Teaching Notes
Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
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:
Purely in terms of the lecture experience, I wholly enjoyed listening to Andy Lehren. He struck me as incredibly well-versed on issues of foreign affairs and his recounting over The New York Times's closed-door, hush-hush approach to mounting the Wikileaks reporting was fascinating. I learned, too, of the communication that can often surface among different publications breaking the same story. I appreciated the breadth of questions directed at Lehren, straying away from generic soft balls and often challenging him from an ethical standpoint. On the whole, I thought the students and faculty sparked a terrific and worthwhile conversation.
In terms of viewing Lehren's work from an ethical perspective, I was struck by his emphasis on the three-week deadline in compiling the Wikileaks material. (In all fairness, actually, you're looking at two weeks of actual reporting, given that third week was devoted to lawyers and editors.) The monumental fashion in which Lehren painted the Wikileaks story left me feeling as if two or three MONTHS would have been more suitable in efficiently and accurately analyzing all of this material. Admittedly, I was rather discouraged when Lehren revealed that he was focusing more on certain items over others, given his stance/belief that certain documents weren't revealing anything notable. I was also somewhat perplexed by the use of computer programming to assess the documents.
That all being said, it's not as though I'm labeling Lehren a "bad" journalist. Looking at him through the score of Gardner's "good work," I, at the very least, think Lehren operated in a morally good fashion. That is, he protected the subjects who, upon having their names revealed in print, could find themselves in danger. As Lehren briefly alluded to, I suppose some on the political right might well deem his reporting to be entirely morally wrong, but, in listening to him, I hardly think Lehren (or The New York Times) entered this reporting with a ideological bias toward the subject.
In terms of technical excellence, however, I think there is perhaps something left to be desired. I'm sure Bill Keller was delighted to have a lengthy Wikileaks package ready in three weeks, but, again, was that really sufficient time? Had Lehren garnered a later deadline, would he have had the time to delve into the documents he, under deadline pressure, deemed least important and basically discarded? Finally, as Lehren himself conceded, the computer software utilized to assess the Wikileaks documents was mediocre at best. Perhaps with more time, Bill Keller could have hired some actual human beings to process the information.
Andrew Lehren struck me as a journalist whose sole focus is to do technically good work. When confronted with questions that raised ethical issues he deferred to people who weren't present, danced away from giving direct answers and grabbed at lame excuses that suggested he'd been so busy with the technical aspects of compiling and publishing his reports that he hadn't had time to notice if his work was actually making any impact in the world or not.
He seemed uncomfortable fielding these questions and not once did he give a straight, outright answer. He kept harping on how the Times had painstakingly made sure that they had been "ethical" in not publishing any names that might endanger an individual's life, as if that was some sort of high standard of ethics that he could hang his hat on. Not once did he talk about the gravity of the information in the wikileaks documents or how, upon seeing it, he knew he must get this important information to the public. He talked about the stories, the patterns, the narratives (without saying so)... when he discussed not being able to use extraction software, due to the complex nature of the documents and the authoring soldiers' shorthand, I got the distinct impression that the Times had entrusted him with the decoding of these documents because he is the human equivalent of such software.
Lehren was so noncommittal with his answers that it almost made me uncomfortable. He was clearly not open to voicing any personal opinions or tackling the tougher questions that were raised and seemed, very much, to want more to talk about what a colossal job he had done in sifting through the wikileaks documents to find compelling stories for his paper to print. When the wikileaks stories first broke I got the distinct impression that Julian Assange wanted wikileaks to be something revolutionary and revealing; Lehren gave me the impression that the documents were more like interesting archaeological discoveries that had to be translated. When one of the audience members mentioned wikileaks fading from the news spotlight and garnering diminishing returns Lehren became almost defensive, stating "we're not done publishing stories; we think we've got some more good ones", but what does that mean, exactly? If you've been sitting on important information from these documents for the past 9 months, hoping to stretch the information for more stories, than have you really been doing your job of reporting on it? Or have you been focusing more on getting good narrative fidelity and keeping your readership high?
It truly was fascinating to have a guest speaker like Andy Lehren come to SUNY New Paltz. For him to share his experience with the Wikileaks material firsthand with us, many aspiring journalists, was fascinating. The New York Times is truly a dream come true for many journalists, and it was exciting to dive in and learn behind closed doors about one of the most talked about stories as of the past year. This fascination landed Andy with many questions from students and faculty alike, who spent a lengthy amount of time trying to figure out just exactly what was going through his head before, during, and after the articles were published. From an ethical perspective, I and I'm sure many of my classmates were listening to see what role ethics played while Andy Lehren was writing these articles.
We can use Howard Gardner’s approach to try and see if Andy’s articles would constitue as “good work.” Gardner would define “good work” using the three E’s: Excellence, Engagement, and Ethics. For one, it is an undisputable fact that he has excellence in a technical way. The only debate could be that he used software to pull out certain phrases to create more of a story. Nonetheless, he definetly possessed an extreme amount of technical excellence to be put onto these documents to extract information. I would also say that he was engaged by these documents. He definetly possesses a strong interest in world affairs, and he clearly found these documents fascinating. These documents were so important to him that his own family took a backseat during his 4th of July weekend. Lastly, it comes down to ethics. I believe Andy Lehren really could have done better in this situation when it comes to ethics. He didn’t include names that would get people hurt, keeping that information classified, which was one of the few positive things he said. The fact that he singled out information in the documents, looking just to build upon narrative stories, makes me feel like he was using these documents to craft stories, instead of informing the public. He was also very timid and defensive when questioned by the audience. Overall I believe he possessed Excellence and Engagement, but his Ethics definitely could have used some work.
--Evan Brieff
I'm not sure if it's a misunderstanding that I have or that everyone else had, but from the other responses so far and some students from our class/other classes that I spoke to immediately after Lehren's discussion, everyone seems to be under the impression that he did utilize software to help him go through these documents while I was under the impression that he stated that due to the time it takes to ready the documents for the software and the limitations the software poses in terms of understanding the language of the wires and the authoring soldiers' way of writing, he was unable to use the software and claims to have done most if not all of his work by hand. If so, it's more technical excellence for Andy, I suppose. On the other hand, I found that he seemed to not be so engaged in world affairs and more concerned with only what he was working on himself.
Almost a year later, I still think it was great to have an opposing viewpoint, though maybe not directly, of Ray McGovern's lecture also at SUNY New Paltz who was against the NYT's and Washington Post's coverage of the Iraq war and who believed that the fourth estate "was deteriorating." It was just another take on media and how they handle classified documents, and Andy Lehren and his team received respect that they handled it ethically.
I thought it was noble that The NYT doesn't jeopardize a source's life by releasing their name. This is morally courageous, but in turn that person, say a former Taliban member releasing the hideout of his former comrades, also takes moral courageousness. You have to give it to get it, and I hope that phrase applies appropriately.
Lehren was being coy on issues of epistemic responsibility, though he pointed out he had a limited amount of time to scan through these documents. Deadline got in the way of doing his job. In turn, it hurt the amount he was allowed to cover. Choosing not all of it, which I believe the public is entitled to know, but the most "fascinating", my own word, accounts. What Lehren deems as necessary is subjective and should be left up to the readers. I also got a little lost when he said some reports were missing, like the NFL player who controversially died by friendly fire. This also affected his ability to do his job completely, but this was out of his control. If it wasn't done before, it should have been printed if he ever came across the information in full at a later date.
Using Gardner's good work model, I think Lehren achieved both. He did a fine job of ethically making sure, with a team of lawyers and by censoring names of those in danger, by being ethical. He also did good work by relaying this information to the public in an easy to read format, but also taking the time to decipher this as a part of the public's need to know basis. Maybe he was getting defensive during the lecture, but this is probably related to the legality of classified material.
One final point, I liked his discussion on the over-classification of documents. It hurts the public's need to know, and I guess want to know basis, in the long run because they eventually are released and are not really surprising and a threat to our national security after all, he gave the example of Anna Nicole-Smith's file.
Using Gardners “good work” model, which states that good work consists of labor that is both technically and morally good, I think that Andy’s method of writing and process of rifling through the papers can be called good work. He and his co-workers discussed the ethicality of what they were about to do with the information as well as worked with lawyers to determine what would be considered libel. They also worked to maintain their ethicality by keeping the names of people in the documents secret for their own safety. Working off of Gardners “good work” I believe that Andy was morally good throughout the entire process. He was also technically excellent as he made a point of deciphering the terminology in the documents.
Just like everyone else I did find it very interesting to sit in on a lecture from Andrew Lehren and felt very fortunate for being able to. I enjoyed hearing about the coverage of the wiki leaks story from a different perspective and getting a firsthand look at how a journalist deals with a story of this magnitude. What I kept imagining however was where I was and what I was doing when all of the preparation for the articles was being performed. I just find it interesting that at any given time something monumental can be happening and you are none the wiser to its existence. This idea is not only brought to mind because of Lehren's personal recollection of how the story was crafted before release (the hush hush of everyone involved with the article and how he couldn't even tell his wife what he was doing). In addition to what the story is about in general, wiki leaks, the fact that there are so many different bits of information being kept from citizens of the world and wiki leaks is probably only a fraction of what else is out there. It just made me think what other secrets are being kept from us and will we ever find out?
When evaluating Andrew Lehren's reporting on wiki leaks I find it the most appropriate to do so using Howard Gardner's model of “Good Work.” Gardner defines good work as something that earns high marks both in the technical and moral sense. Although what Lehren did was impressive it may not completely fall under Gardner's attributes of good work.
In the technical sense I would have to say that Lehren certainly performed excellently providing his audience with good work. This is seen in his recollection in how he worked under such a stressful time frame and managed to uncover many different pieces of information after examining the different cables. In addition to how he had to overcome the obstacle of deciphering the different bits of army code that were used in the different reports that were found in the different cables of wiki leaks. All of this is reflected in his articles where he published his findings, where he did so in a concise and organized manner that anyone can read and understand.
In the moral sense I am not as confident that Andrew Lehren's actions could be called morally good work. To start I did think it was morally right for him to not disclose some of the identity's that were spoken of in the cables that he scifted through. This was to prevent anyone from being in any sort of mortal danger because of the actions that they took and were written down in the reports on them later. However there were a few names that he did publish in his article even though he was asked specifically not to due to embarrassment that might be faced because of it. In a sense someone might consider that to be good work following the idea that it is a reporter's job to “Print the truth and raise hell.” This is exactly what Lehren did but only to a point where it wouldn't cause physical harm to someone.
In another sense I suppose Lehren's motivation to print and go through the articles might not be labeled as something that is morally right. He talked about some cables as not as interesting or important as others and therefore were not covered in his articles. Wouldn't it be reasonable to say that anything being held from public knowledge should be considered important? Instead he only took bits of particular information and pieced it together to create a story that might be more interesting to read. This makes me question is he using wiki leaks as a kind of government gossip? Or is he actually concerned with educating the public and revealing secrets that have been kept from us?
Gardner's good work model tells us that good work must be both technically and morally good. Andy Lehren's work on the surface appears to be good work. During the lecture, he discussed how himself and other journalists flown in from different parts of the world dissected the wikileaks documents. They only had three weeks to analyze hundreds of thousands of documents. Because of the deadline, some of the documents were deemed unhelpful to stories to the journalists. This may raise questions to how technical the good work was. Lehren also addressed that the New York Times did not publish the names of anyone in the wikileaks that's lives could have been in danger if published. This makes the work morally good. When asked about his opinion on how ethical the publication of these documents were he seemed to shy away from answering the questions thus making me wonder how much of was he leaving out in his recounts of the wikileaks reporting that would make me believe it was unethical.
Unfortunately I missed the lecture given by journalist Andy Lehren. I was only able to catch the last two minutes of the Q&A session, and was not really able to grasp what the overall presentation was about.
However I did notice, that he got extremely defensive when Professor Good brought up ethics. He seems like a very talented journalist technically, but a slave to deadlines.
I wish I could have been able to hear the lecture in it's entirety.
I waited a until now to post this only partially out of laziness. The main reason was that I wanted some time to really think about the discussion we had with Lehren, without all the impediments of my emotions.
I got into journalism because I thought it was one profession that still had a shred of integrity. Sure, Anderson Cooper might be dressing up like a giant bunny (not a joke, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlwONwmjK68) but I had found some reporting that really inspired me. And most of all, it seemed like one thing that could do more good than harm.
But the more I wade through my journalism education here, the more I realize that Journalism is hardly better than any of business institutions I’ve looked down upon for so long. I hated the idea of becoming somebody who started at a low-level job at some horrible corporation, and “worked my way up the ladder,” to a larger salary, lying my face off to get enough money to afford a divorce and kids that hate me. But what I’ve come to realize is that a journalist’s byline is really just his “promotion” or his “raise.” It’s all the same bullshit. We narrow our goals in life to simple tangibles. Keep it simple.
And that’s what I feel Andy Lehren has narrowed his goals to, even though it may be subconscious. I know that was one hell of an anecdotal lede, but the point is this – we could argue on and on about every little ethical point that was made on each side, the most common of which I’ve heard is something to the effect of “there’s only so much he can do” and “he was taken by surprise, he wasn’t saying that journalism is perfect.” Howie made this point, Persaud made this point, and Lehren made that point. But it’s pretty simple. If you can’t look back on the work you did almost a year ago, and reflect on it, then you didn’t do any work at all. You’re a drone.
I thought that Andrew Lehren's work was, in a sense, good work. For one thing, he kept his findings as discreet and confidential for as long as he could, and when he approached writing the story, he met up with attorneys to go over what would be considered libel. What also made the stories ethical were that Lehren kept the identities of his sources confidential.
There are some things that could be questioned. If I remembered correctly, he had mentioned that although there was a promise to a source that they would not be put into the story, they were put in regardless (or something along those lines). I feel as if that would be questionable when it comes to ethics because you should at least respect those who do not wish to be included for whatever reason they may have. Also, as people have previously stated, there were some questions brought up by the audience in regards to ethics that Lehren seemed to skate around.
According to Howard Gardner's concept of "good work" it requires the attention of both the technical aspects of one's job and to the moral implications of one's work. The reporter who spoke about WikiLeaks demonstrated his way of handling the documents and how he, as a journalist went about writing about it and how he absorbed the information given to him.
I feel like he did a good job on the moral aspect of "good work" in that he kept these confidential information to himself and made sure that no names that can be endangered would be leaked. He also seemed to put all bias aside while he read these documents and put them into writing for the public. He seemed to be trying to tell the compelling facts to the public and thought the public should be informed of what these documents showed.
In the technical aspect, I think he could've done better. Yes, there was his defense that he was only given 3 weeks to read thousands of documents and write about it. It can be seen that the editors who gave the WikiLeak documents should've seen that this was a form of crucial document and of importance and should've given these journalists more time to fully absorb everything that they read and try to write the truth without just skipping "unimportant" stories. He also mentioned the use of technology to narrow down his searches, which i thought maybe of good use to shorten his time looking for specific things he had missed, however, it is also demeaning to the information because everything is a piece of importance, and not just because he thought they were not newsworthy. He shouldn't have skipped and overlooked "dull" segments but rather see them of a part of the bigger story. He also said that he could not do all this because he had time pressure to read as much as he can and write stories. If he as a journalist is doing his job, he should do it with all responsibility. I don't think any information that he read in the documents were not worthwhile and he should've been more responsible since he and the other few were the only ones accessible to this confidential information. Time and pressure shouldn't have gotten in the way of his responsibility as a journalist. The deadline shouldn't have gotten in the way for him to seek truth and report it. Though he argued that he tried his best, I feel that there should've been more dedication and responsibility for him to report the WikiLeak documents.
I wasn't very impressed by the lecture given by Andy Lehren. I was hoping the lecture was going to be more informative than a pat on the back for himself.
I wanted to know more about wikileaks and why it was no longer in the press. Obviously the information spilled into the public's hands, but now is completely removed from American's grasp unless willing to be questioned by the FBI.
Although I did learn a lot from the lecture regarding certain articles, I was left wondering more.
From an ethical prospective, I noticed Lehren was stuck on deadlines and getting out what was "necessary" for the public to know. His perspective on what was important and entertaining to news may not be the same as everyone else.
I took a lot of notes during the lecture and noticed that when asked about the NYT being "cheerleaders for the war," Lehren was stuck. Ethically, because he worked for NYT, I understand his answer. However, I do think his loyalties to the NYT forced bias towards his response.
When Professor Good began questioning him, Lehren became defensive, which I didn't understand. Yes, at times Good can be a bit intimidating, but as a journalist, Lehren should have been able to answer the questions presented to the best of his ability. He should have prepared himself for professors to act as the "devil's advocate" to bring up topics that students may not have.
Overall I thought Lehren seemed pretentious. Maybe he is "allowed" to because of his hard work and role in his job? I just think as a professor and journalist his presentation could have been more than a hype for the New York Times and how well they work under pressure.
At first, I was kind of impressed by what Andy had done. After a while, I began to get disappointed by him. Andy Lehren was interesting to listen to but overall it does feel like he's a bit pretentious and arrogant. He emphasized not using names in order to protect people and it seemed to me more like he was saying that he was trying to boast about being 'ethical.' I also didn't like how he tended to push journalism and it felt a lot like an ad for the NYT. Much of what he talked about felt like the same material over and over. It's nice that he does believe in journalism, but that doesn't mean I'd want to take one of his classes.
Like a lot of the others have said, I think that the work he did is more of technical rather than "good work." He seemed more preoccupied with releasing at least some information for the deadline rather than take the time to really sift through the information. It's better to process a lot of information with a larger amount of time as then there's more time to analyze and understand it properly. Morally, it was nice that he didn't post names but I dislike how it felt like he boasted about it. Just because you do something morally correct that doesn't mean you need to brag about it or even talk about it. Overall, as I stated earlier; at first I liked him but in the end it just wasn't all that informative to me.
I found Andrew Lehren’s speech quite interesting. As ignorant as it may sound, I wasn’t really aware of the issues surrounding wikileaks, or cared where the sources came from. This made me think of good work instantly and although I wasn’t writing the stories, by not caring I was not being a good consumer. I feel that it goes both ways.
He spoke in a clear and organized way in telling us the ways in which he received this top secret information, how he handled sorting all of the information, and how he developed his stories. When asked about how he felt about the ethics in all of this. His reply was that he felt he and the others involved did the best they could to hold back information that could endanger the lives of someone, but when it came down to information that may perhaps embarrass someone, they did not hold back. By his standard he felt that he had done good work. However this brought up a few criticisms, which wouldn’t necessarily say that he hasn’t in fact done good work. Depending on the information give, perhaps some of these embarrassing acts did not need to be told. I don’t feel that damaging a person’s reputation unless it is vital for the public to know the information is considered good work.
Lehren discusses a three week deadline. I realize that we live in a changing world where news needs to be reported as fast as possible, but is it really ethical to allow such a deadline for information as important as this. He said there were over 7,000 files to go through. In three weeks? Also at one point he said that within thousands of files, he sort of put pieces together from all different accounts. I wonder if any of the information was taken out of context. Just because it looks like it fits well, doesn’t mean it was meant to go together like to a puzzle piece that almost fits, but doesn’t quite make it. In such a short period of time how is one able to do good work?
Lehren seemed very passionate about the work he had produced and stuck by it, even when tough questions about whether or not he was driven by a deadline was asked. I feel that he probably did the best he could considering the information and the deadline, however good work is an impossible achievement when asked to do something that seems near impossible.
Sorry this is late- I totally lost track of time!
I really enjoyed listening to Andy Lehren. It was fascinating to hear about his experiences dealing with the classified documents and the amount of work he had to put into sifting through them to unearth stories and the amount of secrecy involved in the process as well. I know some may have viewed the way Lehren spoke as pretentious or conceited and maybe expected to hear more information about Wikileaks itself. Howevever, I was glad to hear more about the task from Lehren's perspective. I thought it was not only interesting, but potentially beneficial to hear about what Lehren had to deal with from a reporting stand point, something some of us may encounter in our future careers. I think I would be able to find quite a bit of info about Wikileaks online if I wanted to, but hearing about how the actual reporting was accomplished is something that only a lecture of this sort could really fulfill.
In terms of "good work," I think Lehren generally did achieve good work, aside from a few fairly understandable things. Technically, Lehren's work was excellent. He found significant information and presented it to the public in a reader-friendly, organized and clear way.
I do think the ethical portion of "good work" is what brings about a few questions. I think it was very ethically responsible of The New York Times to leave out the names of people whose lives could be endangered. This was definitely the right thing to do. He consulted lawyers and also the government about which cables would be okay to use.
I think the part that many were stuck on was that he used software to locate key terms in the story, which makes it seem like he was searching for a certain story or trying to create one. While there is some validity to this idea, I think the software merely aided him in going through this hefty amount of documents in such a short time period. Looking through so many documents, that are most likely somewhat complicated, on such a short deadline is a lofty task and I think he just searched for some common words that he thought might be of interest/importance to the public. I'm torn between thinking that on one hand Lehren shouldn't decide what the public should know or not or that The Times clearly couldn't share the information of so many documents so it was their job to choose what appeared most significant. This ethical dilemma does bring about the sad truth of deadlines in journalism though, which is important to note.
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