24 June 2008
Blurry Line Separates Politics, Journalism
“Revolving door” spins experienced politicos between professions
Washington -- Can people formerly involved in politics and government be objective journalists? Is it appropriate for journalists to enter the political realm? Respected professionals give America.gov a qualified “yes,” but say a wall needs to be maintained when professionals move to different sides of the podium.
Former State Department official Hodding Carter III says the “so-called revolving door” between government/politics and the news media is as old as the United States, founded in 1776.
“The debate is much more recent, in large part because journalism finally evolved a code of ethics in the 20th century and made tentative stabs toward professionalizing its ranks,” said Carter, a former newspaperman who is now professor of leadership and public policy at the University of North Carolina.
Whether the revolving door is a “good or a bad thing depends on the individual,” said Carter. “Some of the people with the greatest integrity,” said Carter, such as the late NBC newsman Tim Russert, “were once happily employed in politics and then were happily employed in the media.”
Carter, the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for public affairs in the 1970s under President Jimmy Carter (no relation), also cited former U.S. Information Agency Director Edward R. Murrow as working as a newsman for CBS and then for the government, and former White House aide and Republican strategist Karl Rove, who is now a commentator for Fox News and also a contributor to Newsweek magazine and the Wall Street Journal.
Carter said that “I found government work to have been invaluable to my later journalism and an eye-opener for someone who had spent 17 years as a reporter and editor” before his four-year stint began at the State Department.
POLITICIANS BRING INSIDE KNOWLEDGE TO JOURNALISM
Richard Wald, a journalism professor at Columbia University in New York, said one positive about politicians becoming journalists is that they “bring with them a fund of knowledge and details of the actual [political] process that most reporters never get.”
On the negative side, he said, former politicians bring with them the “prejudices of the administrations they served, skewing -- consciously or unconsciously -- the information knowledge that they have.”
Therefore, Wald added, the news organizations that former politicians “wind up serving ought to be clear with their audiences/readers” about their “previous allegiances.” That means, he said, “not only an announcement” by the new hires about their former work in politics, “but occasional reminders along the way,” which in most cases, Wald said, could be announced for as long as a year.
Wald said that on the whole, “it is a good thing that people move from politics to journalism, and vice versa.”
The real problem, he said, is the “reversal of the process.” When a journalist leaves that profession to return to politics, it “raises the suspicion” that the journalist never was “disinterested but was, in fact, in the service of an ideology. It casts a retrospective shade over what the person did as a journalist” and his or her real intentions.
One example of a journalist switching to politics is former print and television newswoman Linda Douglass, who in May joined the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.
Another is Tony Snow, who went from being a talk show host on Fox News to White House press secretary for President Bush, and now is a commentator for CNN.
AIMS OF POLITICS, JOURNALISM DIFFER
Tom Rosenstiel, director for the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, said the potential advantage of having people go from politics and government into journalism is that they understand the workings of government and how “politicians talk and think.”
But the potential risk, Rosenstiel said, is that journalism and politics/government have different aims. Politics is about “effecting outcomes, pushing certain policies over others and having a political ideology or view that you want to advance” in government, he said.
In contrast, said Rosenstiel, journalism … comes from a tradition that no one side has the answers. The goal of journalism is to get people to consider events and issues, and to promote public discussion -- not particular outcomes.”
Rosenstiel said individuals going from government into the media have to “prove that they have shed old allegiances and taken on the disciplines of their new profession.”
TIM RUSSERT A MODEL FOR POLITICAL JOURNALISTS
Alex Jones, a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on the press and public policy, said the “right kind of political types” --- such as Tim Russert -- demonstrated “that being grounded in politics is great preparation for a political reporter.”
Russert worked for several New York politicians -- the late U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan and former Governor Mario Cuomo -- before becoming a role model for television journalists. (See “Famed political journalist Tim Russert dies.”)
Former political types have to “bend over backwards not to seem biased, which may interfere with doing an aggressive job” in journalism “when it is called for,” said Jones, who won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for specialized reporting while working at the New York Times.
Jones said when applicable, every journalist’s biography should list their previous active role in politics on their news organization’s Web site.
For additional information, see “Edward R. Murrow, Journalism at its Best.”
