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NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos (who teaches here at Columbia) takes a look at the networkâs poor showing with manufacturing sources over the last few weeks.
I wrote about this last Tuesday, noting how a couple of small businessmen, including a New Jersey printer named Joe Olivo, show up frequently in news stories that donât disclose their ties to lobbying groups.
Schumacher-Matos.
(Joe) Olivo shouldnât have been interviewed at all.
He is quoted so much as a typical small businessperson that it rightly raises the sorts of suspicions and questions it has about why. Those questions undermine otherwise good reporting. Turning too often to the same source, moreover, makes a story look old and tired, and hardly reflects well on a reporterâs initiative.
That much we agree on, and itâs good to see that someone at NPR does too, including one of the reporters and its managing editor. But I donât agree with Schumacher-Matos that NPR shouldnât have identified Olivoâs connection to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a right-wing group that lobbies against stuff like unions, environmental regulation, and raising the minimum wage.
First, heâs presented as a random businessman off the street, when heâs not. Itâs not like heâs even some random member of NFIBâone among hundreds of thousands of dues payers. Olivo was vice chairman of the powerful lobbyâs New Jersey Leadership Council, appeared in promo videos for the national group, and worked hand in hand with lobbyists to advocate political issues before legislatures and Congress. That crosses over into political activismâeven a âvoluntary advisory panelââand it needs to be disclosed.
Put another way: Letâs say a local resident who is opposing a new factory because of pollution concerns is as active in Greenpeace as Olivo is in the NFIB. Donât mention it?
Itâs true that the line can be fuzzy, but thatâs why folks like Olivo are so valuable to groups like NFIB and why itâs worth leaning toward abstention from rent-a-quotes and at least disclosing their ties if those deadline and/or balance pressures are too much.
Letâs face it: Nobody trusts what some paid-to-say-it lobbyist thinks. The press knows it and the lobbyists for sure know it, which is why they seek to cloak their messages in the authenticity of the man on the street. The operating assumption should be that a lobby will only sends reporters to quote someone whoâll reliably say most of the same things it would say. You wouldnât quote a spokesperson from an activist group without noting their affiliation. These lobbyist-supplied sources are proxy spokespeople.
It very well may be that these folks believe, on a personal level, the lobby-backed quotes they provide to the press or in testimony to Congress. But on a bigger level, lobbying groups are inserting their views into the news stream without accountability.
Thatâs insidious, and when itâs exposed as it has been in the last few weeks, listeners and readers have one more good reason to distrust how the news is made: Is this journalism? Or is it guerrilla marketing? These anecdotes are presented to listeners and readers as if they popped out of nowhere or were at least dug up by the reporters. False.
Without the NFIB, you can be quite sure that the same small businessman from New Jersey wouldnât have appeared on NBC Nightly News, Fox News, and NPR in the span of eight days to discuss his views on Obamaâs health care law. The silly thing about it is that there are plenty of small businesspeople out there who would be glad to tell you how Obamacare will affect their companies and who arenât activists for the plaintiff in National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court case that nearly overturned the landmark health-care law.
Next time, find them yourself.
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