As digital communication becomes more central to our lives and our work, technology companies like Google have more at stake in the public-policy decisions that affect the evolution of communication systems—such as the debate over net neutrality.
The New York Times quoted Zittrain at least twelve times in the last two years on issues related to Google or its rivals. In most cases, only his academic affiliation was provided to readers. (Sometimes he was also identified as author of his 2008 book, The Future of The Internet—And How to Stop It.) “We don’t have specific written policies on what questions you should ask a source before you start interviewing them,” says Philip B. Corbett, the Times’s associate managing editor for standards.
Asked what the difference was between the Berkman-Google connection and a recent Times story on Eli Lilly in which readers were told that the expert quoted—the dean of the medical school at the University of Virginia—“has consulted for Lilly and other companies,” Corbett says: “Medical writers and health writers have become much more aware of this nexus and have gotten used to, almost as a matter of course, when you’re writing about a drug trial, to ask whether there’s a connection and to disclose that.”
In a subsequent interview, Corbett told me he had visited Berkman’s website and, “It looked to me as though they get funding from a lot of sources. I’m not sure that necessarily raises a flag, because they have multiple funding sources…. In a case where an academic is getting directly paid by the company, you’d want to know.”
At The Wall Street Journal, Zittrain has been asked to opine at least nine times in the last two years on issues related to Google and its rivals, with only his academic affiliation provided. (Again, sometimes his 2008 book was cited.) Ashley Huston, Dow Jones’s senior communications director, said via e-mail that, “While there is no formal policy” at the paper about what to disclose when quoting academics or other expert sources, “we do our level best to tease out conflicts and disclose them to readers when we believe it’s warranted.” Nick Wingfield, a technology reporter at the Journal, said in a brief telephone interview that, though he wasn’t sure whether the paper had a policy on this, “As a general rule I ask people if they are consultants or if they worked with somebody that they’re commenting on.”
As for the supply side of the expert-quote equation, Harvard has been shoring up its own policies regarding conflicts of interest in the wake of several high-profile cases of undisclosed industry ties involving employees at its medical school and affiliated institutions. On August 19, four days after Newsweek published its Q&A with Zittrain, B. D. Colen, Harvard’s senior communications officer for university science, who said he speaks for the university and not the law school, said that the university is in the process of requiring all schools within the next nine to twelve months to “meet or exceed” new conflict-of-interest guidelines. These include a provision regarding disclosure that would appear to have required Zittrain to spell out the Google connection in his interview with Newsweek (emphasis mine):
To promote the transparency essential to societal trust in the University and its faculty, faculty members receiving financial support for their academic work…are expected to disclose such interests and sources of support in all publications, public reports, communications to the media, and formal presentations, written or oral, concerning that work…. Disclosure of support and financial interests is also expected when faculty members are sought as experts to inform the public on matters of concern and to help shape public policy.
So let's see if I understand this correctly:
The Columbia Journalism Review allows someone who unsuccessfully applied for a job at Harvard's Berkman Center to write about alleged conflicts of interest at the Center, and believes that simply including a casual passing remark about that rejected job application eliminates the author's conflict? Really. That's quite interesting. Why wouldn't the CJR's editors assume that someone who had been rejected for a job at an organization would have - or would be perceived to have - an axe to grind that she might want to use to behead that organization? And why wouldn't your editors assume that your readers would assume that such a conflict exists? Especially when Ms. Brill had already attacked the Berkman Center on Huffington Post?
#1 Posted by Vess Pah, CJR on Fri 3 Dec 2010 at 04:39 PM
I think you’re referring to a report I wrote in July for the Daily Beast. I reported that Google, according to Google and to Harvard officials, is the Berkman Center’s chief corporate backer and that maybe the disclosure policies at Harvard should change; that, in fact, according to Harvard officials, those policies are changing. Several weeks after my July report, Harvard did announce new University-wide conflicts of interest and disclosure policies which, as I reported, had been in the works for nearly two years.
As for the job, I’m a freelance journalist. I had applied for a position through my computer and was subsequently told, by email, that my background did not fit what they were looking for. About two weeks earlier, Professor Zittrain invited me to attend his class at Stanford (which I did) -- as a journalist. And I was even encouraged to write about his and Berkman’s work, though I’m not sure this is the kind of writing they had in mind. The fact that this part-time, freelance position at Berkman fell through (by the way, I had already figured out work in New York for February, so it truly didn’t matter) was something I thought I should disclose, but I don’t see what that has to do with the FACTS I reported in that prior article, let alone the facts in this article. One final note: Harvard Law School's public relations department shipped a Fed Ex box full of documents to CJR trying to discredit my reporting and head off this article. CJR, with whom I had no prior relationship, checked all of every word of the Fed Ex box out independently, as they should have, and published the article with no changes.
I’d suggest that the focus be on the facts of what is reported here and, yes, the fairness of the context of the facts – in other words the message – rather than on Harvard’s preference that the focus be on the narrative it has created about the messenger.
--Emily Brill
#2 Posted by Emily Brill, CJR on Fri 3 Dec 2010 at 10:15 PM
And don't forget the NY Times expose on how former members of the military, who have since served as paid consultants and board members of defense contractors, virtually are never identified as such by the news networks who also pay these military men to offer opinions on foreign policy and military affairs.
#3 Posted by Peter Kohan, CJR on Sat 4 Dec 2010 at 01:59 PM
Excellent explanation, Emily Brill.
Now to get to the heart of the matter -- if the Internet is available equally to all on a volume pay basis you get competitive economics as users try to be efficient, but if you can throw up a toll (or open up a separate lane) for selected users then you get extra profits for those controlling traffic.
As to professors who are beneficiaries of funding and fail to disclose -- does Harvard's ethics policy allow this? If no disclosure is required isn't hat a story? And if disclosure is required and the professor failed to do so what questions have you asked of Harvard's ethics watchdogs?
What about the ethics policies of other universities on disclosing such financial interests?
How familiar should journalists be with these policies in general?
And who will investigate this nexus of financial backing and public statements that support what backers want? Ms. Brill?
#4 Posted by David Cay Johnston, CJR on Sat 4 Dec 2010 at 04:58 PM
Dear Mr. Johnston,
I think the Daily Beast article covers a lot of those issues. Have a look:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-05/emily-brill-investigates-jonathan-zittrain-star-harvard-law-prof/
Best,
Emily Brill
#5 Posted by Emily Brill, CJR on Sun 5 Dec 2010 at 11:15 AM
Now that Emily Brill has cashed her check from CJR, perhaps she should also list every corporate donor to the Columbia School of Journalism School, which supports and publishes CJR.
Or perhaps she should disclose all the companies that supported her rich father as he paid for her private schooling, Brown University degree, and whatever else made this article possible.
Of course, I am joking. I wish Brill were.
And I wish the editors of CJR had assessed her motives and work with a more critical eye.
Once again, Brill has endeavored to make a mini career of this irrelevant moral panic. To equate a benign Internet research center that describes the extent of Chinese censorship of the Web (among many other interesting but hardly health-effecting issues) with medical faculty personally cashing consulting checks from the companies whose products they are supposed to assess is absurd.
As plenty of people (especially me) demonstrated after her ridiculous piece in The Daily Beast appeared months ago, Brill tries to make it seem that Berkman had failed to disclose corporate support, when in fact all the facts she relates to us CAME FROM BERKMAN. In other words, they were disclosed. For some reason, Brill seems incapable of understanding the word "disclose."
All support for Berkman has always been public and unambiguous. And, as she concedes, no one has ever cited an example in which Berkman or Professor Zittrain has ever bowed to corporate influence in research, teaching, or public statements.
Brill, in addition to misunderstanding the word "disclosure," has no clue how a university works. If she did, she would have found comical the idea that we who work for them remember, list, or even know the web of private donations that support our research.
So Brill thinks I should carry around a list of more than 2,000 corporations and 10,000 private individuals who support the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia so I can present it to reporters every time they call me for a quote?
Professor Zittrain, who has never personally profited from any sort of relationship with Google or Microsoft (two companies that agree on nothing except that the Berkman Center does admirable and essential work studying the laws and policy of the Internet worldwide), has never carried water for any company. He is a scholar, through and through. He directs research, teaches courses, and speaks to the public with a clear and honest voice. His reputation is stellar, despite working in a field at which billions are at stake and every hacker and blogger who wants to take a cheap shot at him could. Oddly, only Brill seems to have a problem with Zittrain.
Brill's campaign to impugn his character is deeply suspicious.
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Professor of Media Studies and Law
The University of Virginia
(I have never taken money from Zittrain, Google, The Berkman Center, Harvard University. And I have never applied for a job with any of them either -- satisfied?)
#6 Posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan, CJR on Fri 10 Dec 2010 at 07:37 AM
I forgot to mention that Brill forgot to mention that she has worked for MSNBC, as have I.
What's that "MS" stand for again?
#7 Posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan, CJR on Fri 10 Dec 2010 at 08:01 AM
We continue to think that Brill made a good, simple point, not about universities, but about the press, and how journalists should train themselves to be alert to major donors in the media policy field, in the same way they have learned to do with drug companies etc., where donors have major economic interests.
#8 Posted by mike hoyt, CJR on Fri 10 Dec 2010 at 09:02 AM
No, I was not joking. I was simply making the point that if someone with a Harvard “brand” is also taking money directly (Professor Zittrain has still not disclosed if he gets consulting or speaking fees from those he opines about under his Harvard insignia) or indirectly (as in through lead-donor support of the place where he works) by those whose interests could be helped by the positions he takes, wouldn’t reporters or readers turning to him for dispassionate “expert” analysis want to know that? And, yes, if CJR had had a donor who was affected by this article they/we should have noted that, just as I would have, had I had any financial relationship with anyone involved in this article.
With Professor Zittrain in mind, if you want to see an example of a non-disclosure disclosure, click here:
http://futureoftheinternet.org/about/disclosure
Emily Brill
#9 Posted by Emily Brill, CJR on Fri 10 Dec 2010 at 09:23 PM
This is an important article that should remind reporters and editors on the tech beat to dig a bit deeper when using many academic and non-profit sources. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and others (including phone and cable broadband giants) have many think-tanks, non-profits and academic centers on their payroll. Tech companies like Google (with ad partner WPP) fund academic research at major universities related to their business interests. Google, Facebook and others support policy-focused NGO's like the Future of Privacy Forum. Berkman's corporate funding on issues it addresses is troubling; it's not alone of course--raising money from industry is sadly required in most of academe. But Berkman officials should proactively always tell reporters about its funding and the potential conflict. For example, Berkman Co-Director and Law Prof John Palfrey also works as a "Venture Executive" on "Internet and Digital Media" investments at Highland Capital Partners. Among Highland's Internet venture portfolio include companies involved in online marketing and data collection [including in China]--an area related to privacy and other issues that Berkman frequently addresses. All of these potential conflicts should be disclosed proactively to reporters. The analogy with the funding by pharma of medical research by doctors is apt. Meaningful transparency from the scholarly community is especially required because critical issues about the future of US and global society involving digital media are now being debated and decided--involving our politics, health, privacy, civil rights and economy. Academics and NGOs play an important role in these debates. But they need to embrace a more fine-tuned ethical stance regarding disclosure and conflicts of interest. I am glad Ms. Brill raised this important and timely issue. For disclosure purposes, I run the nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy that addresses civil rights and consumer protection issues connected to digital media.
#10 Posted by Jeffrey Chester, CJR on Tue 28 Dec 2010 at 09:38 AM