Slate and Microsoft
Slate and Microsoft
Slate
is
published by Microsoft Corp. Some people are concerned or even alarmed at the
thought of the world's largest software company getting into the media
business. Can
Slate
tell it straight when it is owned by
Microsoft? Since we are about to ask our readers to help us finance this
enterprise (see last week's "Readme"), and since Microsoft is in the headlines these days, this
may be a good moment to tell you how we see this issue.
First, as a practical
matter, in the year and a half
Slate
has been coming out, the
company has not interfered in editorial decisions in any way. Nor has any
Microsoft higher-up complained about any
Slate
article even after
the fact.
In
theory, too, the alarm about Microsoft owning media properties seems odd.
Compare Microsoft with, say, Time Warner or News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch's
empire) or other big media companies. The potential conflicts of interest are
far greater for a publication that is part of a traditional media company than
for one owned by a software company. Time magazine bumps up against the
various interests of its corporate parent many times in each issue, including
every time it reviews a book or a movie. By contrast, even lately with the
antitrust controversy, very little of what
Slate
publishes has
anything to do with Microsoft's other products and interests.
There is legitimate concern about the concentration of the
media in large corporations of any sort. But the special concern about
Microsoft entering the field is hard to understand. Microsoft has been founding
new journalistic institutions (
Slate
, MSNBC, etc.)--not buying up
existing ones. Thus Microsoft's media adventures add to diversity and
competition among the media, rather than reducing it. This makes the complaints
of journalists in particular about Microsoft getting into the journalism
business especially puzzling. A journalist who objects to a new company getting
into journalism is a journalist with a secure job.
Media
companies, of course, have decades of experience and (in the case of Time
Warner, if not Murdoch) a reputation for integrity to protect. Microsoft, as a
new kid on the block, has no journalistic reputation yet, either good or bad.
But Microsoft will need to establish a reputation for integrity and hands-off
management if it hopes to attract journalists and customers to its media
properties. The company would be stupidly shortsighted to destroy this
reputation before it is even established, in order to tilt the editorial
product more in the company's favor. And even Microsoft's fiercest critics
rarely accuse this company of being stupid or shortsighted.
Of course it may not be necessary for a
corporate parent to interfere actively with the editorial content of media it
owns. Employees know which side their bread is buttered on. In software
companies like Microsoft, a chunk of employees' pay is in stock options, which
give employees an especially throbbing interest in the future prosperity of
their employer. Does this affect journalists' ability to treat issues touching
the company with the same lofty detachment they bring to issues that don't?
Answer:
maybe. As a practical matter, once again, we at
Slate
think we
play it pretty straight, though others inevitably will disagree. We
commissioned Ralph
Nader's attack on Microsoft as soon as we heard about his campaign against
the company. Later, we ran a piece defending the company. More than once, in discussions of the
browser wars, we have provided links to Netscape Navigator's download page. There are other examples, and no doubt there are
counterexamples. Root around the "Compost" and decide for yourself.
In theory, as well, we as journalists have an even stronger
self-interest than our corporate employer in establishing
Slate
's
reputation for journalistic integrity. We don't have to resist temptation
nearly as often as employees of traditional media companies. And some of those
companies, by the way, also use stock as an incentive.
Now, a
slight disclaimer. Despite all the completely compelling arguments offered in
the preceding paragraphs, it would be silly and dishonest to insist that
Slate
does or can treat Microsoft just as we would if it were not
our employer. (And the same is true for any journalist working for any company
with varied interests.) The reality of ownership affects
Slate
in
a couple of ways, we think.
First, we cannot actually forget that we work
for Microsoft. The most we can aspire to is to imagine successfully how we
would treat Microsoft if we didn't work for it. But this is an artifice, and it
is not foolproof. There is the temptation to take the company's side, and the
contrary temptation to prove one's independence with ostentatious criticism.
Since editors and writers get their ideas from their surroundings,Microsoft
probably looms larger in
Slate
's editorial landscape than it does
in that of other magazines. On the other hand, the simplest and always tempting
solution to conflict-of-interest concerns is to take a pass on some
Microsoft-related topics that you would otherwise treat. Although we do the
best we can--and we think our best is pretty good--it would be an amazing
coincidence if the result of all these opposing temptations and self-conscious
calculations was exactly the same quantity and slant of Microsoft coverage as
if there was no connection.
Second,
Slate
will never give Microsoft the skeptical scrutiny it
requires as a powerful institution in American society (any more than
Time , once again, will sufficiently scrutinize Time Warner). We can come
pretty close to neutral reporting and analysis of news developments in features
like "Today's
Papers" and "The
Week/The Spin." At the other extreme, if we discover that Bill Gates
murdered Vince Foster, or a similar megascoop, journalistic bravado will easily
triumph over corporate loyalty. But in the middle ground--entrepreneurial and
analytical journalism--no institution can reasonably be expected to audit
itself. The standard to insist on is that the sins be of omission, not
distortion. There will be no major investigations of Microsoft in
Slate
.
The journalism reviews dote on episodes where some
newspaper runs an eight-part series about how its own ink is filled with
cancer-causing chemicals, or whatnot. However, what guarantees that powerful
institutions get skeptical scrutiny isn't a lot ofstagy self-mutilation. It's
diversity of voices. You can't trust a publication owned by Microsoft to keep
an eye on Microsoft, but you can expect it to keep an eye on Condé Nast and Time
Warner, and youcan reasonably expect Condé Nast and Time Warner to keep an eye
on Microsoft. By creating new journalistic institutions--sometimes in
competition with established ones--Microsoft is adding to the total amount of
skeptical scrutiny going on.
Or at
least at
Slate
that's what we're trying to do.
--Michael Kinsley
