One of my great disappointments over the past 10 or 15 years is the utter silence among journalism professors and j-school deans regarding the deterioration of journalistic standards, and by that I mean the rampant liberal bias that has infected every aspect of mainstream journalism.
Following outrage after outrage we get no condemnation from the men and women who are supposed to be training journalists and policing its standards. In many cases they actually defend the outrageous behavior on the grounds that a free press is worth some irresponsibility on occasion. The problem is, it’s not just on occasion, it’s almost universal.
So you could have knocked me over with a pica pole when I read the reaction of The Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins in this story about the publication by the New York City area’s Journal News of the names and addresses of all gun-license holders in a couple of counties in its circulation area:
“Just because information is public does not make it newsworthy. People own guns for a wide range of law-abiding reasons. If you are not breaking the law, there is no compelling reason to publish the data,” said Tompkins.
“The problem is not that The Journal News was too aggressive. The problem is that the paper was not aggressive enough in its reporting to justify invading the privacy of people who legally own handguns in two counties it serves.”
In the ultimate irony, the newspaper that feels owning a gun is worthy of social stigma has hired armed security to guard its offices after it got some angry emails. That irony, however, is lost on the arrogant editors of the paper and, presumably, the entire Gannett corporate structure, which seems to support this bit of journalism.
The paper has gone after the records of other counties in its circulation area, but, heroically, one has refused to provide them.
The Journal News has been working hard at damage control since first publishing the lists. They seem to think that their publication of the names and addresses is mitigated by the fact that you can’t “search” by name or address. That’s just absurd. All you have to do is zoom in on a street and hover over the red dots that signify a gun permit. The resulting pop-up shows you everything.
As Tompkins, The Poynter Institute’s senior faculty for broadcasting and online, says in his comments above, editing involves not just printing whatever the hell you want just because you want to. It also should includes some judgment and reason, two commodities the editors of the Journal News seem to lack.
