Comments on: Picking up the phone

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:56:56 +0000

“Hmm, maybe what we’ll see from blogger is “liability laundering”: hiring homeless people as cut-outs for your defamatory opinions or facts in exchange for beer or joints. It will kind of undermine the vanity aspect of the whole thing though.”

It will also fail to provide you any protection against liability (at least in the UK). Republishing or quoting someone else’s defamatory statement renders you just as liable as if you said it yourself.

By: Alex R

Alex R — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:01:39 +0000

Ben Alpers brings up the point that I wanted to make. This is more applicable to academics than to bloggers in general, but academics are frequently subject to IRB restrictions that would more-or-less ban ordinary journalistic practice with regard to interviews. In a case I am vaguely familiar with, elaborate protocols had to be set up regarding how identifying information would be dealt with, the amount of time and location that records of interviews would be kept, and so on. And in this case, the interviews were with public officials who would routinely speak to journalists, for the record, as part of their jobs.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:29:26 +0000

Also, “just ring up the prime minister’s official spokesman” is easier if you have his phone number and you are officially considered entitled to an answer. This entitlement, of course, in part rests on a tacit understanding that you will not ask certain questions. It’s just the self defence of the Guild Of Serious.

Further, those lazy journalists. Why won’t they just write a RESTful web service that integrates diverse sources of official information? eh?

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:12:51 +0000

With politicians, I’d expect calling to do much better. Politics in anyplace remotely democratic requires a talent for talking to anybody and explaining what you’re about. Asking a politician to talk, particularly about himself, is like asking an academic to talk about their research. At some point the problem becomes getting the person to shut up.

To a politician, a reporter is a filter and an amplifier – the reporter helps the politician reach more people, but can shape the message in ways the politician doesn’t like, if the politician is careless.

By: Martin Bento

Martin Bento — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:34:59 +0000

“bloggers are subject to liability once they start reporting facts. If they stick with opinion, they’re okay.”

Hmm, maybe what we’ll see from blogger is “liability laundering”: hiring homeless people as cut-outs for your defamatory opinions or facts in exchange for beer or joints. It will kind of undermine the vanity aspect of the whole thing though.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:49:03 +0000

I agree, the distinction really arises in relation to confronting/intrusive questions, and the cases I cited were like this. In the Windschuttle case, bloggers were speculating, based on internal and public evidence, that a particular person was the hoaxer (she was) and the natural journalist approach was to call her up and ask.

By contrast, calling up an academic to ask them about their work is pretty much like asking someone in the shopping mall why their baby is so pretty.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:08:21 +0000

As someone who is both an (occasional) journalist and a (unhappily Z-list) blogger, I’d say you’re mixing up a few different things here. You’re completely right as to there being a “professional license”, but it’s a license to confront someone – it’s not talking to them in general. As a blogger, I typically don’t have problems in talking to a mid-level or low-level academic about their research, though I usually e-mail. They’re generally grateful anyone cares at all. But businesspeople tend to have an attitude of “Why are you bothering me instead of rewriting my press release, and what’s in it for me to talk to you at all?”. A reply of “I’m representing the institution of The Press” is much more socially respected than “I have a BLOG” (meaning, ordinarily, I rant to a few people about my opinions).

This is different from the commodity recounting of events versus pontificating. That’s news/analysis, whereas the previous is about investigation. These can be intermixed (you can do investigation to get news, for example). But the social license is very significant in investigation, not commodity recounting.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:02:24 +0000

John,
Regarding the fact/opinion division of labor: I’ve seen it asserted (in a newspaper article about a man who blogged on a local issue and was sued for defamation or something similar) that bloggers are subject to liability once they start reporting facts. If they stick with opinion, they’re okay.

Newspapers, like much else in the United States, are scrupulous about not leaving themselves open to lawsuits, which are expensive in more ways than one. The way they do things is designed to close any possible openings to liability—generally speaking, bloggers don’t have the tools that would allow them to do the same. And, additionally, courts have ruled blogs don’t have a responsibility to inform the public and so don’t have the same immunities as the “official” press.

By: Witt

Witt — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:45:30 +0000

Another key difference between e-mail and phone calls is the perceived investment of time by the asker. If someone’s bothering to pick up the phone and call me, it’s slightly more zero-sum than e-mail. There are only so many phone calls one can make; it’s not like sending the same cut-and-paste e-mail to 30 different people. Also, it’s easier for me to head off idiotic lines of questioning on the phone. [Someone recently asked me about tracking a particular ethnic group; I pointed out that the U.S. doesn’t have guards at each state border checking people’s papers.]

Also, I’m on shaky ground here (perhaps there is a sociologist or psychologist around who could explain this better) but my experience is that a) it’s a lot harder to say no to a voice on the phone than it is to ignore an e-mail, b) voices/accents/tones can convey a wealth of information that may make the askee more [or less] likely to trust the asker, c) powerful people often have an assistant or someone screening their calls and the human-to-human quality of explaining what you’re after or even throwing yourself on their mercy can get you through the gate in a way that e-mail just can’t.

All of which is not to say that e-mail is immensely useful in its own way.

By: King Rat

King Rat — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:33:08 +0000

“What this means is that journalists have to distil, from interviews, and to a deadline, a readable, and at least half-way accurate, story about a topic of which they may know little or nothing when they start. ”

This is, to my mind, the best thing about journalism as a profession. It’s a license to be curious. Every day, you learn something new, and if you do your job well (and yes, often we don’t) you can teach that something to a wide audience.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:42:31 +0000

Pete in #6: “Someone I knew once got a temp job compiling a “defence directory”: a list of the senior political and military leaders of the armed forces of every country, along with their contact details.”
I really do hope the client was not also interested in their children’s schools, habitual routes to work, and whether their cars were armour-plated.

By: Ben Alpers

Ben Alpers — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:16:38 +0000

My institution’s IRB has such a broad understanding of its mandate that it is essentially impossible for anyone not in the College of Journalism to pick up the phone and talk to any living person as part of a scholarly project without jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops designed for medical research. I am not even allowed to pursue the best practices laid down by the Oral History Association because the IRB has in effect deemed them unacceptable.

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:08:43 +0000

Conversely, there’s the off-the-record (and often deniable) character of much discussion between journalists and powerful sources – I doubt that either party would trust this if the discussion were by email.

In this case, isn’t the interviewee acting on trust in an existing relationship, rather than trust in the press card? If you’re leaking something very sensitive, you might insist on a face-to-face meet rather than e-mail or telephone, if you have a pet blogger you’ll mail them things that you wouldn’t tell a journalist you didn’t know, even ‘off the record’.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:38:50 +0000

“How does “picking up the phone” differ from “emailing somebody”, which I get the sense that bloggers do a lot more?”

Phone calls often take less time for the interviewee, which people appreciate.

I would amend Witt’s statement, and say that people love to talk. Period.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:40:37 +0000

There are a bunch of differences between email and verbal interviews, and different ones matter in different contexts. For example, the default in email is that both parties have a full record of the exchange – by contrast, most interviewees don’t record or take notes. Then there’s the potential for an unguarded admission or slip in an interview. Conversely, there’s the off-the-record (and often deniable) character of much discussion between journalists and powerful sources – I doubt that either party would trust this if the discussion were by email.