A Few Thoughts After Twenty-Five Years Half In and Half Out of Journalism (original) (raw)
We established Kaisernetwork.org in 2000, and then we upped the ante and established KFF Health News (then called Kaiser Health News) in 2009 to fill the need for in-depth coverage of health policy and its impact on people, and to add journalism to our well-developed policy analysis and polling capabilities at KFF. Over all these years as we have expanded our newsroom operations across the country, I have had one foot in the news media world, one in my original health policy world, and one in the nonprofit world, starting KFF in the early 1990s. That’s three feet if you are counting.
All the basic decisions the board and I made when we established KFF Health News have worked out for us. We wanted to build it on a content distribution model rather than a destination website. I felt destination sites brought incentives to chase eyeballs almost as pernicious as those commercial news faces. We made our content free to our distribution partners, which now include most news organizations. And inside KFF, the newsroom would be editorially independent with regard to individual story ideas and content but otherwise operate just like our other major programs (it is not an independent organization).
KFF also has many joint ventures with news organizations independent of KFF Health News, especially to conduct large-scale survey projects (36 so far with The Washington Post). For decades we operated one of the leading fellowship programs for health journalists. And outside my office are seven Emmy and two Peabody awards from our work on HIV with the largest media companies, which today focuses on digital media through our Social Impact Media program.
I am not a journalist. But as founding publisher of our newsroom with a well-documented personal commitment to health journalism second to none, these are a few questions I think about:
- Local Journalism. There is a tremendous emphasis now on filling the need for local journalism, which is vital for democracy and community. We operate a national newsroom, but we work closely with local news organizations and although we are not a funder, we are active partners in the Press Forward initiative, which is expanding resources for local journalism. However, in health policy, the news desert that matters even more is in state capitals, where specialized beats covering state government and state health and human services agencies have all but disappeared. That’s where decisions affecting millions are made, especially about Medicaid. When I was a state human services commissioner heading up a state umbrella agency overseeing a third of a state budget and workforce, I had maybe 20 reporters who followed me and my different agencies every day. It was a tremendous public service (and often a colossal pain in the ass), and more than anything else, it gave me my appreciation for the role journalists can play holding government’s feet to the fire and informing the public about complex policy issues that really matter to people’s lives. Local journalists can cover the impact of state (and federal) health policy decisions on their communities but to do it right, it takes expertise, contacts, and sometimes travel budgets that their generally small newsrooms don’t often have. In health and health policy the decisions that are made at the state level are generally more important than anything that happens locally.
- The Misinformation Trap. An outlandish idea begins with agitators somewhere on social media, say about death panels in the Affordable Care Act or more recently about the causes of the Los Angeles fires. Maybe a few hundred or a few thousand conspiracy-oriented believers see it and share it with the like-minded. Then a politician picks it up and amplifies it. Maybe it’s even President-elect Trump. News coverage follows, sometimes busting the lies, sometimes debating them as if there are two sides. It’s a “story” now and more news coverage follows. All that leads to more social media attention. Now millions may hear about the lie. Many more may believe it and even more won’t know what to believe. The impulse to fact check is strong, and sensationalized misinformation can be a juicy story. But the purveyors of misinformation know that the more outrageous they are, the more likely they are to get covered. The dilemma: there is often a real story there, especially when a high public official gets involved, and there is the opportunity to present the facts as part of the story or even call out the lie. But the purveyors of misinformation want that story more than they care about that; they want to manipulate the news agenda. If the goal is to counter misinformation and not elevate it, sometimes the best course may be not to take the bait.
- Awards. We win lots of awards in our newsroom and being human, we’re pleased when we do. The competition with other newsrooms is probably healthy, especially in the nonprofit world where (happily) the usual measures of success and failure in commercial news don’t apply. Funders seem to care about awards as a badge of approval. But the whole ecosystem of journalism awards is at least worth wondering about. Newsrooms nominate themselves for awards (which eats up real time and effort during “award season”) and are selected for them by panels of their peers that are assembled by awarding organizations. Sometimes there are monetary rewards that go with awards with the big ones skewing towards certain kinds of journalism which is in vogue. Our staff don’t accept monetary awards because we have a general policy at KFF of not accepting outside compensation for anything, including speaking or publication fees, teaching, boards, or awards. Donations to KFF in lieu of payments to individuals are ok. The current awards system can’t help but create incentives to chase awards and diverts the energies of newsrooms. In a world where news organizations often pay journalists poorly and treat them harshly, forcing journalists to move from job to job or freelance and to self-promote, the journalism profession has, in effect, created an alternative system to recognize and reward journalists that does not exist on anything like this scale in other professions. I see no way to put this genie back in the bottle and we will continue to pursue our share of awards, but a healthier news industry with sounder employment practices and a less supersized world of awards more typical of other professions might be preferable. At KFF, our journalists are all regular KFF employees paid on the same salary scale with the same generous benefits as our other staff.
- Trust. Holding government and private organizations accountable for failure and malfeasance is an essential role of journalism and essential to democracy. For example, the ProPublica investigations of the Supreme Court held accountable an entire branch of government that had never been held accountable before, and our newsroom has published many vital (and award winning!) investigations. But “accountability” doesn’t exist in a vacuum and can bring tradeoffs. We live in an era when loss of trust in institutions, including in government, is also a serious threat to democracy, and to journalism. Should journalists be mindful of that? For that matter, should policy analysts and pollsters? A lot of our polls and policy analysis show that policies are bad ideas, will hurt lots of people, or are unpopular. “Accountability” provides a vital public service but cumulatively can simultaneously and unintentionally send the message that nothing works, everyone is corrupt, and no one is to be trusted. It can add to a drumbeat of negativism that exhausts the public, and it’s one reason why trust in news organizations has declined along with other institutions. “Solutions journalism” feels like an over-correction but maintaining a healthy balance between accountability and other kinds of stories seems to be important for most newsrooms (we do). This is one reason why across all of KFF—policy analysis, polling, and journalism—we try to keep the focus on people. It’s not a cure-all for polarization and distrust, but it is something most people can relate to regardless of their political views. If there is one thing this election should have taught all of us, it’s that in the future, it’s important to listen to the American people more and cover, poll about and analyze the “show” and the qualities of politicians less.
- Intimidation. Intimidation (anticipated or real) is looming as an immediate threat to journalism. You can see it creeping into the panels of one cable news network, which in prime time now feature a moderator bracketed by pro-Trump and anti- Trump pundits taking predictable positions—a caricature of American polarization and too often a surrender to false balance. Hopefully, most news organizations will resist this. The twin challenges of declining revenues and covering President Trump define the current moment for many news organizations. Fortunately, those of us in the nonprofit space, and especially the few of us who have our own money to help finance our news operations, have greater freedoms.