Hired Guns, Part 7

I’m not a journalist, so to help my understanding of the implications of l'affaire Towle; I contacted the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) to get an expert’s take on the matter.

Towle is the credentialed political reporter who has taken cash from the Republican Party for consulting and, more recently, from state senate Democrats for opposition research.  This post is the seventh part of a series [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6] on the subject.

Responding to my SPJ request was Fred Brown, a former political reporter for the Denver Post (he still writes columns for the paper), a past president of the SPJ, and currently Vice Chair of the SPJ’s ethics committee.

I sent to Mr. Brown links to three accounts of the Towle story, all written by professional journalists (Politics in Minnesota, Citypages, Star Tribune).

Here is Brown’s reply, 

This [situation] reflects the continuing controversy over who can legitimately be called a journalist.  Towle, it seems to me, is more of a political activist; his writing is not up to high journalistic standards, and he has definite points of view.  

Some will argue that this is where all journalism is headed- if you want to be noticed, you have to take sides and increase your appeal to people who agree with you.  This same line of thinking asserts that, as long as you're transparent in disclosing your allegiances and associations, you needn't worry about conflicts of interest. 

I strongly disagree.  I think real journalists should strive to be fair and impartial surrogates for the public.  If journalists are granted certain privileges to help them in their important role of reporting facts to the public--such as access to the floor of a legislative chamber during debates--then the granters of those privileges should be very conservative in their definition of who qualifies.

(Let me say as an aside, here, that shield laws, press plates and other favors granted to journalists make me uneasy.  That doesn't mean I've never taken advantage--I had floor access to the legislative chambers for virtually all of my career at The Denver Post, and well into retirement.  But I finally weaned myself from press parking on the Capitol circle.) 

I think it was a mistake for Minnesota's legislative authorities to expand credentialing to partisan organizations, including partisan bloggers.  We've had similar battles lately at the Colorado Capitol, with the Capitol press association--something new since after I left--recommending against granting floor privileges to online journalists whose organization had financial support from a partisan organization. 

In this case, it appears Towle failed the transparency test--"If you disclose it, it's OK"--until he was called out on it.  And it doesn't make any difference that he was working both sides of the aisle; an ethical journalist who hopes to establish a reputation for credibility simply should not take sides on an issue--or an event or deliberative body--that he or she is covering. 

Fred Brown

Vice chair, SPJ Ethics Committee 

As a non-journalist, I probably see more shades of gray than Mr. Brown does, but he raises some excellent points.  If Towle did end up on the wrong side of the line, what does that say about the officials at the political parties that put him there?