[Boston-editorial] Wealthy Say article- for discussion please

Thu Apr 7 09:00:36 PDT 2005

Thanks for taking down the article on the developer in JP, Pete. And I 
can see your concerns about the UFE article. I liked it because I 
thought it would stump some of the trolls who posted to the previous 
article we got from UFE. And some of the more dogmatic radicals who 
insist all rich people are evil--missing the basic point of a radical 
analysis, that it's the class/capitalist *system* that is the problem, 
not necessarily individual members of the capitalist class. (Blaming 
the world's problems on rich people being evil is actually a rather 
liberal analysis--the implication is that if we just had nice rich 
people, who were reformists, everything would be solved. But bad 
systems can make good people do bad things. And this is hardly an 
original thought--you can find it in Marx's /Capital/. OK, I'm off on a 
complete tangent here.)

The thing is we frequently get articles that are essentially people 
covering their own rallies--the article on the Palestinian rights 
protest outside Caterpillar headquarters is one example and I think the 
protest outside the Mexican Consulate is probably another. In some 
cases, we just won't get coverage in any other way.

I'm not entirely sure what we should do about this. Can we make a 
distinction between press releases and self-coverage? I don't think 
self-coverage is inherently bad--I think it's a legitimate form of 
reporting. I mean even when one of us covers an event, it is coverage 
to some extent, since we're participating in the protest in addition to 
covering it. But I agree, you're right Pete, there is something 
different about the UFE press release. How do make these distinctions. 
Whether or not they were written by paid staff?

(On the whole activism vs. journalism thing, just as I don't want to 
impose one model of writing articles on people, I don't want to impose 
one position in that debate on people. I guess I would consider myself 
an activist-journalist--and some people in the IMC probably consider 
themselves one or the other. The idea that journalists are supposed to 
do the impossible and be politically neutral is a recent idea--I 
believe it only goes back to the 1930s and was part of a larger project 
of consolidating elite control over the press. Even for a long time 
after that, there was a traditional of advocacy journalism--journalism 
that takes sides. That's how I understand what I do. Some critical 
distance from the group you're covering can be helpful, so you can give 
constructive/sympathetic criticism, but given that we're an all 
volunteer group of amateurs, we're not in a position to feature only 
that coverage.)

It would be nice to have some method of centering articles that keeps 
us from stepping on each others' toes. I'm not sure three votes is a 
the best way--there's the issue of getting things up in a timely 
fashion and, after all, the center column guidelines are supposed to 
minimize these disputes. I think if we think something might be iffy, 
then we should check in. But that might still create problems, as in 
this case. May be we just need to clarifying the guidelines more, as we 
learn from new disagreements that come up (like this one)? We're not 
going to devise a perfect system--the key is that we disagree with each 
respectfully and really engage in dialogue about these issues when they 
come up.

-- Matt

On Apr 7, 2005, at 12:30 AM, Pete Stidman wrote:

> I am very sorry to take such a drastic action but I
> felt it was neccesary.  I took the article written by
> UFE down.
>
> Please let me explain my position and we can discuss
> this article and perhaps the one before it as well.
>
> One of the main reasons I took it down was that it had
> not appeared on national yet, and I wanted to prevent
> that from happening before we had discussed it.
>
> This article again highlights our own confusion, as a
> group, over the issue of activism vs. journalism, or
> how do the two mix and what are the boundaries.
>
> First of all the reasons for taking this down.
>
> UFE (United for a Fair Economy, the parent of
> Respnsible Wealth) is a well funded non-profit group.
> We have had articles by them before, and by MGA and by
> others, but they have always been commentary or
> analysis.
>
> This article claims to be, or puts on the airs of,
> journalism.
>
> FOr instance, who is this group of wealthy people?
> THere are no names, no evidence of this event.  And
> more importantly, the writer is a paid worker for
> RW/UFE and so has a real monetary incentive to make
> his side sound better.
>
> The real problem, as I see it, is the style of the
> article.  I would be open to this if it was written
> straightforward but I still wouldn't want to center it
> as a PR from a group of paid professionals.
>
> Incidentally, we could all take a hint from the
> immense stink recently put up about news stations all
> over the country using promotional videos-reported as
> news- that were actually created by the Bush
> Administration.
>
> This same issue has caused many a scandal at a small
> town newspaper too cheap to pay a reporter to cover a
> story.  When they publish a straight PR piece and get
> caught, they take serious hits to their credibility as
> a fair and balanced news source.
>
> Now I realize that this reflects back on our last
> battle about the JP article.  When I look back on it,
> I realize that the first paragraph could possibly be
> newsy but the second paragraph reveals that it is a
> call for action.
>
> So then I took down that article!  Two of you were
> opposed to it anyway.
>
> There is a second difference to consider too when
> discussing these articles.  The JP one was not done by
> paid staff.  But we will not always know that
>
> I admit that I may have been wrong about it.    And I
> may have taken us down the wrong road there.
>
> We need to sit down at the next webitorial meeting and
> really get to the bottom of this particular
> distinction.  and figure out what the boundaries of
> our particular brand of activist journalism is going
> to be.
>
> I apologize.
>
> As far as what this may look like from the outside,
> the JP call to actions deadline is over, so it is
> logical to take it down.  The Wealthy article was only
> up for an hour and a half I think.
>
> I tried calling Matthew before I did this, and I
> confered with Petrina who also thought we should
> discuss it more since I was so freaked out about it.
> I hesitated to call more folks because it is midnight.
>  So I did try to take the options I asked Matt to take
> after he pulled on of my stories down.
>
> Maybe we should reinstitute the old voting scheme?
> where a certain number of us (maybe three?) have to
> vote on an article before it gets centered.  We have
> Tim Petrina Matt Pete Rob Joe as editors right now and
> john too if he wants to use it.  We could call or
> email folks when we want to get an article centered.
> It might not be as slow as we think it would be.  And
> it would go a ways in helping this problem.
>
>
> -Pete
>
>
>
>
> 		
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