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A.P. To Distribute Nonprofits' Investigative Journalism
The NY Times is reporting on the Associated Press's decision to distribute the investigative journalism of four nonprofit groups. This ought to benefit both struggling newspapers, which have cut investigative staff, and the nonprofits where, we can hope, many of those laid-off journalists are plying their trade. It's refreshing to see this kind of forward thinking coming out of an organization not normally known for its progressiveness. "Starting on July 1, the A.P. will deliver work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are A.P. members, which will be free to publish the material. The A.P. called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets."
Just for the edification of the reader... the AP also is a not-for-profit cooperative.
From the article:
Lets all take a cue from Woodward and Bernstein, who all these J school grads aspire to emulate - follow the money. These groups are being funded by people with agendas, just like the media they purport to study/critique.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This move is a very good thing. What many people fail to realize is that investigative journalism costs money (a lot of money). When the Boston Globe broke the story about the Catholic child molestation/priest shuffling coverup a few years ago, that cost them over a million dollars to cover the months of research and tons of staff that went into it. This isn't the kind of thing that you'll get from Joe Blogger sitting in his den rehashing/aggregating stories he found elsewhere on the web. Yes, a lot of what passes for "professional journalism" these days is somewhat low level. But that doesn't mean it all is.
Think of it like this (analogy time!) -- just because there are a lot of shitty visual basic programmers out there, that doesn't mean that every programmer is a shitty one that can only program in VB. That's exactly the type of comparison a lot of you make when you talk about shitty journalists. We need to encourage good investigative journalism, and this is a step in the right direction.
I think this is a step sideways. The term "not for profit" is very misleading. In fact, most such organizations need to get their name and "issues" out there to raise funds. Hence, there's plenty of biased, scaremongering stories that comes from non-profit orgs, NGOs and charities. In fact, almost all scaremongering stories come from those very sources. Sensationalist headlines means the organizations name is out there along with a guilt trip designed to encourage people to donate to "fight" whatever issue is being trumped.
Many, if not all, Newspapers already regurgitate press releases from non-profit orgs as news. What would really help newspapers is to stop relying on press releases, and stop relying on the the A.P. or Reuters etc., and actually get out there and investigate actual news. Where are the Bob Woodwards? Those type of guys are what newspapers need. That will save them. There's plenty of stories and scandals in every national and local government, in every corporation -- things we really NEED to know about. But we're not finding out about because no-one is digging into them any more.
Blogs or Google News, or other news feeds, are the perfect places to report things from A.P. or non-profits, or entertainment P.R. Newspapers should be the sources of comment and actual investigative journalism.
I don't know about the others, but ProPublica is a left-wing propaganda organization. It was founded by Herbert and Marion Sandler, from Time's 25 people to blame for the financial crisis. It has provided propaganda stories to newspapers around the country disguised as news....
On second thought, that should fit right in with the rest of what the AP distributes.
The Internet and the natural expectation (by the typical American) of "free" news have destroyed the economic model of newspapers. Here, "newspapers" refers to both print material and online material. We can expect a continued hollowing out of the investigative department of most newspapers.
There appear to be only 3 viable models for the future of newspapers. They are the following.
1. non-profit model. The newspaper operates like the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and receives donations and government funding. The danger in this model is that the ruling political party may withhold funding if a newspaper publishes a damaging story that ruins the career of a politician from that party.
2. public-service model. The newspaper is run as a public service by a non-profit organization or a for-profit business. The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is a good example of this model. The Christian Science church publishes the CSM as a public service. The CSM is quite good -- good enough for use by the Central Intelligence Agency to supplement its own political analyses of hotspots in the world.
3. endowment model. A rich person creates a billion-dollar fund. The interest payments from that fund then fund a particular newspaper.
Model #3 is the best. In it, external interference is minimal. Bias is least likely to enter into a story.
However, model #1 appears to be the one advocated by the AP. In effect, a newspapers' distributing the investigative stories of INPOs is equivalent to this model. The INPOs receive government funding and public donations. The INPOs then use the funds to do investigations, of which the results are fed to newspapers for distribution.
Curiously, Google management almost implemented model #2. There was talk of Google's buying a newspaper. It was likely the "New York Times".
All of this stuff is not merely idle talk for geeks on Slashdot on a Saturday afternoon. The fate of newspapers is vitally important to every Westerner. Newspapers have long served as the 4th branch of government. They are our eyes and ears in keeping us informed of the operation of our government. Without the in-depth investigative reports by newspapers, the voters would be ignorant. An ignorant public is the 1st step to the establishment of an authoritarian society.
We all agree the news is biased. Some say it has a left wing bias, others a right wing bias, and we all experience a little of both. Yet the stereotype of activist/journalist who willingly manipulates the facts to get their point across is untrue for most journalist's I've observed (save the obvious Bill O'Reileys of the world).
Recognize that a journalist's job is tough. It's up to them to get the facts, and nobody is willing to talk. People naturally distrust reporters, and their first instinct is to keep quiet. They don't want to be bothered by journalists. It's a hassle.
But in the end, the journalist has to get the facts. So they get quotes from anybody willing to speak to them. And usually, the only people willing to speak to journalists are those with an ideology to spread. Someone with an interest in how the news gets reported.They volunteer to be interviewed.
That's where most bias comes from: Not the reporters, but their sources. So naturally, if a bunch of non profits "generously contribute the news they've gathered" you can bet half of those groups are doing it to manipulate the news in their favor.