Will Ethical Walls Protect Education Journalism from Billionaire Influence?
By Anthony Cody.
Alexander Russo is an unlikely ombudsman for education journalism, given that he is paid to blog by publishing giant Scholastic. But he has taken on the role, and in this column, he argues that Eli Broad’s ownership of the Los Angeles Times, and Broad Foundation sponsorship of education coverage there is not worthy of the ethical fuss that education advocates have made of it.
The brouhaha kicked off when Peter Sussman, who literally helped write the 1996 Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, was asked to comment on the fact that Eli Broad now owns the Los Angeles Times, and is sponsoring a very controversial project that would turn half of the Los Angeles Schools over to charter operators. Sussman offered this statement:
…trust and credibility are the life’s blood of journalism, and without it, a “news” organization is no different than any other partisan in public disputes, with the added problem that there is no major paper to hold it accountable, although in this case a blogger has apparently stepped into the breach. People have jeopardized and lost their jobs for defending their editorial independence and standing up to such conflicts of interest. I haven’t read the background on the issue you’ve highlighted, but if all your information is accurate, the Times’ problem extends beyond opinions to reporting, however well-intentioned their education reporters are.
Russo then offers two main lines of defense. The first is an impermeable wall he asserts exists between the editorial division of a newspaper and the journalistic side. According to this theory, journalists are utterly objective, and not subject to the influence of their owners. Russo writes:
However, at the LAT and at most other papers, these two parts of the paper are developed independently. The editorial page is where the paper takes a position on an issue. The news page is where reporters cover the story but do not take a position.
I think we have all seen ample evidence that reporting is skewed according to the political perspective and economic interests of the ownership of media outlets. But this supposed wall is good enough for some.
The second defense Russo offers is based on a supposed lack of consistency on the part of the critics.
Russo writes:
There’s also the issue of a double-standard. Where are the objections from Sussman and Ravitch to the Ford Foundation funding the LAT, or the Robert Wood Johnson funding for PBS health care coverage, or Gates Foundation funding forWill Ethical Walls Protect Education Journalism from Billionaire Influence? - Living in Dialogue:
