Exploring Ethical Standards in Digital Stewardship

Matt Weber is the Director of Digital Communications Strategy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This blog does not represent the views of his institution, or maybe, it kind of does.

In the fast paced world of social media, it’s critical to permit the occasional pause. This may be challenging with short news cycles and miniscule attention spans for a growing, voracious audience, but it is also essential.

Each day, as a part of my role as Director of Digital Communications Strategy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), my morning inbox is filled with countless requests for amplification and dissemination of digital content, to be shared out through our myriad distribution channels. Over half of HGSE web traffic comes from pulling our social media levers, with robust Twitter and Facebook audiences measuring over 100,000 followers on each platform. Our commitment to social media as a driver for engagement has been the linchpin in launching several successful digital campaigns over the years.

The necessity of pausing to reflect when wielding these lines of communication was brought home to me sharply when, in February 2016, I posted a blog about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. A member of our faculty had written the op-ed in The Washington Post, critical of Trump’s candidacy. In fact, the subtitle of the article included the words “We Must Stop Trump.” As this was a faculty member’s op-ed published in a mainstream media outlet, the post was an obvious candidate for sharing. We took an attributed quote from the article and shared the link on our Facebook page on a Monday night.

What followed was a 24-hour cycle of comments, emails, and frustration over the fact that HGSE shared this article on its Facebook page. Some of the more representative comments remarked: “HGSE would do well to remember that they don’t speak for all educators…” and, “While I agree, I would prefer my alma mater not opine on presidential politics.”

The reactions to the post caused me to think deeply about the unique opportunities and challenges of my position. Our guidelines in the Office of Communications are two-fold: delivering examples of meaningful impact and cultivating community. These are the two pillars intrinsic to the standards we developed over six years ago. Our digital channels must constitute a lively, microcosm of our institutional mission and succeed in communicating that mission through examples of it in practice. Our curated panoply of content must all reflect back on the collective output of our institutional work and strengthen a wider community committed to the broader themes. This content can take the form of a simple Instagram photo of the campus at sunset or a dense, longitudinal research study shared on Facebook. Yet not all decisions yield the intended result; these guidelines can turn out to be a bit more complicated in practice.

In reading the commentary from the public critical of the posting, I paused and double-checked on why I had shared this article. A verse of T.S. Eliot’s came to mind: “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” (“The Dry Salvages,” 1941)

This quote reminded me of the ways in which I should hold myself accountable as the gatekeeper of these channels. I never want to lose sight of the “why” in the daily repetition of the “what” and “how.” The “what” is any digital content connected to our institution—research, alumni news, events, faculty writing, etc. The “how” is in deciding what channel, framing, and timing makes best sense in optimizing content distribution. Yet knowing the “why” is of critical importance to good ethical stewardship of dutifully representing one’s institution. Perhaps, I thought to myself as I paused, I had made a mistake in posting the Trump story. A self-audit would help me discover if I had broken with our standards.

I posted this article because it represented the opinion of a member of our faculty in a mainstream outlet; it was related to the faculty member’s general work; and regardless of the opinion of the work, our channels are meant to provide meaningful amplification of our community member’s opinions (there is no sifting or sorting out of content based on political views). Indeed, if the piece had been of the opposite persuasion and supportive of Trump, we would have featured it identically. This was an important standard which should have been clear to me and which I needed to share with our audience.

In a response to our Facebook critics, we institutionally replied on this Facebook thread that the school itself does not opine on politics but rather shares the many perspectives of individuals in our community. As a matter of record, we tend to be quite open and de-regulated. In six years of managing these accounts, I have only had to delete a few comments.

On further reflection, I would add the following points. The curator of a site should think carefully about what the site can do and what it cannot do; and the curator as well must try to anticipate how the readers will react to the material that is posted. Especially with reference to an audience that is well educated, people are always looking to see “who” is behind the “what” and asking the “why.” We see this discernment in which cable news channel one wishes to watch political coverage; we see it in the activism of staff writers for newspapers and publications. We see it on Twitter through profiles stating “My views do not represent the views of my institution,” and we see it in less digitized ways on the bumper stickers of employee cars in company parking lots.

As a brand author and architect of how a chorus of individual voices is aggregated and conveyed to a diverse audience, I cannot emphasize enough the value in always remembering to pause both before and after critical actions. In retrospect, I wish that I had better signaled to the audience that this was an essay that took a political point of view; that it is was our policy to call attention to any and all serious writing by members of the community; and that we would have without hesitation run an essay with a different view on the same topic. And as with all our postings, we welcomed thoughtful responses. Had I done so more clearly and proactively, I think that the reactions might have been less heated.

If you are involved in digital stewardship as I am, my advice is that you continually align your messaging with your institution, always check your own personal biases, and frequently ask “why” with attention towards both actual appearance and audience perception of who is the messenger. Beyond digital stewards, I believe this advice universally applies to anyone acting as de facto champion or spokesperson of a cause in both a public or personal context. My professional role is fairly anonymous but often our personal choices are not. Whether that is wearing a Red Sox cap in Yankee Stadium or ashes on your forehead on Ash Wednesday outside of church, be sure to know exactly why you are committing to ownership of this public messaging and reflect on how a timely pause can help you come to a more thoughtful understanding.

The full T.S. Elliot quote goes on to say: “We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”

It’s a fairly simple lesson, but one we don’t always heed when the immediacy and access of public communication often results in a message that is half-baked. I wish you all the best in pausing to approach meaning in new form, which I hope you do… right now.

The Journalist As Professional: Are There Limits To Dis-interestedness?

In the United States in the 20th century, journalism became a profession. As part of her professional identity, the journalist is expected to be neutral, objective, and to cover both sides of a story. Though the term is a bit forbidding, it is better to think of the professional journalist as disinterested. The true professional must not cater to any special interests, and especially not to those who might be in a position to confer special favors on said professional. Instead, it’s her job to describe as accurately as possible the particular person, event, or story in question and to place the particular story in appropriate contexts. The accuracy part of the job means getting all the facts right and, insofar as possible, confirming the story with all relevant parties. We might call this the “Associated Press” or “Reuters” approach. A somewhat higher bar entails providing appropriate context, often requiring both broad historical and scholarly knowledge. We might call this the “New York Times” or “Wall Street Journal” approach.

A test of disinterestedness is the reaction of those who consume the news. When NPR gets an equal number of complaints from the political left and the political right about its coverage of conflict in the Middle East, that’s a sign it is doing its job in a disinterested way. But what does it mean to be disinterested during the presidential campaign of 2016? Has the Trump candidacy made a mockery of the profession of journalism—a profession that Trump both depends on and explicitly condemns?

In the last two decades, it’s become difficult to maintain the high bar of disinterestedness. Postmodern thinkers contend that disinterestedness is an impossible and perhaps not even a worthwhile goal. (“We are all interested; let’s admit it and may the better interested win!”) The 24/7 news cycle puts tremendous pressure on even the most dedicated journalists to cut corners, lest they be scooped. And the advent of social media has nudged many journalists both to put out information very rapidly and to tweet or blog their personal opinions about events of the day. I personally regret this trend—“How,” I ask, “are we to read John’s stories as if they were disinterested, when we know that he has just posted his personal view on the very same topic?”

Decades ago, ‘disinterested coverage’ was associated with the much honored CBS news team—led initially by Edward R. Murrow and then by Walter Cronkite. Indeed, Cronkite would close his nightly newscast with the bald assertion, “And that’s the way it is.” It’s therefore worth remembering that on deliberately rare occasions, both Murrow and Cronkite made clear their own views. Murrow famously broadcast a series of critiques of Senator Joseph McCarthy—and those critiques, along with the televised Army McCarthy hearings, ultimately led to the downfall of that nefarious senator. More than a decade later, after travelling to Vietnam, Cronkite reported that the war was not winnable; it was a stalemate, and negotiations were the only rational alternative. Famously, then President Johnson turned off the television and declared, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

These issues have been recently thrown into sharp relief. In the opinion of many people (including me), Donald Trump is a psychologically-damaged and unprecedentedly ignorant candidate for the most powerful position on the planet. He has disregarded the rules and assumptions of American politics as they have evolved over the decades; his election could well be a disaster for the country and for the world. Under such circumstances, what is the recommended course of action for reporters who wish to maintain their disinterested professional stance?

According to a prevailing narrative, Trump’s candidacy was initially so anomalous that reporters presented it as a compelling form of entertainment. Enormous free publicity helped to propel him to the nomination. Then, this narrative continues, feeling guilty (as their predecessors did for their initial acceptance of the governmental narratives of both the Vietnam and the Iraq wars), reporters have leaned in the other direction, maximizing Trumps’ flaws, while paying relatively less attention to those of Hillary Clinton. Liz Spayd, the Public Editor of The New York Times, recently lamented that many readers no longer pay attention to that ‘newspaper of record’; it is now seen as being blatantly partisan—indeed, highly interested in one outcome of the election.

As one who studies the professions, I’ve come to this conclusion: in extreme cases, professionals should be prepared to drop their disinterestedness, explain why they are doing so, and seek to return to professional disinterestedness as soon as possible.

But what constitutes an extreme case? It’s one in which the very society in which they have been allowed to practice their profession is under attack. It’s not hard for anyone to understand why journalists who objected to Hitler’s stated aims and his calling for blatant acts of violence should have focused the spotlight squarely on these activities and explained in detail why they went against all of the assumptions and presumptions of Weimar Germany. One could make the same point with reference to Stalin’s pogroms or Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Of course, we know what would have happened–what too often did happen–to journalists who described and contextualized what was happening in these totalitarian societies. And yet, had enough journalists (and other professionals, like lawyers) initially opposed the regimes more vocally and more vociferously, the terrible outcomes might have been avoided. Indeed, I think that it is precisely those fears that motivated Murrow in the 1950s, and Cronkite in the 1960s, to declare their ‘interests.’

What of today? I think it is proper for journalists to describe in detail what Donald Trump is doing, what it means for society today and tomorrow, and how it violates all sorts of norms and assumptions that have characterized American political life, domestically and abroad, for many decades. The journalists should be prepared to explain—and explain again―what they are doing and why they are doing it, and how, if Trump were elected, the fundamental values and processes of our society will be at serious risk. They should apply a similar critique to other candidates—in this case, candidates for major parties running for president. But they should not ‘pretend’ that there are two equally plausible sides to every story! And they should voice the hope that when (or even if) the political scene returns to a more normal state, they will eagerly and proudly again wear the robe of disinterestedness.

This blog post was also published via The Huffington Post.

Can Philanthropy Be a Profession? Should It Be?

NOTE: This post has also been published on HistPhil, a blog dedicated to the history of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Click here to read the post on that platform.

Nowadays, almost any vocation—from beautician to beekeeping—calls itself a profession and, accordingly, surrounds itself with the appropriate paraphernalia. I prefer to reserve the description “profession” for those vocations that fulfill a number of requirements. Among those requirements are: a core set of values that entail service to the broader society; extensive training with certification by knowledgeable instructors; ability to make and defend complex, disinterested decisions under conditions of uncertainty; and, crucially, the possibility of de-certification if these requirements are violated. For an elaboration of these and other conditions, please click here.

Those who practice philanthropy—either as philanthropists or their designated agents (sometimes termed “philanthropoids,” though I’ll continue to use the word “philanthropists” here)—exhibit many of the outward signs of a profession; but it is premature to admit philanthropy to the ranks of a full-fledged profession. At present, just about anyone who is presentable can claim to be a professional philanthropist; and unless he or she commits actions that are clearly illegal, it’s not possible to remove that title from a claimant.

In my most recent blog, I described four forms of philanthropy. Two of these have existed for many years. Charity entails a gift triggered by the dire straits of the recipient. Support of traditional community organizations (the so-called SOB trio of symphony, orchestra, and ballet) is simply an admirable habit. Needed and appreciated though these two forms of philanthropy may be, they have no particular claims on being a profession.

The other two forms of philanthropy are quite different from one another and also are frequently in tension with one another. I’ll describe them in sharply contrasting ways. In the accounting form of philanthropy, the funders and recipients agree on a goal and then a precise strategic plan is laid out: the means of meeting it; the milestones along the way; and the ways that these achievements can be measured. To be sure, there can be slack or branches in the plan; but unless there is a well-worked-out game plan, an applicant will not even be considered. Think McKinsey; think Boston Consulting Group.

In the taste form of philanthropy, funders and recipients agree broadly on a question to be answered or a problem to be solved. There can be steps along the way, even designated measures. But by and large, the project is seen as a work-in-progress. It’s assumed that the recipients are thoughtful and committed individuals and will keep in regular touch with the funders. However, it’s understood that the project—and even the question to be pursued or the shape of the goal—may well change; and perhaps that change, while not anticipated, may be appropriate and commendable.

In my own case, having been fortunate enough to have secured philanthropic funds for over four decades, I’ve clearly fallen more in the “taste” category. As mentioned in the earlier blog, I’ve been supported by funders who trust me to reflect continuously on what my team and I are doing. I quoted John Gardner, a personal hero, who said, with respect to a large project that my colleagues and I had outlined, “It will take you five years to figure out what question you are asking,” and then Gardner proceeded to help us secure funds. So clearly, I have a personal leaning with regard to that form of philanthropy. I am not completely disinterested.

We’re concerned in this blog with what it takes to be a profession. Frankly, it’s much easier to train individuals in the accountability form of philanthropy—they require business, financial, and strategic acumen; they are expected to honor the ways in which they have been trained; and both they and the beneficiaries of their due diligence know where they stand and what they have to do. The proper training is likely to be attendance at one or more of the respective professional schools and then ascending the ranks in an organization committed to process and accountability.

In contrast, the taste form of philanthropy prefers that the practitioner resemble a curator. The philanthropist reviews various priorities; considers the credentials, track record, and cogency of the grant request and requester; and then makes a considered judgment about what should be funded—and under what conditions, if any, the funding might be terminated. Rather than entailing graduation from a professional school (typically a business or policy school), the educational model resembles participation in an atelier, in which one apprentices oneself to highly regarded philanthropists and observes keenly how they go about their job. As Mihaly Csikszentmihaly expresses it, “Philanthropy resembles artistic domains—people are joined by a common goal but left free to change and improvise the means of reaching this goal.”

One can actually observe lineages: at the Carnegie Corporation, John Gardner was the mentor for Barbara Finberg; Barbara Finberg mentored Gerry Mannion; and the lineage continues. I’ve also observed such mentoring first hand with respect to Julie Kidd, the longtime president of The Endeavor Foundation (formerly The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation). Not only has Julie modelled open-minded philanthropy for a number of excellent project managers over the years; recently, she has brought her daughter Ashley centrally into the work of the Foundation.

I’ve sharply contrasted two forms of philanthropy, but there is no reason for them to be mutually exclusive. An aspiring philanthropist can be trained in both ways; indeed, a person with both management consultant and apprentice training could become a very skillful dispenser of support (so long as she kept the aforementioned distinction in mind and did not attempt to merge these two philanthropic strands). Perhaps, indeed, this would be one way to move philanthropy closer to a professional status.

Moreover, there are efforts to codify what it means to be a professional philanthropist. As I was rolling up my sleeves to write this blog, I was sent the “Code of Ethical Standards” for the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Most of the 25 principles seem reasonable, if predictable. But I was caught by one of the bullets—“Members shall recognize their individual boundaries of professional competence.” As phrased, this point seems to presuppose what is meant by professional competence. My argument here is that we still need to define that competence—or those competences!—and do so in such a way that some kind of body could declare, with confidence, “You have violated the boundaries of professional competence and are no longer considered a philanthropist.”

More so than in other aspiring professions, in the end, individuals with resources are always making value judgments about what to support and how much support to give. As far as I can see, there is no way to remove this central core element of philanthropy. And so while it certainly should be possible to make philanthropy more professional, I don’t expect to see the time when we will clearly consider philanthropy as one of the “major” professions.

Philanthropy as a Profession? Four Approaches

Twenty years ago, my colleagues Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Bill Damon, and I launched the GoodWork Project (originally called “the Humane Creativity Project”). The goal of the project was to describe “good work” in various professions and to determine how best to foster good work in the future. Our story has been told in many places, and this blog is one of many fruits of that collaboration.

For each of the sectors that we studied, we had to raise funds. Somewhat unexpectedly, we found it easy to raise funds to study philanthropy. And, in accordance with the research design, we interviewed many involved in the philanthropic sector and reflected on what it meant to be a good worker therein. Our findings were reported in various articles and also in a book edited by Bill Damon and Susan Verducci called Taking Philanthropy Seriously.

As the study unfolded, Mihaly floated an intriguing idea; he said, “Philanthropy is a field, but it’s not a domain.” Let me unpack this phrase. According to our terminology, a field is any organized activity in which there are participants, careers paths, and gatekeepers who decide who can participate and who gets rewarded. A domain entails a higher bar. A domain is a sector of society dedicated to the pursuit of a clear set of values—values that are publicly stated, carefully monitored, and directed toward a recognized public good. Any occupational area can be a field, but as a rough approximation, we restrict the use of the word domain to organized professions. In 19th century America, it was relatively easy to call oneself a lawyer or a doctor: the field was wide open. In the 20th century, these fields became professionalized: there were clear standards of preparation, a set of ethical principles, and, importantly, criteria by which one could be ostracized from the profession or domain.

And so, in Mihaly’s term, anyone could call herself a philanthropist or (to use another term of art) a philanthropoid—someone who gives away money accumulated by someone else. As long as one obeyed the law and, so to speak, dressed in a suit, one could not be expelled from the practice of philanthropy. It is a field, but not a domain.

In the decades since our work was launched, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many individuals whom we could term philanthropists and/or philanthropoids. Two of their approaches are quite familiar and have been around for a long time:

–Charity. In this oldest form of philanthropy, one gives money or other kinds of support to those most clearly in need: those who are ill, those who are destitute, those who are helpless, or those who beg.

–Standard “SOB” Support. Much of philanthropy consists of giving money to those community organizations that have most visibly relied on such support. The playful acronym “SOB” refers to symphonies, opera, and ballet. But I would extend that characterization to other organizations—many of them quite worthy—that have been around for a long time: annual community drives, The Salvation Army, The Red Cross, and—in the sector that I personally know best—Save the Children or Doctors without Borders. One does not need to scrutinize their activities annually; barring scandal, one assumes that these well-known “do-good” organizations are going about their work in a reasonable fashion.

In the case of my own fundraising, I have dealt primarily with two other forms of philanthropy which, for the sake of this essay, we might think of as “discretionary” philanthropy. One was quite dominant when I began to raise funds decades ago; the other has become dominant in recent years.

–Twentieth Century “Taste” Philanthropy. In this style of philanthropy, funders place bets on individuals or projects that seem promising. Funders focus on the track record of the fund seeker; the importance of the project being put forth; the thoughtfulness with which the case has been made; and the nature of the personal relation between the funder and the funded (often one of candor and trust). For those of us on the GoodWork Project, 20th century philanthropoid John Gardner (no relation), President of the Carnegie Corporation, represented the prototype of this form of philanthropy. Gardner and those like him had excellent taste and many of the projects that they supported—for example, Public Television—were highly successful. The risk of this form of philanthropy was that it relied too much on personal relations between certain individuals and certain institutions; and if you were not part of an “old boy” or “old girl” network, the chances of securing funding were much smaller.

–Contemporary “Accountability: Philanthropy. Partly in reaction to the limitations of philanthropy of decades ago, another form of philanthropy has arisen in recent years. Much influenced by the modes of operation of management consultancies like McKinsey, this form of philanthropy focuses heavily on the specific goals of the project, the methods being used, the steps taken along the way, and the criteria by which success will be judged. It is highly reliant on strategy, on numbers (constantly monitored), and on accountability or “return on investment.” If the applicant does not have much experience in thinking along these lines, or if her project does not lend itself to such matrixes, her chances of securing funding are low.

About a decade ago, I attended a meeting in which a well-known philanthropoid—representing a foundation with billions of dollars—discussed the foundation’s shift from 20th century to contemporary approaches to funding. “No more betting blindly,” he declared, “from now on, we will know exactly what we are funding, whether we are succeeding, and how to cut our losses.” He was wildly cheered by the audience, composed of successful individuals representing various sectors of society.

I then asked to speak. I acknowledged the appeal of the message he was delivering. But I then added, “I’ve been raising funds for nearly forty years. By most accounts, the work that I’ve done has been of quality. I have to say that, under the ground rules that you outlined, I’d never have been able to raise a penny.” And this is because, in my own fundraising, I at most had a promising idea and a reasonable track record. But I never knew ahead of time what I and my colleagues would discover and how we would make sense of it.

I thought back to what John Gardner said to Mihaly, Bill, and me back in 1995, when we first talked with him about what ultimately became the GoodWork Project and today is the Good Project: “It’ll take you five years to figure out what you are trying to accomplish.” And then he helped us to secure our first grant—from the Hewlett Foundation.

In an upcoming blog, using philanthropy as a case study, I’ll discuss how a field can become a domain—or, in lay terms, how does an occupation become a profession, and what might cause it to lose its professional status.

“Remarkably Narcissistic”—“Who Could That Be?” and “Who Can’t Say It?”

Note: In December 2015, I posted an extensive essay on the future of the professions, which received extensive and extremely thoughtful responses that elicited many further thoughts on my part. As a result, for the ensuing five months, I have posted my responses here. I also participated in an interview about Good Work in the law, conducted by Harvard Law Professor David Wilkins.

With this week’s posting, I re-commence the blog as it was originally conceptualized. I’ll contribute regularly, and I hope that others will comment and contribute blogs of their own. This week’s blog is a bit unusual because it focuses on events in my own life; some succeeding blogs will further consider various dimensions of what it means to be a professional—today, in the past, and, most importantly, in the future.

Several months ago, well before Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy was being taken seriously by most observers, a journalist from Vanity Fair asked me for my opinion about that candidate. We talked for a while, and at some point in the conversation, I expressed my view that Trump was “remarkably narcissistic.”

I did not think twice about this casual remark, and I was somewhat surprised that this two-word phrase was quoted prominently in the November issue of the magazine. I was even more surprised when I received a lot of email about this remark, found it quoted not only in the United States but also abroad, and even received an invitation to speak on the Glenn Beck show (which I declined). When I last checked, the phrase “Howard Gardner Donald Trump remarkably narcissistic” received over 18,000 hits on google, and “Donald Trump remarkably narcissistic” received 143,000 hits.

I’m not averse to publicity, and yet I regret having made this casual remark. Not that I think the remark is wrong—indeed, I’ve run into few individuals who would disagree with this characterization of the presumptive Republican nominee for President. (I wonder what he would say!)

The reason for my regret: within clinical psychology, the term “narcissistic personality disorder” has a technical meaning. Indeed, it usually foregrounds several features—for example, “believing one is special,” “selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own end,” and “shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors of attitudes.” The official diagnosis entered into the Third DSM Manual (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders); and while its place and definition have been debated ever since, the phrase is still a “term of art” within the clinic and among clinicians.

I am not a clinical psychologist. Moreover, I was using the phrase in a lay way (after all, Narcissus peered admiringly at his reflection thousands of year before the field of psychology was born). And yet, it is not reasonable for me to expect other persons to know those facts. One reason I was quoted is because I am a psychologist, and so one can reasonably infer that I was using the term as a trained diagnostician might use it. And were I a clinician, I should not have invoked the phrase causally—I should only have so characterized Donald Trump if I had studied him carefully and, optimally, if I had examined him myself.

Why discuss this faux pas in a blog devoted to professional ethics? Because professionals should be held to a high standard of conduct. Clinical psychologist or not, I should have anticipated the ways in which my words could have been cited and accordingly declined to utilize any words that smacked of diagnosis whatsoever. And to the extent that I could delete my words—whether or not anyone else would notice or care—I should do that.

I’ve also concluded that, in general, when discussing politicians, we should focus on the truth or falsity of what they say and on the appropriateness of their policy recommendations, not on characterizing their personalities or engaging in armchair psychologizing.

This episode raises the broader question: to what extent should any professional speak to the press? Or email reporters? I do have colleagues who refuse to speak to the press altogether—either because they feel that they should not do so on principle (“I think it is not a good thing to speak to reporters”), or because they feel insufficiently informed (“I don’t really know enough about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders”) or because they have been misquoted or fear that will happen.

In my view, professionals are often the best informed individuals on certain topics, and it’s unfortunate if they/we refuse to interact with the press. Indeed, if professionals do not, then amateurs certainly will! And yet I think that we have a special responsibility to be as Deliberate, Dispassionate, and Disinterested as possible.

Alas, the three Ds are rarely what an American journalist is looking for—rather it’s Drama and Hyperbole. Indeed, sometimes, in speaking to a reporter, I have been so frustrated that I’ve said, “For goodness sake, tell me what you want me to say, and I’ll let you know whether I agree with that.” That’s one reason why I typically answer by email, so that words cannot be put into my mouth or be distorted.

But just because some reporters do not behave in a professional manner, that’s all the more reason why those professionals to whom reporters speak should hold ourselves to a high standard. Yet we are also tempted to act in a less professional way, because it is the more dramatic remark that tends to be quoted and—as I learned in the Trump affair—requoted.

I hope that I’ve learned my lesson. I will not perform lay diagnoses of others. I will desist from providing dramatic headlines. And whenever possible, I’ll write for myself—as in this blog.