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captainsblogThere was a thought-provoking piece in the Buffalo News today, titled "It's TMZ's World Now; ESPN just Lives In It." The author is the paper's longtime arts editor, who recently recalled being sent off in his cub-reporter days to cover Woodstock- in a coat and tie. Now, in the twilight of his career, he's both bemused and befuddled by the way a "little gossip site created by a lawyer" has become such a vital source of news- both reporting it and, in recent weeks, shaping it. He cites the downfall of Donald Sterling and the big reveal on Ray Rice's violence as the most recent examples of it, and goes back to TMZ's earlier production of Mel Gibson's racist rants as proof of the influence now weilded by this purveyor of the prurient.
Yet there's one aspect of the TMiZation of reporting that Jeff Simon doesn't mention: this site, like many, does what Old Media officially refuses to do in order to get the news: it pays for it. Six figures, if necessary to get the story. That is a complete 180 from the reporting ethics I was trained in. My New Testament was The Gospel According to Sunstyle, which was not just a technical manual but a source of many do's and dont's for the words being written in that style. Older, and more readily referenced online these days, was the Washington Post's version, which set forth a Torah for turning facts into capital-N News: We pay our own way. We make every reasonable effort to be free of obligation to news sources and to special interests. We do not misrepresent our identities and we publicly correct our mistakes. It was obvious that we would not stoop to bidding for news items; nor would we cede a scintilla of editorial control to a source. Pre-review of unpublished articles was prohibited, and pre-approval of their content was unthinkable.
Now, TMZ says, think again. It's all about the page clicks, and everything is on the table, including the checkbook. The concept is neither new or exclusively digital- the National Inquirer and other tabloids have done pay-for-play for decades. But responsible media did its level best to avoid even citing such "rag" stories, much less participating in the practices that journalistic ethics have always deplored.
Yet today? Time, Inc. is about as Old Media as you can get without getting grey ink on your fingers, but around the time TMZ was paying for the Sterling tapes, Time's Sports Illustrated was "breaking" the story of LeBron James's return to Cleveland. "Breaking," in this case, meant "getting an exclusive right to the announcement from its subject, assigning a senior writer to be the King's scribe, and scooping the competition with an 'as-told-to' manifesto that James certainly saw pre-publication and almost certainly had creative control over."
Edward R. Murrow must be spinning in his grave over the likes of this.
Throw in the blurring of the lines which should tie, but separate, the creation of news from its reporting and its ultimate distribution- the three old-line networks now being owned by a movie studio, a real-estate and tobacco oligarchy, and a soon-to-be-my cable company- and there's no longer any potential for conflict of interest among these roles. It's already here- and TMZ merely points to the Mogul Emperor and tells him that, forget the clothes, YOU have no ethics on, either.
If that doesn't deserve a WARNING in the corner of the screen like any other nudity gets, I don't know what does.
Yet there's one aspect of the TMiZation of reporting that Jeff Simon doesn't mention: this site, like many, does what Old Media officially refuses to do in order to get the news: it pays for it. Six figures, if necessary to get the story. That is a complete 180 from the reporting ethics I was trained in. My New Testament was The Gospel According to Sunstyle, which was not just a technical manual but a source of many do's and dont's for the words being written in that style. Older, and more readily referenced online these days, was the Washington Post's version, which set forth a Torah for turning facts into capital-N News: We pay our own way. We make every reasonable effort to be free of obligation to news sources and to special interests. We do not misrepresent our identities and we publicly correct our mistakes. It was obvious that we would not stoop to bidding for news items; nor would we cede a scintilla of editorial control to a source. Pre-review of unpublished articles was prohibited, and pre-approval of their content was unthinkable.
Now, TMZ says, think again. It's all about the page clicks, and everything is on the table, including the checkbook. The concept is neither new or exclusively digital- the National Inquirer and other tabloids have done pay-for-play for decades. But responsible media did its level best to avoid even citing such "rag" stories, much less participating in the practices that journalistic ethics have always deplored.
Yet today? Time, Inc. is about as Old Media as you can get without getting grey ink on your fingers, but around the time TMZ was paying for the Sterling tapes, Time's Sports Illustrated was "breaking" the story of LeBron James's return to Cleveland. "Breaking," in this case, meant "getting an exclusive right to the announcement from its subject, assigning a senior writer to be the King's scribe, and scooping the competition with an 'as-told-to' manifesto that James certainly saw pre-publication and almost certainly had creative control over."
Edward R. Murrow must be spinning in his grave over the likes of this.
Throw in the blurring of the lines which should tie, but separate, the creation of news from its reporting and its ultimate distribution- the three old-line networks now being owned by a movie studio, a real-estate and tobacco oligarchy, and a soon-to-be-my cable company- and there's no longer any potential for conflict of interest among these roles. It's already here- and TMZ merely points to the Mogul Emperor and tells him that, forget the clothes, YOU have no ethics on, either.
If that doesn't deserve a WARNING in the corner of the screen like any other nudity gets, I don't know what does.