News Business, Help Thyself
Reviewed by Stuart H. Loory Posted Wed, Oct 10 2007
In the previous issue of Global Journalist, I wrote that we have always been concerned in the news business with ethical issues as fakery, plagiarism or conflicts of interest. But there are many other practices that have been treated more as practical matters rather than ethical deviances.
Matters of special privilege for journalists – such as using special license car plates to avoid parking tickets, taking Christmas gifts from sources, traveling at government expense, accepting a free meal, mounting a campaign to help a beleaguered colleague or petitioning the government for greater access to officials – were not discussed. Datelining a story was arbitrary as was taking information from a wire service or competing news organizations.
Those were different times for journalists. More importantly, discussing how to deal with the safety of journalists was unnecessary. In most countries with a strong news business, journalists were not viewed as actors on the world stage. They were spectators – respected and protected spectators at that.
The danger to journalists these days – from kidnapping to murder – has raised a new set of practical problems that have ethical components.
As Jay Bushinsky, the dean of international correspondents in Israel, reports elsewhere in this issue, members of the Foreign Press Association in Israel gathered at Checkpoint Ezra on the Gaza Strip – Israel dividing line to protest the kidnapping in Gaza of Alan Johnston, a BBC correspondent, by a little known Gazan terrorist group.
The demonstrators brought placards and banners; they shouted slogans and listened to speeches by a BBC executive and an FPA officer. They did it all for the benefit of television cameras covering the story. The publicity for their cause – Free Alan Johnston – was important. The tactic had some effect. Johnston was released soon after the protest.
In the Dominican Republic, at about the same time, the Inter American Press Association met with supreme court justices from most of the Latin American countries. They discussed what could be done to bring the murderers of journalists to justice and, in that way, to destroy a threat to effective reporting.
IAPA has done much in recent years to create understanding between the judiciary and law enforcement officials on one side and the news business on the other. That kind of activity was unknown in the past. In fact, such cooperation was effective only in countries where the press was controlled by authorities, and such meetings were held to give journalists their marching orders to protect authority.There are, of course, problems with this kind of cooperation. If journalists in a news organization think authorities are helping them solve the capture or murder of a correspondent, will they show reluctance in following up on stories that may be critical of the government involved? That is a strong possibility. It is also possible that the authorities could use the news organization to do their bidding.
The IAPA meeting had no discussion of what journalists could do on their own to investigate the killings of their colleagues. Investigative reporters excel in many countries in exposing corruption, wrongdoing, murder, oppression and theft. They have made little progress in tracking down and exposing the slayers of their own. It is not too much to ask that they devote more effort here.
In Russia, three reporters of the Moscow independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, have been murdered in the past six years. One of them was Anya Politkovskaya. In August, the Russian prosecutor announced charges against 10 men – Chechen hit men, Russian police and investigators, and a member of the FSB, the foreign intelligence service that is the successor to the KGB. The prosecutor said these men were directed by Russian political opponents living abroad with the intent of embarrassing the Putin regime.
Before the ink was dry on the arrest stories, two of the men, police officers, had been released, and there were some questions about whether they had been arrested in connection with the Politkovskaya murder in the first place.
Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novoya Gazeta, has been conducting its own investigation, and its editors say they hope to have a more conclusive result sometime soon. If the newspaper comes up with a credible list of suspects, it will contradict the policies of news organizations in most countries that believe in letting the duly constituted authorities carry out the investigations. As the Alan Johnston case shows, pressure by news organizations is not counterproductive, and it is not unethical. The news business can apply its talents to fighting for its own rights. And it should.
Stuart H. Loory
Stuart H. Loory, an international journalist, is Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism and editor of Global Journalist. Loory worked for TBS/CNN from October 1980 to March 1997 as CNN vice president and Washington managing editor, Moscow correspondent, and executive producer, among other positions. Before joining TBS/CNN, Loory spent 28 years in the newspaper business. Among his positions were Moscow bureau chief for the New York Herald Tribune and White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times during the last years of Lyndon Johnson and the first two of Richard Nixon. He was a member of the Nixon enemies list. He was later managing editor of the Chicago Sun Times where he supervised several award-winning investigative reporting series.