The recent controversy over the Wakefield school reassignments is so rich with journalistic issues that I — and you — can’t absorb it all in one swallow.
Did The News & Observer create a race/class issue in its coverage, where there wasn’t one before? Did the paper unfairly tar Wakefield as an elitist enclave based on the comments of a few residents? Did staffers abuse one of those residents by using an inflammatory quote in a story without her permission?
These are some of the questions that have come my way since the first story, Jan. 22, on the Wake school board’s plan to reassign 150 Wakefield students, temporarily, to modular units at the DuBois Community Center in Wake Forest. Many Wakefield parents protested mightily, which attracted the disputed coverage in The N&O.
The issues are so weighty and instructive that I’m going to divide them into Wakefield Part I and Wakefield Part II. This week: What can “private citizens” expect when they deal with the press? Next week: Did The N&O contribute to the conflict with its coverage? (Short answer: yes)
Part I: Many of you have seen the letter to the editor in Tuesday’s paper terming the paper’s treatment of the writer “unethical, irresponsible and an unconscionable abuse of freedom of the press.” (Letter: “Unfairly treated in Wakefield story”)
Here’s a thumbnail of the issue: Colleen Larsen, the letter-writer, was quoted in the news story as saying, “You are going to move people from Wakefield to the slums of Wake Forest.” Predictably, the quote set off an explosion in both communities. Larsen says she didn’t understand, when talking to an N&O reporter, that her comments would end up in the paper. She had called the paper to get information about the reassignments.
I’m not going to get into the details of the communication between Larsen and N&O staff members. Suffice to say that there is more than one side to the story.
Regardless of the merits of this case, it does illustrate the general issue of how reporters should treat “civilians” in news stories, people who aren’t sophisticated about dealing with the press. They are not like seasoned politicians and other public officials, who are intricately familiar with the concepts of “off the record,” “background,” “not for attribution” and other nuances of the reporter-source relationship (and, I might add, are very effective at manipulating reporters to put their best spin on the story. That’s another column.)
There is a first principle in dealing with the press: If you’re talking to a reporter, assume that what you say will end up in print. Period.
The corollary, to reporters, is that anything you’re told in an interview is fair game for a story, unless the source stipulates otherwise. A second corollary is that, once a source makes a statement, he or she can’t take it back.
That’s all fine for regular traffickers in media communication, but how much can we expect, say, a school parent who never deals with the press to know those rules of the game? — unwritten anywhere, by the way.
My answer is that we should give them broad leeway.
Sometimes in the media we assume that information is a commodity that people are obliged to share with us. That’s because we’re accustomed to demanding public information from public officials, who rightfully should be accountable to the public through the press.
But when we’re seeking information from private citizens, they are free to share that information or not. They, not we, own the information. And if we take it without asking, we’re taking something that’s not ours.
A recent publication of the Freedom Forum, “Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists,” offers this advice: “In dealing with people who may be nave about the press, it often is permissible and even a best practice to grant them a privilege reporters almost never afford public figures: the right to change substantially or even withdraw a quote.”
I’d say further that it’s a reporter’s responsibility to not only let a private citizen know that he’s with the newspaper, but also that the paper intends to print the information supplied. In the case of an inflammatory statement, like the “slums” quote, I think a reporter should go a step further and ask the person if he or she means for the statement to go in the paper. Call it the Miranda warning of journalism.
There is disincentive for reporters to do that, you should know, because such full disclosure invites the source to withdraw a juicy quote, which could take the sizzle out of the story. But most reporters are sensitive to the vulnerabilities of people not savvy to media and cut them more slack than they would a public official or seasoned politician.
All this is not to say that our staffers deliberately deceived anyone in the Wakefield case. They are honorable people, I know by experience. But there clearly was a disconnect between the expectations of reporter and source that resulted in an unhappy outcome for the citizen. That could have been avoided with clearer communication.
