Will Collier has got an interesting post today about Journslists and whether they should disclose what they have voted the last elections.
It's a hard-and-fast ethical standard among financial reporters and columnists that they disclose any personal stake they have in companies, funds, or people that they're covering. Why should news writers be any different? Would the republic collapse if Peter Jennings announced that he wouldn't vote for George W. Bush even if he were offered a lifetime supply of aged Coulommiers brie? Would Jennings' viewers really be so mis-served to know in straightforward terms where he's coming from?
I am a journalist and have been thinking about this ever since I graduated from college. Collier raises interesting points, but the two standards he points to, aren't comparable.
I agree that any journalist should disclose if they were members of a political party - even though I don't think that we should be.
What we should do is blog - or something similar to it. At the Newspaper or tv- or radio station we all should have a small homepage where we had our CV, our family ties and financial stakes we have posted. At the same page we should have posted which organisations we are or have been members of.
This way everybody could check if the reporter have a stake in a specific case.
And at the same page, one should be able to search all the articles made by the journalist in question.
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