Here we are for part II.

Dan Gillmor talks about the need for transparency. I gave my predictable spiel (below). Vaughn Ververs said it’s too hard to keep up with being transparent and it’s not as simple as a label and I agree with that but when it’s relevant it’s worth it, I think.

Hugh Hewitt says people want to be able to navigate about fixed point and big media doesn’t reveal those fixed points. He said he spoke to a class at Columbia and asked a list of questions about issues and with one exception they were all on the hard left. “You’re all going to deny that it matters to your audience but that’s why you’re losing your audience… If you’re not going to tell your audience they’re not going to trust you.” Landman objects and says they are not losing audience. Merrill Brown says he will not let “the spin of the newspaper industry go unchallenged.”

David Carr says that in spite of Times editor Bill Keller’s efforts at openness, the Times is not transparent. That is, before the assignment, a reporter with a conflict will not be assigned to the story that may touch that conflict. He answered my smoking shtick saying that he smokes but he was in favor of the smoking ban and he’s confident he could write a story about a smoking ban down the middle. “At a certain point, people have to trust the brand, have to trust the standards, have to trust the mediation.”

Dvorkin says to Hugh, “you’re describing a world without editors.” He talks about reporters assigned to troubled spots in the world who eventually go native and quit to become advocates. And he says he tells them they should not be journalists if they care that passionately about an issue.

Peter Hart of FAIR says that the background of personal stances does not matter next to the product itself.

Hugh Hewitt says, as a lawyer, that this is contrary to the standard of evidence. In a trial, an expert must give their background so the jury may judge what they say. “Journalism wants nothing of those rules of evidence. They don’t want confrontation…. Mainstream media is so removed from the rules of evidence” that they are losing credibility.

Jim Brady answers the metaphor says the one person in the courtroom who’s not questioned is the judge. Nice touch. The implication is that journalists are the judge. I say that’s not the case. The public is the judge.

Dan says he is arguing more for institutional transparency than individual transparency.

Vaughn Ververs says that what is important about transparency is the willingness to defend and explain a story. Well said.

Jon Landman says he comes out where Dan does and that I “apply transparency in a mechanical way that’s not terribly helpful.” True. I apply it somewhat symbolically, culturally. Landman says that papers need to do a better job of transparency and that this is also about the process, about journalism as a team sport.

Jay Rosen brings up the NSA story as a case where transparency comes to the rub. The story was held at first out of concern of harm to national security but then released and Jay says he wants to know what went into that decision. Landman says that Keller explained that it was not released because of concerns about sources. Jay says this is where the limit of transparency — Landman agrees — but Jay asks whether Keller needs to be more transparent to be trusted.

Hugh says the brand has become a collection of bylines. He asked his audience the night before what they should say today and an emailer said to tell this table “we don’t trust them.” He acknowledges that the people who call into a talk show are self-selecting anyway, “they’re props” (much laughter; insert irony).

Heyward asks whether transparency is an answer to the issue of trust. “I would just answer questions.” He complains that Keller would not come on his show. That, he says, is hiding and that leads to the belief that you have something to hide.

Vaughn says he’s now hearing the same complaints about the media from the left that he had long heard it from the right: the media are the creatures of corporate interests that protect power.

Brady says that we all agree that transparency but we disagree about whether we want it to be back-end or front-end — that is, before or after the story. Peter Hart says that perhaps the issue is more responsiveness than just transparency.

Someone says that people don’t hear their view reflected in what they see and hear on TV. That’s because we present the country as hard blue or hard red and that’s not where the country is; the people are more nuanced. The issue is not balancing out the ends but including the middle. Amen.

Carr said it’s important that Bush came in saying that he didn’t buy the argument that the press is a proxy for the American people. He says he met Bill Clinton once and he spoke to Carr for 20 minutes about the Times being cowed by the right. “These people understand power,” he said.

Jay says that Dana Milbank of the Washington Post loves it when people from both the left and right are screaming at you it is journalists’ indication of balance. He says it is possible, just possible, that they’re both yelling at you maybe there’s a reason you’re doing something wrong. I’ll get this wrong but Jay says we have a situation where one party, the Republicans, attack the press and the press decides not to attack back and then the left goes after you for that. The result is more dissatisfaction and anger.

Dvorkin says there is a notion he hears that the media should operate at the loyal opposition and he questions that, especially because the opposition party is also being criticized for not taking that role.

Dan Gillmor says the most important thing to do is to listen. Dvorkin says that people are grateful when they get access, “and then they get mad.” Landman says the most underused asset is the public. “The more we can use the intelligence and the knowledge of those people the better our information will be… Simply opening the door is not the best way to do that. We need more sophisticated means.”

Merrill Brown says that inviting the public in before is important — why doesn’t a health reporter have a health blog to llisten.

Amanda Congdon says that whether you talk about transparency or responsiveness “it’s not optional.” Andrew asks what the value of rich worldwide news resources is important to the next generation of news consumers. Amanda replies that if they don’t seem interested it’s because news is presented in a condescending way. This, she says, is why they turn to blogs.

Vaughn brings up the old saw that what the bloggers talk about is the news the big guys produce. Dan Gillmor says that’s simplistic; there are blogs that are doing reporting but in more focused areas than big media can afford.

I am at the Museum of Television & Radio Media Center event about opinion and news with Andrew Heyward moderating. Random not-quite-live blogging ensues…. I’ll boldface a few of the good bits (opinionated judgments, all).

: Lou Dobbs comes up immediately as a poster child for opinion and news. A few of the people here are, unfortunately, off the record, but suffice it to say that Dobbs, controversial as he may be among journalists, is proving to be a credible success with the audience.

Peter Hart of FAIR says he has no problem with him having an opinion but he has problems with the quality of his journalism and cites specifics. I say that this shows the benefit of being transparent about perspective: We got past Dobbs’ opinions because we know them and talk about the quality of his reporting. David Carr of the Times says the commercial imperative gets in the way — a controversial Dobbs is a ratings hit — and that, in turn, gets in the way of the journalism.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman of NPR, says his problem is that we’re not doing enough reporting: In his words, this is about “fact-based reporting vs. faith-based reporting.”

Vaughn Ververs of CBS’ Public Eye says people are seeing as opinion what is indeed reporting: If you go to Iraq and see a mess and say it’s a mess is that opinion or reporting?

Vaughn makes a very important point: There is no algorithm that tells you the difference between opinion and news. Perspective is opinion. News judgment is opinion.

Merrill Brown says he knows of no data linking declining trust in news with an increase in opinion.

David Carr says this is nothing new in this and raises the Cronkite Vietnam example. Heyward says that what stood out about that was that it was atypical and uncharacteristic.

Jon Landman of the Times says the idea that “the idea that the blend of opinion and news is new is not serious.” He says they have blended long since in many media. He says having news and commentary don’t have anything to do with the credibility issues now. So what is it about, Heyward asks. Landman says we have an increasingly divided society that “has the means to hear what it wants to hear.”

Jay Rosen says that a lot of this discussion is about “how to be virtuous in the news business… and it is taken as given that it is virtuous to separate news and opinon.” He says the same is the case about complaints about the audience — ‘they only listen to what they want to hear.’ He says the arguments about opinion bring a jaundiced way to judge the audience. He says it is about trust and if you want to persuade to trust your account, there are many ways to do that: ‘I got it from God’ … ‘I’m a PhD’ … or trying to argue that you have no religion in the story and so you should be trusted in your account.

Landman says that’s a strawman. He says that people don’t see opinion journalism as inferior to fact-based journalism.

I’d say that this is precisely the arrow shot at bloggers: you’re just opinion.

Dvorkin says the 800-pound gorillas in the room are Fox (invited but not present) and economics. He quotes CBS news boss Dick Salant in a fabled story that the good news and bad news of his time was that CBS News started making money.

Peter Hart says that journalism is supposed to be aggressive and that’s going to piss people off. Tony Burman of the CBC says the commercial motivation is behind this.

I think the marketplace is too often portrayed as the boogeyman, the blame vessel. The marketplace is the public you want to serve.

Hugh Hewitt says “a lot of people trust journalists a lot” but they trust different journalists. He says that the biggest sustained audience in broadcast is Rush Limbaugh at 20 million a week and because those people trust him. He says Rush is rebranding himself as “America’s anchor in contrast to drive-by media.”

After a discussion of the Colbert Report, Rocketboom’s Amanda Congdon says that her show candid and that is its appeal. Heyward says there is an issue of “the real voice” that came out, for example, in Katrina. He says that one could judge the voice of the anchors there positively or cynically. There was a question of injecting humanity into news. I said it’s sad we have to inject humanity. It shows that we hit our humanity.

Now we get to the 900-pound gorilla: does expressing your opinion grant you trust or diminish your trust. I argue the former. Dvorkin and Landman argue the latter. Landman says that people on the other side of the immigration debate don’t trust Dobbs because his opinion is stated. Dan Gillmor says it’s a matter of knowing where he stands and being able to refract through the lense of his knowledge about Dobbs’ stand to make a better judgment about what he says.

Carr says that the next gorilla is that “this thing that we’re all annotating” and commenting on is going away. Carr quotes another person saying that once you can make a parody about news then the audience is in on the joke.

Jim Brady of WashingtonPost.com says the audience has changed because there are more roads leading to news. One-third of the referrers traffic WashPost gets comes through blogs, Brady says. Blog that.

Tom Easton of the Economist says the used to conflate “information” and “news” and “now you don’t have to” because now you can go to more original sources of information. He says his future as a reader of news is “a reader of links.” Well said. “We might just be going into the information businesses. We might be bypassing all of us.” We can go to the original sources. Dan Gillmor says, “you have the time to do that…. The people in this room are actually different from most people out there, who have lives.” Easton says that in the ’70s you’d have to go to a law library to read the abortion opinion; now you can get it directly.

Easton says he doesn’t like the cynicism of The Daily Show because, if I paraphrase him correctly, it doesn’t deliver information. Someone else says that is why The Smoking Gun is popuar.

New York Times lead in its report of Condi Rice’s speech at Boston College:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered the commencement address on Monday at Boston College to an audience that included dozens of students and professors who stood, turned their backs and held up signs to protest the war in Iraq.

The AP’s lead:

A few students turned their backs but more stood to applaud as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received an honorary degree and addressed graduates at Boston College on Monday.

The Reuters lead:

Dozens of faculty and students turned their backs and waved protest signs when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received an honorary degree from Boston College on Monday. But the protest against Rice, a central player in President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy, was smaller than had been expected and those among the 25,000 crowd who gave her a standing ovation outnumbered those who sat in silence.

I’m part of an event at the Museum of Television & Radio Media Center on Wednesday about opinion and news, and so I’m putting my thoughts together beforehand. That’s not hard to do on this topic since it has been argued over … and over … and over. So there’s nothing new here, just a summary of things said before.

The question isn’t whether opinion should be injected into news. The issue is about revealing the perspective, opinion, and bias that already exist. It’s about transparency — into a journalist’s viewpoint and also into the process of news judgment. It’s time to unlock the sausage factory.

Key to this discussion is the realization that journalists do not own or even decide the truth. It is their job to help the public decide what is true. And so the public has a right to know what journalists bring to their stories so the public can make better judgments. The one real lesson the internet and the advent of two-way media has brought to the masters of old media is that they did not own trust. The journalists thought they could just tell the public to trust them and accept what they said as the truth. But they never really could.

At every journalism seminar like this, someone asks whether readers will trust a reporter covering an election after knowing how the reporter votes or what party she belongs to. I argue that the readers wonder and speculate about this anyway and so once it is out in the open, then the discussion can turn to the reporting: ‘Having said that I’m a liberal, now you can judge my work on its completeness, fairness, and accuracy.’ There is no agenda worse than a hidden agenda.

Sometimes it’s easier to discuss this in arenas other than politics. At yet another seminar on news and opinion, an editor raised the example of a reporter covering a smoking ban. If the reporter smokes, don’t we have a right to know that? If we catch the reporter outside the office catching a puff and we say, “gotcha,” isn’t that a problem? Should journalists ever be on the other end of a “gotcha”?

But none of this means that just because you have a relevant perspective on a topic in the news, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cover it. Nor does it mean you should. A good reporter must be intellectually honest and report the facts no matter whose perspective they may bolster.

And none of this means that you need to reveal every single view you have, only those that are relevant. A food writer probably doesn’t need to say what party he belongs to. But if he can’t stand Italian food, that’s relevant.

Here are my disclosures.