Politco.Com’s Mike Allen broke the story yesterday: “For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists  . . . off-the-record, non-confrontational access to Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24441.html

 “The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

The event was billed as a “Washington Post Salon,” an intimate" off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.”

Before the news cycle ended yesterday, the planned series of dinners had been cancelled. Today, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz quoted Weymouth “This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."

Kurtz  revealed that  “the fliers were approved by a top Post marketing executive, Charles Pelton, who said it was ‘a big mistake’ on his part and that he had done so ‘without vetting it with the newsroom.’ He said that Kaiser Permanente had orally agreed to pay $25,000 to sponsor a July 21 health-care dinner at Weymouth's Northwest Washington home, and that Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) had agreed to be a guest.”

 Kurtz also reported that “John Spragens, a spokesman for Cooper, said that once  the  Tennessee Democrat learned the details  of  the dinner, he would not have attended "a radioactive event. . . . You don't want to be put in a position as a congressman where someone's buying access to you."

                                  Astonished

Politoc.com called the offer astonishing. Indeed. I’m  so astonished on so many levels that I almost don’t know where to begin. 

So let’s start with fact that the person who blew the whistle on the scheme was a lobbyist.  In other words, a health-care industry lobbyist has a finer understanding of journalistic ethics than anyone inside the Post who saw the flier?  (While I’m persuaded that the newsroom hadn’t signed off on the flier, it’s hard to believe that Pelton managed to wreak so much havoc all by himself. Others must have been involved in designing, producing and distributing the invitation. )

The event was going to be staged in Katharine Weymouth’s home?  Presumably someone gave her a head’s up. Does this mean Weymouth signed off on the idea?

Today, Kurtz explains:  “Weymouth, who had not seen the marketing copy, said that ‘we will never compromise our journalistic integrity.’ But she [also] said other news organizations sponsor similar conferences and that she remains comfortable with the basic idea of lobbyists or corporations underwriting dinners with officials and journalists as long as those paying the fees have no control over the content.

“But precisely what would be acceptable remains unclear,” Kurtz observed. “Asked whether the forums she envisions might still be viewed as buying access to Post journalists, Weymouth said, ‘I suppose you could spin it that way, but that is not the way it would have been done.’ She said the situation would be comparable to a company buying an ad in the newspaper while knowing that it ‘might hate the content’ on that page.”

Certainly, the rules of the evening would be critical. Unfortunately, the flier suggested that the journalists present would leave their press credentials at home.

       Reporters Expected to Mind Their Manners

The flier offered those with a financial stake in health care reform a chance to "Bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama Administration and Congressional leaders .   . . Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of   Katharine Weymouth assures it." The invitation went on to say that the dinner , would involve "health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post . . . an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done."                     

 “Spirited” but “non-confrontational” suggests that reporters would have their marching orders: no tough questions that might embarrass their publisher’s guests. Nor would they be reporting on what was said—the entire dinner would be “off the record.”  In other words, this would be an opportunity for CEOs to try to influence how reporters view health care reform without fear of that the journalists would quote them– or present them with uncomfortable counter-facts.

Full disclosure: About a year ago, I was invited to a similar healthcare “salon” sponsored by a well known publication. I have never worked for the publication, either freelance or on staff. I was not aware that CEOs at the dinner paid for their invitations –if they did. And I certainly made no promises about avoiding controversy.  (If anyone expected that, they have never read my work.)

No surprise, once I arrived at what turned out to be an elegant dinner party for twenty, and heard what some of the industry’s representatives had to say, I probably crossed the “spirited” line. When a Pharma executive growled that “comparative effectiveness research” would never happen because it would lead to “one size fits all medicine,” I felt obliged to disagree. (I explained that such research focuses on which products are most effective for patients who fit a particular medical profile.)

 On the question of hospital safety, I ventured so far as to suggest that, these days,  anyone spending time in a hospital should do their best to have a friend or relative with them at all times– someone who could say, “That doesn’t look like the medicine you gave her yesterday; are you sure it’s the right drug?” I expanded a bit on the dangers of hospital stays, until I was jolted out of my seat by a Manhattan hospital CEO on the other side of the table who erupted: “Mistakes don’t happen at my hospital!.” he shouted. (Methought he did protest too much, and made a mental note to warn friends and family who live in NYC.)

I haven’t been invited to a “salon” since. Though the host did thank me for helping to make the discussion “lively.”

Presumably, Pelton thought that reporter-employees who attended the dinner would understand (or be told) that they were expected to check their skepticism –and their knowledge of the facts–at the door.

                      The Newsroom Reacts

But that’s not how most reporters view their job. Once Politco.com reported the story, all hell broke loose in the Washington Post newsroom. Reporters who read that someone at the paper planned to “rent them out” (or to be more precise, “pimp them out”) for an evening were blind-sided.

 “Pimp them out” may seem harsh—and clearly this is not what Washington Post publisher Katherine Weymouth had in mind. But the marketing folks who put the flier together seemed to assume that reporters who cover both health care and health- care lobbyists wouldn’t mind finding themselves in a position where they would be beholden to those very lobbyists for making a $25,000 to $250,000 donation to their employer.   

Not only that, the flier presumed that journalists would be happy to serve as go-betweens, helping to “connect” the politicians who are shaping healthcare reform with the lobbyists who oppose reform. And of course, reporters would be expected to “forget” anything they overheard in the conversations that ensued.

 As Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote yesterday: “From every angle, it's dirty: It compromises us with the government officials we should be covering but who are doing us a financial favor by participating. It compromises us with the lobbyists we should be covering but who are now funding our business in return for access to the newsroom and the administration. There's literally no way to look at it that doesn't leave us in a terribly unethical position.

“And I don't imagine there is anyone in the newsroom who disagrees with that. Reporters are pretty religious about this stuff.”

Certainly, most reporters share his view. Though, these days, no doubt some more cynical journalists simply shrugged and said, “Hey, it’s a business. The Business-side guys at the Washington Post were just doing what they are supposed  do.”

 But these tend to be reporters who don’t think of themselves as “journalists.” They prefer to identify themselves as members of “the Media.” Their goal in life: to become a TV  “pundit.” (Apologies to those television pundits who are, in fact, excellent journalists. Unfortunately, they are the exceptions.)

 

Washington Post Executive Editor Does the Right Thing

Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli  deserves credit for his swift and sure response: . "You cannot buy access to a Washington Post journalist,” Brauchli told POLITICO yesterday.  Brauchli was named on the flier as one of the salon’s "Hosts and Discussion Leaders."

Brauchli said in an interview that he understood the business side of the Post planned on holding dinners on policy and was scheduled to attend the July 21 dinner at Weymouth’s Washington home, but he said he had not seen the material promoting it until today. “The flier, and the description of these things, was not at all consistent with the preliminary conversations the newsroom had,” Brauchli said, adding that it was “absolutely impossible” the newsroom would participate in the kind of event described in the solicitation for the event.

 He also insisted that Post employees on the business side — not the newsroom — would have been responsible for seeking participants for this event. Reporters, he said, would not solicit sources or administration officials. Brauchli said that he did not know who was invited or who accepted. 

Nevertehless as the post’s Howard Kurtz pointed out, the “aggressively worded” flier “gives the impression that The Post is selling access to special interests, not just to administration officials and lawmakers — which raises a separate set of questions about cozy relationships — but to the people who produce the newspaper. The Post often raises questions about whether corporations, unions and trade associations receive access or favors in return for campaign contributions to political candidates.

“Now the fliers have raised the question of whether the newspaper itself is pursuing such a strategy in exchange for hefty fees from special-interest groups,” Kurgz added. “Access to Weymouth herself, a granddaughter of longtime publisher Katharine Graham who took over as chief executive of Washington Post Media last year, would be deemed valuable by those trying to influence The Post's editorial policies and news coverage.

He ended his column by explaining why all of this happened:  “The Post Co. lost $19.5 million in the first quart completed its fourth round of early-retirement buyouts in several years, prompting Weymouth to look for new sources of revenue.”

                      Firewalls and “the Fourth Estate”

Why does any of this matter?  What reporters write will affect how readers view the healthcare debate.  Readers need to trust that journalists are doing their best to get the facts right—and that they are asking pointed questions, without worrying about who they might offend.

Especially these days, when the mainstream media is in deep financial trouble, it would be disastrous for readers to suspect that corporate lobbyists were paying tens of thousands to help “save” a paper.

One of the most basic rules of journalism is that the editorial and business sides of a publication must be separate. Editors and reporters are  not supposed to be involved in raising money to keep the publication going. This is the publisher’s problem. 

The publisher, not the editor-in-chief , runs the business side of the enterprise. The publisher is supposed to worry about ad sales– and selling newspapers. This means that he may lay awake at night fretting about stories that could irk advertisers, while praying that his reporters are writing titillating, entertaining stories that will draw readers.

But a publisher with integrity does not pressure his editors to toady  either to advertisers or readers. He understands that a reporter’s job is to tell readers what they need to know—not what they want to hear. And journalists cannot kowtow to advertisers.

 This is why, traditionally, there has been a “firewall” between the business side and the editorial side of a publication. Time Inc. founder Henry Luce referred to it as a wall between “church and state.” 

It seems that the dividing line needs to be made much clearer to the Washington Post’s marketing department. People on the business side of the Post should not have the authority to invite politicians, lobbyists or reporter’s to the publisher’s home. It’s not just that she should have seen the invitation; an invitation that involved Post reporters should have come from the publisher and the executive editor—not from the marketers. And it should have made it clear that the editorial side of the  Post would be setting the rules for the evening.

Finally, the idea of having the Post take money from lobbyists to provide access to politicians seems to me , as Congressman Cooper put it,  “radioactive.”  It places both the paper and the politicians in an untenable position.

Today, however, it seems that many have forgotten that the press is supposed to represent “the fourth estate. “

The phrase takes us back to 18^th century France.  During the reign of Louis XVI there were three “estates” or powerful groups that the King would summon to Versailles: 300 clergy representing “the Church”, 300 nobles representing “the Nobility” and a hundred commoners representing the majority of the population (what we might call “the public.” )

Sometime after the French Revolution,  Edumnd Burke named the press the “fourth estate” in the body politic. He believed that the press was  just as powerful as  the church, the nobility and the public.

But the fourth estate would maintain its power only if it maintained an arms-length distance from those powerful special interests.  Standing outside these other  groups, the press was supposed to remain both impartial, and skeptical, casting a critical eye on any vested interest that was trying to impose its will on the rest of the country.

Today, I am afraid many view the idea of “the fourth estate” as quaint.  Certainly, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, when the majority in the mainstream press refused to investigate the truth about Weapons of Mass Destruction , it was clear that, in some sense, the Fourth Estate was dead.

Reporters who wanted to be invited back to power-dinners in D.C.—and maintain their contacts with powerful sources—swallowed the administration’s implausible stories, along with the meals.

It is crucial that the mainstream press does not repeat this mistake as we approach landmark healthcare legislation.  Reporters should be asking reformers tough questions—about how healthcare spending will be contained, about how reform will be financed, and about whether universal coverage will indeed offer equally high quality care to everyone.

At the same time, they should be exposing the misinformation that those who oppose reform will be spreading. (See our "Truth Squad" posts.)

Bloggers enjoy an unusual amount of freedom. Typically, our work is not edited. This of course can lead to some very sloppy reporting and writing. But the best bloggers know how to fact-check and do a reasonably good job of editing themselves. Moreover, if they make a mistake, readers can immediately call them on it—leading to an instant correction and explanation.  It’s hard to maintain a serious audience if you make too  many substantive mistakes.

 Since no one is looking over a blogger’s shoulder, most bloggers are not constrained by corporate imperatives.  For that reason,  I am hopeful that honest and intelligent bloggers can revive the ideal of the fourth estate, maintaining a critical distance from those who protect money and power. This is essential if journalists are going to speak truth to power.

Of course not all journalists will be right about the truth. Sometimes we will be mistaken. (This includes yours truly.) But if the vast majority of reporters are making an honest effort, “truth will out.”  The truth will become obvious to the public-so, ultimately, the majority of the nation repudiated the Bush administration. 

I also believe that in the world of print, television and radio, honest columnists and journalists keep the idea of the fourth estate  alive.  The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein  set an example yesterday in the way that he responded to what must have been a difficult day at the Post. And it no one at the Post censored either Klein or Kurtz.

 In the end, it is no doubt good that this scandal broke. The brouhaha may make other publications think twice before soliciting donations from the very people they are supposed to cover.