By Frank Moher
I recently advised two former journalism students of mine, one working on an article for Chatelaine, the other on a feature for this magazine, that they couldn’t offer money to an interviewee, even though in both cases the interviewee could really use it. That, I explained, is called “chequebook journalism.” And it’s not okay, even if the cheque is going to someone seriously in need.
Imagine my delight, then, when the CBC reported that, along with CTV and Global Television, it had paid “several thousand dollars” to Paul Pritchard, the young man who shot video of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski being tasered at Vancouver International Airport, in return for the footage.
The CBC at least had the presence of mind to regard the payment as a story, although they turned it into a matter of why Pritchard accepted payment rather than why they made it. CTV and Global, on the other hand, offer no mention of the payment on their websites, although Global’s print sister CanWest did run a story implicating the public for wanting to see the video. “In the Internet age,” it intones, “the decision to watch — or not watch — high-profile deaths captured on camera may be the grisly litmus test for participation in extreme media culture.”
Well, no. Whether or not you watched Saddam Hussein’s hanging or the beheading of Daniel Pearl on youtube might be a test of your snuff video threshold, but the footage of Dziekanski’s death at the hands of the RCMP is a matter of public interest. Hence the reason that paying for it is so dodgy.
Did the CBC, CTV and Global also pay for their interviews with Pritchard? Presumably not; reputable news organizations know that, besides encouraging bidding wars, buying information from sources degrades the whole notion of individual responsibility to the polis — the obligation to alert your fellow citizens to what’s going down. Nobody paid Paul Revere to get on his horse and shout “The British are coming.” Is it any different, then, to pay Pritchard for his video? Whether or not he’s going to use the money to help his sick Father? If they hadn’t paid him, would it have been okay for Pritchard to just upload the evidence of our national police force killing an agitated but innocent man to his computer and leave it there? Even he didn’t think so; it was apparently his intention all along, once he got his video back from the Mounties, to release it publicly. So how exactly did money get introduced to the equation?
Jeff Keay, Head of Media Relations for the CBC, says its journalists “thought the video should be paid for just like any other freelance video.” But the element of public interest renders this a lot different than the latest Lindsay Lohan sighting. Just who initiated the idea of payment remains unclear; Keay says he’ll get back to me about that, and I’ll let you know if he does. Regardless, the news organizations have tripped up. If Pritchard requested payment, they should have turned him down flat. If he didn’t and they came up with the idea, CTV, Global, and the CBC have seriously undermined one of the basic tenets of legit journalism — you don’t pay for news. And, I’m sorry to say, it doesn’t matter how well-intentioned their offer may have been.
I don’t disagree with your premise that the media shouldn’t pay for news. There’s an important distinction to be made, however, between the news event itself, comment on the news event, and pictures/video/audio recording of the event.
To elaborate: There are several video recordings of the airplanes hitting the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. There can be no dispute that the event itself was newsy, and coverage of the event was and is very much in the public interest. I don’t think, though, that anyone could reasonably expect that anyone who happened to have still photos, or video, or film, or any other recording of the event, has a civic duty to surrender their material to anyone – let alone at no cost.
After a very rapid online search I ascertained that Abraham Zapruder received no less than $150,000 for his film of the JFK assassination – not counting the more than $80K paid by Oliver Stone for use of the film in his movie. Should Zapruder have been more altruistic? Perhaps, but he also owned a piece of film that was unique in all the world, and he marketed it for gain.
In the case of an event that occurs on public or semi-public property – I would argue that YVR is a public place, although some might disagree – any recording of an event belongs to the person who did the recording. That person then has the right to give away, licence or sell his/her work.
News organizations also jealously guard their own material. For example, they generally will not voluntarily give video or audio recordings of an event to police unless compelled by a court order. This also serves to reinforce the concept that the media should never be perceived to be part of the long arm of the law.
To come back to the payment issue: in day-to-day news, you’re quite correct. I don’t know of any news organization, in Canada at least, that would tell the victim of a house fire that they will be paid $X for talking about the event and what it means to them.