Of Embargoes and Embarrassments
I was in Rome last week for a conference for journalists covering Catholicism, and specifically the Vatican, and doing some other reporting and kibbitzing. Beats working, I know. On my return I found lots of understandable buzz about the Dolan-Colbert Catholic Comedy Slam at Fordham. It seems to have been a huge success, especially for those who were there. I was invited to attend, and wished I could have made it.
But the event also seems to have generated a great deal of teeth-grinding among some Catholic journalists in particular, who feel that their colleagues in the Fourth Estate who wrote about the panel had behaved unethically in doing so because they violated an embargo on the proceedings.
“When is an embargoed media event, not an embargoed media event?” Kevin Clarke asked at America’s blog. Kevin was arguing that in the era of smart-phones and instant communication, embargoes can’t be trusted to work because folks – as our own Grant Gallicho and many Fordham students did – will Tweet the proceedings anyway since it is so easy to do, and well, everyone is doing it, ya know?
But then that shafts good-hearted scribes who abide by the terms set out by an event’s organizers.
Well, the short answer to Kevin’s query, and that of many others, is that it is NEVER acceptable to break an embargo – to violate a trust and break your word. The means of communication don’t matter. Trust and ethical behavior are paramount no matter what the medium.
But there is an even more parsimonious – and for our purposes vital – answer to the question about when an embargoed media event is not an embargoed media event: Namely, when there is no embargo. And there wasn’t one in the case of the Dolan-Colbert panel, and neither Grant nor Rachel Zoll of the AP nor Laurie Goodstein of the NYT was acting improperly in reporting on the event.
The event was of course expected to be a great boon to Fordham and the wider Church, and originally plans were made to broadcast it. But as way leads on to way, a decision was made not to broadcast or tape the event. That stank. But so it goes.
Still, Fordham officials and organizers understandably wanted coverage of the event, and made sure to invite a number of journalists to attend with the often explicitly communicated expectation that we would write about it. They never said when or how or by what means. Nor were all the other attendees enjoined from writing about the proceedings.
Fordham created a special Twitter hashtag to encourage interaction while the event was going on, and many students did just that. Many others were taking photos and even taping as well. So it goes when you invite 3,000 college students to a celebrity event.
There were no particular ground rules for the writers beyond no taping the proceedings. Some critics and even Fordham officials later referred to an embargo. But there was no mention of an embargo beforehand or a clear explanation of when it would expire – that is, at what point journos could write about the event. There is no such thing as a permanent embargo. By nature it has an expiration date, and if there had been an embargo it expired as soon as students and others started broadcasting the bon mots being dished out by the capable participants.
Some also referred to the event as being “blacked out,” which refers to the ban on any broadcast of the event. Others said it was meant to be “off the record.” But again by definition you can’t have an off the record conversation with 3,000 people who don’t know that it is an off the record conversation.
No doubt different people were told different things, but that is not the fault of the media covering the event; that is the fault of the organizers, and the fault of those journalists who either don’t understand basic terminology or did not seek to clarify the terms of engagement if they were confused.
In short: the event was closed to broadcast but writers were invited to attend and write about the event, and the participants on all sides expressed great satisfaction with the stories about the evening, as they should. Fordham is putting out photos and understandably kvelling about it all.
Yet some are now accusing those who covered the event of unethical behavior. It is a meme that is gaining traction in other coverage, unfortunately.
Why do I go on at such length? Yes, it’s kind of a classic “inside baseball” story for media types. But hey, we love that stuff. (And if you don’t, feel free to move on to my “Mrs. Jesus” post for something really frothy and irrelevant.)
But there are serious issues at stake. I am of course driven by a certain tribal loyalty to members of the guild who I believe are being unfairly maligned (as opposed to fairly maligned). And many of the targets of the criticisms are friends. But even absent such personal motivations I think it is important to understand how damaging accusations like these can be to a journalist, especially in the Age of Google.
Embargoes are almost sacred pacts, and breaching them can damage a journalist’s ability to receive information ahead of release in order to prepare better stories. Moreover, viability in this business is closely tied to one’s reputation as a person of good faith, and impugning that reputation is not just wrong but potentially perilous to one’s livelihood.
The other important issue that I believe this episode reveals is the lack of expertise among too many people in Catholic media, and among church officials and academics who deal with the media.
I suspect there was some measure of butt-covering going on in the post-facto claims that those who reported on the Fordham event had somehow jumped the gun, or violated the rules. Those involved in organizing the event may have been chided by the principals for allowing so much coverage, or any coverage at all. Reporters who didn’t get invited and didn’t cover the event until it was too late in the news cycle may have been miffed. This biz is all about being first (viz., CNN and the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling), and getting beat makes reporters look bad. Kevin Clarke admitted that “it does smart a little” to get beat on the story, though he claimed he got beat because he was the only one who played by the rules.
Motivations aside, I think the backlash over the coverage was about ignorance as much as irritation with how it went down – ignorance about basic media terms and customs by those organizing the event, and ignorance by many in the Catholic media who wanted to cover it.
The problem of inadequate expertise is also a growing among secular media pros themselves, as budget cutbacks have eliminated that cohort of grizzled veterans (and they really did used to be grizzly, in so many ways, rather than TV-ready pundits) who could lead younger reporters through the real-life ethical dilemmas that emerge in the business every day, and that are not always covered in journalism school.
Catholic media may not be immune to these problems – the loss of sages to guide apprentices – and perhaps it is having a trickle down effect throughout Catholic institutions that deal with the media. I’m not sure. I do see so many professions as a kind of a guild, and worry that all the cutbacks and constant movement in the workplace are diminishing what was once a general culture of professionalism.
I also think that the emergence of Catholic bloggers who have no journalism training whatsoever is highly problematic. Apart from not knowing basic terms – “embargo” and “off the record” and “blackout” and such – they don’t know the basics of proper attribution. They often cut and paste swaths of copy or even entire stories, or use information and quotations and photographs that they shouldn’t use or don’t attribute. Not to mention that lack of transparency about their funding sources.
These are issues that I think Catholic media should address. Perhaps the development of a “Code of Conduct” for bloggers who identify as Catholic could provide rules of the road for the digital superhighway, and maybe some remedial training for Catholic journalists and institutions who deal with the media could help avoid some of the mistakes and misunderstandings that characterized the Fordham event.
Such an approach might also reduce unfair accusations that can damage the reputations of good journalists and expose the embarrassing shortcomings of those who make unfounded claims.
Still unclear, was there an embargo or not? In what form?
Re-reading the article, and speaking as one with more than 25 years in newsroom management, if there is no explicit embargo, there is no embargo. If the host said at the top of the program that it was ‘off the record’ that should be honored, even if it wasn’t clear at the time of the invitation. BTW, “never” is probably very slightly too black and white.
What’s the difference between off the record and an embargo? Are these somehoow elated to the seal of the confessional?
And if a reporter is told by someone that he has abused a child or knows that someone else has, is the reporter bound to report it to the police or his/her editor?
“Off the record” is always subject to agreement. If the reporter doesn’t consent to going off the record, it’s not off the record. Both the reporter and the source have to agree. It’s a serious decision for a reporter to go off the record.
In journalism parlance, an “embargo” means that information is released with the stipulation that its publication is delayed until a specified time. It’s not like the Iranian arms embargo – eventually the information is supposed to get through. It should be very specific on the time when the embargo is lifted. For an event like this, the ground rules would need to be set in advance, and they’d have to be uniform and explicit. As David notes, that wasn’t the case.
Once an embargo is broken, it’s done. If there ever was an embargo, Fordham couldn’t encourage students to file notes to the Internet without accepting that the journalists present would do the same.
Well. I seem to be accused of a large number of offenses here: misunderstanding basic journalism terminology, impugning reputations, gross ignorance (I plead no contest in general to that), casting about unfair accusations, embarrassing shortcomings…where to begin. I may be a Catholic journalist who could use some schooling, but here is what I had no trouble understanding: I was invited to attend the event under the condition that I would not cover it. If I had real integrity, I should have refused to attend at all under those conditions (but I really wanted to see Steve Colbert, what can I say? … oh, and the cardinal, too); probably all of us should have refused. My invitation and its conditions came from the same source as that of the other journalists mentioned except, as I pointed out in my blog post, for Grant, who would not speak to me on the record about this kerfuffle (I wish he had because I could have made his position plainer than I was able to). If there was no “embargo,” than why did both journalists who elected to “break the cone of silence” as one put it, feel obliged to describe their rationale for breaking it? Both took pains to explain in their published accounts that they did so because students (and Grant) were live-tweeting the event. This seemed like a new idea to me and as a result note- and newsworthy and perhaps a new practical/ethical consideration for the field of journalism to review a little. I thought I covered that novel conundrum in a properly light-hearted manner, since in the grand scheme of things this is all very inside baseball, but perhaps not. It’s wonderful that David is such a good friend that he felt compelled to rush to defend the reputation of his pals and I am sorry that something I wrote provoked that protective instinct, but I have a reputation to protect as well and I wish he had been a little more generous to mine.
Sounds like Fordham University is where the fault lies, giving different people different information. I imagine their communications office wants to have good relations with journalists? It’s up to them to make it right.
Btw, this is what David wrote about the event for NCR. He clearly notes in this piece a proposed “total media blackout.” It was never my understanding that print media would be exempt from this restriction and there is nothing to suggest in this article, which was published long before the event, that David is making that distinction. I feel like I am taking crazy pills:
http://ncronline.org/news/people/no-joke-dolan-colbert-catholic-comedy-slam-gets-media-blackout
News that Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert and New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan would appear together on a panel on faith and humor next month was greeted with widespread anticipation: Both men are devout Catholics and pretty darned funny.
But now this tale has a surprising punch line that will surely make a lot of people unhappy: Organizers of the Catholic comedy slam, set for Sept. 14 at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York, have announced a total media blackout of the event.
“After extended conversations with the program participants, the university will be closing the event to the media,” the university’s communications office wrote Thursday in an email to reporters. The event is titled “The Cardinal and Colbert: Humor, Joy, and the Spiritual Life.”
“The evening has evolved from a public event to a more intimate conversation in front of members of the Fordham community,” the statement said. “We will not be videotaping the event for distribution, nor streaming it on the web or elsewhere.”
That’s an abrupt change from initial plans to broadcast the event as widely as possible, maybe even on cable television. It may also rob the Catholic church of a valuable opportunity to show the faith in a positive light and to an audience — Colbert’s, mainly — that might otherwise tune out churchmen like Dolan.
As of now it appears that the audience for the event will be limited to several hundred Fordham students. But given the ubiquity of hand-held digital devices — and the demand for at least snippets of the cardinal and the comedian interacting — it is likely that at least some of the program will make it onto YouTube or Twitter.
Why did/would Fordham pimp this event so hard to such a wide arena when it was going to be restricted to a tiny audience?
Kevin, I understand your annoyance at getting beat but you are conflating and confusing a number of basic journalistic terms and practices.
You say your instructions for the event came from the same source as everyone else, but who was that source? I was contacted by a range of different people, all saying different things about the invitation.
You have to allow for the fact that different people were told different things and may have abided by the terms they were expressly or implicitly given.
Also, an important point: you note in your response that Grant would not speak to you on the record. For future reference, it’s standard practice never to reveal when you have off the record conversations with someone. It violates an explicit and implied promise of confidentiality, and let’s others know who you are consulting.
You also use various terms interchangeably: “off the record’ and “embargo” and “blackout.” These are all quite different. If you could not cover it at all then there was no embargo. And if there was no embargo how could someone have broken the embargo? A “blackout” referred in this case to TV and audio taping. You cited my write-up about the blackout, which was fine. But there were subsequent developments as well. Fair is fair.
Also,in your original post, you wrote:
So you weren’t surprised that students would be live-tweeting and that the proceedings would become public. Yet you professed to be shocked, shocked I say that reporters then wrote about the now-public proceedings. You weren’t prepared to write about it when it did become public, as you said you knew it would. The other reporters were. That’s not their fault.
Clearly the event got the kind of coverage it deserved and made Fordham and Colbert and the Church look good. There was also confusion about the ground rules, no doubt. But the event went public almost immediately, and the media who were invited did what they were expected to do.
The problem is disparaging their reputations for doing so.
So it appears that Fordham first wanted it on CNN, then they wanted a media blackout, then they gave students (and Grant) instructions for sending out tweets about the event. Nice mess.
Claire, indeed. One thing: no one has publicly stated who wanted the ban on recording or videotaping. I can see arguments for Comedy Central wanting to protect their Colbert “brand” as well. Personally, I think this was not a light the church would hide under a bushel, and I’m glad it got out at least in print.
It is clear that Mr. Gibson holds my professionalism in low regard, along with that of apparently a good cross section of Catholic communications and press. We will attempt to soldier on, burdened though we are with his heavy disapproval. (I would add that every criticism made here about the Catholic press could easily be applied to Mr. Gibson’s secular “guild.”)
If he will allow me to have the last word, I will only invite fair-minded readers to contemplate the phrases “closed to the media” and “total media blackout.” I think Mr. Gibson is mistaken to believe in this specific case, and in general, that the term blackout only applies to video or audio feeds. This is certainly not the understanding that Fordham staff had nor was it the understanding they conveyed to their guests. The journalists in question within their articles acknowledged press restrictions of some kind, whatever word you want to use to describe them, and then explained their decisions to disregard them.
I acknowledged those reasons and to an extent agreed with them in my commentary. Perhaps Mr. Gibson missed that bit. I would like to also invite folks to revisit my actual commentary and judge for themselves if it warrants the outrage and condescension on display here. It is pretty hilarious to be called on the carpet for wanton disparagement of a fellow journalist’s reputation within what amounts to a lengthy, gratuitous disparagement of my reputation.
The more perplexing question is why there was ever a “total media black out” in the first place. Who imposed it and why? What was the whole point of this knee-slapping event?
For those of us who have never thought about it before, http://embargowatch.wordpress.com has examples of reasons for embargoes and of botched embargoes. (But it sheds no light on Robert Mickens’ question.)