Bloggers: The new face of ‘gotcha’ journalism

You may not recognize the name Mayhill Fowler, said Jacques Steinberg in The New York Times, but you likely know her work. A self-described “failed writer” who became an unpaid “citizen journalist” for the liberal Huffingtonpost.com website during the primary season, it was Fowler’s hand-held recorder that caught Barack Obama making his devastating comments about “bitter” Pennsylvania voters “clinging” to guns and religion. Then, in the contest’s waning days, Fowler provoked, and recorded, Bill Clinton’s rant against the “sleazy” and “slimy” writer who trashed him in Vanity Fair. What the incidents have in common—aside from Fowler’s presence—is that neither Obama nor Clinton seemed to realize Fowler was a reporter, or that their remarks might be made public. Fowler’s scoops have now sparked a debate in journalistic circles “about the do’s and don’ts of ethical reporting in the YouTube age.” In an era when anyone with a camera phone can be a journalist, do the old rules of reporting—such as identifying oneself as a reporter before asking a question—still apply?

I’m afraid not, said David Sarno in LATimes.com, but don’t blame Fowler. Thanks to the proliferation and miniaturization of cameras and digital recorders, we all live in a world “where anything you say to anyone, anywhere, any time can be used to skewer you”—whether or not you’re aware you’re being recorded. The very notion of being “off the record” is starting to feel quaint. For the most part, that’s a good thing, said Stephen Foley in the London Independent. Thanks to new technologies, voters can now watch candidates’ speeches in full at a time of their choosing, comment on them, and debate their merits with other voters around the nation. As for those embarrassing off-the-cuff remarks, what’s wrong with us getting to hear them? Should politicians really have the right “to say something different in private life to what they do in public?”

But exposing hypocrisy is no excuse for deception, said Alex Koppelman in Salon.com. If you actually listen to Fowler’s recording of Bill Clinton’s venting, at the start you hear Fowler asking the former president how he feels about the “hatchet job” in Vanity Fair. In short, she implicitly identified herself as “a supporter, not a reporter,” effectively tricking him into letting down his guard. Not only that, said Jeff Bercovici in Porfolio.com—Fowler failed to inform Clinton that she was even affiliated with a publication. The “citizen journalist” may indeed have a role to play in the new public discourse. But that “doesn’t mean you get to pose as a citizen and then publish as a journalist.”

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