They are taught the standards expected of journalists. Gavin Ellis surveyed press codes across twelve western countries and found common ground on values of accuracy, honesty, fairness, independence and avoidance of conflicts of interest. The Elements of Journalism by leading US educators prioritises obligation to the truth, loyalty to citizens, and independence as a monitor of power.
But the Elements also lists "the exercise of personal conscience" and, in a university equipping critical citizens, students are given the thoughts of Robert Fisk, whose dispatches from the Middle East feature in the Herald.
Asked about the "goal of objectivity", Fisk called it a "problem in American journalism schools, which thank God we Brits don't go through. We do politics and history and other subjects at university", feeding a concern with truth and justice not just with "what two sides are saying", since journalists "have to have some sense of morality, and passion and anger".
Some journalists, like Fisk, get to show their colours in the job. Most others are required to exchange personal conscience for professional conscience at the workplace door, like pulling on overalls, to the extent that it conflicts with the mission of their institution, journalistic and otherwise. To many, there seems no conflict, and the normal business of journalism invites moral passion enough. But the tension lurks when the conscientious journalist has to be both political animal and political eunuch, in a system where societal ills are addressed through party politics.
The issue then is line-drawing, and most accept the lines drawn by editors and employers, by conscience or necessity. This is not unproblematic. This week New Zealand claimed a top 10 place in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index issued by the influential Reporters Without Borders organisation, based on questions that included asking whether media staff "may take positions of any kind on public issues with no limits of any kind from owners or the government".
Of course they can't. Press freedom belongs to those who own one, to quote the old saw, and journalists as such do not have rights to freedom of expression, individual citizens do. The system works, by and large, though it implies a self-censoring newsroom. Organising party campaigns in work's time clearly crosses the line, and so may putting personal political conscience first in doing the job of independent intermediary, though this is more fraught.
But more fraught still would be a limit on taking "positions of any kind on public issues", including outside the office. TVNZ has subsequently revealed that Shane Taurima was required to make "an explicit choice between journalism and politics", which presumably means not just leaving his party conscience at the door but censoring it entirely.
TVNZ revealed this to bolster its case, since reneging on an agreement crosses the line too. And the idea that journalists should have no party affiliations or even inclinations is fairly well embedded.
Not just journalists, either. A book I've just finished on censorship and press freedom has a chapter on the 18th century thinker Immanuel Kant and his case for 'freedom of the pen'.
Kant's advice, roughly, was obey the boss but keep arguing as a citizen. In election year, the likelihood and benefits of political journalists doing both are uncertain. Even more uncertain may be the future, as the split personality of journalist and citizen becomes increasingly the separate persons of professional journalist and citizen journalist.
Dr Geoff Kemp is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Auckland, and a former journalist.
