Transparency Is All The Rage, But Is It Making A Difference?

There's an interesting story on the trend of "transparency" over at the American Journalism Review that examines the various efforts being made by news organizations (including us here at PE) to open up their doors to news consumers. Rachel Smolkin writes:

Have the news media gone New Age? You can almost hear the hot air seeping from our bloated egos, replaced by groveling apologies and overwrought explanations to our fleeing readers: Let me tell you why I ran that story, made that decision, chose that lead, buried that other story that you, our readers (and bloggers and ideologues and cranks), thought was more important. You can almost see the self-assured cigar smoke dissipating, the Wild Turkey neglected in favor of...healing crystals?

Or, as the healing crystals are know in our business, "transparency." A chorus of media critics, AJR among them, has seized on openness as the panacea to our sullied reputations, the antidote to those cheaters Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley, the tonic to our arrogance that cyberspace loves to hate.

Explaining is all the rage, and that's largely a good thing. From the vice president's hunting calamity to the federal government's communications collapse during Hurricane Katrina, the media demand answers to uncomfortable questions. When officials stonewall, duck questions or try to change the subject, their reticence tends to ignite a media swarm that lasts until someone has apologized and accepted responsibility. It's unfair, even hypocritical, for the media to try to play by different rules, to ignore public demands for accountability that we would insist on from anyone else.

But what exactly should news organizations be open about? Are we trying too hard to explain ourselves, being too needy, wasting too much time on the therapist's couch, with a motley lot of bloggers, partisans and pundits as our Dr. Phil? Is more transparency always better, or are there dangers lurking within an otherwise healthy movement? In short, is the pressure for explaining spiraling out of control?