checkbook journalism
Checkbook journalism is the label applied when journalists or their news organizations pay for information. Print and television tabloids freely admit that they regularly offer cash in exchange for exclusive interviews or news tips. However, most mainstream news organizations, along with the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), condemn paying for interviews, arguing that it undermines journalistic credibility and independence. At the same time, these organizations sometimes pay for the right to use video or photos. They provide substantial consulting fees to former government officials, politicians, lawyers, or others who might provide expertise or commentary. They sometimes pay sourcesâ travel expenses or take sources to lunch or buy them coffee. These practices may be more widely accepted than direct cash payments for interviews, but some critics argue that they too have the potential to compromise credibility. And, while probably in the minority, some professional journalists and media scholars suggest that there are times when it may be only fair to compensate private individuals for the value of their information.
History
The outcry over checkbook journalism intensified in the 1980s as 24-hour cable news channels and syndicated television tabloids began to compete with more established news organizations for public attention. Moreover, as video cameras became ever cheaper and more portable, television stations and networks sometimes paid for video taken by individuals who were neither newsroom employees nor traditional freelance journalists. However, checkbook journalism did not begin with the invention of the camcorder, nor has it been used exclusively by tabloids. Mainstream news organizations also have pulled out the checkbook from time to time, whether it was The New York Times paying for an exclusive interview with a crew member who survived the Titanic sinking in 1912 or Life magazine paying for interviews with astronauts and their families in the 1960s.
Some of the best-known instances of checkbook journalism occurred in the 1970s in the aftermath of the Watergate investigation, which led to the firstâand so far onlyâresignation of an American president. Facing impeachment, Richard Nixon left office in 1974 and was quickly pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. British talk show host David Frost, sensing the hunger for answers in the absence of a trial either in the Senate or in the criminal courts, paid the former president $600,000 in exchange for a series of recorded interviews. The interviews, edited into 49-minute episodes, aired in prime time in the spring of 1977. They rank among the most-watched news interviews in U.S. television history.
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None of the three major networks that dominated American television at the time would carry the paid-for Frost-Nixon interviews. So the entrepreneurial Frost sold the interviews station by station in markets across the United States in a barter-syndication deal in which he split advertising minutes with local broadcasters and personally peddled national spots. There was early skepticism about whether a non-journalist like Frost would or could ask tough questions, even though Nixonâs contract obligated him to discuss Watergate. However, combining his teamâs research with his own considerable on-camera skills as an interviewer, Frost used the power of the television close-up to give American audiences the closest thing they would ever hear to an apology from the former president along with such jaw-dropping moments as Nixonâs claim that when the president does something, it is not illegal.
Not every attempt to buy Watergate stories was so successful. Before the Frost-Nixon interviews, CBS News had earned intense criticism when it paid H.R. Haldeman, Nixonâs former White House chief of staff, $100,000 for what turned out to be little in the way of useful disclosures from the former advertising executive who had gone to prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up. CBS justified its payments by characterizing the interview as Haldemanâs televised memoirs, a genre for which book publishers traditionally had paid former government officials.
After cameras returned to many courtrooms in the 1980s, some of the most controversial instances of checkbook journalism arose from competition in coverage of sensational criminal trials. Among these was the case of O.J. Simpson, a former football great turned movie and television celebrity charged with murder in 1994 after the stabbing of his former wife and her friend. In the early days of the investigation, reports indicated that a tabloid paid the owner of a Los Angeles knife store and one of his employees for an exclusive interview in which they claimed that, prior to the stabbings, they had sold a stiletto to Simpson and sharpened it for him. They said that Simpson had paid cash and that they had kept no receipt. Because no murder weapon was found, their testimony was potentially important, but it was compromised by the deal that they had struck with the press.
It has not been only the tabloid press paying substantial sums for sensational crime stories. In 2010 a lawyer representing Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her toddler daughter, revealed that in 2008 ABC News had paid $200,000 for exclusive rights to Anthony family photos and home videos. ABC denied that the payment had entitled it to exclusive interviews with Anthony, but the SPJ Ethics Committee was skeptical, condemning what it called a growing trend of checkbook journalism by major television networks. ABC had only compounded the problem by failing to disclose the payment for more than two years.
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Ethical Considerations
Invoking the principle that journalists should âAct Independently,â the SPJ Code of Ethics explicitly rejects checkbook journalism: âBe wary of sources offering information for favors or money; do not pay for access to news.â Whenever journalists pay sources, it undermines the credibility of both the source and the journalist.
The SPJ Code of Ethics also exhorts journalists to âMinimize Harm,â reminding them that âprivate people have a greater right to control information about themselves than public figures and others who seek power, influence or attention.â Federal statutes and the laws of all 50 states give the press and the public the right to access at least some government meetings and documents. However, the legal right to publish information about private individuals is not absolute and generally depends on a balance between privacy interests and newsworthiness, particularly when reporting on purely private affairs.
While journalists provide an essential public service, they are paid by news organizations that, for the most part, operate for profit. There are times when it may be only fair for news organizations to compensate private individuals for the value of the information they provide. The emergence of social media, whose business models are based on collecting personal data about end users and selling ads based on that data, has raised new questions about who deserves to control and profit from personal information.
In the Information Age, the debate over checkbook journalism may no longer be a simple binary choice of whether or not to pay for news. More complex questions arise. There are certainly instances (as in coverage of criminal trials) in which checkbook journalism has the potential to erode public faith and disrupt due process. However, not every individual with an interesting story to tell is a potential witness in a criminal trial. The debate then shifts to questions of transparency and accountability, of how to decide when it is appropriate to exchange value for value and, even more important, how to disclose and explain a decision to pay for information in a way that allows the public to make informed judgments about credibility, independence, and motivation.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.