NY Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse had quite the little diva moment, threatening to walk off a panel at the journalism education convention in Washington if it were broadcast by C-SPAN.
C-SPAN was shocked by this, as am I. Terence Murphy, VP of programming at C-SPAN, wrote in a letter of protest: “But the larger concern is why AEJMC organizers allowed Ms. Greenhouse’s view to prevail. If professors of journalism and working journalists taking part in a journalism education conference don’t stand up for open media access to public policy discussions, who will?”
Greenhouse is a journalist who should be open and transparent and, in fact, should be urging the court she covers to be more open. I want C-SPAN in there broadcasting their work on our behalf.
Besides, it’s foolish to think that anything you do at such events as these can be — let alone should — be private. As the CJR story points out, the room had working reporters in it. It also had bloggers in it. It could have had vloggers in it.
We in journalism want to throw light on the powerful. We should not shy away from that light ourselves.
