Advocates and Adversaries

"Given the choice of government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would choose the latter." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Chico Marx

  Politicians and candidates assail news media for what they call negative coverage, insisting that all reporters "be nice." Translation: Be an advocate for me. To them, "fair" means favorable, and any report that's not favorable must, therefore, be unfair.
   Good journalism, however, requires that reporters do just what their name implies: Report, both the favorable and the unfavorable. It requires that journalists expose lies, hypocrisy and corruption as well as reveal selective truth-telling and misleading statements, and provide documentable proof that the claims and statements are factually untrue. (That's a nice way of saying it's a lie.)
   Too many politicians -- and people in business -- assume that if a reporter is not an advocate for them, the reporters is therefore an adversary, to be treated as such.
   The reality is that good reporters are neither advocates nor adversaries. They ask the tough, penetrating questions because they need to be asked, and the questions are posed on behalf of the general public. And a journalist is first and always a member of the public.
   Whenever a politician or business leader encounters unfavorable news coverage, he or she accuses the media of not being "truthful," and attacks.
   The irony is that the attacks are also duly reported by that same media. Moral: Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Quite often, challenging and attacking a news story causes more people to see the story, either in the response attack version, or they research the original and read that as well.
   Meanwhile, the reporter and the news outlet have very little to lose, since major media firms have squadrons of lawyers to defend them and every incident of thrust and parry by both sides gets even more exposure.
   Here's an example: A spokesman for Amazon, Jay Carney, took to the Internet to post a blistering 1,300-word critique of a New York Times investigative story about the company's treatment of employees. Result: The NYT editor posted an equally long response defending the story as well as covering the incident with a news story in the print edition and its online pages. This led to many millions more readers of the original story in addition to the followup coverage.
   Second example: A woman posted an article criticizing a major consulting firm, alleging its work was unsound and unethical. Similar exposes had already appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune years earlier. But the consulting firm, ChemRisk, did not challenge the two major newspapers. Instead, it filed a major lawsuit against the woman who posted the Internet article. The writer, Karen Savage, a private citizen, defied the consulting firms charges, continuing her postings and writing, "Bring it on, bro!" according to a New York Times account of the dispute.
   So why didn't the aggrieved firm take on the Wall Street Journal with its complaints of defamation? One reason could be that the newspaper has squadrons of lawyers, supported by a corporate media behemoth to continue the legal battle for years.
   The Internet writer, by her own admission, has no resources, and therefore has nothing to lose. She does, however, have access to the Internet, and her comments can go worldwide.
  As for any allegation of libel or defamation, the best defense against libel is truth. If it's true, it's not libel. That was established in the 18th Century in the John Peter Zenger case. The dispute was over a story Zenger printed in 1734 about the New York colonial governor, noting that the governor had a mistress. The governor was unhappy, and even after a grand jury refused to indict Zenger, the governor had the journalist arrested and charged with libel.
   The defense lawyer argued that the governor did, in fact, have a mistress, and it was common knowledge that he did. Therefore there was no libel. The jury acquitted Zenger.
   Suing a private citizen, then, over Internet postings is not a good idea, especially if the postings are true. This only leads to more ink in print documenting the dispute and spreading news of the spat to more people more often, via the Internet and broadcast media.
   Now, with the Constitution protecting the right of freedom of speech and of the press and the Internet enabling anyone with access to a computer to express thoughts and opinions worldwide, more people can spread more information more quickly and with greater impact than ever before.
   When a major corporation sues a private citizen who has no assets, but the firm does not challenge a major media outlet that runs the same story and has a brigade of specialized lawyers to fight back, that  shows the firm to be a bully picking on the little guy. Nobody likes that. And for journalists, that's a great story.
  Just be sure it's true.