Any time that I talk about the beat system, my USA colleagues look to me like I were crazy.
Well, they now now that I have not changed my mind.
The beat system must go.
This does not mean that we don´t need to cover the sources.
Yes, but we can not depend from them.
Edward Wasserman, a Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, explain very well why.
From his superb column in The Miami Herald:
Reporters can’t be friend and foe of sources
…Seen from that perspective, we shouldn’t be surprised that journalism is so often timid and reverential toward sources; the miracle is that journalists are ever tough and courageous, that beat reporters do defy their sources.
But that’s a mark of their own guts and ethical maturity, and of the presence of determined informants within the institutions they cover.
It’s not testimony to the wisdom of the system within which reporters operate.
Would journalism suffer if beats were abandoned?
Running a staff would be harder, but life could get interesting.
Time and again great stories have been broken by outsiders with clear eyes, who owe nothing to those who feed and water the beat reporters.
Watergate didn’t come out of The Washington Post’s political staff, the My Lai massacre wasn’t uncovered by a Pentagon correspondent, and the White House press corps was complicit in the disinformation campaign leading up to the Iraq invasion.
Beats have got to go.
They’re an endemic conflict of interest.
Fortunately, they are going, and while Internet scribes have areas of interest and expertise, they have so far resisted institutionalizing themselves in the sclerotic fashion of traditional news media.
Reporters can be smart and informed, and still be free.
Thanks to Gabriel Sama.