Member-only story
The Right’s Fight Against Journalism
Has trickled down to the local level
Last week, my editor threw me a last-minute assignment: A fun, short, human interest piece about local ice skating rinks for the winter issue of one of the magazines I write for. The photos — which are nice — had already been taken last winter, and just needed some text to go with them.
I hopped on the phone and called the manager of the ice skating rink featured in the photos to ask a few questions about the place and talk up all the family friendly fun it has to offer.
What started out as a friendly conversation quickly devolved into a specific sort of paranoia I’m starting to see lately. The manager of the ice rink asked if she could read the story ahead of time, something interview subjects ask from time to time. The standard answer in journalism is “No,” because you don’t want the subject of the interview spinning a story the way they see fit. (No one, for instance, should want either Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be able to read and rewrite news stories before they air or go to print.)
When I told her my editor wouldn’t allow that, but we would be very careful to get our facts right, she replied that I could use her quotes but not her name. I knew this would not fly with my editor, so I told her unfortunately, I wouldn’t be allowed to use…
