Sitting next to British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he attacked the feral beast nature of the media in a speech at Reuters headquarters on Tuesday, I had mixed emotions.
I knew it was a great story a politician who has been a master of managing press relations criticising the institution that has been a key player in his rule but I also felt uncomfortable, weighing up the points he made.
The lines have been blurring in the media between fact and comment and between public lives and private lives. Sometimes those lines blur for the right reasons: questions of character definitely reflect on fitness to rule; facts without context are useless. But sometimes the media crosses over and politicians and the public are right to call us on it.
I love my profession, and am usually hugely proud of it: when we expose a story that otherwise would remain hidden; when we exhibit huge bravery covering war or disaster; when we bring expertise to explaining an important but complex issue.
I sometimes wince at what my profession gets up to, however: when we fall slave to the cult of personality journalism, when we pander to the lowest common denominator of taste, when we are voyeurs instead of guides, when we just plain miss the story.
Ultimately, though, I think the answer does not lie in regulation or legal structures to try to paint lines brighter
Within an organization like Reuters, I think our tradition of unbiased fact-based reporting serves us well. When we push the boundaries, when we experiment with new forms, when we move our journalism up the chain of value to make it ever more useful to our customers, the key is to label clearly what is fact and was is not, to be crystal clear about the source of our facts, and to hold true to the best traditions of our craft.
The final arbiters remain our readers, our clients and our customers thats true of any media organization.
I have the greatest faith in the marketplace of ideas. That marketplace will create the winners and losers.
Sometimes, of course, pure entertainment will win the show of point/counterpoint and the sniggering, prying exposure of celebrity satisfies some human need.
But if you believe, as I do, that real, honest, insightful reporting truly powers the decisions of this world and is necessary for the working of business, government and life then ultimately that kind of reporting, properly done and presented, will win and be given its proper value.
David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief
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Sounds good on paper, David, and believe me when I say I have the utmost respect for Reuters: when new happens, Reuters is almost always there, first on the scene. However, what does it mean when one says that the final arbiters are readers, clients and customers? Is it not equally true to say that readers are not just final arbiters but the primary drivers of the news? Take, for example, quality British newspapers such as the Guardian/Observer, Times/Sunday Times, Independent/Independent on Sunday, Daily Telegraph, The Economist, etc. Do not these papers in some way tend to pander to what their readers expect of them? I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if the Telegraph suddenly came out in support of Labour at the next election, or the Guardian the Conservatives? One might argue that this political bias only manifests itself at the editorial level, as opposed to the reporting of hard news, but surely this kind of slant creeps into the process of everday reporting as well, in terms of the choice, slant and texture of particular stories.
- Posted by Gerald GrahamDont you have luxury of a different revenue model to mainstream media David - ie not dependent on Ad revenues? Paraphrasing ES Turner, the Adv/Media model exists not to inform, but to sell product. Doesnt most Western media largely remain financially viable to titillate sated and sedated audiences (on behalf of its Advertising paymasters).
- Posted by gerryWhat a shame that Tony Blair picked the same week as OJ Simpson (and Paris Hilton, for that matter) to lecture “the media” about its priorities. Dan Rather is now sounding almost sage-like as he decries the “dumbing down” and “tarting up” of his old network’s evening news broadcast — but no less a sore loser.
The truth of the matter is that reporters and publishers these days are more restrained and more inclined to let facts get in the way of a good story than they were even a few generations ago. The age of so-called yellow journalism was replete with slash and burn and outrightlies and pandering, with no transparency or empowered crowd to see right through it all.
We have short memories. We are led to believe the Internet has whipped a malleable public into lowering their standards of what is news when, in my mother’s day, there were dozens of cheap, cheesy rag mags “covering” Hollywood starlets. We are told by politicians who made decisions that cannot be defended outside of a long-evaporated context (which may never have even existed) that some of the reporting about them has been uncalled for.
Complaining is seldom a character-burnishing attribute when it comes from a member of the power elite. It doesn’t look earnest, just weak. When Edward R. Murrow complained This might just do nobody any good he was keeping his criticism in school. Blair would have been wise to use this salutary to look within himself rather than at the indignities, real and imagined, he has endured.
PS: David, now that you have been up close and personal with both The Queen and Tony Blair I hope a “tell-all” book is in the works
- Posted by John C Abell