Citizen Journalism Implications of Blog Doc Controversy

(UPDATE 6/7/05 6:08p.m. -- John Hart has posted a public reply on his website, and I'm a bit speechless. It is certainly not a very rational response to the whole situation. Below were my thoughts on what I saw developing with the project independent of any outside influence or input from Chuck Olsen.)

There could be a bit of a PR nightmare brewing for the 59 Bloggers documentary in pre-production that I mentioned a few days ago. Independent filmmaker Chuck Olsen titled his film Blogumentary and expressed concern to the 59 Bloggers director John Hart that there might be some confusion over loosely throwing around the "Blogumentary" meme on his site.

Hart sent back a curt e-mail telling Olsen, "Please don't bother me with this bullshit nonsense." Then Olsen published an excerpt from Hart's e-mail on his blog. Hart apparently threatened Olsen with some type of legal action for publishing the e-mail.

Then David Weinberger -- one of the potential interviewees for the 59 Bloggers film -- responded to the controversy by saying, "I've seen how this new guy responds to a civil inquiry, I have asked him to drop me from his list of interviewees."

Hart then backtracked and removed all references to "Blogumentary" on his website -- along with a lot of other background information. Here's Olsen's archival screenshot.

At this point, we're only hearing Olsen's side of the story because Hart is not keeping a production blog (Bad PR on Hart's part).

So I see four lessons for citizen journalism from this little episode:

1.) There's a difference between social capital and normative standards and institutional capital and legal standards
2.) There are ethical and legal issues with publishing e-mail correspondence
3. ) This may have implications for establishing credibility and building trust with potential interviewees for citizen journalists
4.) It's bad to write something in an e-mail correspondence that you wouldn't want published in The New York Times.

More details below...

Lesson #1. There's a difference between social capital and normative standards and institutional capital and legal standards.
I'll get into what I know to be the legal aspects of publishing e-mail correspondence in the second lesson, but it is irrelevant who would have the upper hand in a legal battle if Hart pisses off all of his potential interviewees by taking a heavy-handed legal approach to this issue.

There are normative standards in the blogosphere that you should treat people with dignity and respect. When you fail to be civil, then you loose social capital. Without social capital, then you don't have a lot of credibility or trust. Without credibility or trust, then it's really hard to gain access to sources and have them trust you in an interview.

Hart saw that he is starting to loose this trust and social capital with his potential interviewees after Weinberger dropped out due to the "Blogumentary" fall-out. Hart inevitably saw that it'd be pointless to push the controversy any further if he still wanted to actually take a stab at this documentary.

So Olsen will probably not be threatened any further with legal action since Hart probably wants this little episode to just go away. But it'll probably start to ripple throughout the blogosphere since it's a bit of an ethical dilemma on whether or not the e-mail should've been published.

Olsen will inevitably win in terms of the normative standards of openness and transparency within the blogosphere. But Hart could actually have a legal case against Olsen if he foolishly decided to push the issue in court.

Lesson #2.) There are ethical and legal issues with publishing e-mail correspondence

Now I'm all for siding with Olsen when it comes to openness and transparency, but I'm not sure if I would have gone public with the e-mail myself.

Why? As an independent filmmaker who tried to gain access to sources for my investigative documentary on the performance of the TV media leading up to the war in Iraq, I need to have some medium of trusted and private communication. If potential journalistic sources whom I deal with don't know that they can contact me and their message will be secure from being broadcast to the world, then they're not going to contact me. Or more likely, they're not going to return my calls or return my e-mails.

Journalists realize that there's a normative standard for establishing trust and credibility that takes a lot of time to build up. Part of this process is to protect the integrity of e-mail correspondence and other private communication.

Inside sources talk to Symore Hersh because they know that he's never burnt a source. Sources talk to Josh Marshall because he never publishes the name of the e-mailer unless he receives explicit permission.

These inside sources won't come out unless they know that can trust the journalist.

* Can citizen journalists establish this same level of normative trust without an institutional backing?

I'd say that it is certainly possible after what I was able to achieve with conducting interviews with retired government sources, the spokeswoman of the French embassy, and a host of working journalists.

Once I finish The Echo Chamber, then each of the people I interviewed will be able to know how fairly I edited and recontextualized their sound bites. Being transparent about the entire interview process can start to build trust with these sources again for future projects. And if there isn't an outcry of complaints from interviewees being edited unfairly, then this will build trust for other future interviews.

I'm hoping that being transparent throughout the entire process can help me to build trust and credibility as an independent citizen journalist.

Olsen published Hart's e-mail without receiving explicit permission from him. This was an ethical decision that Olsen took, and you could make a convincing argument that Hart treated him with disrespect and Olsen had a right to expose Hart's character to be further scrutinized.

These are the ethical considerations, but there are also potential legal issues at hand as well.

I once received a message from someone who had the following very scary disclaimer on it:

This communication constitutes an electronic communication within the meaning of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 USC 2510, and its disclosure is strictly limited to the recipient intended by the sender of this message. This communication may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient and receipt by anyone other than the intended recipient does not constitute a loss of the confidential or privileged nature of the communications. Any review or distribution by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient please contact the sender by return electronic mail and delete all copies of this communication.

Wow. If Hart would've put this in his e-mail, then Olsen would've known pretty explicitly that he'd be taking a risk by publishing it in his blog. If Hart would've written the exact same message with this disclaimer, then Olsen might have published it anyway just because it is so ridiculous considering the normative standards of transparency in the blogosphere.

I actually have no idea how the courts would rule this case if Hart tried to invoke the Electronic Communications Privacy Act on Olsen. Anyone have any insights? At any rate, Hart probably isn't going to press the issue because the damage has been done, and he hopefully realizes that he probably should've handled the situation a little bit better.

But this is a cautionary dilemma for bloggers, because a legal case like this is bound to happen sooner or later where the blogospheric normative standards are challenged by the set of legal standards. For the sake of citizen journalism, then I think more research needs to be done on this issue and more explicit transparency standards need to be adopted.

For example, CNet's Dave Berlind started a media transparency experiment, there was a source who e-mailed him with explicit transparency sematics to declare their desired level of transparency. There were three choices, and the source had explicitly indicated their desired level:

this email is: [ ] blogable [ x ] ask first [ ] private

Now if Olsen would've included these choices in his e-mail to Hart, then Hart would've either checked "blogable" and not been so curt. Or he could've checked "private" and told Olsen to go to Hell. Either way, this could've cleared up the transparency assumptions and prevented this controversy.

A common scenario is that Hart would've ignore the three boxes by not checking any of them -- which happens to me a lot. Then Olsen would've have been faced with the same decision of whether or not to publish the e-mail.

Something else which is helpful is to delcare which which box is decided to be the default. When dealing with new sources, I usually default to "private." In this case, Olsen could have declared that the default for the correspondence is "Blogable," which is how he was treating the correspondence. I think that the best option is to give the source a choice as to which level of transparency he/she would prefer. I usually prefer complete transparency whenever possible, but it's not always possible and there would be some things I wouldn't be able to do without a private line of communication.

Lesson #3. ) This may have implications for establishing credibility and building trust with potential interviewees for citizen journalists

The other lesson that pops out at me is that this may have a ripple effect for other citizen journalist projects who are trying to gain access to sources. I didn't have a lot of problems with gaining access to a lot of sources within DC and NYC. I had my fair share of people turn me down, but I was still able to cover a lot of ground.

But at the same time, there still aren't a lot of citizen journalists running around. Sooner or later, everyone is going to be a citizen journalist and will want access to sources. At some point, these sources will have to be a little bit more discerning with whom they grant access to.

I had a difficult time gaining access to a number of conservative sources, but luckily the Baltimore City Paper did a cover story on my project while it was still in pre-production. This had to have a qualitative impact on my credibility. The other thing that helped was that I was able to conduct and secure a lot of interviews with sources who had a considerable amount of social capital within the journalistic field within two to three weeks into the film shoot. I was able to say I've already talked to Jay Rosen, Greg Mitchell, Todd Gitlin, Jonathan Landay and Lawrence Grossman, and I plan on interviewing Tom Rosenstiel, Helen Thomas and Warren Strobel. I'm sure this helped me score interviews with Bill Plante and Grover Norquist.

John Hart is a relatively unknown filmmaker -- even though he worked in the Hollywood industry, he hasn't established much of a reputation in the field of documentary filmmaking.

Now David Weinberger is publicly questioning his level of trust with Hart and reneging on his commitment for an interview. Usually if a potential interviewee didn't want to do the interview with me, they would just not return my calls. If I was lucky, they would actually respond with an explicit decline.

But Hart is faced with one of his interviewees who is telling the world that he questions his integrity. A PR nightmare of sorts which may end up having a ripple effect with other interviewees.

This brings up some interesting questions:

* How do sources test the credibility and trust that they have with citizen journalists?
* What are the levels of transparency that are required from citizen journalists that can help build the trust and credibility that is so crucial in gaining access to sources and having those sources be as open and honest as they can be?

These are some unanswered questions, and I hope to reduce the uncertainty to some of them with this investigative citizen journalism project.

Part of the solution may be for citizen journalists to use the emerging credibility tools like Technorati and other PR tracking tricks to build a virtual identity and Google footprint.

Lesson 4.) It's bad to write something in an e-mail correspondence that you wouldn't want published in The New York Times.
Okay. This should seem obvious by now. If you're writing something in an e-mail and sending it to someone, you have to assume that it may end up getting forwarded and passed along for the whole world to see.

I'm guilty of doing this, and it takes getting burnt once to really learn this lesson. It's good to be honest and express your feelings, but there is a certain point where some things are just better to keep to yourself.

UPDATE 6-6-05: I've sent out a few e-mails to people about this post. I'd be curious to whether or not Steve Rubel weighs in on Hart's lack of PR savviness by failing to actively respond to the controversy on his film's website.

UPDATE 6-8-05: Hart has responded. Yikes. Did you get all of that? More reactions and trackbacks can be found in Olsen's comment section in his blog post titled "59BLOGGERS SAYS I'M THE DEVIL!" I aggregated my further thoughts in this comment below.

UPDATE 6-9-05: John Hart has calmed down and given an e-mail interview with Kit Jarrell -- one of the 59Blogger interviewees. This is a much more coherent response than his initial reaction which was totally blinded by anger. He accepts some responsibility for being uncivil and actually plans to continue with the project in some way.
When asked about whether this whole ordeal may have damaged his level of trustworthiness, Hart says,

To judge someone untrustworthy for defending himself against mob rule is an indication that their ability to judge is severely impaired. I have heard from no one on the original list on the subject of trustworthiness. Quite the opposite, actually. Look, the camera doesn’t lie. When it points at you, you need to trust yourself, not the person holding it.

We'll see how it goes for him, but I think trust is actually one of the most important keys to getting people to open up and be honest on camera. Anyway, Hart concludes that "failure is just another stepping stone to success."

UPDATE 6-9-05 5:54 p.m.:
As part of Jarrel's interview, Hart humbles himself for an apology:

KJ: Do you feel that you crossed the line at anytime, or do you stand by your actions?
JH: Crossed what line? Civility? Yes. I am guilty of being uncivil in my reply to Chuck. It’s a shame, actually. I try to practice what I preach, but you must admit, Chuck’s original email to me was absurd and without merit. Had I the chance to do it over, I would say, “just exactly what is your request? How can I help you alleviate your concerns?” But, hindsight can only help my gatekeeper to learn better civility. Meanwhile, I apologize to Chuck for my initial response. I have rent the garmet of civility I wear, but it can be repaired.

And in the comments, Olsen accepts

Wonderful!

I accept your apology, John, and I offer you mine: I’m sorry for posting part of your email online. And I’m sorry, in general, for this whole episode. I’m glad you’re taking the current 59bloggers page down and continuing with the project in some fashion. I’ll remove your email from my post. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like me to do, via email or comment, or via Kit.

Peace,
Chuck

More of Olsen's response here

And everyone lives happily ever after...