing—or at least winking—at people who have been doing precisely that—the criminals who have been hijacking ships and crews off the Horn of Africa and holding them for ransom?
I think it has something to do with what we've chosen to call them: pirates.
Perhaps we in the media have all seen too many cartoonish films with Johnny Depp portraying the charming and engaging Jack Sparrow. Or maybe we remember an earlier era when Errol Flynn played a charming and engaging Geoffrey Thorpe who fights for commerce and his country (England) and the affections of a Spanish princess.
Maybe we need a break from the mostly grim coverage of the financial crisis and evaporating savings, continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a tide of gun violence and unrest around the world.
The day after the crew of the Maersk Alabama kept control of their ship after the attack by pirates who later held Capt. Richard Phillips, the front-page headline in the New York Post was: “Yo, Ho, D’oh.”
A Google News search over the past month shows 414 stories with references to “ahoy,” 150 to “avast,” 76 to “walk the plank,” 61 to “Davy Jones,” and 165 to varying spellings of “arrgh.”
The White House press corps was not immune. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote (sprinkling his piece with references to Davy Jones, walking the plank and scallywags), “ …the discussion of an American shipping captain’s successful rescue from pirates over the weekend brought the rare sensation of adventure on the high seas to the White House briefing room yesterday—and everybody seemed to enjoy the diversion.”
Maybe we do need the diversion, but this is deadly serious business and I wonder if we’re calling the Somali “pirates” something they aren’t.
At the risk of being accused of splitting hairs (oh, let’s split hairs!), dictionary definitions of “pirate” and “piracy” traditionally have much more to do with theft than kidnapping.
According to Merriam Webster online, “piracy” is defined as “1: an act of robbery on the high seas; also: an act resembling such robbery 2: robbery on the high seas 3a: the unauthorized use of another’s production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright b: the illicit accessing of broadcast signals.”
Putting aside the third definition (that’s another column), it seems that what the Somali “pirates” are doing is closer to extortion and kidnapping than robbery. They don’t want the grain in the holds of the Maersk Alabama and other famine relief ships headed to Kenya or even the vehicles on the decks of other seized ships. They don’t even want the ships. They want to exchange the ships and their cargoes for a ransom that is a very small percentage of what they are actually worth.
I know this isn’t the Council of Trent and I don’t hold out much hope of persuading my colleagues to call the “pirates” something else, like “kidnappers” or “extortionists” or “hijackers.” But I think we could turn down the “shiver me timbers” index considerably.
There are signs that the coverage of the kidnappings off the Horn of Africa are changing the ways some people think about "pirates."
In Grand Rapids, Mich., Amy Hekman, a childhood literacy coach, told the Grand Rapids Press that when she’s talking to her children about the incidents, “I’ve been conscious not to use the word ‘pirate.’ I tell them a ship was captured.”
And 10-year-old Jacob Peterson told the paper that he’s not sure he’ll want to reprise his pirate costume for Halloween, because, he said, the Somali “pirates” “seem mean.”
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
The global financial crisis may have drained the coffers of investors, businesses and nations, but it’s making our language a bit richer as we discover, revive, coin and develop words and phrases to help make sense of it all.
Some take hold quickly and spread far and wide. “Bailout,” naturally, was voted Word of the Year for 2008 by the American Dialect Society and by Merriam-Webster and was No. 2 on Time’s “Top 10 Buzzwords” (a list that also included “staycation,” a frugal vacation spent close to home). Interestingly—and predictively, as it turned out—the dialect society’s 2007 Word of the Year was “subprime.”
There is a blizzard of language that strives to describe—but sometimes obscures—the strange new financial world we’re in. Television shows, websites and talk radio have exhorted us to buy or sell, have faith or run for our lives, be calm and just trust CEOs or don't believe a word they say. It's enough to make you wonder if screenwriter William Goldman's famous assessment of Hollywood—"Nobody knows anything"—applies here.
We who make our livings in financial journalism have a responsibility to help show the way through the blizzard—to translate and explain, or at least not to make it any more confusing. To that end, here at Reuters News, we're updating our financial glossary. We want it to be a living document that changes as the world it describes changes. When we're finished with updates, we plan to open it up to our users as a wiki. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to comment on this blog.
I also want to invite all of you to post on this blog your own words and phrases that capture the essence of the financial situation or help you make sense of it. Or you might want to share words and phrases that you'd like to see disappear from the language because they confuse and obfuscate, rather than illuminate.
Some words describing phenomena and financial tools that are causes or effects of the global financial crisis have quickly come into common usage. For many people, definitions for these important terms are still less than clear. Among them:
Agflation: “Inflation driven predominantly by rising prices for agricultural products,” according to Word Spy. Reuters was quick to cover this phenomenon and we created a special coverage page, though the earliest use, according to Word Spy, was by the National Post in May 2007.
Collateralized Debt Obligation: “An asset-backed security which uses a portfolio of bonds or loans as collateral, or security. A sponsor uses the portfolio to set up a special purpose investment vehicle which issues securities or CDOs, sometimes with a higher credit rating than any of the individual underlying assets. There may be reduced transparency in assessing the underlying risks,” according to our financial glossary. That’s not exactly a “Finance for Dummies” explanation, but it's a complex term. Given what's happened in the last year, maybe no one really understood CDOs.
Leverage: Also known as "gearing," according to our glossary, leverage is the ratio of debt to equity. As we've learned painfully in the current crisis, companies with extremely leveraged positions—that is, those who have borrowed much, much more than they own—are left vulnerable to major market fluctuations.
Securitization: "The creation of asset backed securities. The assets to be securitised are sold to a special purpose vehicle (SPV), thus isolating the borrower from any claims for repayment. The SPV then issues bonds or other debt instruments which can be traded. The money raised by the issuance of the debt is used to pay the borrower for the assets. Mortgages can be securitised as can future royalties from a pop star's song portfolio," according to our glossary. Again, that's not exactly an elementary explanation of this important term. More simply, securitization is a process of pooling assets that produce revenue—like mortgages—slicing them up, and repackaging them as securities that are sold to investors. In the U.S., securitization of mortgages—some of them "subprime" loans taken out by home buyers who couldn't afford them and later defaulted—was a major contributor to the financial crisis.
Stagflation: This one pretty much means what it sounds like: “A state in which an economy experiences high inflation accompanied by stagnant economic activity, i.e. low growth and high unemployment,” according to our glossary. Still, for the uninitiated, it might not be quite so obvious without the definition. And we’ve used the word more than once in stories without defining it.
Other words or phrases that are decades or even centuries old that have risen to prominence during this crisis:
Clawback: "To get back (as money) by strenuous or forceful means (as taxation)," according to Merriam-Webster. This word, which the online dictionary dates to 1953, has been used a lot lately, typically in the context of recouping big bonuses from Wall Street high-fliers whose employers now need taxpayer-funded bailouts just to survive. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who's received plenty of financial support from Wall Street, said on NBC's Meet the Press earlier this month that the U.S. needs "really tough oversight" on limits to executive compensation. "I like clawbacks, for instance," the senator said.
Decremental: A gradual decrease in quality or quantity, according to Merriam-Webster. The online dictionary says this one has been around since 1610, but it’s certainly appropriate for a 21st century crisis (although “gradual” might not be entirely appropriate).
Ponzi Scheme: Sadly, with the arrest and guilty plea of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, this one is firmly back in common usage. “A fraudulent investment scheme that promises high returns which are derived from an inflow of new investors' funds rather than from sound investments. The scheme collapses when there are not enough new investors to pay the old investors. Also known as a Pyramid scheme,” according to our glossary. Generally, we’ve done a good job of clearly explaining what Ponzi schemes are. For instance, this piece about the increase in Ponzi schemes devotes its entire fourth paragraph to this clear definition: “Such schemes use money from new investors to pay distributions and redemptions to existing investors. They typically collapse when new funds dry up.”
There are also a number of tongue-in-cheek phrases that poke fun at the gloomy fiscal landscape.
Brickor Mortis: "A real estate market in which very few houses are being sold," according to Word Spy. This one saw a lot of use in the United Kingdom.
Jingle mail: "The practice of abandoning one's house and mailing the keys back to the creditor because the mortgage is worth more than the house itself," according to Word Spy.
Utility vs. casino: Expresses the divide between conventional and unconventional banking.
Other new words are pure invention. For instance, the Dialogic blog listed the winners of the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational contest, which “asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing only one letter, and supply a new definition.” I highly recommend the full list, and two or three of them seem appropriate for a new financial crisis vocabulary:
Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to begin with.
Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
And at the Double-Tongued Dictionary, we find a number of words and phrases that have made it into the language, if not the mainstream dictionaries. The Double-Tongued Dictionary is edited by Grant Barrett, who is a co-host of the U.S. public radio program “A Way With Words.”
Bad bank: Though it might sound like a scolding tut-tut given to irresponsible financial institutions, this term typically refers to the proposal for a giant, government-run bank that would buy toxic (or "bad") assets from existing banks, hopefully allowing them to return to financial health.
Econolypse: The situation we may or may not be in.
I kill you later: This catch phrase was described this way on Bloomberg.com: “Using derivatives contracts known as accumulators, the company wanted to minimize its currency exposure resulting from a A$1.6 billion (US$1.07 billion) investment in an iron ore mine in Australia. Three months later, the Aussie had lost almost 40 percent of its value against the greenback, and Citic Pacific’s losses from the accumulators—so notorious in Hong Kong that investors refer to them as “I kill you laters”—had soared.”
Jet-pooling: The mode of shared travel that's been popularly, and sometimes sarcastically, suggested to corporate CEOs who fly on expensive private jets to Washington D.C., where they then asked the U.S. Congress for emergency bailout funds.
Mini-Madoff: The nickname given to alleged Ponzi schemers whose suspected swindles—while not nearly as massive as Madoff's US$65 billion fraud—have also been exposed by the economic downturn. As Warren Buffett famously said, "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out."
Zombie company: Firms kept alive by banks even though they were insolvent.
We’ve only scratched the surface. I know readers of this website are more plugged into the financial world than many. So let us know the words and phrases that you’ve heard that have enriched the language, if not your brokerage accounts.
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
It’s Oscar time, and I’m again reminded of the debt Hollywood and journalists owe each other. Journalists supply Hollywood with great stories and Hollywood sometimes makes us look cool—or at least worth a couple of hours of time and the price of a ticket.
Put aside the fact that a number of Hollywood movies literally are made from the pages of journalism --“Saturday Night Fever,”“Dog Day Afternoon” and “Adaptation,” to name only a few, were all based on magazine stories. We journalists are also the very characters that Hollywood screenwriters sometimes love.
In addition to sometimes bringing out our cool factor—although, really, what aspiring reporter could resist Robert Redford’s corduroy suits in “All the President’s Men”? -- Hollywood movies can illuminate the kind of ethical, moral and values issues that journalists have to deal with.
This year’s slate of Oscar nominees again includes a movie with journalism as its subject. “Frost/Nixon,” the film adaptation of the Broadway play about British journalist David Frost’s pursuit of the ultimate interview with disgraced former U.S. President Richard Nixon, is nominated for five Oscars.
So here is a completely arbitrary list of my top dozen movies about journalism that have something to say about the way we do our jobs--ethical or unethical, selfish or selfless. Aside from that, about the only thing they have in common is that they all were at least nominated for Oscars. I'll also acknowledge that most of the films are U.S.-oriented, like the Oscars. So I want to especially encourage feedback and suggestions for films from all parts of the world. (A word of warning: There will be plot spoilers.)
The envelope, please.
12: “Roman Holiday” (1953)—A journalist decides that there are things worth more than getting the story-- love and happiness, for example. Gregory Peck plays a struggling American reporter for a celebrity-oriented magazine in Rome assigned to cover a princess (Audrey Hepburn) on a state visit. The princess wants a taste of “real” life and escapes her handlers and falls into the arms of Peck, who sees the liaison as a chance to get an exclusive story and escape his down-at-the-heels lifestyle. Naturally, they fall in love and the princess sees just how much fun the common people can have. But Peck decides the exclusive story isn’t worth ruining his subject’s happiness as the princess reluctantly returns to her duties. Extra points for a bearded Eddie Albert’s portrayal of crazed photographer.
11: "Reds" (1981)--A journalist crosses the line from covering his subject to becoming part of the story. Warren Beatty is radical American journalist John Reed, who already writes from a strong point of view. He becomes more involved in leftist party politics, journeys to Russia to cover the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and becomes a semi-official voice for the cause, all the while engaged in a tempestuous love affair with fellow journalist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). Extra points for Jack Nicholson's lecherous but poetic role as Eugene O'Neill.
10: “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982)—A journalist uses his relationships with a lover and colleagues to further his career before deciding that love really is more important. Mel Gibson is an Australian radio reporter sent to Indonesia in the 1960s as President Sukarno breaks with the West. Working with a dwarf photographer named Billy Kwan (a stunning Oscar turn by Linda Hunt), his career prospers and he falls in love with a British diplomat (Sigourney Weaver), who may or may not be using him. As he gets wind of a coup, he must decide between love and his career. Love wins.
9: "The Killing Fields" (1984)--A foreign correspondent learns he can't do his job without his courageous local colleagues and that life and friendship are more important than getting the story. Sam Waterston is New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, stationed in Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge take over. His colleague, Cambodian journalist Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) sends his family to the U.S. as the Khmer Rouge move in, but Pran stays behind to work with Schanberg and falls victim to the brutal Khmer Rouge. Schanberg is wracked with guilt and works to ensure that Pran also gets credit for the award-winning journalism. After they were reunited, Pran worked in New York for The Times as a photographer and died last year.
8: “Broadcast News” (1987)—A trio of sad television journalists battle over the authenticity of news and learn that style often trumps substance. William Hurt is a handsome but glib and shallow newsman who’s not above staging shots and faking tears. Albert Brooks is his neurotic, by-the-book rival whose ethics, passion and knowledge are no match for Hurt’s hollow charm. Both men are after the romantic and professional attention of Holly Hunter’s producer, whose journalistic skill and success are equalled only by her private, self-destructive depression. Will the authentic journalist and authentic love win out? Don’t count on it.
7: “Citizen Kane” (1941)—It had to be here, didn’t it? A newspaperman’s youthful idealism turns to power-mad self interest. Orson Welles’ magnificent film about the fictional Charles Foster Kane (now who might that be?) tracks the rise and fall of a journalist who got into the business to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted and dies a lonely, loveless tycoon. A great moment in the idealistic phase, as Kane talks about his creed: “…It is my duty, and I’ll let you in on a little secret, it is also my pleasure—to see to it that decent, hard-working people of this community aren’t robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because they haven’t anybody to look after their interests.”
6: “Frost/Nixon” (2008)—Journalists and politicians can’t live without each other and sometimes do the right things for the wrong reasons. In a gripping piece of drama and history, television journalist David Frost (Michael Sheen) seeks to save his career by landing an exclusive interview with former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Frost wants to get the scoop and make news by forcing the disgraced president to confess. Nixon wants a platform to clear his name -–and the $600,000 fee. The truth wins.
5: “The Insider” (1999)—Corporate self-interest clashes with public-service journalism—and people in the middle get hurt. Al Pacino plays an aggressive television producer who wants to tell the story of whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand’s (Russell Crowe) revelation that the tobacco industry not only knew their product was dangerous, but deliberately tried to increase its addictiveness. When Pacino’s corporate bosses become nervous, Crowe loses his job, his wife and almost everything but his self-respect. Extra points for Christopher Plummer’s complex portrayal of Mike Wallace.
4: “Ace in the Hole” (1951)—A journalist who will do anything—and I mean anything—to get the story and revive a career. Once called one of the most cynical movies ever made, this is certainly one of the most cynical portrayals of a journalist. Kirk Douglas is Chuck Tatum, a down-on-his-luck former big-city journalist who stumbles on a story of a man trapped in a cave in New Mexico. Tatum takes charge and prolongs the rescue effort to milk the story for all the headlines it will take to get him back to the big time. (“Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.”) All the while, Tatum is romancing the trapped man’s wife, a blowsy Jan Sterling (“I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.”).
3: “Network” (1976)—The line between news and entertainment blurs to invisibility. Released the same year as “All the President’s Men” (below), “Network” portrays journalists in a decidedly less positive way. Longtime network journalist and now ratings-challenged anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has an on-air breakdown after learning he will be fired and promises to kill himself on the air. His struggling network decides to encourage his implosion after Beale’s antics begin to catch on, billing him as the “Mad Prophet of the Air Waves.” Beale’s famous line is, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more,” but the more telling one is: “ But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell.”
2: “All the President’s Men” (1976)—Hard-working journalists put their reputations on the line in pursuit of public good. As earnest in its portrayal of journalists as its Oscar-rival “Network” was cynical, Alan Pakula’s film focuses on journalists as investigating, crusading watchdogs. A search of the script fails to turn up any references to “ethics”, “ethical” or “unethical,” but few films about journalists portray reporters—played memorably by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford—as more dedicated to not just getting the story, but getting it right. And I still get nervous in lonely parking garages.
1: “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005)—A tough choice for No. 1, but for me no film does a better of job of telling the story of journalists who act courageously and responsibly, fighting powerful corporate pressure to take on injustice. Perpetually wreathed in the tobacco smoke that killed him far too young, storied journalist Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and his producer Fred Friendly (George Clooney) challenge and eventually triumph over Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. And extra points for Frank Langella (“Frost/Nixon”) and his nuanced portrayal of CBS chief Bill Paley.
So what do you think? What are your favorite journalism movies? What would be on your list of films journalists should either pay attention to or ignore? And again, I'd especially like to see suggestions for films made outside the U.S. Let the fray begin.
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
