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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Sure it is. You, as a voter, don't want to know what makes the man tick? Their job is to report on the relavent facts. Sometimes those facts are whether he's a Yankees fan or a Diamondbacks fan. They're humanizing their subject so that there's more to him than a former POW who can't raise his arms above his head and a problem with authority.
Shakran, I'm waiting for your opinion here.
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I can get to know you, Jazz, on a personal level without you having to give me a $100,000 vacation. A core tenet of journalistic ethics is that we do not use our position as journalists to gain advantages. We do not take gifts, we do not go to media days at amusement parks, we do not let restaurants comp our bill because they see the station logo on our coats. . .None of it.
Now, yes, there are some. . hell, many, journalists who violate that ethical obligation. They do nothing but to lower our profession in the eyes of the public. Considering journalists currently have an approval rating below that of Congress, that's not a wise move. For myself, if you work for me and you take gifts, you get fired.
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Is it ethical for someone who is externally auditiing my business with the intent to recomend to someone else to buy it to take me to dinner to get to know me?
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Is it ethical for him to accept a $50,000 gift from you when his audit will determine the fate of the sale?
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You know who it's really hard to interview? Strangers. You know who it's hard to figure out who's lying? Strangers.
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Well, I know my regular sources pretty well, and I got to know them by interviewing them, constantly, on and off camera. I don't need to go to their house and swim in their pool to do my job. Doing that, in fact, makes my job harder because the public will assume that I feel indebted to my sources and therefore won't craft a fair report.
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Was it ethical for Deep Throat to pick Woodward and Bernstein to out CREEP and Nixon? They most certainly profited from it. If you think they didn't, then check the receipts for each of their last books.
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Deep Throat didn't profit from it. Woodward and Bernstein wrote journalistic accounts of the Watergate scandal (All the Presidents Men and The Final Days, if anyone's interested. Good reads, both of them). Journalists have the right to get paid for their work.
Had W & B accepted tickets to the symphony from Deep Throat, or gifts from Nixon, they would have been crossing an ethical line.
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And reporters routinely eat for free on the campaign trail, by the way.
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Yes I know. I watch it all the time and it pisses me off. Here's one journo that does not. I will not taint my reporting or the perception of my reporting by being in any way indebted to the people I am covering.