Ethics disaster waiting to happen

More on the photo-fraud scandal at Reuters, which critics say is the end result of cost-cutting at that news organization:

...COVERAGE of foreign news, always an expensive proposition, has suffered worse than almost any other category of coverage. Recently, for example, the Baltimore Sun — which like The Times is owned by the Tribune Co. — was forced to close the last of the foreign bureaus it had maintained since 1887. Baltimore readers still will get coverage provided by this paper and the Chicago Tribune, but with each such reduction American journalism loses more of the redundancy that helps keep it honest and the multiplicity of perspectives that helps keep it fair. Worse, all this occurs at a historical moment in which responsible citizenship requires a wider and more sophisticated grasp of foreign news than ever before.

And, as less and less money is spent on original foreign reporting and photojournalism from abroad, the reliance on international news agencies for both words and images becomes greater and greater ...

...The truth is that "consolidation" and cutbacks are creating similar hazards throughout the English-speaking world's journalistic network.

In a recent article in Britain's Financial Times, Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Leo Wolinsky said, "There is only a relative handful of papers that still have big ambitions for themselves."

Comments

[Walter]

Pay more so newspapers won't be unethical? Not sure that flies.

[Ryan]

Thanks for the info, Jay!

[Jay Furst]

Ryan: We don't rotate beats in any systematic way...we're always looking at how we're organized, whether the existing beats really get the news or match the talents of the reporter, and we'll make changes along those lines, but not simply to stir the pot. That doesn't make sense to me.
Regarding the experience level of people we hire for reporting jobs, we typically hire people with at least a few years (and often several years) of daily newspaper experience.

[Ryan]

So your comment is...that it doesn't matter if news organizations spend money or not, they're just inevitably inept?

Not so much inept as corrupt *ducks*. But, there's ineptitude as well, don't get me wrong; ineptitude is practically built-in to the way many news organizations operate*.

I'd rather see big media companies spend the money, invest in international reporting and try to get at the truth.

And not reporting atrocities in the interest of keeping a bureau open in a hostile environment is getting at the truth?

Be honest, Jay. Let's say Reuters had enough money on hand to buy the world. Do you really think this photojournalism scandal wouldn't have happened then? If you believe that, I have a couple of bridges and some ocean front property in Iowa I'd like to sell you.

I mean, my God, how much money do you need to be able to see that Lebanon image you posted below was doctored? It looks like it was done in MS Paint, for crying out loud.

* Maybe you can shed some light on the interworkings of the P-B here. In my j-school classes, it was taught that many news organizations rotate their beat reporting. Meaning that, say, the court reporter would be rotated to the business beat when it was felt they were becoming too familiar and "inside" their beat (this being done to limit bias and ensure objectivity, or some such nonsense). This always struck me as rather dumb, because rotating beats, to me, seemed to absolutely ensure ineptitude. Additionally--at least in the newspaper biz--news organizations seem to rely heavily on graduates fresh into the market which, again, could you find more ineptitude than recent graduates (of which I was one, so this is a dig at me, as well; I was inept as hell)? Again, I have limited exposure to the interworkings of the P-B, but I'd love to know your policy on beat reporting.

[Jay Furst]

So your comment is...that it doesn't matter if news organizations spend money or not, they're just inevitably inept?

I'd rather see big media companies spend the money, invest in international reporting and try to get at the truth.

[Ryan]

but with each such reduction American journalism loses more of the redundancy that helps keep it honest and the multiplicity of perspectives that helps keep it fair

Right. Like the CNN bureau that kept its Baghdad offices open under Saddam but refused to report some atrocities in order to keep those offices open. Such honesty. Such multiplicity of perspective (whatever the heck that nonsense means). Such fairness.

So, now let me get this straight: the present-day journalistic scandals are due to cost-cutting? Wow. Imagine the lapses in journalistic integrity when times were good and there was actual money to be made by being dishonest. Oh, wait, I already covered that up above.