Clifford geertz’s classic essay about the suq bazaar outlines the categories of knowledge and verification used to evaluate information flows that moved through the suq bazaar. in a similar manner, I had a long discussion today with piotr stasinski, deputy editor of poland’s largest daily Gazeta Wyborcza, about the categories of knowledge and verification the paper uses to evaluate information coming into the news office and then, in turn, how those evaluations are used to make publication decisions.
First and foremost, local knowledge: the gathering of accurate knowledge and the possibility for proper assessment requires a network of reporters familiar with the social environment, sensitive to the happenings of that environment. A few years back, Wyborcza tried to put together a team of investigators in their office in Warsaw. But they soon realized that this would never work because centralized investigators was a contradiction-in-concept. Their dispersal was crucial because the possibility for an emergent investigation occurred only sporadically.
Second, assessment is an art, not a science. Piotr says he has a nose for such things, relies on intuition. Over the course of many years of reporters feeding him their stories and rumors, many of which never come to publication because they cannot be verified, Piotr has a unique perspective in terms of knowledge. He often helps put together the bigger picture of stories which, from a singular perspective, make little sense. But much of this puzzling he must base on random memory or a game akin to recognizing the mosaic on which one stands.
when information arrives, they evaluate in two main ways: the source involved and the content.
sources outside of the government might be wronged citizens or they might be conspiracy nuts. Piotr probably gets a dozen of those crazy people every week. But the same goes for sources inside the government, many paranoid, incessant complainers out of touch with reality. Sometimes, the frustrated sources may be particularly valuable, as are the whistleblowers who want to work in the public interest. Then they must draw the fine line of categorization between the whistleblowers and the sources who will use the paper as an instrument, a sort of controlled leak with political motivations. Even still, recognizing the instrumentality, the paper may go with the story if they feel it important.
leading us to the second main form of evaluation concerning content. these evaluations may be even more difficult to decipher and definitely rest upon interpretive elements. does the information have a social value beyond that of a personal quarrel or local event? are there larger interests at stake? is there public money involved? is the story representative of a larger value or problem or phenomenon?
and the category of leaks from the secret services represent a unique situation in itself because no one outside of them can have truly local knowledge about the intelligence services.
so the complexities of categorization build and require increasing contextualization. the reporters and editors need to work together as a team of evaluators, but doing so also demands that they share a common ethic. Gazeta Wyborcza attempts to promote a culture of openness, apolitical in nature, “cultured,” and with a social sensibility. Essentially, this is part of the liberal, Polish intelligentsia elite.
the ultimate compliment was paid to this fieldworker last week. I was having a conversation with a reporter who I’ve known for several months and we were discussing the new Bob Woodward book about Bush’s war in Iraq and explaining to him what was written about the intelligence situation in Iraq before they decided to go to war. In the book, the top US intelligence expert for Iraq came to the White House and told VP Cheney that he could count the number of reliable operative sources in Iraq on one hand and still be able to pick his nose.
So, we thought, what does it really take to be a good spy, to provide basic intelligence of what’s going on in a country? Read the newspapers, talk to some reliable people, get out and get a feel for what’s going.
“you’d make a good spy,” my journalist friend said to me.
“well, thank you. I think.”
sorry for the long delay between posts, but warszawa underwent some circulatory problems in the last week and my apartment, in particular, has suffered from the lack of paying the telephone bill (by my landlady, not me!).
the more peculiar phenomenon was the european economic forum from wed. to fri. last week. days or even weeks before, the media had been stirring up a storm of paranoia that resulted in shops boarding up their windows miles away from where the march was scheduled to take place. the official response to the protests was no more calming. some 8000 reinforcement police were called in from throughout the country and they were dressed in their riot squad battle gear. the morning of the protest, the tv ticker warned that soccer hooligans were arriving in warsaw, prepared to "start war" on the anti-globalists and the police.
nothing happened. i was there and saw not one broken window. some threw toilet paper on the police. fortunately, no one was beaten in retaliation. we walked through what looked like a ghost town or maybe, with all the commercial signs covered up, something more similar to pre-1989 warsaw.
millions of zlotys were spent on security and shops were closed without business for one week in the center of the city.
the entire episode mostly confirmed for me the widespread nature of a peculiar kind of paranoia or the susceptibility to paranoia amongst people living in warszawa. in many ways, it was a completely amazing mass response to what turned out to be not much of a threat at all.
and worst of all for my fieldwork, as i'm running out of time, i had about 3 meetings postponed on me.