The share factor: Should journalists voice personal opinions?
The share question is starring on the j-controversy stage once again after NPR dumped Lisa Simeone’s “World of Opera” after she became an Occupy Wall Street spokesperson.
The share question is starring on the j-controversy stage once again after NPR dumped Lisa Simeone’s “World of Opera” after she became an Occupy Wall Street spokesperson.
NPR spokesperson Dana Davis Rehm told the Associated Press it didn’t matter Simeone’s show was about the opera, not politics. “Our view is it’s a potential conflict of interest for any journalist or any individual who plays a public role on behalf of NPR to take an active part in a political movement or advocacy campaign,” she said. “Doing so has the potential to compromise our reputation as an organization that strives to be impartial and unbiased.”
Here’s what Simeone had to say:
I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen — the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly — on my own time in my own life,” Simeone wrote in an email response to questions from the Sun Wednesday night. I’m not an NPR employee. I’m a freelancer. NPR doesn’t pay me. I’m also not a news reporter. I don’t cover politics. I’ve never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I’ve done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I’ll do — insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?
The show’s producer, North Carolina-based WDAV, also believes Simeone didn’t violate her agreement with the station and will start syndicating the program on its own beginning Nov. 11.
The whole thing has journalists asking: Is it really that bad to have an opinion?
[node:ad]Reuters columnist Jack Shafer doesn’t think so. He recently held a live chat on the issue with Poynter, in which he said:
We're kidding ourselves and kidding our readers when we pretend that journalists have no opinions and no biases. My view is that journalists can't be objective, because as human beings we are all subjective. What we can do is employ an objective method in the reporting and writing of the news: To be fair, to be accurate, to be comprehensive. If a reporter pledges to do that, I have no problem with them having opinions. In fact, some of my favorite journalists work at opinion magazines–National Review, Nation, New Republic, Weekly Standards–and they're able to break stories because they're not shackled to an ideal of "objectivity."
And author David Weinberger recently wrote a blog post arguing transparency was the new objectivity:
Objectivity without transparency increasingly will look like arrogance. And then foolishness. Why should we trust what one person — with the best of intentions — insists is true when we instead could have a web of evidence, ideas, and argument? In short: Objectivity is a trust mechanism you rely on when your medium can’t do links. Now our medium can.
GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram has also weighed in, saying “It’s time we allowed journalists to be human beings, both online and off.”
Who’s got it right?
