Journalists critical of their own companies cause headaches for news organizations
NEW YORK — This spring, NBC News, The New York Times and National Public Radio each faced unrest for the same reason: journalists taking the scrutiny they use to cover the world and turning it inward, on their own employers.
Whistleblowing is not unique to any sector. Yet for many journalists – who can be a central part of their work – the opposing perspective has been ingrained and there have been generational shifts in the amount of vision activism that have made it likely that these types of incidents will continue.
In recent weeks, NBC reversed a decision to hire former Republican National Committee head Ronna McDaniel as a political contributor, following a revolt from some of its best-known personalities. An NPR editor was suspended and then fired after criticizing his company’s willingness to tolerate diverse viewpoints, and an internal investigation over Gaza coverage ended at the Times.
Journalism as a profession attracts people who are anti-authoritarian, who see themselves as truth-tellers. Many believe that you can make an organization better by criticizing it, says Tom Rosenstiel, co-author of “The Elements of Journalism” and professor at the University of Maryland.
“We are taught to hold power accountable,” said Kate O’Brian, news president of the EW Scripps Co.
Was it really surprising to see Chuck Todd, who has spent years questioning politicians on “Meet the Press,” doing the same to his bosses when there was resistance to putting McDaniel on the payroll? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Joe Scarborough, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace and Lawrence O’Donnell all took part in a protest that was extraordinary for the way it played out on the network’s own airwaves.
National Public Radio editor Uri Berliner didn’t get much support internally for his complaints, but that actually reinforced his point. He said that NPR had become too one-sided in promoting a liberal position, and that he had come out with an essay in another news outlet when his concerns went unanswered by his superiors.
NPR management says he’s wrong. But Berliner quickly became a hero among conservatives who share the same faith.
The history of journalism has many examples of meaningful internal protests. Women journalists filed a lawsuit in the 1970s to force The New York Times and The Associated Press to fight gender discrimination. Los Angeles Times journalists revealed a deal their company made to share profits from a special edition with a sports arena. A Chicago news anchor quit to protest her station’s hiring of talk show host Jerry Springer as a commentator.
The 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police was a landmark moment, forcing news organizations across the country to confront the way they reported racial issues, both past and present, often at the insistence of their staff. It also forced a look at the lack of diversity in newsrooms.
There are several reasons why many journalists are now more likely to air complaints that they might not previously have shared with colleagues at the corner bar. One is the likelihood that their outlet is owned by a far-flung hedge fund rather than a local family, said Joel Kaplan, associate dean for graduate studies at Syracuse University’s Newhouse communications school and a former Chicago Tribune reporter.
A generational change has also given courage to many young journalists. In his own classroom, Kaplan sees more and more young journalists challenging traditional notions of objectivity that keep them from expressing their opinions. Many believe they have the right to express their beliefs and support causes, he said.
“Now you have journalists who are advocates,” Rosenstiel said. “That reflects something of a culture war going on within journalism.”
Debates about reporting on the Trump administration had a similar galvanizing effect.
“There are journalists who say, ‘I’m not interested in covering conservatives because they’re not interested in the truth,’” Rosenstiel said.
Some traditionalists, like former Washington Post editor Marty Baron, have grown desperate about some of these changes. Fights with young staff members over the way they expressed their views on social media left him despondent, which was a factor in his eventual retirement.
“Never have I felt so distant from my fellow journalists,” he wrote about a staff meeting on the subject in his 2023 book, “Collision of Power.”
One of the most prominent thinkers in this field, journalist Wesley Lowery, has written that some defenders of objectivity are more interested in innocuousness and appearances, and less interested in journalistic accuracy.
“By pursuing objectivity, we silence the marginalized,” wrote a Harvard student, Ajay V. Singh, at the height of the debate. “By silencing the marginalized, we place the narrative of ‘truth’ in the hands of the powerful.”
The New York Times has regularly been at the forefront of journalists questioning their organization. In 2020, the editor of the newspaper’s editorial page resigned after the newspaper rejected an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton on Floyd-related protests, following a staff protest. Some Times employees have also spoken out intensely against the paper’s coverage of gender issues.
However, executives appeared to have lost patience in a debate on another controversial issue: the war in Gaza.
They launched an internal investigation into who leaked material to an outside publication, the Intercept, about a podcast based on a late December article about Hamas and sexual violence. The podcast was never finished. That angered some staffers who worried that the Times was hitting back at employees for doing something its own reporters regularly do: writing stories based on leaked material.
Still, Times management viewed the action as a breach of trust, especially sharing what were essentially drafts of material that never saw the light of day.
“Reporters, editors and producers should be able to have frank exchanges and disagreements about the best way to approach a difficult piece of journalism, with the understanding that these exchanges will enhance the story and not become the story,” said Joe Kahn, editor-in-chief of the Times. , said in a memo to staff on April 15. He said the investigation concluded without determining who leaked the material.
Against this backdrop lies another truth: the media themselves and the way they deliver news are issues that interest the public more than in the past, creating the market for exactly the kind of material Kahn was talking about – and also for this story .
Because of the interest and because of the journalistic DNA running through the debate, there likely won’t be a shortage of sources for such news, Rosenstiel said.
“The newsrooms,” he said, “are full of people who are often dissatisfied.”
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David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him on X.