The media's right to a private life

Journalists may make a living out of being busybodies, but just lately they have started worrying about privacy. Their own, that is.

Do reporters have the right to belong to political parties? If so, do they have a duty to tell the editor? And do members of the public deserve to know about journalists' political affiliations?

The questions emerged from last week's controversy over an internal email circulated at Maori Television, in which management asked staff to declare whether they were members of the Maori Party.

The station claimed it was responding to accusations of bias from other political parties.

But the issue raised an interesting election-year dilemma: whether journalists' right to privacy is different from, or lesser than, that of other workers.

Privacy is the issue of the moment in workplace relations. Although employers are entitled to know all sorts of personal details about their staff - bank details, health records, even the potentially embarrassing contents of email inboxes - employees are also protected by the right to keep their public and private worlds separate.

But journalism is a profession where that boundary may be blurred.

Among a dozen senior journalists, editors and media experts interviewed for this article, the majority believed that reporters who want to cover politics must sacrifice the right to political activism.

"Part of being a journo," says Otago Daily Times editor Robin Charteris, bluntly.

Charteris, like all editors, sometimes fields calls from irate politicians complaining or insinuating that coverage is biased.

"Once, where it seemed there might be some substance to the claim, I took the reporter aside and asked some searching questions, but I was satisfied with the answers," says Charteris. The ODT has no written policy on political disclosure, but he expects and gets professionalism from all its staff.

Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst says political journalists could certainly not belong to a party, and nor could he as editor.

"A staff member did ask me if he could stand for a mayoralty at the last local body elections. I wasn't particularly keen but people have individual rights, too, and I did agree," Pankhurst says.

The staff member eventually decided not to run for mayor. "My usual response [to accusations of bias] is that it is hard enough putting a paper out every day, and that I'm not smart enough to run an agenda, too."

Sir John Jeffries, a former High Court judge and Press Council chairman, believes political affiliations are private matters, just like sexual orientation and personal views on issues like abortion.

"There is no reason why any professional doctor, lawyer, roadworker, clerk or journalist cannot perform their duties without ever disclosing what concerns them politically.

"That is a matter of respect for one's individuality," Jeffries says. "I think it really would be wrong for editors and newspapers and journalists to go down that track, because the most important thing a journalist does is to produce the content of his or her article.

"If you say this was written by Joan Smith, who's a member of the Labour Party, that just distracts from the content."

Paul Thompson, editor of Christchurch's Press, agrees that unnecessary disclosures may actually shake readers' faith in the implicit professionalism of a newspaper.

"[Journalists] are expected to conduct themselves professionally and independently and therefore there is no need to list at the end of an article any particular association that might be deemed relevant - indeed, to do so would signal that somehow the article is not impartial," Thompson says.

Jeremy Rees, head of news at the Herald, says although it's healthy for journalists to have a wide range of interests and opinions, they must be open with readers and the public.

"Should readers know? American newspapers are assiduous about this. I think they're right. Anything that causes readers to doubt the truth of a story hurts us."

Winston Peters is one politician who sees many New Zealand journalists as biased and unprofessional, and wonders if journalists were involved in some kind of conspiracy to aid Labour by writing speculative stories about his possible inclusion in a National Party Cabinet.

"In a country that has very few media outlets, it's pretty important that people are neutral and professional," says Peters.

He points out that Newstalk ZB radio promotes its Monday morning chat between host Paul Holmes and Helen Clark with this teaser: "The leader on talk radio brings you the leader of the nation."

"Can you wonder why I think that is not impartial? There's an election campaign on, for goodness' sake."

Newstalk's general manager of talk programmes, Bill Francis, says that trailer has stopped for the election campaign.

He says each election year the station provides balance by broadcasting a Tuesday morning interview with the Opposition leader for the six-week lead-up to polling day.

On the topic of bias, Francis says he doesn't need to ask about hosts' political affiliations "because as we work in the opinion business I already have a knowledge of where their views sit. While at times the leanings of a particular host may be apparent, Newstalk ZB maintains a policy that all interviews remain fair and open".

The media cannot expect to exercise power without responsibility, says journalism lecturer Charles Riddle, of Waikato Institute of Technology. "There is no doubt that journalists do have an impact on people's lives. If somebody's going to get involved in politics and write about politics in an election year, they are putting themselves up for public scrutiny.

"They should be willing to take a little bit of heat about whether they're biased or not," he says.

"The editor definitely has a right to ask. I think if a journalist hesitates in telling their editor if they're a member of a political party you'd have to wonder why."

Political journalist Marie McNicholas, who has been covering the Beehive since 1984 and is now chairwoman of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, says although MPs suspect most Gallery members of bias, she is not aware of any present political reporters who are paid-up party members.

That may change after the election, when retiring Act politician Deborah Coddington returns to journalism for the Herald on Sunday. She has applied for associate membership of the Press Gallery and although McNicholas will not say whether Coddington will get a pass, other senior journalists say there is no way the Gallery committee could legally block her or any other political figure, provided they had the backing of a media outlet.

McNicholas says she disapproves of journalists being party members, but scoffs at the suggestion they should abstain from voting altogether.

"I think that's bollocks. If you are privileged enough to live in a democracy, you should vote. You can't expect journalists to be political eunuchs".

They should be fully functioning members of society and that means standing for the school board, joining the local SPCA, being in touch with the community, says McNicholas, who is now political correspondent for the online news service Newsroom.

Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff, who constantly deals with disputes between employers and employees over the boundary between public and private, says journalists have similar obligations to senior public servants.

"I used to be the secretary to the Cabinet and the Government, as my employer, would have been entitled to know whether I was a member of a political party or not," Shroff says.

"If you take certain jobs, my personal view is that you do have certain responsibilities to your employer.

"It may be that in occupying a job as a political journalist or a senior government employee, you do have to sacrifice some of your personal privacy for the time being. But if I were a mechanic in a garage, my employer is not likely to have a necessary reason to know that information."

The Privacy Act says an employer can collect or ask for information about a staffer only if there is "a lawful purpose connected with the function of the agency", Shroff says.

"The employer has a responsibility not to be too intrusive," - and that may mean employers regularly re-check information about political leanings and discard if it becomes irrelevant because the journalist has moved on to become a rugby writer or embroidery correspondent.

What about journalists taking jobs as political spin-doctors, and then coming back to journalism?

Paul Norris, head of the New Zealand Broadcasting School at Christchurch Polytechnic, has faith that journalists can preserve their integrity. Norris, a former TVNZ news director, has no problem with journalists moving back and forth to jobs in political spin-doctoring. Helen Bain, for example, is a former press secretary to Labour MP John Tamihere and has returned to journalism as political editor of the Sunday Star-Times.

It would be unacceptable for a journalist in this situation to retain membership of the party they had worked for, Norris believes.

He takes a firm line on party membership.

"Reporters and producers within news and current affairs should not have political affiliations at all. The TVNZ news and current affairs manual is pretty clear on this; it's under the heading of Conflicts of Interest," he says.

"The only way to avoid this is to say 'Look, if you work here, you can't be a member of a political party'."

The Listener knew perfectly well when it engaged columnist David Young that he was once an Act party staffer, says deputy editor Tim Watkin, just as it knew columnist Russell Brown briefly belonged to Labour, and that writer Denis Welch was once a candidate for the Alliance.

"The thing about New Zealand is that it's such a small country, you kind of know [about people's backgrounds]. We know where they are coming from. Readers have to judge for themselves how a story is written and whether it's coming from a particular perspective.

"If someone has been a political candidate, once, 20 years ago, he or she can't declare in every story they once stood for a political party.

"I think full disclosure is a really good principle for journalists to stick to, but within realistic boundaries," Watkin says.

He attributes the the phenomenon of reporters switching over to public relations and back again to the fact that both professions are taught at the same media training schools.

Journalists should remember they are two very different professions, he says.

"It does bother me that some of the young journalists coming through today don't treat PR with the contempt you would hope.

"We work with PR people; that's part of the business, but I'm concerned that some of the young journalists I deal with don't get the very strict line there.

"The end goal for one is to push a certain line and the end goal for the other is in all its glory, objective truth."

Personal relationships are another political issue. Not surprisingly, in the small workplace that is the parliamentary Beehive, there are some relationships.

Pankhurst points out that his columnist Jane Clifton is the partner of National MP Murray McCully - a fact she discussed in her recent memoir, but which may escape the casual reader. Other political journalists have slightly more furtive connections.

Norris says living with - or loving - a political figure is not something journalists should feel compelled to confess.

"I would say no, because within most modern marriages the partners are entitled to operate as independent units. But anyone in that position has to be mindful all the time of maintaining their integrity and eliminating all possible bias."

Jeffries says Clifton is the perfect example of someone who can be impartial despite her personal connections.

"I think it's in the public interest that journalists be allowed to have their own personal, private areas. They know, and their colleagues and editors know, if they are biased one way or the other. The readers know, too."