Embargoes and Junkets

According to two On the Media guests, there are serious downsides to the practice of organizations providing embargoes and junkets.  Really?  During their respective interviews, the two guests expressed concern about a reporter’s ability to appropriately and responsibly write an article when an embargo or junket is accepted.   I must disagree with their stance.  (Please note that his is respectful disagreement, since one of the guests is my also my professor (Vincent Kiernan) at JHU and has my fate in his hands.

First, is there any ownership or responsibility on the party of the reporter to ethically do his/her job?  When I refer to ethical responsibilities, I am refering to responsibility to look at all sides of a news stories and publish an article that is informative and in the best interest of the public.   I would hope that reporters are not so easily swayed.

I am also in favor of embargoes because of the detailed information that they provide a reporter.  Reporters have to cover a wide range of topics.  Embargoes provide reporters with detailed information relative to the topic being covered.  I would argue that having an explanation of jargon and terms of art would allow the reporter to write a better story and conduct better research for the story.   Junkets have a big plus also.

 The spending cuts at major newspapers, especially in investigative and international new stories, have been highlighted in the new lately.  Just last week, On the Media discussed the future of the newspaper and several comments were made about the problems about the traditional newspaper’s business model.  It would seem junkets are the perfect answer.  The junket provides the reporters with the needed resources to cover the news story at no cost to the paper.   What then is the problem??

 I must admit that embargoes and junkets are not perfect.  The sponsor of the embargo or junket will most likey do their best to make their product, service, or organization look brilliant.   However, The reporter should know this and approach all information received with skepticism and conduct independent research.  In fact, I would think that the responsible reporter would want to do even further research, if they are presented with what seems to be a one-sided presentation of a topic.  However, Vincent Kiernan recently convinced me of a strong argument against embargoes.

If a reporter has to rely heavily on the explanation in the embargo due to his/her inexperience with the topic, then there is a good chance that a good article will not be written due to ignorance.   This is exactly why Vincent Kiernan opposes embargoes.  During a side conversation in class last night, Kiernan briefly expressed his concern about how news is covered.  Specifically, Kiernan expressed his concern that the right reporters are not being sent to cover new stories. The reporter covering a topic should be trained or have experience in the field of the topic being covered.  

What is my final decision?? I am not sure.  I don’t think it really matters because everyone reads blogs for news, right??