"If you deliberately set out to invent an arrangement
- less conducive to tough, adversarial reporting,
- it would be hard to beat beats.
- Ensuring reliable conduits for official information to flow from leading institutions of government and business, and establishing low-cost sources of raw news for the burgeoning, mass-circulation press. Under the beat system,
- reporters turned up at appointed times and received the news of the day.
- I may be alone in saying this, but of all the improper influences on the flow of publicly significant news
- from commercialism to deliberate disinformation the one that is
- almost never discussed and yet which may be more
- profoundly corrupting than any of the others is, in my view,
- the beat system.
- ************
- "The reporter had a question. A colleague on the police beat had learned of minor wrongdoing involving town cops. But publishing a story on it would come at the cost of the reporter’s continued access to valuable sources within the police department. Worse, she said, her state’s law allows police to withhold practically all information about investigations that haven’t brought arrests.
So the reporter faced a choice: She could sit on a perfectly newsworthy story that would embarrass the sources she relies on, or she could write it and sacrifice her future effectiveness as a police reporter.
It’s a conundrum, but it’s more than an occasional problem for a small-town paper. In fact, this conflict has been institutionalized into a routine reality traditional journalists face, thanks to the near-universal adoption of a particular way of organizing newsrooms.
- Here I’m talking about beats.
- The upside of the beat system is clear. It encourages journalists to develop pockets of expertise so they can report knowledgeably on topics that require focus and specialization to understand.
And here’s where the problems begin. The reporter’s success in covering his or her beat depends on the cooperation of the people being covered and not just their cooperation, but their good will.
- If you deliberately set out to invent an arrangement less conducive to tough, adversarial reporting, it would be hard to beat beats.
- Instead, beats solved two problems: Ensuring reliable conduits for official information to flow from leading institutions of government and business, and establishing low-cost sources of raw news for the burgeoning, mass-circulation press.
- reporters turned up at appointed times and received the news of the day.
I may be alone in saying this, but of all the improper influences on the flow of publicly significant news
- from commercialism to deliberate disinformation the one that is
- almost never discussed and yet which may be more
- profoundly corrupting than any of the others is, in my view,
- the beat system.
- Seen from that perspective, we shouldn’t be surprised that journalism is so often
- timid and reverential to sources;
- and of the presence of determined informants within the institutions they cover.
- It’s not testimony to the wisdom of the system within which reporters operate.
- Beats have got to go.
- They’re an endemic conflict of interest.
- and still be free. "