Michael Bugeja on Transparency, Media and the Internet

OurBlook interview with Prof. Michael Bugeja, director of Iowa State University's Greenlee School of Journalism

What is your opinion of the New York Times writing articles based on excerpts from the WikiLeaks trove of classified U.S. military material?

MB: This is what journalism has come to with the World Wide Web ... the idea that you can write about Afghanistan from digitized documents and transmit not only the documents but your report via the Internet ... all the while giving readers the false impression that you're on the ground and reporting where and when it matters. Make no mistake: The New York Times has a legacy of brilliant international and war correspondence. So when we read a report with its logo, that legacy remains with us. An NYT war correspondent in the field during Vietnam, say, saw the carnage first hand, knew how small disclosures about travel plans could lead to a convoy ambush. The reporter used judgment on what to report based on humane rather than political perspectives.

I'm all for transparency, as every journalist and journalism educator should be; but transparency involving transmission of secret or sensitive documents during war can be catastrophic for servicemen and women or the allies and partners who work alongside them. What I'm about to say now is not directed at the NYT; but if you tweet all day you're apt to miss those small points about discretion because you're writing about conflict from a safe distance. And that, in the end, is what Internet has given us, the second-hand experience of YouTube and reality programming ... even about war. Too many reporters are viewing the world through the looking glass of iPad. In other words, the PDF becomes the Eyewitness. We know hard news now through software.

In many other major investigative projects for the media, the whistleblower is anonymous. In what ways are anonymous tips and data desirable? In what ways are they out of line?

MB: There is absolutely nothing wrong with an anonymous whistleblower. Some tipsters blow whistles. Others blow smoke. In either case, the reporter is tasked ethically to check out the veracity of the tip. If the tip has substance, the reporter may never even reference the person who provided the initial information, as the facts should speak for themselves through basic investigative techniques grounded in place and time.

But WikiLeaks is different, and the people who disseminate secret or sensitive documents are doing so without critical thinking. They're doing it via "Web-think," the idea that if you can press a key to disseminate one document, why not press the same key any number of times to disseminate a library of them as you sip your Starbucks in the safety of your home office, feeling empowered because of the chat and tweets you're going to generate?
Your average tipster now doesn't read anything over 140 characters. The reporter might read the digital avalanche, but that isn't journalism. You still have to follow up on and check out assertions in those documents before deciding whether to disseminate them to the audience. We used to call that gatekeeping. Web-think hates a gate.

Considering that the head of WikiLeaks is as secretive as the military and intelligence organizations he is so critical of, and is virtually unavailable and unaccountable, what are your thoughts about the Times working with such a person and giving him and his group imprimatur?

MB: The New York Times believes it got a scoop. What it got was used because of a logo.

The Times of London reported that the names of hundreds of Afghanis who had cooperated with the U.S. military, plus which villages they lived in, were contained in the WikiLeaks documents, thus targeting them for extermination by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The New York Times refused to link directly to WikiLeaks mainly for this reason. Despite this precaution, do you think newspaper reporters are qualified to determine or guarantee that revealing military secrets would not endanger soldiers and civilians?

MB: Not linking to a site like WikiLeaks presumes your readers are not intelligent enough to add ".com." Is that the new ethic? Reporters are qualified to make decisions on military secrets if they (a) have field or military experience and (b) have investigated those secrets thoroughly. I have experience as an investigative reporter for United Press International. I have no experience as a war or military correspondent. Thus, I would not be qualified to make decisions about revealing military secrets. But I would search for a journalist or editor who might have such experience. In my day, it was the late, great Kate Webb, author of "ON THE OTHER SIDE: 23 Days with the Viet Cong," published in 1972 by none other than the New York Times.

The Obama administration is pursuing legal action against New York Times reporter James Risen for revealing U.S. intelligence secrets during the Bush administration, and it also obtained an indictment of a former top National Security Agency official for providing classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter. Your thoughts?

MB: I don't like to comment on specific cases because they may or may not have to do with basic journalism tenets and traditions, which is my area of expertise.

Two San Francisco sportswriters became famous for writing stories revealing secret grand jury information concerning baseball star Barry Bonds and his use of steroids. Your thoughts?

MB: I don't like to comment on specific cases because they may or may not have to do with basic journalism tenets and traditions, which is my area of expertise.

Considering that the above questions deal with the press printing military secrets, intelligence secrets and grand jury secrets, is there too much power of the press? Are there any limits on what the press should be able to do? Are there any limits on how transparent the government should be?

MB: The First Amendment empowers the press. It's the most powerful of our five freedoms. It multiplies freedom of speech. It monitors separation of church and state. It covers assemblies and protests and it verifies petitions. In the end, my view about the power of the press is generational. I practiced journalism in the 1970s. We were taught by the likes of Murrow's generation that the press had a contract with the nation. As long as we did a thorough, ethical job and practiced restraint when the occasion called for it, we would continue to enjoy great freedom and expose the likes of Joseph McCarthy. We were taught that if we failed to practice restraint, and misled the public because of negligence or sensationalism, we could lose our rights. But that notion is in opposition to "Web-think," which hates a gate. Someone, some day, is going to close it.

Looking to the future, do you think there will be more investigative stories in the mainstream media involving military/intelligence/grand jury secrets or about the same or fewer, and why?

MB: We can anticipate fewer investigative stories in mainstream media that entail critical thinking, primarily because of media downsizing and outsourcing. The best reporters also tend to be older with greater salaries, so many already have been terminated. Also, investigative reporting is expensive, and many publishers are not willing to support it. So we can anticipate more reports that masquerade as investigative but really only are products of "Web-think."

Many journalists contend that too often the government abuses the classification of material and slaps a secrecy tag to cover up wrongdoing or mistakes by officials or others with power, and investigative reporting by the press corrects that abuse and informs the public. Your thoughts?

MB: Of course the government abuses and conceals! Both political parties do. My concern is not with investigative reporting, per se, which we need now more than ever; my concern is with declining standards of investigative reporting in an Internet age. Bad investigative reporting, as often occurs via "Web-think," not only misinforms and deceives the audience; it also gives the government the occasion to argue that the power of the press is too great. People start to believe that. And then we get the governments we deserve.

(Prof. Bugeja directs the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. He also has taught at Oklahoma State and Ohio University, and received outstanding teacher awards from the student bodies at both. He is the author of 19 books, including "Living Ethics Across Media Platforms" (Oxford, 2008) He has a B.A. from Saint Peter's College, an M.S. from South Dakota State and a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State.)