Vikileaks and the death of the journalist as news gatekeeper

I was in Las Vegas for a work trip and tuned-out of all news from back in Canada, so it was only Friday that I returned and caught myself up on the “Vikileaks” drama, and it was fascinating to read some of the commentary and follow the tweets on the topic, particularly those from hill journalists and political sorts.

I won’t pass judgment on whether or not the information about Vic Toews should have been published or not, except to say it’s not how I would chose to do politics. Which I guess is passing judgment, so there you go. This sort of thing is par the course in modern politics though, and for the Conservatives, who have taken it to new levels, to now wring their hands is silly. And, for the record, it is only an ethical question, and we are talking about publicly available information and documents.

What really interests me though is the reaction of the proverbial “main-stream media” to the Vikileaks story, with an Ottawa Citizen piece attempting to trace the IP address of the “@Vikileaks30 leaker” spurring endless speculation and demands to identify the person or persons responsible. It should be noted that had @Vikileaks30 given their documents to a journalist who chose to publish a story based on them, then the media would be reminding us how important it is to protect the confidentiality of their sources. Even competing outlets wouldn’t try to unmask another journalist’s confidential source. That’s just not cricket, old boy.

What the media reaction to @Vikileaks30 really shows though is how angry, and perhaps frightened, they are about losing their traditional role as the gatekeepers of news, the people that get to decide what we, the unwashed masses, need to know and what we don’t need to know. Journalists are used to being in the know, to having the inside details, the scoop. It helps make up for the low pay, long hours and heavy drinking.

Journalists made judgment calls every day on what is news and what isn’t, what people have a right to know, and what isn’t relevant. It's part of the job in one sense; there's always more news than column inches or air time. And they see it as a public service. But no one elected them as the arbiters of good taste. They’re accountable to no one but their publisher and the shareholders. It’s a lot of trust, and a lot of responsibility.

The internet, blogging and social media are changing all that however. Now you no longer need a printing press or a television or radio station to publish information to the masses. Anyone with an Internet connection can publish anything they want, and potentially find an audience. And the market will, in a way, make its own judgment on its news worthiness. If people find it relevant, they’ll share or re-tweet it and the news finds a wider audience; if they deem it inappropriate it will wither and fade away, perhaps after first being soundly condemned.

What it means, though, is that the role of the traditional media as gatekeeper is drying, if it’s not already dead. With their breadth of reach and size of audience, the regular media is still the fastest way for news to be disseminated to the wider public. But thanks to social media, even if the press deems something “un-newsworthy,” if it gets enough traction online they eventually have no choice but to cover it anyway.

Whether or not you think publishing details of Vic Toews’ divorce as a form of protest against privacy-invading Internet snooping legislation is appropriate, what this drama shows about the eroding power of the media gatekeeper is very much a positive, in my opinion.

But back to the moral media tut-tutting around this story. Here’s the National Post editorial board weighing-in, for example, with a reflex attack on the always handy partisan scarecrow:

… their partisan opponents wouldn’t care. Rightly or wrongly, to embrace, promote or even acknowledge Vilikeaks — as a remarkable number of opposition MPs have done — is to accept yet further debasement of the Canadian political conversation. There is no way around it. The ends may justify the means in some people’s minds, but all politicians’ private lives are less private today than they were on Monday.

The media’s role in this is more tricky. The content of the Vikileaks tweets has been widely known in Ottawa since the events occurred. Yet not a word of it was breathed in the mainstream press, in accordance with the basic Canadian understanding described above.
But now it is all over the news — if not the particulars of Mr. Toews’ situation, then the fact that someone is publishing those particulars at a Twitter account called @Vikileaks30.

Attacking evil partisans is always easy for journalists, or in this case anonymous editorial writers, but the fact is the Post’s statement that “not a word of it was breathed in the mainstream press” is easily and demonstrably wrong, as a simple search of any newspaper archive service shows.

* May 17, 2008, Mia Rabson in Winnipeg Free Press

Sources suggest Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants Toews to step down because of concerns about issues in his personal life -- he's currently in the midst of a divorce. An appointment to the bench makes sense because of Toews' background as a former Crown prosecutor in Brandon and lawyer for the Manitoba government.

* May 17, 2008, Don Martin in Calgary Herald

But the 55-year-old Toews' public face of self-righteous morality is now clashing with his troubled private life. An MP dubbed the "minister of family values" by Liberals is embroiled in a messy divorce after fathering a child last fall with a much younger woman.

That's his business, frankly, yet it might explain why Mr. Toews was demoted to the Treasury Board and immediately cloaked by invisibility, stewing in question period silence while his junior parliamentary secretary juggles tough questions on election financing irregularities.

* May 23, 2008, Joan Bryden in Waterloo Region Record

As well, Tories have been whispering that Treasury Board President Vic Toews, embroiled in a messy divorce, has fallen into disfavour with Harper.

In June of 2009, Vancouver Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe even wrote a column headlined “U.S. 'affairs' so much more interesting.”

And last year, then-Justice Minister Vic Toews split with his wife of 33 years after having fathered a child with a political staffer. A Winnipeg newspaper called it "messy personal stuff.

Toews since has been re-elected and appointed Treasury Board president. His website features nothing personal beyond "Vic enjoys roller blading and jogging. He resides in Steinbach.

In fact, here’s a May 21, 2008 story from the National Post with Toews reacting to a story about his divorce proceedings, in, you guessed it, the National Post (I guess the op/ed writers missed this one):

Mr. Toews, appearing at a news conference for a joint federal-provincial program for aboriginal youth sport, was also asked about a report in Saturday's National Post indicating he is currently involved in a messy divorce after fathering a child last fall with a much younger woman.

"I don't talk about my personal life," Mr. Toews replied.

Perhaps Vic, but the media sure does an awful lot. It seems obvious that the media tut-tutting has nothing to do with publishing such personal details; it’s just the feeble protests of the dying news gatekeepers.


UPDATE: An earlier post along these lines that has relevance to this one: On Adam Giambrone, morality vs. privacy, and the media as gatekeeper.

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