Transparency

People don't like to admit they are wrong.
That they don't know the answer to something.
That, because some very human issue intervened, they didn't finish the job.

Yet, transparency has become one of the most important aspects of doing quality journalism.
And journalists are just as guilty as everyone else of glossing over mistakes, holes in information, and how real life can side-rail their work.

I was irritated today by a New York Times article about allegations that Herman Cain, an interesting and appealing GOP candidate for president in 2012, had been accused at least twice in the 1990s of sexual harassment by colleagues.

In the interest of transparency, the Times does a number of things right. It clearly states that some of these allegations were dug up by a news competitor, the Associated Press. It openly stated that one of its sources, Chris Wilson, who worked as a pollster at the National Restaurant Association when Cain led that trade group, would not say what Cain said to one of the allegedly harassed women, and that Wilson couldn't shed much light on any such instance. It identifies Wilson today as being a pollster for the Rick Perry campaign for president.

But the Times story also contains this passage, supposedly outlining the sweep of its interviews to try to get to the bottom of this Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill-like mess:

While Mr. Cain’s accusations briefly turned the attention away from him, interviews with more than a dozen people over the last three days paint a picture of his 1996-99 tenure at the National Restaurant Association that is at odds with his insistence that he never harassed anyone. Several people who worked at the association said they knew of episodes that women said had made them uncomfortable dealing with Mr. Cain. 

If you keep reading though, very little info "at odds" with Cain's story is revealed. Many people are quoted anonymously. The story leaves me feeling unsettled, unconvinced. Why was this story on Page One of the nation's most influential newspaper?

And, in fact, this is how I want my journalism students at Miami University of Ohio to feel whenever they consume some news that doesn't quite fit nicely in a transparent box.

I want them to be skeptical. To challenge assertions. To go seek out other info, other viewpoints.

And, ultimately, I want my students to be MORE transparent when they must write an article in which the stakes are high, the answers obscured by muck and the audience ravenous.

The Artifice of Anniversaries

Ten years ago today, I spent a 14-hour day as an editor in the Cincinnati Enquirer's newsroom.

The day started out doing my civic duty - voting. Many people, in fact, have forgotten that Sept. 11, 2001, was also a day to vote on (mainly) municipal issues across the country.
The day ended also doing my civic duty - informing the public at length about the horrors of terrorism on our own soil.

In-between, I insisted that my husband leave work, pick up our two young children who were in school near Cincinnati's downtown, and take them home to protect them should more deadly planes come calling on tall buildings in America's heartland.

Spencer Platt, photojournalist

The special edition we at the Enquirer published on 9/11 featured on its cover a photo by my former Elmira, N.Y. Star-Gazette colleague, Spencer Platt, at right, who has gone on to be an international photojournalist extraordinaire.
Read his account in Life magazine of how he did his civic duty that day - leaping out of bed in NYC and racing into the unknown with a lens pointed skyward.

Most of 9/11 and the days that followed I spent coordinating with two Cincinnati Enquirer journalists - Robert Anglen and Karen Samples Gutierrez - who just happened to be vacationing separately in NYC.  They left their loved ones to jump into the reporting fray - Robert by talking his way into the Ground Zero area and Karen by befriending a group of rescuers at their home base on the water.

To call this civic duty would be the understatement of an industry - it was sheer journalistic heroism, and I am still humbled by their work.

Today, for hours I read 10-year anniversary accounts of 9/11. How could you NOT want to acknowledge, on the 10th anniversary, how this terrorist attack changed America's history, its people, the things we fear the most?

And yet.
There is something to be said for setting aside anniversaries.
Instead of wallowing in memories of pain and heroism, danger and loss, why not live each day building on what you have learned from an event - and concentrating on the here and now?

We went hiking in the woods today, too, this 10th anniversary of 9/11. I gardened, cleaned a bathroom, talked with my 16-year-old son about football, wrote, made turkey burritos for dinner. And it felt good, even noteworthy for its ordinariness. An American ordinariness.

The 9/11 reporting the Cincinnati Enquirer did was extraordinary, and I would not take back those days. Many, many other stories we did that year were also noteworthy in their civic significance - particularly our investigative and social service work after race riots, which I was integrally involved in.

But embattled American journalism is a civic trust, meant to serve citizens every day as a watchdog, as a reliable source of information, as storytellers, as empower-ers so people can take action.
Anniversaries come and go.
Civic responsibility does not.

Raising Questions

My teenagers always accuse me of asking 20 questions about things they'd rather not share at all.

My reply always runs along the same line as Jack Sparrow gave in "Pirates of the Caribbean," when Will Turner indignantly said in the midst of a sword duel: "You cheated!"
Sparrow's reply: "Pirate."
My reply to my kids: "Journalist."

As a new Journalism 101 semester begins at Miami University, my students will be exploring what it means to be a journalist today -- and back to America's roots as a democracy.
Their first assignment: Check facts and look for bias while comparing the same news story across several different news sources.

The exercise cuts to the heart of the question: Whom do you trust for reliable news?