Shannon Rupp writes in The Tyee about “the really super new new journalism” in which journalists are “repeaters.” She describes an incident in which an editor paid a freelancer for a piece only to learn that the freelancer had simply put their byline on a press release.
Rupp’s not so sure this kind of practice can be condemned in the trade today, except as a case of lying to an editor: “(A)s an issue of journalism ethics, it isn’t quite as clearcut as it was even a decade ago. News media as a whole are running all sorts of self-serving propaganda and slapping bylines on it to make the content look like old-fashioned mediated news.”
And to nail her point home? Rupp points out that Vancouver Sun editor-in-chief Patricia Graham recently said Oprah Winfrey (!) was one of the journalists who inspire her:
“Graham is editor-in-chief at one of the leading papers in the country’s largest chain: if she says that a peddler of infotainment content like Oprah meets the definition of journalism, I think we have to believe her.”
