Why Access in Journalism is Overrated

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://lithub.com/patrick-radden-keefe-on-why-access-in-journalism-is-overrated/


One challenge I frequently grapple with in my work is how to write vividly, intimately, and fairly about people who I have never met. Sometimes the people I’m writing about are dead; often, they’re very much alive, but would prefer that I not be writing about them, and thus refuse to speak with me. People have lots of reasons not to talk, many of them understandable, and I never hold it against someone when they decline an interview. But if it is their prerogative to boycott the process, it is my prerogative to write about them anyway.

In magazine journalism there is an editorial tendency, when a subject won’t give you the time of day, to just move on: If they won’t play, then we won’t write about them. But over the years I’ve come to believe that one of most overrated aspirations in journalism is access. This is particularly true in any story involving people who are wealthy or powerful, and who have experience in dealing with the press. They know that journalists and editors (and, to a lesser extent, readers) prize access above all else, and so they wield it as a form of barter.

You can always tell the sophisticated repeat players: when you request an interview, they don’t demand “quote approval,” because they know that would offend you, indicating that you might be willing to cede editorial control, which of course you would never do, because you have too much journalistic integrity. Instead they say—and it’s almost always some version of this exact phrase—“Why don’t we talk off the record for now, and if there’s anything you want to use you can come back to me.”

This is the fig leaf that allows a subject to demand quote approval, and a reporter to let her have it, without anyone feeling as though their integrity might have been compromised. Such behind-the-scenes arrangements may seem distasteful, but they’re a reality (and, often, a necessity) in a lot of reporting about sensitive issues or resourceful people. I’ve had to use them myself on many occasions.

*snip*

[duckworth969]

1. Thank you for sharing that

I enjoyed reading your perspective on interviewing. Off-the-record comments do appear to be less than desirable unless you can find a more oblique way to get what you need from a related source based on what was just shared off the record. You can make inferences and assumptions, but then there’s the issue of going down the rabbit hole on a hunch. I would like to hear you sometime on the Longform podcast. They often talk about issues like the one you shared with us.