Lawyers and advocacy groups can be among a reporter’s most valuable resources. They’re often the gatekeepers to crucial sources and can help vulnerable interview subjects understand what it means to talk to a journalist. Lawyers can provide documents and explain complicated legal issues. Public interest groups with deep ties to a community can offer story ideas and facilitate access.
At best, when your interests as a reporter align with their interests in representing their clients, the relationship is mutually beneficial.
But that’s not always the case. Your job, after all, is not to cast a favorable light on a particular source or community but to report the facts as honestly as you can. . Lawyers and public interest groups are advocates working on behalf of particular clients. Your “client,” so to speak, is the news audience, which deserves independent truth-telling.
At worst, lawyers and public interest groups may lie outright, obfuscate, or use their leverage with sources and community members to obstruct your reporting. (Most reporters have experienced all three at one time or another.)
Whether you’ll get help or hindrance from a source’s advocates is not always within your control, depending mostly on the nature of your story. But we have suggestions for how to navigate these relationships ethically, so that even if a source’s advocates don’t like your story, they can’t question your professionalism.
Clarify the terms of your engagement with advocates
Many lawyers and public-interest advocates are accustomed to working with reporters and may believe they know the meaning of phrases like “off the record” and “on background.” Don’t assume that your definition matches theirs. Be clear about how you intend to use information they supply and whether you can use their names in your reporting process. Also be sure they understand that you are an independent fact-finder, not a mouthpiece for their client.
Lawyers and other advocates may try to impose restrictions or conditions on your access, such as attending any interview or insisting that you pre-clear their quotes – or even your entire story – with them. Think carefully about whether to accept onerous terms. You should also check your news organization’s rules.
Be sure the source understands your role as a reporter
If an advocate has facilitated access to a source for your story, be sure the source understands that you are not representing them. Be explicit: You don’t work for them, their lawyer or their advocacy group and will engage in independent fact-finding.
You do not need permission from an attorney or advocacy group to contact a source directly unless you relied on these third parties to facilitate your initial access to the source. Nor do you need to include the lawyer or advocate in an interview unless you’ve told them you would.
Even if a source tells you she is working with a lawyer or advocate, it’s entirely ethical for a reporter to ask for or to conduct an interview without the source’s lawyer present. In fact, you may well get more information and establish a closer relationship with the source if you speak one-on-one, rather than under the watchful eye of an attorney.
Think strategically, though, about whether the potential benefits of an unguarded interview are likely to outweigh the risk of angering the source’s lawyers and public-interest advocates. If you are working on a long-term project that will require multiple interviews and access to documents, or if you are a beat reporter who works regularly with an advocacy group, it could be a mistake to try to circumvent a key source’s lawyers or representatives, at least early in the reporting process.
It bears repeating that you must be sure sources understand your role as a journalist before they talk to you, especially if an interview does not include their advocates.
When lawyers and advocates become obstacles
Some lawyers and advocates may, in certain circumstances, believe it’s consistent with their role to lie or mislead on a client’s behalf. It’s especially important to fact-check what they say as carefully as you can and to make clear to your audience that the person quoted is speaking in an advocacy role.
Advocates may also try to cut off your access to a source. In a criminal case, for instance, a defense lawyer could be concerned that an interview will undermine the client’s case, even if the client wants to talk. Or immigration advocates might be worried about a community-wide crackdown from your interview with an outspoken source. As we stressed above, your interests don’t always match the interests of lawyers and public interest groups.
That mismatch may result, in extreme situations, in threats from well-connected lawyers and advocacy groups to shut out you or even your newsroom if you don’t drop a story.
Imagine, for example, that a community group is well-known and well-trusted in a migrant neighborhood. The group has been helpful in introducing you to sources and providing story ideas – but warns you that if you try to interview residents without its permission, it will put out the word that people should not talk to your newsroom. Similarly, a criminal defense lawyer might tell you that if you write an unflattering story about one client, he will advise his other clients not to speak to reporters from your organization.
If you’re facing that sort of intimidation tactic, talk to your editors, who can help you figure out how to assess the risk of the threat to you and your fellow reporters and may have advice on how to persist with your reporting while working to de-escalate the conflict.