Citizen: transparent :: journalist: neutral?

In April 2008, Mayhill Fowler published a piece about Barack Obama calling Pennsylvanians bitter on a site that is meant for citizen journalists. That does not undercut that what she was producing was journalism but it does allowe her to report what she had access to and thought was newsworthy.

Fowler includes audio proof of Obama's words at the private Pacific Heights fundraiser. She allows the public to judge for themselves before and after she states her own opinion in the original post. Here, she is transparent and acts as a citizen. Any other person at the private fundraiser, where Obama tried to explain Pennsylvanians to Californians, could have easily gone home, told a friend, sent an e-mail or posted Obama's words on their personal blog.

These were Obama's words:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Fowler is not neutral, however. She clearly states her opinion of Pennsylvanians and how it diverges from Obama's:

"Pennsylvanians are remarkably chipper. In the end, the material world that once gave them prosperity has not defined them. On the contrary, Pennsylvania unfolds in an interlocking chain of Turkeyfoots and Allentowns, held separately and together by a sense of shared community, of humor, of history, and of abiding faith."

Journalists are supposed to be neutral and objective according to Michael Tomasky. Fowler was neither. But she still calls herself a reporter. She felt the need to report what she learned to the public and that need is important criteria for being a journalist. Obama was wrong to put down Pennsylvanians to wealthy Californians and Fowler made that clear.  

Tomasky portrays Fowler as both a sneaky citizen and a sleazy journalist. He makes a valid point that blogging, like journalism, needs rules. However, because Fowler was transparent about her disagreement with Obama's words in her original post about the fundraiser, it is hard to view her as such a villain. In Jay Rosen's words, she "wrote about what concerned her in them...I was proud to publish Mayhill's account, which is partial but truthful, even though I recognize that it touched off an ordeal for the campaign, a media storm that isn't over and could hurt Barack Obama's chances."  The big issue here was that the event was closed to the press, but because of the world's ability to publish on a whim, nothing that was said could be considered off the record.  

Yet, nowhere in her piece does she indicate that she donated money to his campaign. She says she supported him and that is what provided her access, it is also where she fell short of transparency. Fowler's need to inform the public was an act of journalism. She was transparent, clearly stating her views and opinions. Her opinion was a citizen's, but her words were a journalist's. Yes, she was granted access for doing something un-journalistic (donating to a campaign), and obviously she was not neutral when she published her piece. Even the platform she published on--OffTheBus--is a hybrid of pro-am journalism. Rosen proposes that "Journalists, the pro kind, aren't allowed to be loyalists. But loyalists because they're allowed to write for OffTheBus may find that loyalty to what really happened trumps all. And that's when they start to commit journalism."

We keep hearing that the lines between citizens and journalists have been blurred but I have some sort of Darwinian faith that the ones who commit to the ethics of journalism, whether they be the ethics of transparency or neutrality, will be the ones who survive. Since the professional and the amateur are converging, and the spheres for privacy and anonymity are diminishing, the need for transparency has never been so imminent.  

Credits: ebnflow.com; Offthebus.net; Mayhill Fowler, Jay Rosen and Amy Holmes at a panel discussing semi-pro journalism, flickr.com