Journalists who allow quote approval become complicit in political spin
It’s shocking enough for The New York Times to report that it and other news organizations are now giving the White House and campaign sources from both parties quote approval – the ability to clean up, tighten up, tone down, rethink, and kill the embarrassing (and perhaps candid) bits from what they end up saying in print.
It’s worse that we’re learning of this only now, long after granting quote approval has clearly become standard operating procedure in what we used to call political journalism – but what a Mother Jones tweet relabeled stenography (or I’d say flackery).
This is not how I was brought up in journalism. I was taught never to give sources or subjects approval – or any detailed foreknowledge – of what we were to publish. To do so would have been a gross violation of professional ethics.
When I arrived at People magazine 30 years ago (and you may feel free to insert your own punchline here about that being the moment I left journalism … or about my age), I was shocked that the magazine gave photo approval and sometimes even reporter approval to the stars. But back then, even People refused demands for quote approval, even from the press agents for celebrities who had little to say anyway.
Now journalists give quote approval to the White House. Now politicians and their agents demand it and journalists cave. Quietly. Shamefully.
I realize there could be an argument in favor of checking quotes with sources: accuracy. But the modern technology of sound recording pretty much handles that. I have also witnessed the fact-checking regime in magazines, both as a writer and a source, and recognize that it provides an opportunity to try to backtrack on what has been said (though the good reporter will have a recording or good notes and a good reputation to fend off a source’s second thoughts). I’ve also been the beneficiary of the public radio show On the Media’s practice of editing out an interviewee’s verbal ticks and pauses, and I’m, um, well, y’know, like … grateful for that. It’s the substance that matters.
It’s also true that quote approval is given in other nations. I was gobsmacked the first time a German reporter offered to read back my quotes before publication. I later found it’s common practice there (but then, so is accepting journalist discounts for various goods and services).
The Times points to the wrenching choice journalists apparently face, having been quite rightly hammered for publishing quotes from anonymous sources. So isn’t taking doctored quotes from named sources the lesser of evil choices? No, it’s not.
When journalists give sources the opportunity to fix up what they’ve said, we become complicit in their spin. When we do so without revealing the practice, we become conspirators in a lie to the people we are supposed to serve: the public.
Besides, this is the age of 24-hour news and millisecond-reflex Twitter, when at the moment of an inane utterance, reaction is immediate. Some gaffes are just that – stupid mistakes, revealing little, and it’s our fault when we in media obsess on them or allow political opponents to do so. But some gaffes are not gaffes at all but revelations or attempts at spin that deserve to be exposed and not erased – witness campaign adviser Ed Gillespie’s attempt to argue on CNN Sunday that Mitt Romney had “retroactively retired” from Bain Capital. (I jumped on to Twitter immediately and gleefully with a #retroactiveromney hashtag.)
If TV, radio, and online become the media of spontaneity, without the option of retroactively rechoreographing a misstep, then what does that make printed news with its quotes now sanitized for sources’ protection? Propaganda?
In the end, I’m glad the Times has finally fessed up on behalf of my profession and revealed this sin of omission. I hope and assume the article is a tactic in winning back our publishing prerogative and pride.
Indeed, the Times article came on the very day that the paper appointed a new public editor (read: ombudsman), Margaret Sullivan, who served as editor of the Buffalo News for 12 years and worked there for 32. The Times had also considered some more digitally oriented candidates (including Dan Gillmor, who, true to transparent form, blogged his suggestions to the paper). I’ll hope it’s a good sign that there’s a traditional editor in the role who might just insist on returning to the long-held tradition of never giving sources quote approval.
What do you REALLY think? 