This article fails to account for the fact that abiding by the rules suggested would mostly kill the ability of journalists to share the most valuable information they share with the public.
You don’t get to reveal stuff from the world most powerful organizations if you double check the quotes with them.
I think journalism is one of the professions where the consequentialist vs deontological ethics have the toughest trade-offs. It’s just really hard to abide by very high privacy standards and broke highly important news.
As one illustrative example, your standard would have prevented Kelsey Piper from sharing her conversation with SBF. Is that a desirable outcome? Not sure.
You don’t get to reveal stuff from the world most powerful organizations if you double check the quotes with them.
I don’t think the most important stuff that journalist reveal comes from the people who misspeak in interviews. It rather comes from the journalist having strong relationships with sources that are willing to tell the journalist about real problems.
Investigative journalism is often about finding someone within an organization that’s actually cares about exposing problems, and it’s quite important to be portray the position of the person who’s exposing the problems as accurately as possible to affect real change. If the journalists makes mistakes in portraying the positions it’s a lot easier for a company to talk the problem away then when the problem is accurately described.
This article fails to account for the fact that abiding by the rules suggested would mostly kill the ability of journalists to share the most valuable information they share with the public.
You don’t get to reveal stuff from the world most powerful organizations if you double check the quotes with them.
I think journalism is one of the professions where the consequentialist vs deontological ethics have the toughest trade-offs. It’s just really hard to abide by very high privacy standards and broke highly important news.
As one illustrative example, your standard would have prevented Kelsey Piper from sharing her conversation with SBF. Is that a desirable outcome? Not sure.
I don’t think the most important stuff that journalist reveal comes from the people who misspeak in interviews. It rather comes from the journalist having strong relationships with sources that are willing to tell the journalist about real problems.
Investigative journalism is often about finding someone within an organization that’s actually cares about exposing problems, and it’s quite important to be portray the position of the person who’s exposing the problems as accurately as possible to affect real change. If the journalists makes mistakes in portraying the positions it’s a lot easier for a company to talk the problem away then when the problem is accurately described.