Who does she think she is?
NY Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse had quite the little diva moment, threatening to walk off a panel at the journalism education convention in Washington if it were broadcast by C-SPAN.
C-SPAN was shocked by this, as am I. Terence Murphy, VP of programming at C-SPAN, wrote in a letter of protest: “But the larger concern is why AEJMC organizers allowed Ms. Greenhouse’s view to prevail. If professors of journalism and working journalists taking part in a journalism education conference don’t stand up for open media access to public policy discussions, who will?”
Greenhouse is a journalist who should be open and transparent and, in fact, should be urging the court she covers to be more open. I want C-SPAN in there broadcasting their work on our behalf.
Besides, it’s foolish to think that anything you do at such events as these can be — let alone should — be private. As the CJR story points out, the room had working reporters in it. It also had bloggers in it. It could have had vloggers in it.
We in journalism want to throw light on the powerful. We should not shy away from that light ourselves.
Tags: journalism
August 10th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
“…according to the organizer, Amy Gajda, a non-tenured professor from the University of Illinois who, with much difficulty, had managed to organize the star-studded panel and the media attention, an email was sent the night before telling them about the C-SPAN coverage.”
How about some blame for Amy Gajda for giving panelists less than 24 hours notice (the evening before a morning event) that the discussion might be on television?
If I were invited to speak at a panel which might be on TV, I would want to be told that it might be on TV at the time I received the invitation.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
CJR: Greenhouse said that she had come prepared to speak to a “room of academics.†She added, “I didn’t want to have to modulate my comments for a national audience.â€
Was Greenhouse worried she’d have to dumb herself down for TV?
August 10th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
What may be more accurate is that Ms. Greenhouse was afraid that in a panel discussion she may let her bias’s be exposed. The risk for these reporters, especially by the Times, is the tightrope they need to walk with their personal opinions and their public persona.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I agree with Tom. The first question in MY mind was “Whose the heck’s POCKET is SHE in, anyway?”
August 10th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Interesting that Justice Scalia has the same rule about refusing cameras when he speaks at gatherings.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Speaking in “public” should be regarded as just that: Public; no qualifiers, no conditions, no exceptions; regardless of the medium through which such public comment may be presented. She WAS being a diva, it WAS a hissy fit and they should NOT have caved. Was her “public” opinion so precious as to excuse it actually being made public? Shame on them all.