Integrity: Three simple steps

One of my favorite books is “Integrity” by Yale law prof Stephen Carter. In it, he offers three steps to follow to lead a life of integrity:

1) Discern right from wrong. This is harder than it looks because so many of us make decisions without slowing down long enough to discern whether we’re acting within a consistent moral framework.

2) Struggle to live according to the sense of right and wrong you have discerned. This is tough because it could often be time-consuming or expensive. For instance, whenever I park in my downtown Atlanta parking garage, I get a discount because I’m a student. However, the garage asks that I park on one of the top three floors. I’m always tempted to park on a lower level because it’s more convenient. Can’t do that and live in accordance with this principle.

3) Be willing to say what we are doing and why we are doing it. This can be the toughest of all and will often point out that our moral foundation is shaky. (It plays on Kant’s publicity principle.) It’s one thing to take a moral stand, but quite another to so publicly. For instance, I once justified downloading music illegally because the record companies were charging too much per song. That’s a fine moral position — as long as I’ve slowed down and discerned it — but am I willing to tell the record companies that I’m stealing their music? In my case, I had neither discerned the position nor was I willing to announce it publicly.

You should buy the book. It’s a great read — he takes you on a series of ethical propositions and explores each one within this framework. Is it OK to exaggerate on a recommendation letter? Is it cheating for a baseball player to steal signs? Can a politician live in integrity and yet compromise on his principles?

Great questions, and Carter provides some great answers.

Iceland to become journalistic haven

Interesting idea:

On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.

Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?

“This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of expression,” Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it.

End of market-based journalism

Great essay from Michael Schudson on the future of journalism — he’s betting on low-profit and non-profit models:

Let me take as my model the online startups that already exist, from TalkingPointsMemo to ProPublica to MinnPost, VoiceofSanDiego, St. Louis Beacon, New Haven Independent, Rustwire, and many more. They are springing up, and growing, and providing effective journalism, including original reporting, and so providing effective models for the future.

Schudson offers six reasons why this model will work:

1) Low overhead: They do not have to invest in a printing press, in paper, or in delivery trucks …  The Internet levels the playing field and nearly eliminates the established newspaper’s competitive advantage.

2) Increased productivity: The productivity of an individual journalist is enormously increased by the Internet and the personal computer … If there had been no recession and if there had been no Craigslist, newspapers would still have cut hundred and likely thousands of jobs because they could have put only the same quality product with fewer people in the newsroom.

3) Information sharing: Online operations have taken on an ethic of sharing rather than an ethic of exclusivity. Sure they want credit for their stories … But they need and use other media to get the stories out. Voiceofsandiego editors appear regularly on commercial television and public radio in San Diego to disseminate their work. It’s advertising and public service all at once.

4) Wider access: The growing availability of relevant data that make first-class journalism more accessible than ever before… Examples: www.foreignlobbying.org (built by two non-profits) and www.OpenCongress.org (formed by conservative thinktank.) … Collaboration is not only in publishing news, then, but even in constructing the data sources that become the raw material that journalists from any news organization can work with.

5) Labor of love: New online operations remind us how important is the resource of obsessive, endless, gritty enthusiasm. Nobody said you have to get rich being a journalist.  … But many worthwhile pursuits endure without a so-called business model. Artists, musicians, dramatists have been doing it for centuries. And so have some journalists, those who set up their alternative weeklies in the sixties, those who worked for political magazines or started vegetarian newsletters or pieced together a living as free-lance foreign correspondents…

6) Non-market solutions: There are non-market ways to assure the survival of worthwhile practices that the marketplace itself can no longer protect… There is no business model for a string quartet, no balance sheet for poetry that doesn’t bleed red, no income streams that can support (the arts) without philanthropic donations. There is no market solution… As with culture and the arts – the universities have and should have a growing role in supporting journalism.

Excellent points. Schudson is one of my favorite academics, by the way. Excluding, of course, any academic on my facebook friends list.

Reviving the Golden Rule

This 10-minute talk from religious historian Karen Armstrong is really worth watching.

French philosopher Levy errantly quotes fake writer

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy quoted another French philosopher in his latest book. Unfortunately, the author he cited was a fictional character made up as a swipe against the ridiculousness of French intellectualism. Pardon me, while I resist the urge to engage in schadenfreude.

Reminds me of the Sokal affair.

Mrs. Freshley’s

Despite the clever moniker, I doubt these Dollar Tree brownies are really that fresh.

Too Close to Home

The New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem has a son who joined the Israeli Defense Forces. Should he be reassigned out of concern for potential bias in reporting? The paper’s ombudsman argues yes, while the paper’s editor vociferously disagrees. Good case study for journalism ethics. I agree with Keller. He points out that an ex-Marine is covering the war in Afghanistan. He may have a bias, but you wouldn’t know it from his reporting.

On another note, some people say that Public Editor Clark Hoyt too often carries water for his own newspaper. I think this column proves he’s not afraid to challenge the leadership of the New York Times.

Proofreading game

Check out this online proofreading game. May have to assign this to my journalism students…

The return of the partisan press

Fantastic article from Princeton prof Paul Star about the rise of Fox News and its effects on the political landscape. His verdict — maybe not so bad:

Not since the 19th century have presidents had to deal with partisan media of this kind, and even that comparison is imperfect. Today the media saturate everyday life far more fully than they did in early American history. Fox News, in particular, is in a league by itself. In the absence of clear national leadership in the Republican Party, Fox’s commentators (together with Rush Limbaugh) have effectively taken over that role themselves. Although they have their liberal counterparts on MSNBC, the situation is not exactly symmetrical, because MSNBC’s commentators do not have as strong a following and the network’s reporting is not as ideologically driven as Fox’s.

Of course, professional journalism, with its norms of detachment, hasn’t disappeared, though it’s in deep financial trouble. Leading newspapers, notably TheNew York Times, have a wider readership online and in print than they had before in print alone. Media-criticism blogs and Web sites from varied perspectives serve a policing function in the new world of public controversy. Partisan media are now firmly part of our national conversation, but countervailing forces—not just the political opposition and its supporters in the media, but professional journalists and other sources for authenticated facts—can keep partisanship from controlling that conversation. Although most American journalists assume that professionalism and partisanship are inherently incompatible, that is not necessarily so. Partisan media can, and in some countries do, observe professional standards in their presentation of the news. That is where civic groups and the scientific community, as well as media critics and others upholding those standards, should focus their pressure. Some commentators may be beyond embarrassment, but the news divisions of the partisan media are likely to be more sensitive to charges of unsubstantiated claims and loaded language. The yellow press of the 1890s looked equally immune from rebuke—and for a long time it was—but the growth of professional journalism in the 20th century did bring about a significant degree of restraint, even in the tabloids.

No one can put the old public back together again. Walter Cronkite’s death last July provoked nostalgia for a time when it seemed all Americans had someone they could trust, and that person was a journalist. But it’s not just Cronkite that’s gone; the world that made a Cronkite possible is dead. Now we have a fighting public sphere, which has some compensating virtues of its own. As in the early 19th century, a partisan press may be driving an increase in political involvement. After a long decline, voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 elections returned to levels America hadn’t seen in 40 years. Fox News and MSNBC stir up the emotions not just of their devoted viewers but of those who abhor them; liberals and conservatives alike may be more inclined to vote as a result. Democracy needs passion, and partisanship provides it. Journalism needs passion, too, though the passion should be for the truth. If we can encourage some adherence to professional standards in the world of partisan journalism, not via the government but by criticism and force of example, this republic of ours—thankfully no longer fragile—may yet flourish.

Read the whole thing — he offers a great history of the partisan press and describes the evolution of today’s fragmented media.

A partisan press doesn’t seem so bad to me. Critics have always complained that the “objective” model never really worked in the first place. So, perhaps we should just drop all pretenses — the New York Times covers stories from the left (the Public Editor already admitted it), the New York Post takes a rightward slant. Injustices perceived from both ideological camps would be uncovered, and everyone leaves satisfied.

Good advice for job hunters

From John Temple, who’s managing an online news start-up in Hawaii:

A gentle reminder: If you’re looking for a job, it’s a good idea to follow directions. A second reminder: Sending an online news service a resume that says your goal is to work at a metropolitan daily newspaper or something other than the job you’re applying for is probably not a good idea. Also, think about customizing your resume for each position. It makes people appear more serious if they seem to understand what we might be looking for. Generic doesn’t help somebody stand out.