As a rule, journalists should always question the ethics of politicians and public relations practitioners because these two groups consistently have their own best interests at heart," Berrin Beasely writes in her essay, "Political Manipulation of the Media: Wag the Dog." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Please respond by Wed., March 9, 4 p.m. No late responses will be accepted.
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
17 comments:
I agree, for the most part, with the statement. I say this because I don’t honestly believe every single PR practitioner is out to deceive the general public. I think there must be some that take a step back, consider situations, and choose the best approach that will do the least harm to the publics perception.
However, there are many who use deceitful tactics in order to distract the public from the real situation. When BP finally admitted that the largest natural disaster that occurred was their fault, their PR people made up stories and fabricated photos insinuating that they were on the scene within hours. Then after they released commercials claiming that they were doing the best they could to clean up, the public found out that they were spending more dollars on their PR campaign than the actual cleanup.
Berrin Beasely uses the example “Wag the Dog.” This film introduces a spin doctor called Conrad Brean who is very good at his job. He feeds the media an elaborate lie in which they consume without so much as a doubt in where the evidence came from. Over and over again they ran stories that Brean fed to them without questioning sources or the evidence given. Their disregard for their ethical responsibility to make sure that this information was factual undermines their “Watchdog” status. It is their responsibility to report the news as factual and without even questioning sources the general public relies on the credibility of the reporter or Journalist delivering the news. It proves that the media can be easily spun and steered in a particular direction, which is what the wag the dog reference means. How can one do “good work” if they completely disregard all of the ethical rules that are supposed to guide Journalism so that people can rely on information they would never know otherwise. Information that affects us as a whole. It’s no wonder that people have very little faith in the news being reported or the so called “truth” we are supposed to believe.
Though I might well argue "Wag the Dog" is to media manipulation as "Network" is to TV ratings strategy - that is, subjects played to high hyperbole, though not without elements of sharp, scary truth - I think Berrin Beasley is absolutely correct in her assertion.
For instance, with all due respect to Hillary Clinton, who I mostly admire, while reading Beasley's piece, I couldn't help but think of Clinton's certifiable lie, made during the '08 primaries, over a past trip to Bosnia. Clinton claimed that, during a trip there as First Lady, her helicopter landed under sniper fire, leaving she and her crew to flee, heads down, to the nearest safety base. It wasn't until hours after Clinton's claim that a news organization tracked-down video of Clinton's Bosnia trip. This discovery revealed no sniper fire, but rather Clinton leisurely exiting her helicopter to attend a welcome ceremony at the airport. If not for this research, Clinton's fabrication would've stuck.
On another note, for my money, particularly in the political arena, there's perhaps no more frustrating (or successful) strategy of media manipulation than the employing of surrogates. For instance, Colin Powell, a figure perceived in just about the most favorable light, being used to deliver PR on the Iraq War. Or, likewise, a Democrat being used to sell a Republican talking point, or vice versa. These surrogates are sent out there to create an aura of "if this person says this is OK, how could you ever question it?" And, often times, the media does take the bait.
I agree with Beasely’s statement. There are very fine and clear cut definitions when the terms, journalist, politician, and public relations practitioners are used. Generally, people see journalists as people who stand by the truth, and report their findings based on multiple sources that are valid and fact checked. Politicians carry a negative connotation of being known to abuse their power for their own personal gains. In “Wag The Dog,” our “president” may have used his power to molest a girl. As far as public relations practitioners go, they are seen as a direct opposite to the things that journalists hold so near and dear. Public relations practitioners are all about creating the perfect story, to get the right reaction out of the right amount of people. Hence, “Mr. Fix It,” fixing all the negative issues by lying and deceiving others.
It is up to Journalists to expect the worst out of both politicians and public relations practitioners. It is necessary that the public’s perception of the truth should not be altered. Journalists bear to this code under the SPJ Code of Ethics. “The duty of the journalist is to further these ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” As seen in this film, many public relations practitioners use a series of distractions to get away from the real issues at hand. For example, I believe the Iraq war was used as a distraction from our real problems to carry out the Bush Administrations own personnel vendetta. Am I personally happy that Saddam Hussein is out of power? Yes. But I do not feel that it was where we needed to send our troops after the 9/11 attacks. Public relations practitioners aimed to persuade the public that this was in fact where we needed to be, to suit the best interests of the politicians in power, who very well might have abused their power for their own personal gains.
It is a clever play on words in the title of this movie. Although we assume that it is up to the dog to wag its own tail, we see that the “watchdog can be mislead.” It is this that leads to the controlling of the press, and therefore the information people have access to. This is a very sneaky practice that has been going on for sometime, and unfortunately, it works. It is not ethical by any means, but it serves the purposes of those who wish to seek control over the press, and what information is relevant. In this story, the real issue of molestation is manipulated so much that people would rather pay attention to the distraction (the B-3 bomber) than a young girls well being. This is not “good work.” This is another sad example of ethics being ignored and disregarded.
If I were to answer that question years ago, I would probably disagree with Beasely's statement and be naive enough to believe that politicians and public relations practitioners would do their job to the best of their ability, but only when that meant it did not interfere with what was in the best interest of the public. Journalists can rely on politicians and public relations practitioners to be honest and work together to report both the good and bad of what is going on in the news. As representatives of towns, states, and entire countries, politicians should present no twisted facts or lies to get their own way or protect their own image. However, after monitoring the actions of politicians, public relations practitioners, and just people in general, I have to agree with her statement completely.
Today we live in a society that is completely run by money, everyone wants to get ahead and be rich or at least provide for themselves. There is still such a thing as an honest living but as time goes on more men and women are willing to perform dishonest and unspeakable tasks so they can make a dollar. New professions have been invented like Public Relations Practitioner and Spin Doctors which are careers that somewhat center around the manipulation of other people and overall dishonesty. Why do they do this? They perform such tasks because this has become just another acceptable career path in the world. With each day the population of the world becomes larger which inversely makes it harder and harder to have a stable career. An honest career no longer matters when staring at the possibility of poverty. Basically it ultimately comes down to the idea that if you won't do your job as a PR or Spin Doctor to the fullest extent possible, your client will find someone else who will. None of this should come as a surprise to any journalist especially when all kinds of distraction and manipulation techniques are being taught to future PR's with each year that goes by. In Beasely's article she quotes reporter and editor Alicia Mundy who explains how PR's are taught the “Three General Weaknesses on the Media's Part.” They are principles of journalists that can always be counted on in a tight situation when trying to rescue and salvage the image of a client.
With the ideas and concepts that are being taught to future Public Relations Practitioners, and how their primary function is to serve politicians and other large figures, it is hard not to question their ethics as a journalist. Coupled with the fact that today most people are motivated by their own self interest, even if that means lying to the majority of people who have supported them.
I agree with Beasley that journalist should question the ethics of politicians and public relations practitioners because unlike journalists, those groups do not follow a code of ethics that emphasizes truth. Instead, they specifically aim to manipulate the media and the public. No matter what it is that they are trying to convey they are usually biased and one-sided. Journalists are always taught to not be biased and to “follow their instinct and their ethics.” Also it is a part of a journalists job to do investigative reporting and check the facts to make sure the information is accurate and the sources are reliable. Journalist need to enlighten the public. According to the SPJ, “The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” Politicians and PR practitioners should be cautioned because they want to control the public’s image of them. That would lead them to hide many important facets of their lives or what they represent. Also, as Beasley states, the average American does not have access to state legislatures or congressional meetings so they need the media to be present and report on these occasions so they can make decisions for themselves. It is a journalists job to make sure that the public officials are acting ethically and legally and if the are not, then it needs to be reported to the public.
I agree--to a certain extent--with Beasely's statement. Politicians will do whatever they have to do in order to make themselves look good in the public eye, especially during election time. The public relations practitioners are just as guilty, and can be the cause of covering up a multitude of lies for politicians, such as Brean in Wag the Dog. However I would not pigeonhole all PR practitioners to be liars. In certain situations, they can be as easily manipulated by the politicians as most journalists, and a good PR practitioner would question whether or not the actions of the politicians are unethical, as well as if the public should be rightfully notified of the injustice.
Wag the Dog just gives one example of a PR practitioner who clearly disregards ethics; dismissing if the allegations towards the presidential candidate is true or false simply to keep his name in good standing for elections and to get a good story out in the media. But there are very few PR practitioners who--for lack of better terms--can sniff out bullshit and call it out because it's the ethical thing to do. As journalists have to follow a set of ethical codes, PR practitioners are subject to a code of ethics as well; the hard part is deciphering which PR people are pulling our leg and which ones are also out for the journalistic quest for truth.
To be honest, so far throughout this course I find that everyone, journalist included, are in an endless cycle of manipulation and deceit. PR practitioners are manipulated by politicians, and journalists are manipulated by PR practitioners. The question I raise is how can we backtrack to upholding the motto of "seek truth and report it" in such dog-eat-dog professions?
I agree with the statement that "Journalists should always question the ethics of politicians and public relations practitioners because these two groups consistently have their own best interests at heart."
With ethics learned and instilled into journalists minds, throughout their training and career, it is their responsibility to use critical thinking when determining truthfulness.
If it is so "commonly known" that politicians and public relations practitioners are paid to manipulate, journalists should ethically feel obligated to research and find out whether or not they are being "spun."
The book references that "Wag the Dog" is an ironic metaphor for controlling the press and the information being displaced into the public's eye. Journalists ethically obligated to the public and therefore are morally responsible to care about how they are being "used" by sources who are relaying information.
It’s hard to disagree with Beasely.
By the very definition of their job, a person in public relations is essentially trying to present a company in a certain way, stretching the truth. And in PR, the interests are never that of the people as a whole. A person giving a statement for Burger King most certainly does not have the interests of the public in his mind; he is representing a specific few, and will spin the truth to enhance the image of those few. While those high in the corporations would argue that they are real people too, and therefore public relations is still a representation of the people, it’s for such a specific few, that’s really not the case.
With the government, it’s an entirely different story. There’s a whole mess of interests involved. But mainly, the interests are that of the politician themselves. There’s always the interest of saving face and advancing further in politics. There’s always an image to protect. Unless they’re being forced to resign, you’ll never hear a politician admit a mistake. But nobody’s perfect. So you can pretty much bet that there’s some stretching of the truth going on. On top of that, there’s always a mixture of other voices being heard by a politician. The biggest voices are those with the most money to lobby.
Everyone has their own interests in mind. Corporations and politicians have the most to gain from bending the truth.
Throughout “Political Manipulation of the Media: Wag the Dog." Beasely states that today’s journalists have become lazy and need to make more of an effort to check their sources to make sure that they are not duped, and are thus not duping their audience. I completely agree with Beasely on this point; many journalists have no qualms about printing information without making sure that what they are stating is in fact the truth.
Beasely also states that journalists should always question the ethics of politicians and public relations practitioners because these two groups consistently have their own best interests at heart. On this point I cannot fully agree with Beasely. Although I am only a beginner PR student it has been constantly drilled into me by my PR professors that if we lie to the public then the public will discontinue trusting us. Public relations practitioner’s goals, as far as I am aware, are to spin as far as they can while still keeping to the general truth. Although public relations practitioners do not necessarily follow the same ethics code as journalists they do intend to keep to the general truth, if for nothing else, than for the well-being of whatever organization they are representing. Also, in order for politicians and public relations practitioners to successfully manipulate the media and the public does not necessarily mean that they lied. With all of this in mind, I believe that just as politicians and public relations practitioners do occasionally lie, so do some journalists and for that matter so does everyone. Journalists should not specifically be weary of their political and pr sources, they should be weary of all of their sources and always double check their stories and their sources.
I absolutely agree that journalists must always question the ethics of politicians and PR practitioners, as a rule. I would go so far as to say that if they don't at least consider the ethics/truthfulness of a politician or PR practitioner than they are not doing their job; no politician or PR practitioner that is doing THEIR job is ever going to say something that will reflect negatively on their administration/campaign/client (even when admitting failures, they do so in a manner that spins a positive light on their organization) and so the journalist must, in turn, be sure to check the validity of any information coming from these sources.
Whether or not you believe that all PR practitioners are evil, paid liars or not, the fact stands that even admissions of guilt or failure are framed in a way that is intended to produce, at least, a silver lining for their interests. There isn't always one, but the PR practitioner wouldn't have a job if they simply went out and said "Yeah, we fudged up... big time. Uh. Sorry" and so all of the "... and in light of our recent failure to protect the environment from our manufacturing procedures, we vow to redouble our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint in 2011 and will be launching campaigns to plant trees in Bolivia, and feed the world's poor, and clothe the needy and topple evil everywhere, because we know that our customers care whether or not their iPhones cost the planet half of it's natural resources and we want to show the world that we care too" has to be taken with a massive grain of salt, especially by the journalists who we rely on to carry out the watchdog duties of the press. The same clearly applies when covering politics - when Beasley refers to Noam Chomsky she's referring to his theory of manufacturing consent; the way that government distracts, confuses and manipulates the populace (via the media...) into believing its actions are always in their best interest.
Essentially, even though all professionals, especially those who hold government offices, should always act ethically, history has frequently proven that they do not. This, unfortunately, is particularly true when people are given positions of power and influence. Since there is no guarantee that the PR professional or politician will act ethically, the responsibility, as Beasley says, falls to the journalist to make sure that they act ethically in their stead. When all parties have behaved ethically, this is just simple fact checking, but when the politician or PR man fails to follow ethical principles, the journalist is in a position to truly act as the watchdog that the press is supposed to function as.
I agree with this statement. Many politicians only seem to do what would be best for themselves, and generally try to make themselves look good to the public to help with gaining a following. In addition, many people follow them in general as they are politicians; but that doesn't mean that whatever they do is right or wrong. Some politicians may look good on the outside yet do unethical actions behind the scenes. If they're good at covering it up, then it's possibler the public may never find out; but that still doesn't mean that what some of them do is right.
As for PR practitioners, they're supposed to cover up the mistakes of their client and make their clients look good to the public. Politics is a job that deals more with justice and right and wrong, whereas for PR, it's more of a gray area. However, at least in my experiences with PR classes; most of them teach being truthful, and that the response 'No comment' is not an option. For me, as a PR student; I'd much rather try and be more truthful to the public rather than just hide things from them. At the same time, it's best to be faithful to the client; although this does create hard decisions, there's no way I would want to get rid of my integrity and do things that are less ethical. I'd regret it, and I'd rather live with as few regrets as possible.
I both agree and disagree with what Berrin Beasely is saying. On my first day of Intro to Public Relations class, we learned "The Golden Rule" of public relations. This was to never ever lie. If this rule were true, then this excerpt from Berrin Beasely's essay would be flawed. "As a rule, journalists should always question the ethics of politicians and public relations practitioners because these two groups consistently have their own best interests at heart." However, I think that the "Golden Rule" is a bit idealistic in regards to public relations practitioners and politicians, it does not necessarily apply to all of them.
That being said, I do not believe that all public relations practitioners are looking out for only their best interests. Part of public relations is relaying information about your company and organization to the public. Many companies and organizations make mistakes and admit that they make mistakes instead of covering them up. By putting there mistakes out for everyone to see, doesn't usually make a company look good.
As far as politicians go, they fit Berrin Beasely's opinion more accurately. They never want to confess to any wrong doings. They are all about making themselves look good to preserve the images and save their votes, no matter how ethically or unethically they do it. They only care about promoting their own agendas.
With all of this unethical actions, it is up to the journalists to uncover what is really the truth. They should consciously make an effort to discern what are the hard facts and what are lies being spun to the by pr practitioners and politicians to gain good and free publicity.
I agree with the policy that journalists should always question PR practitioners and politicians in order to do their job effectively and correctly.
First off I love the image that "wag the dog" evokes: a nasty politician laughing as he violent wags poor spot by the tail. However as funny as this image may seem, it really is a frighteningly accurate depiction of what goes on in journalism today.
Beasley has a message for journalists: "you are being spun on a daily basis. and you either don't realize it or don't care." I think the majority of journalists today simply don't care if they are getting played, they just want the most sensational story they can provide, and they want it before any one else has it.
Another important issue Beasley addresses in her essay is the use of anonymous sources. Journalists have an ethical responsibility to report the truth, if they are just taking any and all information they can get and not questioning their source it devalues the field. Beasley asserts that journalists must first "test the accuracy of information from all sources and identify sources whenever feasible."
Politicians and PR Practitioners purposely leak information all the time in order to use the media to their advantage. If journalist don't question the information they are given then we might as well not even have journalists. I'm sure there is a "smart computer" that could simply copy everything that PR practitioners and politicians say.
Even though Beasley's quote was geared at making the readers of this passage, journalists and maybe even the public to be wary of PR practitioners, it seems like the focus was on journalists and how they're easily fooled. Journalists not taking the time to research the "whole truth", and even though in Wag the Dog, both Conrad Brean and the CIA (in a sense) con the media into elaborate, erroneous stories, it's still the journalist's fault for not asking the right questions.
To a certain degree, this is true. But it makes those, even though it's a movie, in the field I hope to go into look vulnerable and stupid.
We discussed in class that no one can ever know the whole truth, and career-criteria roadblocks prevent good, thorough investigative reporting such as deadlines and competition. So what can be done to be ever-vigilant against spin doctors? The chapter refers to the SPJ code of ethics. "Journalists should identify sources whenever feasible." B-roll footage and VNRs (Video News Releases) should be cited as such and be made clear if this was a re-enactment. In Wag the Dog, what caused the most hysteria is a phony terrorist attack staged by Hollywood to incite strong feelings against Albania and to manufacture a war.
What's truly scary about Wag the Dog is that it mirrored reality. Iraq was a manufactured war. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, according to a lecture given by Ray McGovern, former CIA officer, at SUNY New Paltz last year, became cheerleaders for the Bush Administration and the war. They did not print certain articles revealing no WMDs.
Beasley also talks about how sources that come from the top, high government officials, were trusted too easily. A recent Newsweek article about Sec. of State Hillary Clinton had all anonymous sources, and I think it hurt their credibility.
Now they're bankrupt. Could be a coincidence.
But that quote of being wary of PR people is misleading, this chapter focuses on the shortcomings of journalists. The only section is with Hollywood and digital image manipulation. But shortly following, we're back on the journalist and how they're are no excuses to miss a doctored photo. The White House is also to blame by releasing hundreds of official documents of Friday, before deadline, creating a numerous amount of files to sift through to find truth.
Agreeing with Beasley, we should be vigilant of PR and spin doctors, but also of the journalism craft and lazy reporting. A call is in order to re-organize the journalist's priorities. To fashion the industry not on in-fighting and petty competition.
I partially agree and partially disagree. Politicians are known for omitting certain “truths” to make themselves look better. However, not everything said should be questioned. If there is such a lack of trust amongst our politicians and public relations practitioners, why have them? However, the scenario in “Wag the Dog” provides great reasoning for question these two groups of people. I do feel that journalists have the right to search for the “truth” from these parties because they are the sole method of communication between the government and its people.
When asked to describe a politician in one word, the word often used is liar. There is a common belief that all politicians are liars. Although many have proven themselves to be, not all of them are. For a politician the most stressful time of their career is election. Most politicians are willing to do or say anything in order to get elected or re-elected. This time is also when most scandals break loose. I feel that journalists should be extra careful with information they receive from politicians and public relations practitioners at this time. No one really knows what goes on behind closed doors in government, but I feel that journalist should exercise every power or ability they have to find truth in their stories.
The movie “Watch the Dog,” adequately depicts that public relations practitioners can use the art of spin to make their client a politician look good. It was interesting to read that the PR practitioner did not even try to seek the truth before defending his client. It is often difficult for any person to encode the lies of the government; however in a situation like this journalists have a duty to uncover the truth. Often, they fall prey to spin. I am not saying that it is done willingly but like stated in the book some stories trump others. “It is the “consequence” news value at work; stories that affect the greatest number of people get the most coverage, and because it is possible that U.S. citizens may be hurt or killed in a war, the importance of the story increases with the likelihood of direct physical danger.” The journalist could focus much of their time validating this story and ultimately letting the ‘less important’ story fall through the cracks, thus allowing the spin of the PR practitioner to succeed.
I agree, for the most part with the viewpoint of Berrin Beasely, but at the same time I feel that it is not always as easy to uncover the “truth” when dealing with politicians. Most politicians ultimately have their own intentions at heart, and will do and say whatever it takes to keep their name clean. Journalist should try to discover the truth, but they first have to figure out who is lying.
I completely agree with Beasely when he says that journalists should always be in constant skepticism when dealing with politicians and public relations practitioners.
Both politicians and PR practitioners are groups that journalists have to deal with on a daily basis and both groups of people are mostly interested in furthering their agenda.
What is interesting is the relationship that journalists and these two professions share. Journalists are supposed to be the upholders of truth and report in factual manner, which is interesting because they have to deal with professionals who are basically paid to lie and further an agenda day in and day out. A journalists obligation should be to the people (and in a perfect world so should politicians, honestly) where PR practitioners and politicians always have loyalties to groups or people other than the general public.
The sooner a journalist becomes aware that these people are more than likely lying to them, the sooner they can be able to recognize it and begin reporting and sifting through what they are told for the truth. This might be one of the most important jobs a journalist needs to realize. The ability to deliver the actual news and not the spin they are told is important.
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