Jeremy Peters is a political reporter for The New York Times. Instead of focusing on how politics are covered, he told us more of what goes on behind the scenes. He reported on the 2012 presidential campaign and was surprised to find out that any direct quotes that he wanted to use from interviews in the Obama campaign had to be sent to them for approval before they were edited. He clarified on this issue saying that it was a given that when he conducted an interview he was allowed to paraphrase information provided as long as the name was not provided, but any direct quotes or information provided by the person had to be approved. The department of the campaign would send the quotes back after they had edited them, usually to clean them up and make them more elegant-sounding but other times the meaning was changed completely. It was (and is) a regular practice of the Obama administration to prosecute journalists who don’t provide sources to leaks and the leaks themselves. This is scary in many ways because it means the government is controlling information provided more than we think. Although he spoke specifically about the Obama administration, Mr. Peters believes it is an overall trend of the government gaining and exerting more control over what information is shared with the public and what angle is taken. The risk that journalists take if they don’t play by the administration’s rules is being denied interviews or coverage in the future. This is a very scary issue because it is becoming harder and harder to uncover and share the truth.
Another topic he touched on was government agencies having a vast knowledge of the demographics of its voter population as well as personal information from online sites, like Facebook, and finding which voters it specifically wants to reach. In short, they know a lot about us. While big data collection may be intrusive, it is not illegal since users grant information public and grant access to this information. To me, this just shows the importance of educating social media users, especially younger ones, on how data is being collected about them all the time and why it’s important to keep things private. And of being aware of this knowledge ourselves.
Jeremy Peters provided an interesting and kind of scary insight into media coverage of politics and government. Readers/viewers have a trust in journalists that they are providing true and unbiased information and it is important for journalists to maintain that trust and take it seriously. This will involve serious criticism and taking risks but it’s so important to not let agencies and departments change or prohibit the information that should be shared with the public.