What is Journalism? Who is a Journalist? Session 4: Who Is a Journalist?

The afternoon sessions examined the purpose of journalism by asking what values and characteristics makes someone a journalist and disqualifies them as one.

Abe Peck, Acting Dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and moderator of the afternoon session, spoke of his early experiences with objectivity as an alternative reporter in the 1960s:

"I began as a reporter and the editor of The Seed, the underground hippie paper that grew thorns as the '60s went on. We had no press cards. Our sellers got arrested. Our office was shot up on two occasions. But at our best, we told truths about the war and racism and the way people might live together that seemed to elude, at least to us, the mainstream media."

"At the time we preferred an honest subjectivity to political and cultural positions that to us masqueraded as neutral....Unfortunately, though, we weren't always at our best. At our worst, we didn't let the facts get in the way of a good story, or even a good politically correct line before the phrase."

"When were we journalists? When were we merely propagandists? Could we be both? Those are questions that will probably linger."

Carol Marin, the Chicago TV journalist who resigned her job as anchor of WMAQ when the station hired talk show host Jerry Springer as a commentator said that each journalist must define who a journalist is for themselves, but that it is a set of values and principles that make journalism much much more than a job or a business:

"Who is a journalist? . . I'll tell you my boundaries, what I've tried to practice in terms of defining myself as a journalist. That may be the best I can do for you today."

"A journalist is someone who believes in a public trust, and is not ashamed to say so. Yes, journalism is a business. Yes, news is a business. Yes, you have to sell newspapers. And yes, you have to market television newscasts. But in addition to being a business that survives by making money, there is the additional responsibility of being the public's eyes and ears and representative. That's a trust that can't be betrayed.

"A journalist is somebody who isn't awed by powerful people, who remembers that the President works for you. . . A journalist is someone who gives the objects of his or her news stories a fair chance; makes a call; asks for a response. . . A journalist knows that the truth never dies, but it leads a tortured life. . . A journalist is someone who steps away from the table and tries to see it all, and puts away his or her views, and tries to look for the truth."

"A journalist never underestimates the intelligence of the public. People have a lot of busy things in their lives. They have kids, they have shoes to buy, they have places to go, they have work to do. So they don't, on a daily basis, critique the kinds of reporting that our newspapers or our televisions deliver to them, but it doesn't mean they don't notice and it doesn't mean they don't care."

"A journalist is somebody no matter how long they've been in the business, who meets a new ethical dilemma every couple of days or weeks. . . A journalist has a sense of humor because it's the only thing that's going to save a journalist."

"A journalist, in my view, forsakes some of the rights of being a citizen for the privilege of being a journalist. That is to say for me, I belong to no organizations. I do no fund raising. I take no stands, I sign no petitions."

"A journalist has to prepare every day for the possibility of quitting on principle or being fired for the wrong reason."

"A journalist is someone who loves what they do, and despite the cynicism or the skepticism, never gives up the passion."

Jeff Borden, associate editor & media columnist, Crain's Chicago Business: "Perhaps the best way to address the question today is if we can't decide what a journalist is, maybe we can decide what a journalist isn't."

"Someone who gets a job in television and then writes a quickie book advising you to take drama classes because it will help in your career, probably isn't. Someone who wants to cover theater because they really enjoy those free front-row tickets for every opening of a Broadway show, probably isn't. Someone who's busy shining the shoes of his superiors every day, telling them what brilliant geniuses they are in planning and strategies, probably isn't."

"The flip side of it is, that the managers at Channel 5 have a responsibility, too. They work for a publicly traded company -- a company in which people have invested money. Their job is to try to bring in as many viewers as possible so they make more money for their shareholders. That's their job. So we see, as Carol mentioned earlier, how they were at cross purposes."

"But is it possible that while Jerry Springer was the wrong choice as a commentator, perhaps a non- journalist might have added an interesting element to the station's newscast at 10:00? And would the station management be acting in not only their interest, but in the interest of their shareholders and perhaps even the public, had they gone out and found someone who wasn't plumbing the sewers every day?"

"We're not connected to the poorer neighborhoods anymore or the concerns of many people below our economic level. So I wonder how we can address the need to bring other viewpoints and other diverse views and ideas and voices into our newsrooms, but yet keep out the sleaze-meisters and the cheap publicity stunts that Jerry Springer represented."

Mary Mitchell, columnist, Chicago Sun-Times: "When...we talk about what news is and isn't--and this really gets to the heart of the matter of Jerry Springer--we look at what people don't like about the news."

"What I hear from my community, for instance, as an African American columnist . . . is that I don't like how the paper portrays African Americans. Why is it that although the majority of drug abusers in this country happen to be white, that they're always portrayed as African American? Why is that? "

"I go back to my newsroom and I say, 'Why is that?'"

"I don't expect students to come into a job and say okay, I don't like what's going on here and just quit their job. So is there another way for young people who come into this field -- these issues you brought up are very valid issues--what can they do?"

Carol Marin: "The best thing you can do is--and you've done it, too, as a reporter, I'm sure--when your editor says hey, I'd like you to do a ten-part series on liposuction, you say, I think I have a scandal that's breaking. You try to give them something that they want more and need more. You try to hammer it out internally. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes push does come to shove. I'm not the first person that ever happened to in TV or in print. Then you've got to say I've lost all my ability to influence the newsroom in a way that I think is productive...."

Why did people respond to the Springer event the way they did? "I am still awestruck by the quantity and the quality of the letters and e-mails I got (after quitting)...Ron (Majors) and I got a lot of credit because we're public people. But the fact of the matter is, and a lawyer that I know in Chicago for years wrote me and said, 'every one of us in our lives will face a so-called Springer decision.' I talked to butchers who won't short-weigh meat--One got fired; A real estate banker who wouldn't pad real estate assessments in Lake Forest and lost two critical accounts with Chicago banks down there."

"I really believe this isn't an uncommon thing or as uncommon as we think it is."

Dan Okrent, editor of new media for Time, Inc: "I worry...that we remove ourselves from our audiences a bit when we take ourselves as seriously as we sometimes do. Though yes, there is a public trust, I'll agree with that, and that as the public's eyes and ears we're obligated to be honest, I think, to be accurate, to be fair."

"But sometimes to be a journalist also means to report on the new colors for living room sofas, and to tell people whether the power forward is going to be wearing a nose ring tonight, or is the TV star really happy with his new girlfriend? There are things that have to do with entertainment, conversation, connection with readers and viewers at a different level...There is a danger in over- professionalizing and over-sanctifying what we do."

Carol Marin: "[N]ews has gone so low brow...I mean I think we have gotten on not our high horse, but have so far low-balled information. Now in Chicago and other places all across the nation, when the first particle of snow drops in a city known for its cold, we do 12 packages on how to start your car, watch out for your furnace, because it's the lowest common denominator. We tell you endless stories about Marv Albert when a couple would do."

"Tabloid is not a problem for me, actually. I think tabloid's an honest thing. If it bleeds it leads, you know. It is what it is. You decide if you want to watch it or not."

"The insidious part for me, and the increasingly insidious part, is the commercialization, the quiet commercialization where you really have a corporate agenda advanced through fewer and fewer news organizations as they become massive conglomerates, where you really can't tell what's going on there, but it's propelling a financial entity."

Audience Question: "Can there be objectivity in a field that relies on advertising dollars?"

Carol Marin: "Yes. Most newsrooms actually have had a partition for years between sales and news; and good newsrooms make the sales department uncomfortable, but they carry on on their different courses. The danger, and the one that I feel we experienced and others have, is when that seepage begins, it's very hard to stop it once it starts."

Dan Okrent, editor of New Media at Time, Inc: "I don't think that necessarily means there can't be marketing-driven news sections or editorial sections. If you work at a publication that sells a lot of ads, say to technology providers, and a special section is filled with stories on technology, as long as those stories are written independently of the advertising that runs in there, I don't think the public is ill served."

Mary Mitchell: "[A]lthough everyone comes to the table saying we're objective, and my story's objective, I think what they're really saying is I'm fair. Because people go after the stories they want to go after for a certain reason. It's not because they're objective. There's a reason why they want to cover the beat that they cover or do the kinds of stories that they do."

"So the lesson that you learn is that what we're really talking about, was I fair in the story? Am I being fair in the story? Did I make my calls? Did I balance it?"

"One of my biggest fears is not that you end up writing a story that may favor an advertiser. It's that you may end up not writing a story because it may offend an advertiser."

Audience Question: Should Susan Molinari really be a journalist? What does she bring to the table as a reporter?

Okrent: She isn't a journalist because she says she's a journalist...It isn't the self- assertion that makes a journalist; it's the nature of the work that person does. She hasn't done it yet."

Borden: "Is Rush Limbaugh a journalist? No. He is a repeater of information, he's a repeater of rumor, a repeater of innuendo, and he's a commentator. I don't think he's a journalist."

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