"3. Transparency would be a core element of our journalism. One example of many: every print article would have an accompanying box called 'Things We Don't Know,' a list of questions our journalists couldn't answer in their reporting. TV and radio stories would mention the key unknowns. Whatever the medium, the organisation's website would include an invitation to the audience to help fill in the holes, which exist in every story."
That's a very good idea. As a former reporter myself, I have to say that this is what many conscientious reporters wish they could report, if only the editors would get over the idea of pretending to be omniscient. And as a reader of journalism, I think I would like this invitation to be engaged in each story, raising questions about implicit unanswered questions and answering questions that were explicitly identified as unanswered.
It's an interesting list, but I do have a problem with:
"7. We would replace PR-speak and certain Orwellian words and expressions with more neutral, precise language. If someone we interview misused language, we would paraphrase instead of using direct quotations."
This encourages the possibility of the reporter introducing their own biases. Would someone who is against abortion consider "pro choice" as a misuse of language and replace it with "pro abortion"? Would someone who supports legalized abortion replace "pro life" with "anti abortion rights".
I think it would be far better to keep the speaker's quotation as is, and explain separately (in a side bar for instance) why the words used may be misleading.
This encourages the possibility of the reporter introducing their own biases.
Whether they know it or no, reporters already introduce their own biases into the text. Of all the utterances of the interviewee, they choose which parts to quote and which to ignore. De Saussure said that not even a photograph is objective for it represents reality from the preferred angle and from the point of view of the photographer.
Journalism is best when it's used as a weapon against both political sides, it's job is to be in the middle telling the average person these peoples lies.
Pro-lifers are anti-abortion rights, but they don't want people associating them with anti-rights because it's considered anti-American, they'll be seen as un-American as terrorists. When a country has free speech enshrouded in its national constitution, anti-rights is unpatriotic, but pro-life is seen as patriotic.
These games are already played, I see no problem with journalists playing them right back against the people trying to subvert media coverage for their own means.
Journalism is best when it's used as a weapon against both political sides
It would then be convenient for someone to manufacture two opposing puppet causes and run the public through a tight course of fake debate and spectacle, while real issues are left ignored. You can already see how front-page news have very little effect on people's lives; death of a celebrity, or a lucky pet being found at last, etc.
News is dead because news is a commercial product, made, packaged and sold by the owners of the medium. And with its death, government will loose its biggest proponent. For the longest time, the papers and broadcast mediums "of record" have been manufacturing "national unity" and marching people behind the state; it's thanks to broadcast and print news that most nations of this world have created their sense of identity. Once this is gone, people will seek their ideological own and fellow like-minded people across geopolitical boundaries, and the taxing state will have to justify its continued funding a little harder.
People have been arguing this for quite a while: I just read and posted about James Fallows' _Breaking the News_, (see http://jseliger.com/2009/10/04/breaking-the-news/ ), which was published in 1996 and yet still feels equally relevant today. Most of Gillmor's suggestions could have been derived from that book, which leads one to the question: why haven't things changed?
I am so sick of Dan Gillmor. He was a former working hack who knew the web pretty well. He tried out his ideas in a startup which crashed and burned (Bayosphere), but that wasn't enough to convince the world that he's not the future of journalism. So now he sits in an ivory tower, eating brie paid for with foundation money, and tells the world how journalism should be. Please, please someone make him stop.
That's a very good idea. As a former reporter myself, I have to say that this is what many conscientious reporters wish they could report, if only the editors would get over the idea of pretending to be omniscient. And as a reader of journalism, I think I would like this invitation to be engaged in each story, raising questions about implicit unanswered questions and answering questions that were explicitly identified as unanswered.