In an effort to place Ms. Foley’s allegations in the broader context of recent mainstream media (MSM) failures many of the aforementioned takedowns, rebukes, and fiskings have brought to light some of Ms. Foley’s other recent public remarks on this matter. Among them is a letter to President Bush in March, one highly critical of a US investigation into the deaths of journalist’s in Iraq, as well as comments she made during a radio appearance on MediaMatters.

One source of public statements that also deserves closer examination is the website of the NewsGuild, the organization that Ms. Foley has headed for the last 10 years. One especially revealing document is the organization’s “Our Future” statement, the first paragraph of which appears below. A careful reading of this document provides several valuable clues as to the motivations for Ms. Foley’s accusations and, I think, helps to shed light on why some still fail to heed the lessons of EasonGate, RatherGate, and Newsweak.

Our Future: A message from Newspaper Guild-CWA President Linda Foley

The 21st century's information society has transformed news industry workers and news industry work. News industry workers are trained to observe and report on major events, but in today's brave new information world, we're making news and shaping a revolution ourselves. Our jobs, not so long ago performed with pen, paper and typewriter, now employ some of the world's most advanced communications technology.

There are several serious problems with this statement. The first and most significant comes in the second sentence where Ms. Foley states that

“News industry workers are trained to observe and report on major events, but in today's brave new information world, we're making news and shaping a revolution ourselves.”

Few can disagree with the statement that “news industry workers are trained to observe and report on major events.” As Ms. Foley so adeptly pointed out in her full remarks , a free, able, unbiased press is absolutely essential to a healthy democracy. In fact, without the former, the latter can hardly be said to exist.

That having been said, the second half of the sentence reveals in the starkest possible terms why people like Ms. Foley may constitute intractable impediments to the fulfillment of their near-sacred obligations. In a nutshell it is this: when she says “we’re making news and shaping a revolution ourselves” you see that she is desirous of a role for news workers that is not rightly theirs.

Reporters and other news industry workers are not supposed to be news makers. They are supposed to observe and report the news in the most objective, balanced, and factual way that they can. To do otherwise is self-serving and a violation of every code of journalistic ethics that I can find. Here’s a link to over 40 of them. I read over a dozen of them and not one supports Foley's ideas about "making" and "shaping" the news. Actually, that's putting it mildly: each explicitly warns against the perils inherent in news workers being too close to a story, i.e. to its subjects and/or institutions. Each clearly concludes that such "closeness" blurs the line between analysis and opinion and diminishes the capacity for objectivity. Each affirms that when news workers become news makers, when they make themselves the story, when they become the center of attention, journalism stops being just that.

Of course, nothing about this tendency to lose objectivity is unique to journalism: doctors are advised not to treat themselves or their families; lawyers who represent themselves are said to have fools for clients; and many therapists have their own therapists (admittedly, there is another potential explanation for that!). Journalism should be no exception, either in this world or in Brave New One that Linda Foley envisions. Journalists, especially those in war zones, are supposed to get close to and to report the action, not to be it or make it, and certainly never to fancy themselves as War Journalist Action Figures.

See also: What Conflict of Interest

Update: To see how some of the aforemetioned issues are working out in the present, see "Who is a journalist?" at The Belmont Club about the Washington Post's take on Bill Roggio's embed in Iraq. See also, Bill's detailed response and L' Ombre de l'Olivier's analysis of the WaPo's motivations and tactics.

Linked at: Otismaster | Robinek | Uncooperative Blogger | Land of Ozz | Outside the Beltway | Jo's Cafe | Conservative Cat