http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/edward-wasserman/story/1431247.htmlIf you run a news business, staying fairly clean used to be fairly easy. What you published was produced, by and large, by journalists who worked exclusively for you. You didn't accept material from outsiders apart from freelancers you knew or bona fide news agencies. PR firms and advocacy groups routinely offered you articles, but no self-respecting news outlet would simply publish them, even if the authors wore the sackcloth of public-spirited philanthropy.
No longer. Today's media, keen to save money, are deepening their reliance on part-time contributors, mainly because freelancers come cheap. And established media are keen to ``partner'' with a new breed of stand-alone journalism initiatives affiliated with high-minded foundations bankrolled by retired big-shots who want to be remembered for something other than the industries they pillaged.
So you have more and more journalism produced by people who are financially dependent on shadowy offstage entities. The 300 bucks that freelancer gets for a story that took her a week obviously doesn't pay her bills; so who does? The nonprofit that funds those in-depth stories on health reform -- its backers really have no agenda?
The result is a potent new challenge to traditional safeguards against conflict of interest, which, it's becoming increasingly obvious, are either too weak, too harsh or flat-out misdirected. Consider two cases in the past month.
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