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  • Shadid's cousin ignites argument over 'NYT''s role in his death; his widow refuses to join
    • jirik June 27, 2012 at 4:25 pm

      I used to work as a television news producer. I have been on both sides of the editorial desk when it comes to being a journalist deciding whether to cover a story that could get them killed. Assuming that Ed Shadid's account is accurate, the NYT is being disingenuous in suggesting that media (and specifically the Times in this case) do not "pressure reporters to go into combat zones." Such statements are the standard fall-back position of corporate spokespersons.

      The editorial desks fully understand the pressure journalists in the field experience in the interests of professionalism and pride in their work when faced with the choice whether to accept an assignment, regardless of what the desk editors say about the final decision being that of the journalist alone. Journalists feel that they have let themselves, the desk, and the profession down, whenever they refuse an assignment. So, on balance, journalists in the field are likely to accept dangerous assignments.

      A good desk editor does not leave it up to the journalist in the field to decide in the final instance whether to accept a dangerous assignment. The desk and the journalist in the field must agree on the value of the story and the risks of covering it. From my reading of Ed Shadid's account of his cousin's experience with his editor(s) at the NYT this was not the case. Moreover, in the case of doubt and disagreement, the story should not have been pursued, unless the journalist, against the advice (or orders) of the desk, insisted on pursuing it. Again, this does not seem to have been the case with the NYT.

      Finally, former NYT editor Bill Keller's claim that "great journalists always go" is the kind of nostalgia for a journalism that has never been that will only continue to get journalists in the field killed unless tempered. Protection of journalists in the field will only begin when editors begin to take some responsibility for the decisions they off-load onto the people who answer to them.

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