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Journalists should be expanding access, not trying to regulate it in an odd and bureaucratic manner. CCPA seems to be an organization meant to protect the old and deteriorating status quo. The undemocratic nature of this whole thing is really disconcerting to me.
It's that very human-ness and challenging one's own personal biases by seeking the truth that makes for rich, deep and thoughtful journalism.
So-called objective, balanced, he said/she said journalism does nothing of the sort.
Very scary.
Maybe you should spend some time on quiet reflection and think that through a bit more.
The real question is how a self-appointed, unaccountable group of reporters with a serious conflict of interest qualified itself to determine the criteria for admission of potential competitors.
The fact that Charles Ashby of the Pueblo Chieftain is involved should raise serious questions; as Colorado Media Matters has documented, the Chieftain is a stridently partisan publication that frequently uses factual misinformation to support its editorial points of view. We've documented a number of instances in which Ashby himself also has produced stories that dispense misinformation supporting or promoting a conservative political point of view. Who has vetted Ashby and the Chieftain, and their qualifications for reporting from the House and Senate floors?
Clearly the current process is seriously flawed. Fortunately, established journalists such as Mr. Moore and Mr. Otte are willing to step up and provide thoughtful explanations as to why it is flawed. Now it's up to the rest of the Colorado media community to come up with a reasonable solution that -- at a time when legislative coverage demands more voices, not fewer -- puts a priority on serving Colorado readers, listeners and viewers ahead of the self-interests of a small group of reporters.
Bill Menezes
Editorial Director
Colorado Media Matters
While I concede that I don't always agree with the style or content of Colorado Confidential, Colorado Media Matters or other "new" media outlets, and the debate as to whether they are legit media outlets is still ongoing, the default position at the Capitol has always been to err on the side of openness. Give everyone access and let the marketplace and readers determine who is legit and who isn't.
Yes, there is a gray area, but come on folks, this is a bad idea and most the reporters on the CCPA know it. The Capitol press corps does a pretty good job of policing itself, of finding out who the random person with the video camera is and that tradition should continue.
We have very robust editorial meetings where we deliberate/debate story budgets, sources, reporting methods, angles and, yes, even inherent human biases. Just like any good newsroom should.
The instant fact-checking nature of online news reporting by readers further supports our mission by providing ready access to our source material through links, attributed quotes and background information. It doesn't get much more transparent than that.
The slew of awards we've accepted from the lions of journalism -- Society of Professional Journalists, Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, USC Annenberg School for Communications, Online News Association -- and our memberships in the Colorado Press Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors confirm that integrity and quality matter more than the distribution method for conveying the news.
The world of journalism is changing and, in my mind, it's a benefit to both readers and our democracy to offer alternative perspectives and thoughtful commentary in an interactive environment. I suppose one could get frustrated and throw a shoe at the computer screen rather than the television set or radio; yet why not engage in the process of shaping journalism for the better?
Isn't it interesting that we're having this debate today -- on the 232nd anniversary of the first printing of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, a pamphlet rife with its own biases that is celebrated as one of the masterworks of American journalism? I guess it just depends on what prism you're looking through.
Get real. Wake up and smell what you're shoveling.
1-It's just dumb to object to wearing a badge. I've never been required to but had one made up in my first session and wear it most time when I go to the capitol. I simply want everybody to know who I am and who I represent. It makes my job easier. For me, the change means retiring my venerable 35 year-old white badge and wearing this upstart purple one. As Hillary Clinton said, I'll try to carry on.
2-It's actually pretty rare for me to go on to either floor. Most of my job is done on the phone or talking to lobbyists, in the hall, who usually know more about specific bills. Anybody, journalist or otherwise, can do that and anyone can sit in the public galleries and hear the debate if you want to do so. The only thing the badged can do that the unbadged can't is into the chamber itself. I sometimes do that and sit on the sides, where various legislators inevitably beat a path to me because they want to talk. Journalists are never allowed to go to a legislator's desk during sessions.
3-Since I've been an editorial writer for 31 of the 36 years I've covered the legislature, I'm sensitive to the rules governing lobbyists. It is my job to influence legislation, after all, and I try to not abuse that role. I am doing it for our editorial board's vision of a public good, not for pay by specific special interests, but as several other journalists have noted, the existence of editorial writers makes the line between "objective" reporters and avowed ideological, if not necessarily Republican or Democrat, partisans like Colorado Media Matters or Face the State a thin one.
I have no problem with the proliferation of new media. The problem is that the House or Senate Chambers can only accommodate a small number of legislators, staff, guests and press. If someone like Ms. DeGette or Ms. Norris doesn't have actual access to the floor, she can still do her job the way I do 95 percent of my mime, using precisely the same access to the lobby, hearing rooms, coffee shop, telephone, etc. In theory, all access should be equal. In practice, when rationing scarce resources, size sometimes matters. This is more about hurt feelings than the public's right to know.
For some reason I don't see Colorado Confidential running fair stories on Senate Minority Leady Andy McElhaney, or Face the State posting fair articles on Sen. Sue Windels.
One more question, has Colorado Confidential or Colorado Media Matters gained press credentials for the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer?
-FoF
But then, I'm not pretending to be anything else. I'm not claiming to be a journalist when I'm not.
Neither was Thomas Paine.
You want to be the modern equivalent to avowed and unabashed political pamphleteer and general rabblerouser Thomas Paine, go right on ahead. More power to you. But don't pretend that is journalism, because it's not.
(And I'd bet there is a lot of political and philosophical echoing going on in your "robust editorial meetings," too).
It's about a small group of reporters with no accountability and a huge conflict of interest having decision-making authority (albeit limited) over who gets on the floor and who doesn't. That's the problem.
If, as Mr. Ewegen says, 95 percent of his job can be done from off of the floor, then one solution might be to bar floor access for all journalists, instead of having the Capitol club decide who stays or goes. I covered the Missouri state legislature for years with the Associated Press and the rules then (and now, probably) did not allow media on the House or Senate floors during legislative proceedings. And, just as Mr. Ewegen's extensive experience indicates, reporters who couldn't get on the floor had no trouble cultivating sources, getting interviews and other information, and otherwise covering the beat.
:rolls eyes:
GMAFB.
Bob Ewegen is right that there is a lack of space in the chambers and that a reporter doesn't need to be on the floor to do his or her job.
But that's not the point.
The point is that Charles Ashby, who has broadcast loudly his antipathy to any form of new media, wants to secure a privileged position for the old media in this state.
In doing so, he and the other four representatives of the news outlets in the CCPA have snookered the Senate president and the speaker into using state power to help them.
That's not only a bad idea, it is very likely unconstitutional. After all, the CCPA accreditation rules say that an applicant for a credential can't have an ideological agenda. But the outlets that sit on the CCPA board all editorialize on matters before the General Assembly and, to be blunt, some of those outlets take a thinly disguised partisan point of view.
Anyhow, I digress. If you are screening credential applicants for the supposed ideology they intend to advance in their writing, and you use the power of the state (exercised through Romanoff and Groff) to deny equal access to the floors, you're using state action to engage in content discrimination. That's a First Amendment problem.
The other problem with these new rules is that reporters can't always get into the gallery. For example, today there was a huge demand for press access to cover Ritter's address. But reporters couldn't carry their equipment (cameras, laptops) into the gallery without getting a CCPA pass, which in turn required filling out their application form. And the Sergeants-at-Arms, who are state employees, were being used to control press access and decide which journalists got passes and which journalists didn't.
Ashby & Co. have created a monster. I hope those of us that want to be free to cover the Capitol without joining a guild will get a meeting together and talk about whether it might be a good idea to ask a lawyer to write a letter pointing out the obvious constitutional problems.
It might also be good to remind Groff and Romanoff that they aren't making themselves look particularly thoughtful, at least on the issue of the free press, by going along with the reactionary "get a permit to be a journalist" scheme of the CCPA.
One more thought: the space problem can be solved via a lottery, so that all journalists have a shot at being on the floor instead of the "select" who are the CCPA. Or floor access could be eliminated altogether, as many other states have done.
The whole idea behind our nation's commitment to the freedom of the press was to prevent the kind of control over dissemination of information exercised not only by the British monarchy, but also by colonial guilds.
For a group of reporters, competent and respected and talented as they are, to say that others who write for a publication that editorializes or seeks to advance a set of political or philosophical ideas is to say that anyone working for an industry newsletter can't be a journalist. It's to say that anyone who writes an editorial column for a daily newspaper can't be a journalist. It's to say that anyone who writes a story for a magazine or newsletter published by a private organization trying to advance a cause can't be a journalist.
Let's not beat around the bush. The CCPA attempt to delineate who is and who is not a journalist seriously raises the risk of censorship and, maybe worse, enlists the subject those journalists are supposed to be writing about - namely, the state government and its agents and instrumentalities - in an effort to protect their exclusive contemporaneous access to legislators and key General Assembly staff.
This is, to my mind, a cure far worse than the problem. The solution to worries about giving a press credential to an organization with an identifiable ideological bent in its editorials or even in what it chooses to cover is to grant the credentials to other organizations with an opposite or differing point of view.
It was Justice Hugo Black, I think, who once said that objectionable speech can and should be countered with even more speech.
The principle holds here.
The writers at Colorado Confidential are journalists. Maybe some would say they're not "good" journalists, but that's a different question, isn't it?
Eah Zappy baby
Media Matters a reliable source of information....HAH That is rich on so many levels. Chortle, chortle.
Media Matters is just as slanted to the left as you all believe FOX NEWS is slanted to the right. .....Whatever????
Blecch.....
These reporters should be embarassed.
Are you kidding?
Just how friendly of a relationship does the press have with the Colorado legislature?
If I had that close of a relationship with the federal agencies I cover, I wouldn't call myself a reporter. I'd be their spokesman.
To argue that the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Gazette, Durango Herald and Pueblo Chieftain have no ideological ax to grind in their coverage of the Capitol is, at best, naive and, at worst, deceptive.
Those publications are no more entitled to a presumption of neutrality than any blog. Besides, what's wrong with advocacy journalism? Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic, National Review, and many other respected periodicals and publications engage in it. So do the widely disseminated publications of many non-profit organizations and industry trade groups. Their ideological preferences, and editorial decisions that reflect them, do not cast doubt on the skill or integrity of the individual writers on their staff or on the journalistic worth of the publication itself.
Your argument is a red herring, designed to paper over the real motivation for the ridiculous CCPA protectionism. That motivation is nothing new: protect turf, limit competition, and thereby aim to prop up sales of the newspapers involved in a market where more and more people are turning away from printed newspapers (and their online cousins) and turning to more free-wheeling, focused or innovative electronic media.
Glad you asked. Here are some examples of how one statehouse beat reporter at a Denver daily has managed to carry the state GOP's water over the past year:
http://colorado.mediamatters.org/issues_topics/..., he's not the only one engaged in this type of "journalism" (Charles Ashby of the Pueblo Chieftain, one of the Capitol club "deciders", also is guilty) just one of the more frequent perpetrators...
Bill Menezes
Editorial Director
Colorado Media Matters
http://colorado.mediamatters.org
Henry VIII established a licensing system that resembled the prepublication censorship of Pope Innocent VIII. It required printers to submit all manuscripts to church authorities for their approval prior to publication. This licensing system continued in England until 1695. The English poet John Milton protested against such censorship in his classic essay Areopagitica (1644). Many English people associated licensing by church censors with ecclesiastical supervision, the Inquisition, and restraints on religion, education, and intellectual pursuits.
Members are elected by their peers and Congress has delegated to the committee the power to decide who sits in the Press Gallery. The committee has been slow to change with the times and was late in admitting, blacks, women, and online journalists. But it does adapt, and nobody has figured out a better system for allocating the limited space.
See also my "The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age," pp. 253-259.
http://www.senate.go...
Compare those to the CCPA guidelines:
http://www.state.co....
The congressional rules are much simpler and lack language about "activity intended to influence elections or any matter before the General Assembly or before any independent agency ..." that in my opinion trigger all sorts of problems.
...snip...
If journalism is to survive, it will need a professional apparatus as one of the tools in the fight. Trying to reform investors, editors and publishers is a good idea, but let's not wait for those people to change their ways. Those of us who practice or teach journalism at ground level will make progress with greater speed and certainty if we also organizer to reform ourselves. If we can do that, then the next generation of journalists will be ready to work when the process of natural selection chooses the new media forms where trust and social responsibility prevail.
Could you expand on that notion a bit, as it seems in this debate that "floor space" has become a convenient foil for the discomfort some in the traditional media have for their online peers?
I am pleased to see here input from Professor Philip Meyer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ms. Norris has identified a passage from Professor Meyer's book, "The Vanishing Newspaper," that is worth plenty of discussion. Few things get journalists more riled up than his reference to a "professional apparatus." I stirred that debate on a blog I maintained last year while serving as national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. For kicks, check out
http://spj.org/blog/...
And thanks, Cara DeGette, for your interesting story. As I read it, I certainly wasn't wondering whether you and Colorado Confidential deserve press credentials.
Christine Tatum
Immediate Past National President, Society of Professional Journalists
Assistant Features Editor/Online Features Editor, The Denver Post
I have chosen not to provide my real name here because I am engaged in a project that involves covering the Capitol and, obviously, I don't want to needlessly antagonize those in the Capitol press corps that believe the CCPA is a good idea.
Suffice to say, I have experience covering state legislative matters.
I hope you and others in the Colorado Press Association might consider making a formal statement, even directed to Sen. Groff and Speaker Romanoff, indicating the problems with this whole approach.
Thanks for sharing your point of view.
What is being argued is this: one can be a journalist, and a damn good one, even if one is not impartial and even if one works for a publication that has a clear agenda.
Do you say that the great reporting done on the Vietnam War, for example, by David Halberstam was "objective?" Highly skilled, an indication of awesome talent, thorough, clear, yes, but objective, I think not. And nor should it have been. The problem that Halberstam and Neil Sheehan and others confronted was government deception. They saw it as their duty to be skeptical of that government.
The same approach should have a place at the press tables in the chambers at the Colorado State Capitol. When reporters become so devoted to "objectivity" that they lose the ability to inform the public or point out the dishonesty, cynicism or manipulation of facts that happens often in politics, they don't do their job well.
Moreover, sometimes it is the lack of objectivity itself that makes a good journalist. Do you suppose the editors and writers at The Nation or Mother Jones or Human Events would be motivated to explore the issues about which they publish, and to devote precious ink and space to them, if they didn't have an ideological commitment to those issues?
And it's naive to say that any of the major papers covering the Capitol are "objective." All of them have editorial philosophies which are reflected not only in the editorial pages but also in the choice of stories that are covered and even the way in which their reporters' stories are edited. Any reporter can tell you war stories about that particular situation.
This dispute is about protectionism, plain and simple. "Truthteller," you have to accept, whether you think it is a good thing or not, that the media in this country is changing. You can have a good argument about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but there can be no doubt that it is happening.
And once journalists and publications threatened by the evolution and trends in the industry actually enlist state help to try to blunt that change, then the free press itself is threatened. So is the profession's commitment to the free exchange of ideas in a society that has a political system dependent on that for its vitality and healthy functioning.
The CCPA is an over-reaction. Worse, it will not be effective. As Bob Egewen wrote elsewhere in this thread, a good reporter doesn't need access to the floors to find stories. So what's the point, exactly, other than to make a mountain out of molehill (namely, someone's gripe about Colorado Confidential) at the cost of the profession's ethics and the commitment of the reporters and media companies involved in creating the CCPA to free expression?
What the Congressional standards are trying to prevent is lobbying under the guise of journalism. They don't aim at journalism that takes a form, or reflects an ideological hue, at odds with members of the Standing Committee's preferences.
Thus it is easy to see the distinction between what goes on with coverage of Congress and what the CCPA is and does.