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Media Matters
June 4, 2003
Giving Credit Where Credits Are Due?
By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin
Ombudsman
National Public Radio
Yet another issue from the beleaguered New York Times has to do with who gets the credit in a story. Some think that reporting is a solo endeavor and that reporters meet their deadlines without help from anyone else. That's not the way it works -- even at NPR.
Rick Bragg is a reporter who resigned from the Times after it was learned that he used an unacknowledged and unpaid intern named J. Wes Yoder to gather quotes and information for a story about development along the Florida Gulf coast. The Times said that this practice goes against its policy. Bragg said he was just getting the story he was assigned to do.
Who Gets the Byline?
Around the water-coolers of the nation's newsrooms, the talk is about why some low-paid assistant editor isn't getting her or his own byline.
Freelancers who file for wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters are asking their bosses when will they get that recognition and the salary that goes along with the byline.
The rumble of resentment that is the prerogative of journalists since time began is growing louder by the day. But now, stoked by the Blair-Bragg affair, a lot of journalists are asking about getting their "propers."
This is, in my opinion, getting silly.
The Myth of the Lone Reporter
First of all, it should come as no surprise to the listeners and readers that the myth of the lone, heroic journalist a la Hildy Johnson in The Front Page is just that -- a myth. The days of the (usually male) reporter with press card jammed into fedora are long gone. Smart, tough journalism is -- and always was -- a collaborative business. Good journalists exist in part, because of good editors. Radio hosts ask tough and incisive questions because of the research they and others do to make sure the interview works. The Internet has opened enormous new possibilities of organizing and researching stories, allowing journalists to find experts and contacts that take the reporting to unheard of heights of insight and context.
Gathering (A Lot Of) Information
Reporters at NPR, as at other media, gather information in a variety of ways and from an ever more vast variety of sources. Newspapers, wire services, phone calls, libraries, Lexis-Nexus, Google, to name a few. Once that basic research has been assembled, then it's off to get an interview, sometimes on the phone and sometimes in person.
Digital editing means that excerpts from other television and radio programs can be quickly and easily incorporated into the report.
Additional and often invaluable information is provided by a number of people including knowledgeable librarians, nimble researchers and yes, often listeners who frequently e-mail story suggestions and interview possibilities.
Whose Story Is It?
In television news, footage is frequently aired locally before making it onto network programs. Documentary programs routinely have producers do the interviews, arrange for the visuals and write the script long before the "talent" (aka, the reporter) arrives.
In radio, with its smaller economy of scale, producers may occasionally be assigned to go with the reporter, but only for hardship assignments, for example in Iraq. But even there, not every reporter had the advantage of a producer.
Even so, when the NPR reporter finally "signs off" his/her report by name and place, there is usually more than the one or two people who directly helped craft the report.
Some stories are so complex that literally dozens of people may have contributed directly and indirectly. But who deserves to get the credit on NPR?
Bruce Drake is the vice president of news at NPR. Recently NPR has reduced the frequency and the length of on air credits: "The daily news magazines get to air production credits (i.e., mentions of staff names) twice a week," says Drake, "with a limit of 25 seconds... every editorial employee gets credit at some point. Weekend shows can air credits twice a month... If a (report) is a very special effort -- a host format breaker, some special series, a way-above-average or particularly compelling piece -- and the producer was a key player, we will give the producer a credit..."
But not everyone gets a credit. Still unsung are the support staff for programs, technical operations and now the online journalists and editors. Non-program staff is hardly ever acknowledged. Outside journalists have also contributed through the paid subscriptions NPR has with wire services and other sources.
A Not So Tough Choice: More Credits or More Reporting?
It would be nice if everyone at NPR or at a newspaper got the kind of public credit he or she deserved. But even with NPR's relatively small staff of approximately 700 employees, the dent in airtime would be considerable.
Journalistic organizations never used to be concerned at all about credits. Thirty years ago, some local television programs might acknowledge the staff once a year -- usually at year's end when there was a relative absence of hard news. Running credits for five minutes on New Year's Eve made everybody happy.
In those halcyon and more paternalistic days, journalists had, I believe, different expectations of the companies that saw fit to hire them. There was an unstated understanding that a junior in a news organization was required to serve out an apprenticeship, learning the skills and the techniques that would help him or her rise. In return, the organization would invest in its employee by granting experiences, opportunities and the eventual pay raises that went along with those breaks.
The reality today is quite different. News organizations may still operate as though they are apprenticeships. But some employees reject the role of loyal servant and being an unsung and lowly colleague may not seem as promising as it once did.
For many outside the business of journalism (and it is a business -- albeit a high-minded one) this debate over who gets the credit for doing a job may seem rather petty and frankly irrelevant to the many people who rely on journalists to get the story and get it right.
A recent survey about journalistic credibility should put this discussion in some perspective: only 36 percent of people polled by USA Today believe that journalists get it right.
That should be of much greater concern to journalists and to their organizations, than whether Rick Bragg's freelancers got some recognition in the Times, or whether All Things Considered mentions the name of every contributing researcher at the close of the Friday program.
Listeners may contact me at 202-513-3246 or at ombudsman@npr.org.
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
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