Prompted by the anniversary stories of Lehman Brothers failing and the run up to the global financial collapse, Dan Gillmor offers a list of new rules for journalism. Gillmor’s list appears in two parts on his own weblog, Mediactive (here and here), and I hesitated to link to the Guardian‘s compilation—because it diminishes the information authority of Gillmor’s original work; in the best of all possible worlds, the Guardian would have linked to Gillmor’s originals. Someday maybe we’ll get this information authority thing right (perhaps it should be the 23rd new rule: We will link to the authoritative source in all cases possible).
Having immense respect for Gillmor, I have a few nits to pick with his new rules.
Gillmor’s idea of an opt-in service controlled by the publisher to push notices of journalistic errors out to readers is severely flawed. Corrections should be fully and transparently embraced by all publications. Corrections should be given the same weight and prominence as the error they rectify. And I shouldn’t even have to write this, but yes, the correction should actually rectify the error. Completely. I really like the practice of using the delete tag in online publications. It makes for harder reading but the added value of precise context is a fair trade off. Any context at all is lost under Gillmor’s scenario.
Gillmor writes, “We would not run anniversary stories and commentary except in the rarest of circumstances.” It’s not really clear if Gillmor is suggesting that commentary doesn’t have a place in journalism, or that commentary about anniversary stories is not journalism. If the latter, no problem; if the former, I disagree. Commentary absolutely has a place in journalism so long as biases and conflicts of interest are clearly and transparently disclosed. Some of the most outstanding journalism in our collective history has actually been commentary.
The most important of Gillmor’s rules is “We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence.” As we begin to reform journalism for the 21st century, please, let this be the first thing we get right. Second up, and closely tied to this, would be Gillmor’s rule of dropping unnamed sources. Anonymity should be granted only rarely and then used only with a disclaimer. If an unnamed source lies, he or she will be exposed.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.