Every now and then, a journalist will feel guilty about having a proper salary, union-negotiated benefits, ergonomic chairs and all the other stuff that another class of people could only dream of. So, in a bid to absolve them of this guilt, sell a few newspapers and hopefully scrounge up an award or two, a reporter will be sent “under cover” to work in a minimum-wage job, live in the slums and otherwise experience life as a member of the lower classes.

La Presse’s Michèle Ouimet did that, and articles about her work in a minimum-wage job and living in a slum with prostitutes and drug addicts appeared this week. The names in her articles are changed “to preserve anonymity.”

That doesn’t always work, though. Back in 2006, Globe and Mail journalist Jan Wong did something similar, living in a slum and working as a maid at less than minimum wage. She described her daily life, and changed names so that nobody would be embarrassed (or decide to sue her).

Unfortunately, a couple described in the story had enough “private information” revealed that friends recognized them, and they say that caused them personal embarrassment. So rather than admit that they treat hired help like crap and there are parts of their lives that could use some improvement, they sued Wong and the Globe for invasion of privacy.

This week, an Ontario court ruled against a motion from the Globe to dismiss the case.

Ironically, the lawsuits (one from the couple, another from the maid service) names the parties in question, which now makes them Googlable where they were not before. I personally don’t see how this more public humiliation (they’re not challenging the accuracy of anything said about them) is worth a chance to take on a paper for $50,000.

On one hand, this kind of journalism wouldn’t be possible without some deception.

On the other hand, how would you feel if embarrassing information about you appeared in a newspaper, and everyone who knew you could recognize you from the details given?

Perhaps a simple answer to all this is that journalists should take better care at anonymizing information, especially when they’re setting a scene with lots of detail.

Last week, MédiaMatinQuébec, the Journal de Québec locked-out/striking workers paper that I’ve discussed here many times before, decided it would refuse ads from Quebec City’s administration, which is involved in its own labour issues. The city paid for ads in MMQ that explained its points in its negotiation with its union. But because that union supports MMQ, the paper decided it could no longer take advertisements that served to attack its allies.

Was a line crossed here? It’s one thing when MMQ refuses to take ads from Le Soleil, which has a vested interest in making the Journal conflict go on for as long as possible. But Quebec City has nothing to do with Quebecor.

Then again, the entire raison d’être of MMQ is as a union pressure tactic. Should we expect a union-produced newspaper to betray those who support it?

I guess it comes down to a simple question: Is MédiaMatinQuébec a newspaper, with a duty to be objective, or is it a union pressure tactic, whose content should further its ultimate goal?

This is why people don’t trust the media anymore: La Presse says TVA isn’t covering the Journal de Québec situation fairly, because both are owned by Quebecor.

There’s this thing with the media that’s always annoyed me:

1. Journalists love to talk about their industry with other journalists
2. People love reading about the media (within reason, of course)
3. Journalists are hesitant to write about matters that are “in the family” (owned by the same company) or within the media outlet itself, whether because of paranoid self-censorship or orders from upper management not to pursue a story
4. Journalists and their media outlets will never talk about their competition, unless it’s to report something bad about them, in which case they go all out.

La Presse isn’t immune to this. Neither is The Gazette (the paper I work for), nor any other media outlet I can think of. And the larger the corporate empire, the worse the problem gets.

Why can’t they be more honest about themselves? Giving a union boss criticizing a platform to criticize you makes you look bad, but denying that union boss a voice makes you look worse.

Remember: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

CBC announced today that reporter Krista Erickson has been punished for breaking journalistic ethics in the most horrible way possible: They’re sending her to Toronto.

In what Jonathan Kay calls Pablogate, and Mario Asselin calls CBCgate, and is really not a gate at all, Erickson fed questions to Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez about Brian Mulroney’s connection to the current Conservative Party, which Rodriguez asked Mulroney during the Mulroney/Schreiber inquiry over the Airbus affair.

Through this story there’s been a lot of outrage but not much analysis of what exactly went wrong here. The CBC says there was no partisan or unethical intent, and I believe them. It was an unconventional method of getting answers to tricky political questions.

What this story is more indicative of, however, is the amount of informality in beat reporting. It’s nothing new. Reporters and the people they report on have been chummy for decades. That’s how they get the scoops, how they know what’s going on, how they get access to important people.

But the downside is that there can be a perception of partiality when there’s the slightest hint of cooperation between the two. It’s a real problem, and it needs to be tackled in a realistic way by news organizations rather than arbitrarily decided on a case-by-case basis when someone complains.

News organizations should learn from this incident, and update their codes of ethics to cover the problems inherent in beat reporting. The paragraphs the CBC quoted in their statement are far too vague. At the very least, add this situation as an example of what not to do.

UPDATE (Jan. 23): The CBC News Editors Blog discusses the subject without mentioning Erickson’s name (what are we, idiots?). Though it talks briefly about the problems of becoming part of the story and the need to be “inside” while still staying objective, it fails to go into depth about the familiarity problem other than to deny it exists.

Meanwhile (via the Tea Makers) Facebook groups supporting and against Erickson have popped up. Do I even have to point out that the pro-Erickson group was started by a Liberal Party activist and the anti-Erickson group by a Mike Huckabee-supporting Tory?

The blogosphere is abuzz with the story of Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired from GameSpot after a negative review of an advertiser’s video game. The company that owns GameSpot insists that this was not the reason for his firing, but neither side will comment on the real reason, hiding behind laws that apparently prevent that.

Closer to home, La Presse chief editorialist André Pratte paid a visit to Francs-Tireurs this week (Part 1 of the interview deals with his views on sovereignty in case you’re interested). In it, he says there’s no “red phone” from the bosses to tell him what to write. However, the paper has an editorial viewpoint, and its opinions follow that.

Over the years, Big Media learned that it’s in their best interest to separate advertising from editorial content. Otherwise, readers wouldn’t trust them and would move on to competing papers.

But while many still follow that mantra officially, various methods have come up for advertisers to influence the editorial process that news media have accepted don’t cross the line:

• Advertising features: Popular in newspapers, these are advertisements that have layouts that make them look like real newspaper articles. Headlines, bylines, photo captions. Only the tiny word “advertisement” (or in some cases confusing terms like “marketing feature” or “sponsored feature” or “advertising section”) at the top tells you that the content has been paid for. Some newspapers require that such sections use fonts that are clearly different from the editorial content, others don’t.
• Press releases as news: Media outlets subscribe to press releases from Canada NewsWire and others as if they were wire services. In many cases, that’s how they find out about stories. When you read about that new medical breakthrough, or that survey, or damning statement from a lobby group, chances are the news outlet got that information through a press release. Because groups have to pay to have their releases distributed, it gives an air of authority to the statement. It also discriminates against poor, less organized groups to find your news in this fashion. Issues that people don’t want to (or can’t) pay hundreds of dollars to get in the hands of journalists don’t get reported.
• Sponsored, but “hands off” coverage: This is what special sections are all about. Companies offer to place advertisements around articles about a specific subject. They make no demands concerning the content of those articles. This is why you see special sections on big-budget things like home renovation, travel, cars, business issues, fashion, but no special sections on world hunger. In smaller publications, this quid pro quo can cross the line even further. Many small businesses actually think they can demand articles be written about them in exchange for advertising.
• Free gifts: Actual gifts are supposed to be strictly limited. But all sorts of exceptions exist: Free copies of books are much more likely to be evaluated, underpaid journalists are likely to accept a bribe of free food in exchange for attending a press conference or corporate event, and then much more likely to write about them.
• Self-censorship: There don’t have to be official policies against pissing off big advertisers or owners, but journalists aren’t stupid. Many won’t take the chance if they can avoid it. They write good stories and gloss over bad ones. Meanwhile, behind the scenes they rant about how horrible the company is to fellow journalists, in a way they would never do in print or in public.
  
• Finding an excuse: GameSpot said their firing decision was based on an internal review and not on a game company/advertiser’s complaints. That actually sounds entirely plausible. Nobody’s a model employee, and it’s usually fairly easy to find something about an undesirable that’s grounds for dismissal. Unless they’re part of a powerful union, you can fire them and have a ready-made excuse for their lawyer or the media. It also has the advantage of keeping other employees in line (see “self-censorship” above).
• Buddy-buddy at the top levels: As Big Media get huge, and their advertisers too, big corporate bosses find themselves meeting socially often. Threats turn into favours, and bribes turn into unwritten mutual agreements.
• Yes men: Middle-management quickly learn that in order to succeed they have to agree with everything their higher-ups tell them. Self-criticism is shunned. Original ideas are ignored or stolen. Advancement is more about ass-kissing than talent and experience. Not rocking the boat is paramount.
• Cross-promotion: Media properties do stories about other properties belonging to the same owner. A Gazette article about a Global TV show, a TVA documentary about the Journal de Montréal. The coverage itself may not be biased, but the reason behind it is.

When Pratte says there’s no red phone by his desk, I believe him. Big Media publishers and owners are simply too busy making money to care about micromanaging the day-to-day news decisions of their media properties. They have other people hired to do that. It’s very rare that an order comes from the very top that seriously affects journalistic integrity. And when it does, there’s usually a backlash.

So pressures become much more subtle. Advertising is the biggest source of revenue for almost any media operation. They know that it’s hard to exist without it. And so they justify the blurring of the line between editorial and advertising as a necessary evil to stay alive.

Some even call it “innovative.”