Scott Rosenberg has a post at MediaShift Idea Lab today in which he wonders, “Why do so many journalists find it so hard to handle public criticism?” It’s a good thing that Rosenberg isn’t one of those, because I’m about to offer some public criticism of his piece.

A Matter of Context

The part of Rosenberg’s post that bothers me more than anything else is where he cites a passage from the New York Times editor Clark Hoyt’s farewell column:

One passage in Hoyt’s column jumped out at me as a fascinating window onto the psyche of the working journalist today:

Times journalists have been astonishingly candid, even when facing painful questions any of us would want to duck. Of course, journalists don’t relish being criticized in public any more than anyone else. A writer shaken by a conclusion I was reaching told me, if you say that, I’ll have to kill myself. I said, no, you won’t. Well, the writer said, I’ll have to go in the hospital. I wrote what I intended, with no ill consequences for anyone’s health.

“If you say that, I’ll have to kill myself”? Even in jest, the line suggests a thinness of skin entirely inappropriate to any public figure. “Journalists don’t relish being criticized in public any more than anyone else,” according to Hoyt. Yet the work of journalists so often involves criticizing others in public that it is something they must expect in return. Surely they, of all professionals, ought to be able to take what they readily dish out.

In itself, this passage seems ok, until you actually go read Hoyt’s column. Here’s the passage immediately after the paragraph that Rosenberg cited (emphasis added by me):

Those histrionics were extreme and unique. The rule was thoughtful engagement. Take Steve Berman, a respected veteran photo editor, one of several journalists who failed to check out the obituary of a photographer who for years had claimed, falsely, that he took the iconic picture of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his slain father’s casket. After a column pointing out all the missed warning signs, Berman came to thank me. He said he believed in accountability and had learned from the experience. I was surprised but came to know that I should not have been.

Bill Keller, the executive editor, once joked as we walked down the passageway to his office for an interview that he was heading for his weekly proctological exam. But throughout my tenure, Keller was gracious and supportive. When we had what was certainly our disagreement of greatest consequence — over the Times article suggesting that John McCain had had an extramarital affair with a young female lobbyist — Keller showed great equanimity. I said The Times had been off base. Though the story gave ammunition to critics who said the paper was biased, and it was no help to have the public editor joining thousands of readers questioning his judgment about it, Keller said mildly that we would just have to disagree on this one.

That certainly paints a different picture than “if you say that, I’ll have to kill myself.” Whereas Hoyt cites that example as “extreme and unique”, Rosenberg uses it as evidence that such behavior is the norm, calling it “a fascinating window onto the psyche of the working journalist today.” In introducing the excerpt from Hoyt’s column, Rosenberg wrote of New York Times journalists:

It seems the process of being critiqued in public in their own paper continues to be alienating and dispiriting to them.

That’s quite a claim based on one example, an example that the Hoyt himself said was the extreme. When placed in its original context, that passage from Hoyt’s piece is less a window and more a periscope — a tunneled vision showing what lies in one narrow direction — and the way Rosenberg uses the passage, he’s avoiding panning the periscope to see what else is around, since what he would see would conflict with his narrative.

The People Who Are Better Than Journalists at Handling Criticism

Rosenberg starts his piece by pointing to professional athletes, artists, government officials, and businesses as examples of other fields that receive a lot of public criticism and says, “In all these cases, the seasoned professional learns to deal with it. But over and over today, we encounter the sorry spectacle of distinguished reporters losing it when their work is publicly attacked — or columnists sneering at the feedback they get in poorly moderated web comments.”

Yes, it’s a good thing that professional athletes are so much better at handling public criticism …

and government officials …

not to mention artists …

and of course, businesses …

What’s that? I’m being unfair by pointing to a few instances and drawing blanket conclusions? Well, what do you think Rosenberg was doing? As evidence for his argument, he offers up two links — a “bloggers in pajamas” comment from James Risen (which Risen quickly apologized for and yet still got razzed for it) and a “look at the ideologues in my comment section” column by Dana Millbank. He provides a third link later in the post — back to the Risen piece again (and I know there are enough instances of journalists responding badly that you don’t need to recycle links). The fact is, for every spectacle of a journalist behaving badly in response to criticism, there are countless instances when journalists do take criticism in stride and respond thoughtfully. Of course, those don’t get blogged and retweeted because they don’t fit the “old-media curmudgeons in their crumbling ivory tower raging at the world outside that they do not understand” narrative. I think this comment on Rosenberg’s post sums it up pretty well:

I wouldn’t disagree that some journalists can be thin skinned. But the categories of folks you mention at the start all hire armies of public relations people and spend huge sums of money to counter any negative portrayals and massage their reputations with buckets of spin. They hardly take criticism in stride.

On the other hand, the press is one of the most self-flagellating industries I know.

I would argue that when you consider the amount of criticism and the dynamics between the critics and the criticized compared to that in other fields, journalists as a whole handle public criticism about as well as any other professions and are better in some ways and worse in others. Consider:

• How many other professions invite and publish criticism of their work? And traditional media has been doing it for a long time. Newspapers’ publication of letters to the editor look antiquated and outdated as a means of dealing with criticism — and it is, when compared to the kind of transparency and interaction pushed by the Internet — until you consider how many other professions don’t even bother going that far.
• Having worked in and out of the news media, I can say that it is, as the commenter above stated, one of the most self-flagellating industries. How many companies in other industries hire somebody specifically to publicly criticize all the ways in which the company screwed up?
• How many athletes, CEOs, artists, or politicians can you call up directly and berate about their performance? And how many actually have to sit there and listen to you berate them? Journalists do, because a critic is also a consumer of their work — a customer — and hence they cannot simply brush the critic aside.

That said, I do think Rosenberg has a point when he wrote “the typical blogger has more experience dealing with criticism — measuring a reasonable response, managing trolls and restraining the urge to flame — than the typical newsroom journalist.” However, I think this isn’t so much about dealing with criticism as it is about responding to criticism in the blogosphere. I would suggest that a more accurate way of putting it would be “the typical blogger has more experience interacting in a blog setting than the typical newsroom journalist,” which only makes sense.

From seeing fellow journalists respond to criticism over the phone or via e-mail day in and day out for a decade, I get the sense that they know how to do that relatively well and that for most of them, they don’t instinctively lash out when faced with criticism. Sure, they are flabbergasted after the fact when they encounter criticism that they feel makes no sense. But when a critic raises a valid point, most of the journalists I’ve worked with respond in a reasonable manner. The problem is that just as they’ve learned how to calm down an irate caller on the other end of the line and settle into something of a reasonable discussion, some traditional journalists need to learn how to respond to a critique in the blogosphere without pouring gasoline on the fire. There are different rules for different mediums. They need to learn rules such as, “No matter how  much the blogger snarks and generalizes about traditional media, you CANNOT snark and generalize about bloggers because it will only enhance their claim about you being out of touch. It may not be fair, but it is what it is. JUST DON’T DO IT.”

Also adding to the bad appearance is the fact that traditional journalists often seem to face a no-win or hard-to-win situation in responding to criticism from the blogosphere because some of the rules don’t favor them. A snarky and angry blogger is just showing personality and voice, and a little tiff between him and another blogger is just good entertainment. A snarky and angry traditional journalist, on the other hand, is accused of losing it, and a tiff between him and a blogger becomes a battle of old vs. new, good vs. evil, rebel vs. establishment. Sometimes it’s like being in a boxing match where all you can do is deflect the other guy’s punches, and the minute you punch back, you’re disqualified.