{"id":2813,"date":"2013-06-03T08:31:16","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T12:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=2813"},"modified":"2013-06-03T08:31:16","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T12:31:16","slug":"as-journalists-become-the-story-will-the-rules-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2013\/06\/03\/as-journalists-become-the-story-will-the-rules-change\/","title":{"rendered":"As Journalists Become the Story, Will the Rules Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Will news organizations\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 boycott of the Attorney General\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoff-the-record\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 background sessions last week change the rules of the game between government sources and media?<\/p>\n

On the record: Doubtful, at best.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change anything,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Alex S. Jones<\/a><\/strong>, director of Harvard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In Washington, media will continue to deal with administration sources, brokering access and information for pledges of confidentiality.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pernicious practice, and very widespread, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how business is done.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Embattled AG Eric Holder<\/strong> held meetings with top Washington journalists Thursday and Friday to discuss concerns about Department of Justice guidelines for dealing with journalists in investigations of possible security leaks.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em>, CNN, CBS News, NBC News and the Associated Press, among others, passed on Thursday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s meeting because of its off-the-record requirement. At that gathering, however, the DOJ blinked, and news outlets were told they could report on \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgeneral\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 topics of discussion.<\/p>\n

Thursday attendees included The Washington Post<\/em>, Politico, New Yorker<\/em>, Daily News<\/em> and The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. ABC News, the lone network representative last week, met with Holder Friday, along with USA Today<\/em> and Reuters, which had initially said no to Thursday.<\/p>\n

David Westin<\/a><\/strong>, ABC News president from 1997 through 2010, agrees with his alma mater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to attend and says it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153smart\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the DOJ to modify its rule.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153News organizations are in the business of reporting news, not keeping it secret,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Westin. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This happens from time to time. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of a larger issue with the White House itself. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of the normal give-and-take, back-and-forth of the press covering the administration.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In Westin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view, Holder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sessions presented a particular challenge in that the news outlets were also principals in the story. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They were asked not as reporters, but as people being affected by the Justice Department.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Going further, Harvard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the New York Times, says the meetings served as de facto press conferences, regardless of Holder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intentions, and that Holder was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153na\u00c3\u00afve\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to think otherwise.<\/p>\n

continued\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/a><\/p>\n

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media<\/a>. <\/p>\n

via TVNewser http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/tvnewser\/when-journalists-become-the-story-do-the-rules-change_b181892<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will news organizations\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 boycott of the Attorney General\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoff-the-record\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 background sessions last week change the rules of the game between government sources and media? On the record: Doubtful, at best. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change anything,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In Washington, media will continue … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “As Journalists Become the Story, Will the Rules Change?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[971,6,227],"class_list":["post-2813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-reader","tag-gail-shister","tag-ifttt","tag-tvnewser"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2skW4-Jn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}