As I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "Her voluntary step further into the public limelight makes appropriate a unified move by editors to cease the conceit of this naming taboo. Thus freed from a debate of little meaning, journalists could move on to discuss a terribly meaningful one: how to cover rape trials with sensitivity, balance, fairness, a concentration on fact over rumor."EDITOR'S NOTE:The name of the accuser in this case has been removed by Poynter Online editors. After doing a first read on the column, editors Julie Moos and Bill Mitchell met with a group of about 25 Poynter faculty and staff to discuss the issue: Under what circumstances should Poynter consider naming the accuser in this case? The discussion was not to seek consensus, but to inform our decision. Our conclusion: Based on what we know at this point, we believe the journalistic purpose to be achieved by naming the accuser is outweighed by the potential harm that could result from doing so. We gladly present conflicting views, as we did with this column by Geneva that was published last year. But we are not willing to step beyond publishing opinion and take the action of publishing the accuser's name.This has created an unusual dilemma. Geneva is a valued friend of Poynter, a member of our National Advisory Board from 1993 to 2001 as well as the unpaid author of the weekly Journalism Junction column since November 2002. Citing several competing obligations as well as her principled disagreement with Poynter Online editors, Geneva has informed us that this will be her final column for Poynter. Explaining her decision, she said: "There is little to recommend continuing to write the column for Poynter unless I can say what I believe." -- Bill Mitchell
From the paper come these quotes:
"Fox News Channel doing a big number at the RNC is the least shocking thing that's happened all week," said one broadcast network exec. "The Olympics are to NBC what the RNC is to Fox News.""It says that Fox News Channel is the official channel of the GOP, and if people didn't know it before they certainly know it now," offered another competitor. Still another said FNC's success Tuesday night suggests the cable news network is the "in-house organ" of the Republican Party.
And from the Stylebook comes this one:
The Washington Post's Policies on Sources, Quotations, Attribution, and Datelines We should not publish ad hominem quotations from unnamed sources. Sources who want to take a shot at someone in our columns should do so in their own names.
I curtsy to no man in recognizing that media today are becoming more openly ideological. But acknowledging a point of view in newer entrants shouldn't blind us to the fact that the "old media" are far from the model of open-mindedness they seem to feel they are. And I don't mean just the fact that coverage on such subjects as gun control or abortion often is knee-jerkishly liberal. Or the fact that, in over-reaction to those very "liberal media" charges, the occasional abortion-rights march -- to take an example -- is seriously UNDERplayed. That little herky-jerky dance is lamentable. But I'm talking about a deeper and broader truth: The establishment media are so terminally ESTABLISHMENT. And they don't seem to get how much of a bias that is.
This thought struck recently as I read "The Ascendancy of News with a View" in Newsday. The gist of it is that folks like George Stephanopoulos and Ted Koppel are alarmed to find that some Americans are looking to sources other than the likes of ABC to get an idea of what's really going on. I mean, sources like "Fahrenheit 9/11" or Rush Limbaugh.
I have sympathy for this view. I'm worried too about Americans more and more wanting to hear only from those who agree with them. But I am powerfully struck that it doesn't occur to George and Ted –- and all the other sources in the article -- that traditional media also have a viewpoint. Traditional media have a viewpoint. It's a good old conventional, "acceptable," middle-of-the-road viewpoint. It's the viewpoint, generally speaking, of the powerful -- which is by and large, even today, the view of well-to-do male white folks. Like Ted and George. (Forgive me for noting that everybody in Newsday's long and citation-rich piece seems to belong to this privileged group.)
Would anyone who has ever been part of a movement for change –- civil rights, feminism, anti-war, you name it -– believe that the mainstream media offer so full and rich and open-minded and comprehensive a menu that no one need go elsewhere for an accurate picture of what's going on? What has the recent spate of mea culpas in The New York Times ($$), The Washington Post, and the Lexington Herald-Leader shown us, ultimately, if not that these media were in thrall to the reigning conventional wisdom?
When we old-media types come up with our high-sounding prescriptions for the proper media diet for the responsible American citizen, we could stand a reminder that people aren't fools to think that there's truth to be sought outside conventional media. The narrower the conventional media -– and we do go through our cycles -- the more info there is to be found elsewhere. Thus, in this post 9/11 world, have documentaries set records, and political books flown off the shelves. Some of these partisan upstarts have a thing or two to say. The people are listening. Are we?
__________________
Two other quick notes. One of the most interesting things happening in media criticism is the Bay Area's "Grade the News." Recently, the San Francisco Chronicle did an interesting interview with the site's leader, John McManus, which features some delicious straight talk about journalism.
Finally, an immodest plug for a recent radio show with a terrific discussion of the reporters' privilege issue. I took part but, more important, so did Floyd Abrams, Lucy Dalglish, Dan Okrent, and Vanessa Leggett. Check it out at WBUR's "The Connection."
I have a clipping in my files dated January 13, 2003. It's from a British newspaper, the Guardian. Here's the headline: "With war looming, it is no good the American public looking to its newspapers for an independent voice. For the press have now become the president's men."
This morning (Thursday), The Washington Post ran a remarkable story on its front page, responding to months of charges like that one in the Guardian: charges that the Post and other media failed the public in covering the buildup to war in Iraq. The story, by media writer Howard Kurtz, says the coverage "in hindsight, looks strikingly one-sided at times." Last May, The New York Times did its own mea culpa. Its coverage, the story said, "was not as rigorous as it should have been."
The Post is the major paper in the nation's capital. Inevitably, as one of its editors said, it is "the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power." Before the war, it performed that role avidly. Fast and furious came the headlines: "Cheney Says Iraqi Strike Is Justified." "Bush Cites Urgent Iraqi Threat." "Bush Tells Troops: Prepare for War."
These have been difficult times for our country. But whatever the tenor of the era, whatever the popularity ratings of the president, there are things the press should never forget. Skepticism is a patriotic responsibility of journalists. And the press must give voice not only to those in power but also to those who are NOT being heard. These are the failures that the Post –- and the Times before it –- have now acknowledged.
We shouldn't underestimate the importance of these acknowledgments. They signal a revolution in press accountability. Newspapers, like people, have always made mistakes. But they have rarely admitted the big ones. Of course, you can't help but wish that the light had dawned earlier. Even as I read my Post this morning, I was hearing reports on NPR of intense fighting in Iraq. "You're too late," I longed to say to my newspaper. But that would be wrong.
I don't know if I agree with Post editor Len Downie, who says it's a mistake to think that different coverage would have led to a different outcome. But I do know this: Accountability on the part of the press is a good and hopeful thing -– and even a brave one. When those in power, including the media, acknowledge their impact and admit their fallibility, we're all better off.A slightly different version of this was prepared for commentary on NPR's "All Things Considered."
Ms. Overholser --I found your recent posting "Omitting Telling Details" both laughable and tragic.
The larger question is my employer, not that I never got an answer to what even The New York Times was forced to admit was a perfectly "reasonable" question?
Furthermore, you, supposedly the paragon of journalistic whatever, link to a Max Blumenthal blog that is so factually bereft that it would be filed under "fiction" in any library.
Just one example is the smear of my days with UPI (as a bureau chief in two cities and as the broadcast editor for Pennsylvania based in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, no less). Sorry to burst all you liberals' notions, but I didn't work for the Rev. Moon -- I left UPI for the AP in 1991 and well before Mr. Moon bought the wire service.And you and Mr. Blumenthal -– you by your link, Blumenthal by his writings -- show your utter ignorance of economics by finding something nefarious about F.A. Hayek's writings on free-market economics and the well-proven dangers of socialism. The "linkage" to Alfred Jay Nock -– "he was a hysterical anti-Semite ... " –- is equally ludicrous. What, that makes ME an anti-Semite? That's like saying anyone who ever quoted Sen. Robert Byrd must be a Klansman.
And, indeed, if you study the economics of Gov. Ed Rendell, they ARE more socialistic than free-market. In fact, it's a textbook case.
Let's address the real issue here –- Mrs. Heinz-Kerry said something publicly for which any reporter worth his salt would seek clarification/expansion. What did she mean? We still don't know. Attempting to kill the questioner won't get us the answer.
Thank you,
From: Colin McNickle Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 1:50 PMTo: Overholser, GenevaSubject: Oh, and a post script Ms. Overholser-
And one more thing –- Blumenthal refers to "Alfred Jay Nock." It's "Albert," actually.
Cheers,Colin McNickle
From:
Dear Colin McNickle,
Thanks for your feedback. Feel free to post it publicly (if you haven't) on the Poynter site.
Meanwhile, we'll just have to agree to disagree. To me the issue is not whether you asked a logical question (I think you did), but whether Heinz-Kerry would have every reason to be suspicious of and annoyed by an encounter with a reporter who comes from a clearly unfair/imbalanced newspaper that has tormented her in the past.
Geneva
Geneva OverholserCurtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs ReportingMissouri School of Journalism, Washington bureau
From: Colin McNickle Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 3:01 PMTo: Overholser, GenevaSubject: RE: IncredibleDear Geneva --
Agree to disagree? On some basic facts of the issue that you purposely misrepresent? Geesh.
When's the last time -– if ever -– that you have actually read a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, news or editorial section, cover to cover? Perhaps you'd like to see a few issues...
And, please post my response; I think you have a responsibility to do so.
Cheers, Colin.
I came back from vacation raring to gripe about how we in the press conveniently overlook significant details on these catchy little stories we go bonkers over. Details like the roar of the crowd in the Des Moines ballroom where Howard Dean screamed his immortal Scream. Details like a full characterization of the journalist Teresa Heinz Kerry told to "shove it." Then, I discovered just how far behind the curve a blissful few days in the West Virginia mountains can leave you. See, for example, this and this.
Much that is commonly "understood" among journalists is rarely voiced in public. A pre-convention event this week in Cambridge -- where network anchors went on the record about the partisan and corporate pressures they feel -- was a bracing exception. The Shorenstein Center program was mostly noted in the news for Jim Lehrer's chastisement of the big three anchors for their stinted convention coverage. But even rarer was the theme kicked off by Dan Rather at the start: "Fear has increased in every newsroom in America." The three anchors (Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw) sparred with one another about whether it was "fear," "caution," or "anxiety," but its existence seemed clear.
Rather started by noting this: When you're a reporter contrasting what someone in the administration says with what you know to be the facts, pointedly laying out the differences, "You're gonna catch hell." "And those who are willing to pay the price," Rather said, are fewer today than before. In a later remark, he said the strong feelings nationwide and the guarantee that they'll be voiced not only calls up more caution than ever -- sometimes a good thing -- but causes some to ask: "You know what? We run this story, we're asking for trouble. Why do it?"
Peter Jennings, having rejected fear, said shortly thereafter, "I think there is anxiety in the newsroom, and I think it comes from the corporate suite." He hears more from conservative critics than in the past, he said, and "I think it creates concern in the corporate suites. This wave of resentment rushes at our advertisers, it rushes at our corporate suites, and it gets under the newsroom's skin."
Tom Brokaw soft-pedaled this angle, noting that there had previously been "a kind of tyranny of the left" that only naturally had been succeeded by its opposite. But when the three were pressed by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) about what they would have done differently in the coverage of the run-up to war in Iraq, the original topic revived. Judy Woodruff cited "voices listened to but not given the prominence of the flood of voices from the administration." She described a "hyper-patriotic ... mood that had taken hold to some degree in the media." Rather went further with the specific results: "We did not do our job of pressing and asking enough questions often enough." He said there is "more reluctance now than 35 to 40 years ago to stand up and look 'em in the eye and ask the hard questions." Brokaw said he thought "the big failure" was that "we didn't connect enough dots. We didn't raise enough questions about the political process." "Where are the hearings in the House? Where are the hearings in the Senate?" he asked.
Lehrer's only comment on the topic: The fact that views today are "strongly held is terrific for us," he said, because "viewers will watch with more vigor." Woodruff's thought about the powerful partisan outpourings: "We want to be responsive, but it can never govern what we do." As the ensuing debate acknowledged, the country's political mood, translated through the corporate suites, HAS been affecting what the media was doing. Here's hoping the welcome level of candor in Cambridge is a signal that this is ceasing to be true.
Paul Wolfowitz is accustomed to requesting –- and receiving –- anonymity when he wants it. But, as the Des Moines Register reported (not, alas, online, though you can read about it in Slate) that doesn't work everywhere:
Incognito in Omaha After Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spoke to the Omaha Chamber of Commerce last Friday, he set aside 45 minutes to talk about the Iraq war with a handful of newspaper reporters from Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri. As is common in Washington, D.C., a Pentagon aide swooped down just before the questions began and explained that Wolfowitz could only be identified as a "senior Defense Department official." But this was Omaha, and the Midwest reporters rebelled at the suggested anonymity. They told Wolfowitz such a session was essentially a waste of their time, and besides, it's customary for public officials in the Midwest to put their name behind their comments. One reporter explained it would look pretty silly if he wrote a story quoting Wolfowitz speaking publicly to the Omaha Chamber, and then in the next paragraph quoted a "senior Defense Department official." Everybody in Omaha knew Wolfowitz was the only senior defense official in town on Friday. Wolfowitz, who recently apologized for negative comments he made about reporters covering Iraq, retreated without hesitation and agreed to speak on the record.(from the Des Moines Register, July 15, in "Insider: Iowa Ear," a weekly column of inside-baseball political items)
Incognito in Omaha
After Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spoke to the Omaha Chamber of Commerce last Friday, he set aside 45 minutes to talk about the Iraq war with a handful of newspaper reporters from Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri. As is common in Washington, D.C., a Pentagon aide swooped down just before the questions began and explained that Wolfowitz could only be identified as a "senior Defense Department official."
But this was Omaha, and the Midwest reporters rebelled at the suggested anonymity. They told Wolfowitz such a session was essentially a waste of their time, and besides, it's customary for public officials in the Midwest to put their name behind their comments. One reporter explained it would look pretty silly if he wrote a story quoting Wolfowitz speaking publicly to the Omaha Chamber, and then in the next paragraph quoted a "senior Defense Department official." Everybody in Omaha knew Wolfowitz was the only senior defense official in town on Friday.
Wolfowitz, who recently apologized for negative comments he made about reporters covering Iraq, retreated without hesitation and agreed to speak on the record.(from the Des Moines Register, July 15, in "Insider: Iowa Ear," a weekly column of inside-baseball political items)
Interestingly, just after a former Register reporter e-mailed me that story, a friend here in Washington sent me his own thoughts about anonymity. Here's Jim Rosen, a McClatchy Washington bureau reporter:
Since I got to Washington a decade ago, I've been amazed that someone like the national security adviser can hold a detailed briefing with dozens of reporters, and they dutifully cite "a senior administration official" because that's the instruction they get. Some reporters -- and I've probably been guilty of this -- might feel it gives their work a certain cache to appear to have special access to high-level officials. Of course, the poor reader never knows that it's a big pretense and that all those other reporters got the same information in a quasi-public setting. It's a kind of illicit trade: The administration gets deniability, secrecy, and lack of public accountability in exchange for the reporter receiving a false veneer of exclusivity.
Since I got to Washington a decade ago, I've been amazed that someone like the national security adviser can hold a detailed briefing with dozens of reporters, and they dutifully cite "a senior administration official" because that's the instruction they get.
Some reporters -- and I've probably been guilty of this -- might feel it gives their work a certain cache to appear to have special access to high-level officials. Of course, the poor reader never knows that it's a big pretense and that all those other reporters got the same information in a quasi-public setting. It's a kind of illicit trade: The administration gets deniability, secrecy, and lack of public accountability in exchange for the reporter receiving a false veneer of exclusivity.
Meanwhile, William Babiskin told me his uncle Al used to joke: "They tell us something was said by 'someone close to the White House.' For all we know, it's a wino in Lafayette Park."
Finally, a colleague at Poynter, Larry Larsen, wrote to note his concern about the NY Times story on the Cheney-replacement rumor, which was absolutely bristling with anonymity. "So much for this," he said, noting The New York Times' anonymous sources policy. I agree. Maybe inside, in a standard analyis or political memo format, but on the front page?
There appear to be significant differences between State Department and CIA views, between British and American views and between various readings of the Wilson report, as well as different interpretations as to whether Wilson's wife "offered up his name" or responded to queries about whether he'd be willing to make his controversial trip. There is plenty here to make those inclined to bristle do so on either side. I can only say that the entirety of it makes me feel less certain of the truth than I was. I thank my readers for challenging me to return to the issue.
Call this the season of the documentary. The summer's most powerful (not to mention polemical) challenges to conventional thinking have come from the left, via the silver screen: "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Control Room," "Hunting of the President" and now, "Outfoxed." The interesting thing is not whether these flicks are fair or balanced or thorough or comprehensive. Surely they are, by and large, NOT — and not intended to be. The interesting thing is their surprising and quite remarkable popularity — these are documentaries, for crying out loud! — which says a great deal about what has recently been left unsaid, or substantially understated.
Consider the case of Fox News. It has been besting the rest of cable news by delivering journalism with an attitude and an ideology — while declaiming that it alone of all the media is free of these very traits. The pose, while widely winked at within the trade, went largely unchallenged in public — as did the larger, very effective and focused conservative campaign against liberal media bias. Not surprisingly, many believed what they kept hearing. Consider the Pew study released last month, on increasing polarization of news audiences. Check out the chart labeled "Growing Credibility Gap." In a list of most of the main national news media, the percentage of Republicans who "believe all or most" of what they got from each declined dramatically from 2000 to 2004. Fox News was the only exception. Would even the most conservative news consumers claim that the change was in each of these media themselves — that they were all more believable in 2000, much less so in 2004? It was the perception of the news consumers that changed — a change very skillfully cultivated by conservatives, and countered but little by others.
"Outfoxed," whatever else one thinks of it (I haven't seen it) has at last blown this subject wide open. Having acknowledged the change, we are happily freed to think about what it means. For example:
Years of lament over anonymous sources gave way this spring to a spate of policy-tightening. (See The New York Times and Washington Post, among others.) That welcome step, alas, may mostly have resulted in lengthier descriptions of the same old anonymous sources –- perhaps in even greater numbers. Now comes a still more promising stage: Action. First, Slate's Jack Shafer offered to help reporters "out" officials who insist on giving briefings anonymously. Now the NYT's Dan Okrent suggests that the AP and the five largest papers agree not to cover anonymous government briefings.
Another possibility (call it a friendly amendment) is collaboration among Washington bureau chiefs. These folks (I need to say here that my husband, David Westphal, is McClatchy's bureau chief) have worked together to deal with the Pentagon on war coverage. I propose they make the overuse of anonymity their next campaign. Start with the low-hanging fruit -- declining to cover routine briefings by government officials who refuse to be named. If bureau chiefs of the largest news organizations in Washington agreed to do this, I'm betting it would be a solid first step toward real change at last -- a change the rest of the American media (not to mention their readers and viewers and listeners) would thank them for.
So Bill Clinton is complaining from one side and Dick Cheney from the other. Some in the press will take this to mean we're doing fine. Allow me to inject some press criticism less easily dismissed.In interviewing Washington-journalist-par-excellence Elizabeth Drew this week, I was struck by the power with which she counseled the audience to pay close attention to what the candidates say. And don't think you can do it through the press, she added. Political coverage makes it increasingly difficult to get a full and fair picture. (You can watch the webcast here.)In a March 11 article in The New York Review of Books, Drew delivers a more detailed press critique. Writing about the substantial flaws in the process of selecting the Democratic presidential nominee, she finds several of those flaws within the press.There's insubstantiality: The debates, she notes, "tend to be judged by the press according to showbiz standards: Who can produce the best (usually rehearsed) one-liner; who attacked whom the hardest; who is the most entertaining; who made a gaffe that can be the subject of more stories? Such abilities have little to do with governing."
And, inevitably, there's the horse-race problem: "The press and television coverage of this year's nominating process has been more superficial and unbalanced than ever ... Of course some journalists and editors try to be fair, but, for the most part, elementary journalistic standards have been largely ignored. Far too much of the coverage has taken the form of prediction rather than observation, along with a great deal of speculation backed by constantly changing polls about who is the most 'electable' candidate, even though this is impossible to discern so far in advance. (At the close of the 1988 Democratic Convention, Michael Dukakis was predicted to be 18 points ahead of the elder Bush. He lost by 8 percentage points.) "The race was declared 'over' so many times, and so many outcomes were declared 'inevitable,' that it sometimes seemed as if the voters were irrelevant. Reporters and pundits kept telling us what was going to happen rather than explaining what's happened and trying to analyze why. Early in 2003, The New York Times announced that John Kerry was the 'front-runner.' This turned out to have been prescient, but at the time it was written it was hard to discern how there could be a front-runner a year and a half before anyone had voted, and months before there was an opportunity to observe candidates and hear their plans."Before Christmas, countless pundits and reporters told us that Howard Dean had the nomination sewed up — again before anyone had voted. If Dean won Iowa and New Hampshire, we were told, 'it's over'; some commentators and reporters ventured further, stating that if Dean won Iowa, that would suffice. Consider, they said, the fearsome power of the unions in Iowa, who were backing Dean along with Dick Gephardt. Then Gephardt was said to be winning the nomination, and Kerry was 'coming apart' — all before anything real had happened. Clark, a man with admirable qualities — and at times a very good candidate — received, on the whole, negative treatment in the press. That much of the press was wrong in predicting Dean's 'inevitability' apparently gave them no pause in making further predictions."Such journalism is not only a waste of time but can seriously distort the electoral process. Forecasts by the press that a certain candidate will win may produce contributions, volunteers, and energy (as with the early endorsement of Dean by labor unions) -- and the reverse is also the case. That they mislead the public seems not to matter. The entire nominating and election processes need to be reconsidered by the political parties and the press. The voters deserve to be better served by both the politicians and by journalists; otherwise the principle of democratic nomination and election through informed choice is made a mockery."
I chafe at the truth that to everything there is a season. But impatience does make it all the more delicious when a much-needed season arrives at last. Just as the Times's recent editors' note was an acknowledgment of what many an observer felt was surely true -– that the nation's most influential paper was weak on skepticism in its pre-war coverage -– I am hopeful that we are now arriving at a closely related yet broader awareness: That the old "liberal media" charge is largely hooey, and dangerous hooey at that.
The notion has been repeated so often and with such effectiveness that it has come to be widely accepted (see Howie Kurtz's report on the new Pew survey, "Fewer Republicans Trust the News, Survey Finds"). Consequently, the liberal-media charge -– hastened along by the dreaded stink one calls down upon oneself by writing or airing anything that can by ANY stretch be seen as exemplifying it -– has wormed its way into many a media organization's heart. There, particularly in combination with post 9/11 hyper-patriotism, it has done a lot of damage -- the sort of damage the Times acknowledged. The increasingly evident truth, as we keep learning (and not just from the Times mea culpa -- see also Michael Massing's powerful work in The New York Review of Books), is that the media are anything but the never-listen-to-a-Republican types the liberal-media accusation makes them out to be. Ken Auletta wrote a New Yorker piece of June 7 ("Big Bird Flies Right") showing how far from fitting the label is, even in an organization supposed by the right to personify it: PBS. "On the Media's" Brooke Gladstone did a piece on the Auletta story. As she notes, Auletta sets forth how, the political right having backed off criticism of NPR and PBS due to public pressure, the opposition is now coming "from a new quarter, from within the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) itself, the very institution that was designed to protect it."The season is here. Let the evidence accumulate!
Having been away, I come late to the subject of The New York Times’ remarkable editors’ note of May 26, but it’s too remarkable to pass up. For a paper to acknowledge that the “bright light of hindsight” that it shines so eagerly on others must be turned on itself is entirely in order but exceedingly rare. Thus it takes courage and wisdom to shine the light. Whatever issues one can take with the note –- with its not naming names, coming late, perhaps being forced by the questioning of others -- are overwhelmed by the importance of this welcome step.
The media are all too willing to scrutinize everyone else while blithely ignoring our own failings. In smaller and larger ways, with lesser or greater intent, we cause harm yet move mutely on. As ombudsman at the Washington Post during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, I was deluged with reader protests over the multitude of anonymous sources, the apparent willingness to be used by prosecutorial leakers and the excess of column inches and reportorial time. Much criticism has been leveled since then -- from Brill's Content to the Project for Excellence in Journalism to several books and even some staff grumbling. But the institution has never looked back at the coverage for the benefit of readers and assessed its impact. Newspapers rarely do. How many reflect on a big local news story to see how well their coverage fared? Few things could do more for our credibility. More importantly, few things could do more to keep us honest, thorough, comprehensive and fair. Here’s hoping The Times’ self-examination becomes an industry-wide habit.
As historian David Kennedy responded to remarks by David Remnick at Stanford recently, he cited the famous quote by Thomas Jefferson that most journalists know by heart:
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
When Jefferson wrote these words to Edward Carrington in 1787, he could hardly have imagined the mindset of so many publishers today — not wishing that "every man should receive" his papers, but ceasing delivery to any reader of little interest to advertisers.
"No Cure for What Ails Us" takes a look at how news coverage may cause public apathy by depicting problems as having little to do with individuals. A second study suggests gender differences in news coverage: Women-managed newsrooms are likelier to focus on a successful river clean-up, while male managers delivered the water-pollution stories, researchers found.Embedded journalists, meanwhile, produced more favorable coverage of the military than did independent reporters, a third study concluded – though the tone of reporting overall seemed consistent with coverage of past conflicts.
Behind a nondescript door, in one of those faceless modern buildings so common to downtown Washington, works a cussedly independent and most extraordinary man: Seymour Hersh. Thirty-five years ago, he revealed to us the horrors of My Lai in Vietnam. Now he has shown us the tragedy of Abu Ghraib in Iraq. These book-end events in his career to date remind us what a powerful effect a crystallizing event may have on the course of history. Yet Hersh's reporting (in The New Yorker) has been steadily excellent — as strong on events leading up to the war, when digging reporting was scarce indeed, as on the more spectacular events of late.
In an era of celebrity reporters, Hersh spurns the limelight. At a time when prominent journalists seem all too happy to serve as stenographers to the powerful, Hersh gives us information the powerful don't want us to have.
More insider-secrets wordplay on the anonymous source front. In Thursday's lead Washington Post article, we're told that "President Bush privately admonished Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday, a senior White House official said." What this means, apparently, is that Bush bawled out Rumsfeld and then asked somebody who works for him to tell the press that he had done so. Why the official "refused to be named so he could speak more candidly" is unclear. The president, after all, wanted him to speak. Later on in the article, we are told that other unnamed "U.S. officials" are "privately furious." Surely, once they are telling this to the Post, they are not "privately furious" but "anonymously furious in public."
Lou Gelfand is 81 years old and has been the Minneapolis Star Tribune's reader's representative for almost 23 years. Now he has filed an age discrimination suit, saying (reg. req.) he's been forced out. It seems to me that Lou ought to have moved willingly out of the reader's rep job years ago. The Organization of News Ombudsmen "unanimously adopted a resolution of strong support" for him. I hope they meant simply to commend him for a job well done — not to encourage him in the belief that he's entitled to lifetime tenure. Too many newspaperfolk seem to find such a notion appealing without resolutions in support of it.
We journalists tend to accept as an article of faith that we should protect our sources – and that this protection will stand up in court. In fact, the so-called “reporter’s privilege” is very much a qualified one. There is no federal shield law, there are variations from state to state in both the source of the protection and the strength of it. (Here is an excellent look at the issue.) And the “privilege” is very much under assault. No wonder, then, that lawyers – the folks we journalists turn to once this privilege we think of as simple and absolute gets complex and iffy – wish we would be more mindful of the complexities.
