Brit journalists want to call us not “citizen journalists” but “citizen witnesses.” What a crock o’ crap that is. Anyone who performs an act of journalism is at that moment a journalist. Merely witnessing and not reporting is merely witnessing.
Tag: journalism
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Miller snips
Don’t miss Bob Garfield’s interview with Judith Miller on On The Media. He pushes her. She gets snippy and defensive. And you won’t believe her explanation of making a deal with Libby to call him a former Hill staffer instead of what he was: She said she made that deal only to hear what he had to say and that if she had used the information she got as a result, she would have gone back to him to negotiate different attribution…. which, of course, makes one wonder why she didn’t do the same with her more consequential deal for confidentiality. As usual, she won’t take responsibility for her role in leading to the war. And she now says she won’t believe what people in intelligence say — though, of course, that’s what she spent a career doing. Welcome to Judy’s mind. Don’t break any mirrors or you’ll have 85 days bad luck.
: Here‘s Arianna on Judy on Larry King.
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Is anger a job requirement for reporters?
Mary Mapes on WNYC this afternoon was asked about whether she had it in for George Bush. Her answer was that journalists always “have it in for” those in power. Is that so? Questioning power, yes. Challenging power. OK. Questioning power. Absolutely. But attacking? That moment was a journalist Rorshach test, for it uncovered a belief that is all too common in the craft: that it is the journalist’s job to oppose. It shouldn’t be the journalist’s job to oppose anymore than it is to praise. It is the journalist’s job to ask the powerful the questions we want asked, whether they want to answer or not. That is quite different from “having it in” for them.
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Some examples of hyperlocal journalism, please
A reporter I know is looking for some examples of hyperlocal jouralism by real folks, broadly defined. An example is a young blogger who put up a yearbook letter written by a principal and corrected its many grammatical errors, causing a kerfluffle in town. Please leave comments with any examples you know of — with URLs, if possible. Thanks.
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Bye now
So Judy Miller is out. Editorial page editor Gail Collins wouldn’t agree to an op-ed from her, only a letter. I hope the paper didn’t agree to limit what it can say.
Ms. Miller could not be reached for comment.
Lawyers for Ms. Miller and the paper negotiated a severance package, the details of which they would not disclose.
As transparent as an Iraqi sandstorm.
She put her letter up on her own site (see, I told you she’d end up blogging).
On July 6 I chose to go to jail to defend my right as a journalist to protect a confidential source, the same right that enables lawyers to grant confidentiality to their clients, clergy to their parishioners, and physicians and psychotherapists to their patients.
Except that we’re not doctors or priests, even if we try to act as if we are.
Though some colleagues disagreed with my decision to testify, for me to have stayed in jail after achieving my conditions would have seemed self-aggrandizing martyrdom or worse, a deliberate effort to obstruct the prosecutor’s inquiry into serious crimes.
To many, it seemed like just that anyway.
: We are still waiting to hear from the editorial page about l’affaire Miller.
: Huffington calls it “a great victory for the Times newsroom, the blogosphere, and journalism.”