Reporters: Real people?!

This may be a fairly incoherent post, as I'm dead on my feet. Just warnin' ya. I volunteered to be in a focus group on Israeli-Palestinian relations this evening. Interesting stuff - there were about 30 of us, evenly split between those who voted for Bush and those who voted for Gore in the last presidential election. The volunteers seemed to be an even mix of male/female, young/old (though skewed older), and there were a few minorities as well. The focus group was run by a well-known research firm.

We were each given a little black device with a red dial on it, which you could turn from 0 to 100. The moderators gauged our opinions by how we turned the dial - up to 100 if we strongly agreed with what we saw on the TV before us, and down to 0 if we did not. We had to react to several pro-Palestine commercials and several pro-Israel commercials and a news magazine piece on the Mid-East conflict, among other things. We also aired our views on the Middle East and the United States' involvement in resolving that conflict. This went on for about 2 1/2 hours.

Smile, You're on Candid Camera: Though no one told us, I knew that we were being watched - at least three or four observers (I saw them come into the office earlier) were looking at us behind a panel of one-way glass. At our break, one of the moderators came up and very apologetically told me I had to leave because an observer thought that because I'm a journalist, I couldn't give a regular citizen's view.

Now, if I were covering the Middle East or might someday, I would have never volunteered in the first place. That would have been a breach of ethics. But I don't cover Israel and Palestine - far from it. I cover business and technology news. I also do not work with anyone nor personally know someone who does cover the Middle East. Consequently, I have no special knowledge of that area of the world, its foreign policies, or the U.S.'s involvement with Israel.

Journalists have personal lives too and are entitled to have their own opinions (sniffle). For instance, political reporters who cover the presidential campaigns and interview the candidates time and again for their jobs still have the right to vote for president on Nov. 5th.

The problem arises is if they start to editorialize and/or get personally involved in an issue they must cover as an impartial and analytical observer. For example, a reporter covering Dubya's next run for president must not donate money to his presidential campaign or post a "Bush/Cheney" sign in his front yard. Nor should he or she get romantically involved with anyone on his campaign team. At least until after the election. :-)

Clearly, that was not my situation. But I understood their sense of discomfort, so I graciously said thank you and left. Of course, I still got paid for my time, and I got to leave half an hour earlier than anyone else. So not a bad deal for me.