Thank God For Newspapers (Really)

Recently I was reading up on Project MKULTRA. It always amazes me that this happened, in our country, and so recently. Sometimes I need to read about it to make sure it actually, indisputably happened and isn’t just a crazy conspiracy.

This time, though, I noticed this passage on the Wikipedia page:

In December 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by the U.S. Congress…

I started thinking about how this would go down today, or, say, next year, when there IS no New York Times (NB: this is not a prediction of the time-frame of the NYT‘s demise. Bear with me).

Who would report this? Blogs? And what? We’d BELIEVE them? Please. Some people would, some people wouldn’t. We’d reblog and Twitter. Crackpots would put forth compelling counterarguments, and government spin agents would obfuscate the thing until we couldn’t see our noses. Pundits would swear up and down that it was true (or not) and their sources absolutely confirmed it, all while barely caring about the truth, and simply kowtowing to whatever line their party happened to want to say on the subject, which, of course, also would have no bearing on reality. Every pundit’s opinion would be based on political calculation. And the public would know all of this and get totally bored and lose interest.

But in 1974, by and large, if the NYT uncovered and reported something like this, or the Pentagon Papers (a favorite of mine, owing to the participation of Alaskan political character Mike Gravel) people believed them. More or less.

Why did they believe this?

This, I think, is what makes papers such as the NYT worth saving. Not their massive journalism operations in other countries. But their editorial process, moral code, ethics and public accountability. They have an ombudsman. Clear, robust, ethical guidelines that are publicly reviewable. Regular reporting on their success at maintaining or failing to meet these guidelines. It’s policies regarding advertising and editorial are well spelled out.

I know, I know. “Ha. Right.” We’re all too familiar with the failings of major papers. The WaPo’s recent embarrassment around it’s paid “salons,” giving CEOs access to its journalists and Obama cabinet members is only notable because it came to light. And we’ve all had to endure one too many Jayson Blairs. And the bias of the Times has become a modern punchline. But bear with me.

What are anomalies with traditional news outlets are painfully routine with blogs. A major blog without some sort of conference, convention, or roundtable is a rare thing, while blog plagiarism is so rampant, we don’t even count the bizarre world of re-blogging, SEO hacks and spam blogs in the discussion (as any blogger with a Google Alert on their name can tell you). The thought of an independent ombudsman at the Huffington Post, Daily Beast or Daily Kos makes me LOL.

Sure. Blogs are helpful for bubbling up innuendo and rumors to be investigated – the Dan Rather Air National Guard scandal comes to mind, as doesTMZ’s first reporting of Michael Jackson’s death. I’m sure some blog somewhere posted information about this Cheney story before the Times did. But the fact that it’s the Times bringing it to the nation’s attention and not some blog only underscores my point.

Indeed, the Zeitgeist of citizen journalism is almost completely antithetically opposed to this sort of rigor. TechCrunch routinely makes hay with unsourced hearsay and changes its PR policies willy nilly. Gawker yells about Mediate’s relationship with a consultancy (potentially valid criticism but clearly no worse than its peers, just different) while it takes advercopy from HBO’s True Blood and pays its reporters for pageviews rather than something as fuzzy as “social good”. Alley Insider adds five lines of copy to an All Things D story and posts it.

To be clear, I’m an ad man and I think most of the complaints around blogs ethical lapses – especially those involving advertising or revenue-generating activity – malarky. I recently read a comment by one Peter Feld on Gawker’s own post on the Blood Copy brouhaha that made me clap out loud:

I think online is a little different than print. In print, “church” and “state” (but, which is which? ha ha) are supposed to be strictly separate, but I think online needs different rules because it’s more interactive and the business model isn’t all worked out yet. Church and state shouldn’t go to bed together, but they should be allowed to dress up in vampire suits and grope in the dark a little bit.

Journalism’s gotta make some money, so I’m giving blogs and their new ways of interacting with advertisers a pass for a few years. But I do think it’s worth remembering why we innately trust traditional journalistic outlets, whether on paper or on screen. It took what? A hundred years for papers to get their ethical issues worked out? Blogs will do it faster, but they’re nowhere near it yet. For now, we readers should stay wary, and blogs should be aware of the impact of their business model on their ethics. One TMZ scoop does not a revolution make. And in the meantime, forgive us for waiting for the LA Times to confirm your scoop.

It’s easy to pretend that things like MKULTRA are a thing of the past. But of course, most of us know better. This weekend reinforced that as I came across this utterly terrifying article in the Times about Cheney ordering the CIA to keep secret counterintelligence programs hidden from congress. This shit still goes on, and the media properties we’re building for the future are clearly not equipped to handle it.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.